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+Project Gutenberg's The $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories, by Mark Twain
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost
+no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use
+it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this
+eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories
+
+Author: Mark Twain
+
+Release Date: May 12, 2009 [EBook #142]
+Last Updated: February 24, 2018
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK $30,000 BEQUEST AND OTHERS ***
+
+
+
+Produced by An Anonymous Volunteer, and David Widger
+
+
+
+THE $30,000 BEQUEST
+
+and Other Stories
+
+
+by Mark Twain
+
+(Samuel L. Clemens)
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+
+THE $30,000 BEQUEST
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+
+A DOG'S TALE
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+
+WAS IT HEAVEN? OR HELL?
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+
+A CURE FOR THE BLUES
+
+THE CURIOUS BOOK
+
+THE CALIFORNIAN'S TALE
+
+A HELPLESS SITUATION
+
+A TELEPHONIC CONVERSATION
+
+EDWARD MILLS AND GEORGE BENTON: A TALE
+
+THE FIVE BOONS OF LIFE
+
+Chapter I
+
+Chapter II
+
+Chapter III
+
+Chapter IV
+
+Chapter V
+
+
+THE FIRST WRITING-MACHINES
+
+ITALIAN WITHOUT A MASTER
+
+ITALIAN WITH GRAMMAR
+
+A BURLESQUE BIOGRAPHY
+
+HOW TO TELL A STORY
+
+GENERAL WASHINGTON'S NEGRO BODY-SERVANT
+
+WIT INSPIRATIONS OF THE “TWO-YEAR-OLDS”
+
+AN ENTERTAINING ARTICLE
+
+A LETTER TO THE SECRETARY OF THE TREASURY
+
+AMENDED OBITUARIES
+
+A MONUMENT TO ADAM
+
+A HUMANE WORD FROM SATAN
+
+INTRODUCTION TO “THE NEW GUIDE OF THE CONVERSATION IN PORTUGUESE AND
+ENGLISH”
+
+ADVICE TO LITTLE GIRLS
+
+POST-MORTEM POETRY (1)
+
+THE DANGER OF LYING IN BED
+
+PORTRAIT OF KING WILLIAM III
+
+DOES THE RACE OF MAN LOVE A LORD?
+
+EXTRACTS FROM ADAM'S DIARY
+
+EVE'S DIARY
+
+EXTRACT FROM ADAM'S DIARY
+
+
+
+THE $30,000 BEQUEST
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+Lakeside was a pleasant little town of five or six thousand inhabitants,
+and a rather pretty one, too, as towns go in the Far West. It had church
+accommodations for thirty-five thousand, which is the way of the Far
+West and the South, where everybody is religious, and where each of the
+Protestant sects is represented and has a plant of its own. Rank was
+unknown in Lakeside--unconfessed, anyway; everybody knew everybody and
+his dog, and a sociable friendliness was the prevailing atmosphere.
+
+Saladin Foster was book-keeper in the principal store, and the only
+high-salaried man of his profession in Lakeside. He was thirty-five
+years old, now; he had served that store for fourteen years; he had
+begun in his marriage-week at four hundred dollars a year, and had
+climbed steadily up, a hundred dollars a year, for four years; from
+that time forth his wage had remained eight hundred--a handsome figure
+indeed, and everybody conceded that he was worth it.
+
+His wife, Electra, was a capable helpmeet, although--like himself--a
+dreamer of dreams and a private dabbler in romance. The first thing she
+did, after her marriage--child as she was, aged only nineteen--was to
+buy an acre of ground on the edge of the town, and pay down the cash for
+it--twenty-five dollars, all her fortune. Saladin had less, by fifteen.
+She instituted a vegetable garden there, got it farmed on shares by the
+nearest neighbor, and made it pay her a hundred per cent. a year. Out of
+Saladin's first year's wage she put thirty dollars in the savings-bank,
+sixty out of his second, a hundred out of his third, a hundred and fifty
+out of his fourth. His wage went to eight hundred a year, then, and
+meantime two children had arrived and increased the expenses, but she
+banked two hundred a year from the salary, nevertheless, thenceforth.
+When she had been married seven years she built and furnished a
+pretty and comfortable two-thousand-dollar house in the midst of her
+garden-acre, paid half of the money down and moved her family in. Seven
+years later she was out of debt and had several hundred dollars out
+earning its living.
+
+Earning it by the rise in landed estate; for she had long ago bought
+another acre or two and sold the most of it at a profit to pleasant
+people who were willing to build, and would be good neighbors and
+furnish a general comradeship for herself and her growing family. She
+had an independent income from safe investments of about a hundred
+dollars a year; her children were growing in years and grace; and
+she was a pleased and happy woman. Happy in her husband, happy in her
+children, and the husband and the children were happy in her. It is at
+this point that this history begins.
+
+The youngest girl, Clytemnestra--called Clytie for short--was eleven;
+her sister, Gwendolen--called Gwen for short--was thirteen; nice girls,
+and comely. The names betray the latent romance-tinge in the parental
+blood, the parents' names indicate that the tinge was an inheritance. It
+was an affectionate family, hence all four of its members had pet
+names, Saladin's was a curious and unsexing one--Sally; and so was
+Electra's--Aleck. All day long Sally was a good and diligent book-keeper
+and salesman; all day long Aleck was a good and faithful mother and
+housewife, and thoughtful and calculating business woman; but in the
+cozy living-room at night they put the plodding world away, and lived in
+another and a fairer, reading romances to each other, dreaming dreams,
+comrading with kings and princes and stately lords and ladies in the
+flash and stir and splendor of noble palaces and grim and ancient
+castles.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+Now came great news! Stunning news--joyous news, in fact. It came from a
+neighboring state, where the family's only surviving relative lived. It
+was Sally's relative--a sort of vague and indefinite uncle or second
+or third cousin by the name of Tilbury Foster, seventy and a bachelor,
+reputed well off and corresponding sour and crusty. Sally had tried to
+make up to him once, by letter, in a bygone time, and had not made that
+mistake again. Tilbury now wrote to Sally, saying he should shortly die,
+and should leave him thirty thousand dollars, cash; not for love, but
+because money had given him most of his troubles and exasperations, and
+he wished to place it where there was good hope that it would continue
+its malignant work. The bequest would be found in his will, and would be
+paid over. PROVIDED, that Sally should be able to prove to the executors
+that he had _Taken no notice of the gift by spoken word or by letter,
+had made no inquiries concerning the moribund's progress toward the
+everlasting tropics, and had not attended the funeral._
+
+As soon as Aleck had partially recovered from the tremendous emotions
+created by the letter, she sent to the relative's habitat and subscribed
+for the local paper.
+
+Man and wife entered into a solemn compact, now, to never mention the
+great news to any one while the relative lived, lest some ignorant
+person carry the fact to the death-bed and distort it and make it appear
+that they were disobediently thankful for the bequest, and just the
+same as confessing it and publishing it, right in the face of the
+prohibition.
+
+For the rest of the day Sally made havoc and confusion with his books,
+and Aleck could not keep her mind on her affairs, not even take up a
+flower-pot or book or a stick of wood without forgetting what she had
+intended to do with it. For both were dreaming.
+
+“Thir-ty thousand dollars!”
+
+All day long the music of those inspiring words sang through those
+people's heads.
+
+From his marriage-day forth, Aleck's grip had been upon the purse, and
+Sally had seldom known what it was to be privileged to squander a dime
+on non-necessities.
+
+“Thir-ty thousand dollars!” the song went on and on. A vast sum, an
+unthinkable sum!
+
+All day long Aleck was absorbed in planning how to invest it, Sally in
+planning how to spend it.
+
+There was no romance-reading that night. The children took themselves
+away early, for their parents were silent, distraught, and strangely
+unentertaining. The good-night kisses might as well have been impressed
+upon vacancy, for all the response they got; the parents were not aware
+of the kisses, and the children had been gone an hour before
+their absence was noticed. Two pencils had been busy during that
+hour--note-making; in the way of plans. It was Sally who broke the
+stillness at last. He said, with exultation:
+
+“Ah, it'll be grand, Aleck! Out of the first thousand we'll have a horse
+and a buggy for summer, and a cutter and a skin lap-robe for winter.”
+
+Aleck responded with decision and composure--
+
+“Out of the _capital_? Nothing of the kind. Not if it was a million!”
+
+Sally was deeply disappointed; the glow went out of his face.
+
+“Oh, Aleck!” he said, reproachfully. “We've always worked so hard and
+been so scrimped: and now that we are rich, it does seem--”
+
+He did not finish, for he saw her eye soften; his supplication had
+touched her. She said, with gentle persuasiveness:
+
+“We must not spend the capital, dear, it would not be wise. Out of the
+income from it--”
+
+“That will answer, that will answer, Aleck! How dear and good you are!
+There will be a noble income and if we can spend that--”
+
+“Not _all _of it, dear, not all of it, but you can spend a part of it.
+That is, a reasonable part. But the whole of the capital--every penny
+of it--must be put right to work, and kept at it. You see the
+reasonableness of that, don't you?”
+
+“Why, ye-s. Yes, of course. But we'll have to wait so long. Six months
+before the first interest falls due.”
+
+“Yes--maybe longer.”
+
+“Longer, Aleck? Why? Don't they pay half-yearly?”
+
+“_That _kind of an investment--yes; but I sha'n't invest in that way.”
+
+“What way, then?”
+
+“For big returns.”
+
+“Big. That's good. Go on, Aleck. What is it?”
+
+“Coal. The new mines. Cannel. I mean to put in ten thousand. Ground
+floor. When we organize, we'll get three shares for one.”
+
+“By George, but it sounds good, Aleck! Then the shares will be
+worth--how much? And when?”
+
+“About a year. They'll pay ten per cent. half yearly, and be worth
+thirty thousand. I know all about it; the advertisement is in the
+Cincinnati paper here.”
+
+“Land, thirty thousand for ten--in a year! Let's jam in the
+whole capital and pull out ninety! I'll write and subscribe right
+now--tomorrow it maybe too late.”
+
+He was flying to the writing-desk, but Aleck stopped him and put him
+back in his chair. She said:
+
+“Don't lose your head so. _We_ mustn't subscribe till we've got the
+money; don't you know that?”
+
+Sally's excitement went down a degree or two, but he was not wholly
+appeased.
+
+“Why, Aleck, we'll _have _it, you know--and so soon, too. He's probably
+out of his troubles before this; it's a hundred to nothing he's
+selecting his brimstone-shovel this very minute. Now, I think--”
+
+Aleck shuddered, and said:
+
+“How _can _you, Sally! Don't talk in that way, it is perfectly
+scandalous.”
+
+“Oh, well, make it a halo, if you like, _I_ don't care for his outfit, I
+was only just talking. Can't you let a person talk?”
+
+“But why should you _want _to talk in that dreadful way? How would you
+like to have people talk so about _you_, and you not cold yet?”
+
+“Not likely to be, for _one _while, I reckon, if my last act was giving
+away money for the sake of doing somebody a harm with it. But never mind
+about Tilbury, Aleck, let's talk about something worldly. It does seem
+to me that that mine is the place for the whole thirty. What's the
+objection?”
+
+“All the eggs in one basket--that's the objection.”
+
+“All right, if you say so. What about the other twenty? What do you mean
+to do with that?”
+
+“There is no hurry; I am going to look around before I do anything with
+it.”
+
+“All right, if your mind's made up,” sighed Sally. He was deep in
+thought awhile, then he said:
+
+“There'll be twenty thousand profit coming from the ten a year from now.
+We can spend that, can't we, Aleck?”
+
+Aleck shook her head.
+
+“No, dear,” she said, “it won't sell high till we've had the first
+semi-annual dividend. You can spend part of that.”
+
+“Shucks, only _that_--and a whole year to wait! Confound it, I--”
+
+“Oh, do be patient! It might even be declared in three months--it's
+quite within the possibilities.”
+
+“Oh, jolly! oh, thanks!” and Sally jumped up and kissed his wife in
+gratitude. “It'll be three thousand--three whole thousand! how much
+of it can we spend, Aleck? Make it liberal!--do, dear, that's a good
+fellow.”
+
+Aleck was pleased; so pleased that she yielded to the pressure and
+conceded a sum which her judgment told her was a foolish extravagance--a
+thousand dollars. Sally kissed her half a dozen times and even in that
+way could not express all his joy and thankfulness. This new access
+of gratitude and affection carried Aleck quite beyond the bounds of
+prudence, and before she could restrain herself she had made her darling
+another grant--a couple of thousand out of the fifty or sixty which she
+meant to clear within a year of the twenty which still remained of the
+bequest. The happy tears sprang to Sally's eyes, and he said:
+
+“Oh, I want to hug you!” And he did it. Then he got his notes and sat
+down and began to check off, for first purchase, the luxuries which
+he should earliest wish to secure.
+“Horse--buggy--cutter--lap-robe--patent-leathers--dog--plug-hat--
+church-pew--stem-winder--new teeth--_say_, Aleck!”
+
+“Well?”
+
+“Ciphering away, aren't you? That's right. Have you got the twenty
+thousand invested yet?”
+
+“No, there's no hurry about that; I must look around first, and think.”
+
+“But you are ciphering; what's it about?”
+
+“Why, I have to find work for the thirty thousand that comes out of the
+coal, haven't I?”
+
+“Scott, what a head! I never thought of that. How are you getting along?
+Where have you arrived?”
+
+“Not very far--two years or three. I've turned it over twice; once in
+oil and once in wheat.”
+
+“Why, Aleck, it's splendid! How does it aggregate?”
+
+“I think--well, to be on the safe side, about a hundred and eighty
+thousand clear, though it will probably be more.”
+
+“My! isn't it wonderful? By gracious! luck has come our way at last,
+after all the hard sledding. Aleck!”
+
+“Well?”
+
+“I'm going to cash in a whole three hundred on the missionaries--what
+real right have we care for expenses!”
+
+“You couldn't do a nobler thing, dear; and it's just like your generous
+nature, you unselfish boy.”
+
+The praise made Sally poignantly happy, but he was fair and just enough
+to say it was rightfully due to Aleck rather than to himself, since but
+for her he should never have had the money.
+
+Then they went up to bed, and in their delirium of bliss they forgot and
+left the candle burning in the parlor. They did not remember until they
+were undressed; then Sally was for letting it burn; he said they could
+afford it, if it was a thousand. But Aleck went down and put it out.
+
+A good job, too; for on her way back she hit on a scheme that would turn
+the hundred and eighty thousand into half a million before it had had
+time to get cold.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+The little newspaper which Aleck had subscribed for was a Thursday
+sheet; it would make the trip of five hundred miles from Tilbury's
+village and arrive on Saturday. Tilbury's letter had started on Friday,
+more than a day too late for the benefactor to die and get into that
+week's issue, but in plenty of time to make connection for the next
+output. Thus the Fosters had to wait almost a complete week to find out
+whether anything of a satisfactory nature had happened to him or not.
+It was a long, long week, and the strain was a heavy one. The pair could
+hardly have borne it if their minds had not had the relief of wholesome
+diversion. We have seen that they had that. The woman was piling up
+fortunes right along, the man was spending them--spending all his wife
+would give him a chance at, at any rate.
+
+At last the Saturday came, and the _Weekly Sagamore_ arrived. Mrs.
+Eversly Bennett was present. She was the Presbyterian parson's wife, and
+was working the Fosters for a charity. Talk now died a sudden death--on
+the Foster side. Mrs. Bennett presently discovered that her hosts
+were not hearing a word she was saying; so she got up, wondering and
+indignant, and went away. The moment she was out of the house, Aleck
+eagerly tore the wrapper from the paper, and her eyes and Sally's swept
+the columns for the death-notices. Disappointment! Tilbury was not
+anywhere mentioned. Aleck was a Christian from the cradle, and duty and
+the force of habit required her to go through the motions. She pulled
+herself together and said, with a pious two-per-cent. trade joyousness:
+
+“Let us be humbly thankful that he has been spared; and--”
+
+“Damn his treacherous hide, I wish--”
+
+“Sally! For shame!”
+
+“I don't care!” retorted the angry man. “It's the way _you _feel, and if
+you weren't so immorally pious you'd be honest and say so.”
+
+Aleck said, with wounded dignity:
+
+“I do not see how you can say such unkind and unjust things. There is no
+such thing as immoral piety.”
+
+Sally felt a pang, but tried to conceal it under a shuffling attempt to
+save his case by changing the form of it--as if changing the form while
+retaining the juice could deceive the expert he was trying to placate.
+He said:
+
+“I didn't mean so bad as that, Aleck; I didn't really mean immoral
+piety, I only meant--meant--well, conventional piety, you know; er--shop
+piety; the--the--why, _you _know what I mean. Aleck--the--well, where
+you put up that plated article and play it for solid, you know, without
+intending anything improper, but just out of trade habit, ancient
+policy, petrified custom, loyalty to--to--hang it, I can't find the
+right words, but _you _know what I mean, Aleck, and that there isn't any
+harm in it. I'll try again. You see, it's this way. If a person--”
+
+“You have said quite enough,” said Aleck, coldly; “let the subject be
+dropped.”
+
+“I'm willing,” fervently responded Sally, wiping the sweat from his
+forehead and looking the thankfulness he had no words for. Then,
+musingly, he apologized to himself. “I certainly held threes--_I know_
+it--but I drew and didn't fill. That's where I'm so often weak in
+the game. If I had stood pat--but I didn't. I never do. I don't know
+enough.”
+
+Confessedly defeated, he was properly tame now and subdued. Aleck
+forgave him with her eyes.
+
+The grand interest, the supreme interest, came instantly to the front
+again; nothing could keep it in the background many minutes on a
+stretch. The couple took up the puzzle of the absence of Tilbury's
+death-notice. They discussed it every which way, more or less hopefully,
+but they had to finish where they began, and concede that the only
+really sane explanation of the absence of the notice must be--and
+without doubt was--that Tilbury was not dead. There was something sad
+about it, something even a little unfair, maybe, but there it was, and
+had to be put up with. They were agreed as to that. To Sally it seemed
+a strangely inscrutable dispensation; more inscrutable than usual, he
+thought; one of the most unnecessary inscrutable he could call to mind,
+in fact--and said so, with some feeling; but if he was hoping to draw
+Aleck he failed; she reserved her opinion, if she had one; she had not
+the habit of taking injudicious risks in any market, worldly or other.
+
+The pair must wait for next week's paper--Tilbury had evidently
+postponed. That was their thought and their decision. So they put the
+subject away and went about their affairs again with as good heart as
+they could.
+
+Now, if they had but known it, they had been wronging Tilbury all the
+time. Tilbury had kept faith, kept it to the letter; he was dead, he had
+died to schedule. He was dead more than four days now and used to it;
+entirely dead, perfectly dead, as dead as any other new person in the
+cemetery; dead in abundant time to get into that week's _Sagamore_, too,
+and only shut out by an accident; an accident which could not happen
+to a metropolitan journal, but which happens easily to a poor little
+village rag like the _Sagamore_. On this occasion, just as the editorial
+page was being locked up, a gratis quart of strawberry ice-water arrived
+from Hostetter's Ladies and Gents Ice-Cream Parlors, and the stickful of
+rather chilly regret over Tilbury's translation got crowded out to make
+room for the editor's frantic gratitude.
+
+On its way to the standing-galley Tilbury's notice got pied. Otherwise
+it would have gone into some future edition, for _weekly Sagamores_ do
+not waste “live” matter, and in their galleys “live” matter is immortal,
+unless a pi accident intervenes. But a thing that gets pied is dead, and
+for such there is no resurrection; its chance of seeing print is gone,
+forever and ever. And so, let Tilbury like it or not, let him rave in
+his grave to his fill, no matter--no mention of his death would ever see
+the light in the _Weekly Sagamore_.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+Five weeks drifted tediously along. The _Sagamore _arrived regularly
+on the Saturdays, but never once contained a mention of Tilbury Foster.
+Sally's patience broke down at this point, and he said, resentfully:
+
+“Damn his livers, he's immortal!”
+
+Aleck give him a very severe rebuke, and added with icy solemnity:
+
+“How would you feel if you were suddenly cut off just after such an
+awful remark had escaped out of you?”
+
+Without sufficient reflection Sally responded:
+
+“I'd feel I was lucky I hadn't got caught with it _in_ me.”
+
+Pride had forced him to say something, and as he could not think of any
+rational thing to say he flung that out. Then he stole a base--as he
+called it--that is, slipped from the presence, to keep from being brayed
+in his wife's discussion-mortar.
+
+Six months came and went. The _Sagamore _was still silent about Tilbury.
+Meantime, Sally had several times thrown out a feeler--that is, a hint
+that he would like to know. Aleck had ignored the hints. Sally now
+resolved to brace up and risk a frontal attack. So he squarely proposed
+to disguise himself and go to Tilbury's village and surreptitiously find
+out as to the prospects. Aleck put her foot on the dangerous project
+with energy and decision. She said:
+
+“What can you be thinking of? You do keep my hands full! You have to be
+watched all the time, like a little child, to keep you from walking into
+the fire. You'll stay right where you are!”
+
+“Why, Aleck, I could do it and not be found out--I'm certain of it.”
+
+“Sally Foster, don't you know you would have to inquire around?”
+
+“Of course, but what of it? Nobody would suspect who I was.”
+
+“Oh, listen to the man! Some day you've got to prove to the executors
+that you never inquired. What then?”
+
+He had forgotten that detail. He didn't reply; there wasn't anything to
+say. Aleck added:
+
+“Now then, drop that notion out of your mind, and don't ever meddle with
+it again. Tilbury set that trap for you. Don't you know it's a trap? He
+is on the watch, and fully expecting you to blunder into it. Well, he is
+going to be disappointed--at least while I am on deck. Sally!”
+
+“Well?”
+
+“As long as you live, if it's a hundred years, don't you ever make an
+inquiry. Promise!”
+
+“All right,” with a sigh and reluctantly.
+
+Then Aleck softened and said:
+
+“Don't be impatient. We are prospering; we can wait; there is no hurry.
+Our small dead-certain income increases all the time; and as to futures,
+I have not made a mistake yet--they are piling up by the thousands and
+tens of thousands. There is not another family in the state with such
+prospects as ours. Already we are beginning to roll in eventual wealth.
+You know that, don't you?”
+
+“Yes, Aleck, it's certainly so.”
+
+“Then be grateful for what God is doing for us and stop worrying. You do
+not believe we could have achieved these prodigious results without His
+special help and guidance, do you?”
+
+Hesitatingly, “N-no, I suppose not.” Then, with feeling and admiration,
+“And yet, when it comes to judiciousness in watering a stock or putting
+up a hand to skin Wall Street I don't give in that _you _need any
+outside amateur help, if I do wish I--”
+
+“Oh, _do_ shut up! I know you do not mean any harm or any irreverence,
+poor boy, but you can't seem to open your mouth without letting out
+things to make a person shudder. You keep me in constant dread. For you
+and for all of us. Once I had no fear of the thunder, but now when I
+hear it I--”
+
+Her voice broke, and she began to cry, and could not finish. The sight
+of this smote Sally to the heart and he took her in his arms and petted
+her and comforted her and promised better conduct, and upbraided himself
+and remorsefully pleaded for forgiveness. And he was in earnest, and
+sorry for what he had done and ready for any sacrifice that could make
+up for it.
+
+And so, in privacy, he thought long and deeply over the matter,
+resolving to do what should seem best. It was easy to _promise _reform;
+indeed he had already promised it. But would that do any real good, any
+permanent good? No, it would be but temporary--he knew his weakness,
+and confessed it to himself with sorrow--he could not keep the promise.
+Something surer and better must be devised; and he devised it. At
+cost of precious money which he had long been saving up, shilling by
+shilling, he put a lightning-rod on the house.
+
+At a subsequent time he relapsed.
+
+What miracles habit can do! and how quickly and how easily habits are
+acquired--both trifling habits and habits which profoundly change us.
+If by accident we wake at two in the morning a couple of nights in
+succession, we have need to be uneasy, for another repetition can turn
+the accident into a habit; and a month's dallying with whiskey--but we
+all know these commonplace facts.
+
+The castle-building habit, the day-dreaming habit--how it grows! what a
+luxury it becomes; how we fly to its enchantments at every idle moment,
+how we revel in them, steep our souls in them, intoxicate ourselves with
+their beguiling fantasies--oh yes, and how soon and how easily our dream
+life and our material life become so intermingled and so fused together
+that we can't quite tell which is which, any more.
+
+By and by Aleck subscribed to a Chicago daily and for the _Wall Street
+Pointer_. With an eye single to finance she studied these as diligently
+all the week as she studied her Bible Sundays. Sally was lost in
+admiration, to note with what swift and sure strides her genius and
+judgment developed and expanded in the forecasting and handling of the
+securities of both the material and spiritual markets. He was proud of
+her nerve and daring in exploiting worldly stocks, and just as proud of
+her conservative caution in working her spiritual deals. He noted that
+she never lost her head in either case; that with a splendid courage
+she often went short on worldly futures, but heedfully drew the line
+there--she was always long on the others. Her policy was quite sane and
+simple, as she explained it to him: what she put into earthly futures
+was for speculation, what she put into spiritual futures was for
+investment; she was willing to go into the one on a margin, and take
+chances, but in the case of the other, “margin her no margins”--she
+wanted to cash in a hundred cents per dollar's worth, and have the stock
+transferred on the books.
+
+It took but a very few months to educate Aleck's imagination and
+Sally's. Each day's training added something to the spread and
+effectiveness of the two machines. As a consequence, Aleck made
+imaginary money much faster than at first she had dreamed of making it,
+and Sally's competency in spending the overflow of it kept pace with the
+strain put upon it, right along. In the beginning, Aleck had given the
+coal speculation a twelvemonth in which to materialize, and had been
+loath to grant that this term might possibly be shortened by nine
+months. But that was the feeble work, the nursery work, of a financial
+fancy that had had no teaching, no experience, no practice. These
+aids soon came, then that nine months vanished, and the imaginary
+ten-thousand-dollar investment came marching home with three hundred per
+cent. profit on its back!
+
+It was a great day for the pair of Fosters. They were speechless for
+joy. Also speechless for another reason: after much watching of the
+market, Aleck had lately, with fear and trembling, made her first flyer
+on a “margin,” using the remaining twenty thousand of the bequest
+in this risk. In her mind's eye she had seen it climb, point by
+point--always with a chance that the market would break--until at last
+her anxieties were too great for further endurance--she being new to
+the margin business and unhardened, as yet--and she gave her imaginary
+broker an imaginary order by imaginary telegraph to sell. She said forty
+thousand dollars' profit was enough. The sale was made on the very day
+that the coal venture had returned with its rich freight. As I have
+said, the couple were speechless, they sat dazed and blissful that
+night, trying to realize that they were actually worth a hundred
+thousand dollars in clean, imaginary cash. Yet so it was.
+
+It was the last time that ever Aleck was afraid of a margin; at least
+afraid enough to let it break her sleep and pale her cheek to the extent
+that this first experience in that line had done.
+
+Indeed it was a memorable night. Gradually the realization that they
+were rich sank securely home into the souls of the pair, then they began
+to place the money. If we could have looked out through the eyes of
+these dreamers, we should have seen their tidy little wooden house
+disappear, and two-story brick with a cast-iron fence in front of it
+take its place; we should have seen a three-globed gas-chandelier grow
+down from the parlor ceiling; we should have seen the homely rag carpet
+turn to noble Brussels, a dollar and a half a yard; we should have seen
+the plebeian fireplace vanish away and a recherche, big base-burner with
+isinglass windows take position and spread awe around. And we should
+have seen other things, too; among them the buggy, the lap-robe, the
+stove-pipe hat, and so on.
+
+From that time forth, although the daughters and the neighbors saw only
+the same old wooden house there, it was a two-story brick to Aleck
+and Sally and not a night went by that Aleck did not worry about the
+imaginary gas-bills, and get for all comfort Sally's reckless retort:
+“What of it? We can afford it.”
+
+Before the couple went to bed, that first night that they were rich,
+they had decided that they must celebrate. They must give a party--that
+was the idea. But how to explain it--to the daughters and the neighbors?
+They could not expose the fact that they were rich. Sally was willing,
+even anxious, to do it; but Aleck kept her head and would not allow it.
+She said that although the money was as good as in, it would be as well
+to wait until it was actually in. On that policy she took her stand, and
+would not budge. The great secret must be kept, she said--kept from the
+daughters and everybody else.
+
+The pair were puzzled. They must celebrate, they were determined to
+celebrate, but since the secret must be kept, what could they celebrate?
+No birthdays were due for three months. Tilbury wasn't available,
+evidently he was going to live forever; what the nation _could _they
+celebrate? That was Sally's way of putting it; and he was getting
+impatient, too, and harassed. But at last he hit it--just by sheer
+inspiration, as it seemed to him--and all their troubles were gone in a
+moment; they would celebrate the Discovery of America. A splendid idea!
+
+Aleck was almost too proud of Sally for words--she said _she _never
+would have thought of it. But Sally, although he was bursting with
+delight in the compliment and with wonder at himself, tried not to let
+on, and said it wasn't really anything, anybody could have done it.
+Whereat Aleck, with a prideful toss of her happy head, said:
+
+“Oh, certainly! Anybody could--oh, anybody! Hosannah Dilkins, for
+instance! Or maybe Adelbert Peanut--oh, _dear_--yes! Well, I'd like to
+see them try it, that's all. Dear-me-suz, if they could think of the
+discovery of a forty-acre island it's more than _I_ believe they could;
+and as for the whole continent, why, Sally Foster, you know perfectly
+well it would strain the livers and lights out of them and _then_ they
+couldn't!”
+
+The dear woman, she knew he had talent; and if affection made her
+over-estimate the size of it a little, surely it was a sweet and gentle
+crime, and forgivable for its source's sake.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+The celebration went off well. The friends were all present, both the
+young and the old. Among the young were Flossie and Gracie Peanut and
+their brother Adelbert, who was a rising young journeyman tinner,
+also Hosannah Dilkins, Jr., journeyman plasterer, just out of his
+apprenticeship. For many months Adelbert and Hosannah had been showing
+interest in Gwendolen and Clytemnestra Foster, and the parents of the
+girls had noticed this with private satisfaction. But they suddenly
+realized now that that feeling had passed. They recognized that the
+changed financial conditions had raised up a social bar between
+their daughters and the young mechanics. The daughters could now look
+higher--and must. Yes, must. They need marry nothing below the grade of
+lawyer or merchant; poppa and momma would take care of this; there must
+be no mesalliances.
+
+However, these thinkings and projects of theirs were private, and
+did not show on the surface, and therefore threw no shadow upon the
+celebration. What showed upon the surface was a serene and lofty
+contentment and a dignity of carriage and gravity of deportment which
+compelled the admiration and likewise the wonder of the company. All
+noticed it and all commented upon it, but none was able to divine the
+secret of it. It was a marvel and a mystery. Three several persons
+remarked, without suspecting what clever shots they were making:
+
+“It's as if they'd come into property.”
+
+That was just it, indeed.
+
+Most mothers would have taken hold of the matrimonial matter in the
+old regulation way; they would have given the girls a talking to, of
+a solemn sort and untactful--a lecture calculated to defeat its own
+purpose, by producing tears and secret rebellion; and the said mothers
+would have further damaged the business by requesting the young
+mechanics to discontinue their attentions. But this mother was
+different. She was practical. She said nothing to any of the young
+people concerned, nor to any one else except Sally. He listened to her
+and understood; understood and admired. He said:
+
+“I get the idea. Instead of finding fault with the samples on view,
+thus hurting feelings and obstructing trade without occasion, you merely
+offer a higher class of goods for the money, and leave nature to take
+her course. It's wisdom, Aleck, solid wisdom, and sound as a nut. Who's
+your fish? Have you nominated him yet?”
+
+No, she hadn't. They must look the market over--which they did. To start
+with, they considered and discussed Brandish, rising young lawyer, and
+Fulton, rising young dentist. Sally must invite them to dinner. But not
+right away; there was no hurry, Aleck said. Keep an eye on the pair, and
+wait; nothing would be lost by going slowly in so important a matter.
+
+It turned out that this was wisdom, too; for inside of three weeks Aleck
+made a wonderful strike which swelled her imaginary hundred thousand
+to four hundred thousand of the same quality. She and Sally were in the
+clouds that evening. For the first time they introduced champagne at
+dinner. Not real champagne, but plenty real enough for the amount of
+imagination expended on it. It was Sally that did it, and Aleck weakly
+submitted. At bottom both were troubled and ashamed, for he was a
+high-up Son of Temperance, and at funerals wore an apron which no dog
+could look upon and retain his reason and his opinion; and she was a
+W. C. T. U., with all that that implies of boiler-iron virtue and
+unendurable holiness. But there it was; the pride of riches was
+beginning its disintegrating work. They had lived to prove, once more,
+a sad truth which had been proven many times before in the world: that
+whereas principle is a great and noble protection against showy and
+degrading vanities and vices, poverty is worth six of it. More than
+four hundred thousand dollars to the good. They took up the matrimonial
+matter again. Neither the dentist nor the lawyer was mentioned; there
+was no occasion, they were out of the running. Disqualified. They
+discussed the son of the pork-packer and the son of the village banker.
+But finally, as in the previous case, they concluded to wait and think,
+and go cautiously and sure.
+
+Luck came their way again. Aleck, ever watchful saw a great and risky
+chance, and took a daring flyer. A time of trembling, of doubt, of awful
+uneasiness followed, for non-success meant absolute ruin and nothing
+short of it. Then came the result, and Aleck, faint with joy, could
+hardly control her voice when she said:
+
+“The suspense is over, Sally--and we are worth a cold million!”
+
+Sally wept for gratitude, and said:
+
+“Oh, Electra, jewel of women, darling of my heart, we are free at last,
+we roll in wealth, we need never scrimp again. It's a case for Veuve
+Cliquot!” and he got out a pint of spruce-beer and made sacrifice, he
+saying “Damn the expense,” and she rebuking him gently with reproachful
+but humid and happy eyes.
+
+They shelved the pork-packer's son and the banker's son, and sat down to
+consider the Governor's son and the son of the Congressman.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+It were a weariness to follow in detail the leaps and bounds the Foster
+fictitious finances took from this time forth. It was marvelous, it
+was dizzying, it was dazzling. Everything Aleck touched turned to fairy
+gold, and heaped itself glittering toward the firmament. Millions upon
+millions poured in, and still the mighty stream flowed thundering
+along, still its vast volume increased. Five millions--ten
+millions--twenty--thirty--was there never to be an end?
+
+Two years swept by in a splendid delirium, the intoxicated Fosters
+scarcely noticing the flight of time. They were now worth three
+hundred million dollars; they were in every board of directors of every
+prodigious combine in the country; and still as time drifted along, the
+millions went on piling up, five at a time, ten at a time, as fast as
+they could tally them off, almost. The three hundred double itself--then
+doubled again--and yet again--and yet once more.
+
+Twenty-four hundred millions!
+
+The business was getting a little confused. It was necessary to take an
+account of stock, and straighten it out. The Fosters knew it, they felt
+it, they realized that it was imperative; but they also knew that to do
+it properly and perfectly the task must be carried to a finish without
+a break when once it was begun. A ten-hours' job; and where could _they
+_find ten leisure hours in a bunch? Sally was selling pins and sugar and
+calico all day and every day; Aleck was cooking and washing dishes and
+sweeping and making beds all day and every day, with none to help, for
+the daughters were being saved up for high society. The Fosters knew
+there was one way to get the ten hours, and only one. Both were ashamed
+to name it; each waited for the other to do it. Finally Sally said:
+
+“Somebody's got to give in. It's up to me. Consider that I've named
+it--never mind pronouncing it out aloud.”
+
+Aleck colored, but was grateful. Without further remark, they fell.
+Fell, and--broke the Sabbath. For that was their only free ten-hour
+stretch. It was but another step in the downward path. Others would
+follow. Vast wealth has temptations which fatally and surely undermine
+the moral structure of persons not habituated to its possession.
+
+They pulled down the shades and broke the Sabbath. With hard and patient
+labor they overhauled their holdings and listed them. And a long-drawn
+procession of formidable names it was! Starting with the Railway
+Systems, Steamer Lines, Standard Oil, Ocean Cables, Diluted Telegraph,
+and all the rest, and winding up with Klondike, De Beers, Tammany Graft,
+and Shady Privileges in the Post-office Department.
+
+Twenty-four hundred millions, and all safely planted in Good Things,
+gilt-edged and interest-bearing. Income, $120,000,000 a year. Aleck
+fetched a long purr of soft delight, and said:
+
+“Is it enough?”
+
+“It is, Aleck.”
+
+“What shall we do?”
+
+“Stand pat.”
+
+“Retire from business?”
+
+“That's it.”
+
+“I am agreed. The good work is finished; we will take a long rest and
+enjoy the money.”
+
+“Good! Aleck!”
+
+“Yes, dear?”
+
+“How much of the income can we spend?”
+
+“The whole of it.”
+
+It seemed to her husband that a ton of chains fell from his limbs. He
+did not say a word; he was happy beyond the power of speech.
+
+After that, they broke the Sabbaths right along as fast as they turned
+up. It is the first wrong step that counts. Every Sunday they put in the
+whole day, after morning service, on inventions--inventions of ways to
+spend the money. They got to continuing this delicious dissipation until
+past midnight; and at every seance Aleck lavished millions upon great
+charities and religious enterprises, and Sally lavished like sums upon
+matters to which (at first) he gave definite names. Only at first. Later
+the names gradually lost sharpness of outline, and eventually faded into
+“sundries,” thus becoming entirely--but safely--undescriptive. For Sally
+was crumbling. The placing of these millions added seriously and most
+uncomfortably to the family expenses--in tallow candles. For a while
+Aleck was worried. Then, after a little, she ceased to worry, for
+the occasion of it was gone. She was pained, she was grieved, she was
+ashamed; but she said nothing, and so became an accessory. Sally was
+taking candles; he was robbing the store. It is ever thus. Vast wealth,
+to the person unaccustomed to it, is a bane; it eats into the flesh and
+bone of his morals. When the Fosters were poor, they could have been
+trusted with untold candles. But now they--but let us not dwell upon it.
+From candles to apples is but a step: Sally got to taking apples; then
+soap; then maple-sugar; then canned goods; then crockery. How easy it
+is to go from bad to worse, when once we have started upon a downward
+course!
+
+Meantime, other effects had been milestoning the course of the Fosters'
+splendid financial march. The fictitious brick dwelling had given place
+to an imaginary granite one with a checker-board mansard roof; in time
+this one disappeared and gave place to a still grander home--and so on
+and so on. Mansion after mansion, made of air, rose, higher, broader,
+finer, and each in its turn vanished away; until now in these latter
+great days, our dreamers were in fancy housed, in a distant region, in a
+sumptuous vast palace which looked out from a leafy summit upon a
+noble prospect of vale and river and receding hills steeped in tinted
+mists--and all private, all the property of the dreamers; a palace
+swarming with liveried servants, and populous with guests of fame and
+power, hailing from all the world's capitals, foreign and domestic.
+
+This palace was far, far away toward the rising sun, immeasurably
+remote, astronomically remote, in Newport, Rhode Island, Holy Land of
+High Society, ineffable Domain of the American Aristocracy. As a rule
+they spent a part of every Sabbath--after morning service--in this
+sumptuous home, the rest of it they spent in Europe, or in dawdling
+around in their private yacht. Six days of sordid and plodding fact life
+at home on the ragged edge of Lakeside and straitened means, the seventh
+in Fairyland--such had been their program and their habit.
+
+In their sternly restricted fact life they remained as of old--plodding,
+diligent, careful, practical, economical. They stuck loyally to the
+little Presbyterian Church, and labored faithfully in its interests
+and stood by its high and tough doctrines with all their mental and
+spiritual energies. But in their dream life they obeyed the invitations
+of their fancies, whatever they might be, and howsoever the fancies
+might change. Aleck's fancies were not very capricious, and not
+frequent, but Sally's scattered a good deal. Aleck, in her dream life,
+went over to the Episcopal camp, on account of its large official
+titles; next she became High-church on account of the candles and shows;
+and next she naturally changed to Rome, where there were cardinals and
+more candles. But these excursions were a nothing to Sally's. His dream
+life was a glowing and continuous and persistent excitement, and he kept
+every part of it fresh and sparkling by frequent changes, the religious
+part along with the rest. He worked his religions hard, and changed them
+with his shirt.
+
+The liberal spendings of the Fosters upon their fancies began early
+in their prosperities, and grew in prodigality step by step with their
+advancing fortunes. In time they became truly enormous. Aleck built
+a university or two per Sunday; also a hospital or two; also a Rowton
+hotel or so; also a batch of churches; now and then a cathedral; and
+once, with untimely and ill-chosen playfulness, Sally said, “It was
+a cold day when she didn't ship a cargo of missionaries to persuade
+unreflecting Chinamen to trade off twenty-four carat Confucianism for
+counterfeit Christianity.”
+
+This rude and unfeeling language hurt Aleck to the heart, and she went
+from the presence crying. That spectacle went to his own heart, and in
+his pain and shame he would have given worlds to have those unkind words
+back. She had uttered no syllable of reproach--and that cut him. Not one
+suggestion that he look at his own record--and she could have made, oh,
+so many, and such blistering ones! Her generous silence brought a swift
+revenge, for it turned his thoughts upon himself, it summoned before
+him a spectral procession, a moving vision of his life as he had been
+leading it these past few years of limitless prosperity, and as he
+sat there reviewing it his cheeks burned and his soul was steeped in
+humiliation. Look at her life--how fair it was, and tending ever upward;
+and look at his own--how frivolous, how charged with mean vanities,
+how selfish, how empty, how ignoble! And its trend--never upward, but
+downward, ever downward!
+
+He instituted comparisons between her record and his own. He had found
+fault with her--so he mused--_he_! And what could he say for himself?
+When she built her first church what was he doing? Gathering other blase
+multimillionaires into a Poker Club; defiling his own palace with it;
+losing hundreds of thousands to it at every sitting, and sillily vain of
+the admiring notoriety it made for him. When she was building her
+first university, what was he doing? Polluting himself with a gay
+and dissipated secret life in the company of other fast bloods,
+multimillionaires in money and paupers in character. When she was
+building her first foundling asylum, what was he doing? Alas! When she
+was projecting her noble Society for the Purifying of the Sex, what was
+he doing? Ah, what, indeed! When she and the W. C. T. U. and the Woman
+with the Hatchet, moving with resistless march, were sweeping the fatal
+bottle from the land, what was he doing? Getting drunk three times a
+day. When she, builder of a hundred cathedrals, was being gratefully
+welcomed and blest in papal Rome and decorated with the Golden Rose
+which she had so honorably earned, what was he doing? Breaking the bank
+at Monte Carlo.
+
+He stopped. He could go no farther; he could not bear the rest. He rose
+up, with a great resolution upon his lips: this secret life should be
+revealed, and confessed; no longer would he live it clandestinely, he
+would go and tell her All.
+
+And that is what he did. He told her All; and wept upon her bosom; wept,
+and moaned, and begged for her forgiveness. It was a profound shock, and
+she staggered under the blow, but he was her own, the core of her heart,
+the blessing of her eyes, her all in all, she could deny him nothing,
+and she forgave him. She felt that he could never again be quite to her
+what he had been before; she knew that he could only repent, and not
+reform; yet all morally defaced and decayed as he was, was he not her
+own, her very own, the idol of her deathless worship? She said she was
+his serf, his slave, and she opened her yearning heart and took him in.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+One Sunday afternoon some time after this they were sailing the summer
+seas in their dream yacht, and reclining in lazy luxury under the awning
+of the after-deck. There was silence, for each was busy with his own
+thoughts. These seasons of silence had insensibly been growing more
+and more frequent of late; the old nearness and cordiality were waning.
+Sally's terrible revelation had done its work; Aleck had tried hard to
+drive the memory of it out of her mind, but it would not go, and the
+shame and bitterness of it were poisoning her gracious dream life. She
+could see now (on Sundays) that her husband was becoming a bloated and
+repulsive Thing. She could not close her eyes to this, and in these days
+she no longer looked at him, Sundays, when she could help it.
+
+But she--was she herself without blemish? Alas, she knew she was not.
+She was keeping a secret from him, she was acting dishonorably toward
+him, and many a pang it was costing her. _She was breaking the compact,
+and concealing it from him_. Under strong temptation she had gone into
+business again; she had risked their whole fortune in a purchase of all
+the railway systems and coal and steel companies in the country on a
+margin, and she was now trembling, every Sabbath hour, lest through some
+chance word of hers he find it out. In her misery and remorse for this
+treachery she could not keep her heart from going out to him in pity;
+she was filled with compunctions to see him lying there, drunk and
+contented, and never suspecting. Never suspecting--trusting her with
+a perfect and pathetic trust, and she holding over him by a thread a
+possible calamity of so devastating a--
+
+“_Say_--Aleck?”
+
+The interrupting words brought her suddenly to herself. She was grateful
+to have that persecuting subject from her thoughts, and she answered,
+with much of the old-time tenderness in her tone:
+
+“Yes, dear.”
+
+“Do you know, Aleck, I think we are making a mistake--that is, you
+are. I mean about the marriage business.” He sat up, fat and froggy and
+benevolent, like a bronze Buddha, and grew earnest. “Consider--it's more
+than five years. You've continued the same policy from the start: with
+every rise, always holding on for five points higher. Always when I
+think we are going to have some weddings, you see a bigger thing ahead,
+and I undergo another disappointment. _I_ think you are too hard to
+please. Some day we'll get left. First, we turned down the dentist and
+the lawyer. That was all right--it was sound. Next, we turned down the
+banker's son and the pork-butcher's heir--right again, and sound. Next,
+we turned down the Congressman's son and the Governor's--right as
+a trivet, I confess it. Next the Senator's son and the son of the
+Vice-President of the United States--perfectly right, there's no
+permanency about those little distinctions. Then you went for the
+aristocracy; and I thought we had struck oil at last--yes. We would
+make a plunge at the Four Hundred, and pull in some ancient lineage,
+venerable, holy, ineffable, mellow with the antiquity of a hundred and
+fifty years, disinfected of the ancestral odors of salt-cod and pelts
+all of a century ago, and unsmirched by a day's work since, and then!
+why, then the marriages, of course. But no, along comes a pair of real
+aristocrats from Europe, and straightway you throw over the half-breeds.
+It was awfully discouraging, Aleck! Since then, what a procession!
+You turned down the baronets for a pair of barons; you turned down the
+barons for a pair of viscounts; the viscounts for a pair of earls;
+the earls for a pair of marquises; the marquises for a brace of dukes.
+_Now_, Aleck, cash in!--you've played the limit. You've got a job lot
+of four dukes under the hammer; of four nationalities; all sound in the
+wind and limb and pedigree, all bankrupt and in debt up to the ears.
+They come high, but we can afford it. Come, Aleck, don't delay any
+longer, don't keep up the suspense: take the whole lay-out, and leave
+the girls to choose!”
+
+Aleck had been smiling blandly and contentedly all through this
+arraignment of her marriage policy, a pleasant light, as of triumph with
+perhaps a nice surprise peeping out through it, rose in her eyes, and
+she said, as calmly as she could:
+
+“Sally, what would you say to--_royalty_?”
+
+Prodigious! Poor man, it knocked him silly, and he fell over the
+garboard-strake and barked his shin on the cat-heads. He was dizzy for a
+moment, then he gathered himself up and limped over and sat down by
+his wife and beamed his old-time admiration and affection upon her in
+floods, out of his bleary eyes.
+
+“By George!” he said, fervently, “Aleck, you _are _great--the greatest
+woman in the whole earth! I can't ever learn the whole size of you.
+I can't ever learn the immeasurable deeps of you. Here I've been
+considering myself qualified to criticize your game. _I!_ Why, if I had
+stopped to think, I'd have known you had a lone hand up your sleeve.
+Now, dear heart, I'm all red-hot impatience--tell me about it!”
+
+The flattered and happy woman put her lips to his ear and whispered
+a princely name. It made him catch his breath, it lit his face with
+exultation.
+
+“Land!” he said, “it's a stunning catch! He's got a gambling-hall, and
+a graveyard, and a bishop, and a cathedral--all his very own. And all
+gilt-edged five-hundred-per-cent. stock, every detail of it; the tidiest
+little property in Europe; and that graveyard--it's the selectest in
+the world: none but suicides admitted; _yes_, sir, and the free-list
+suspended, too, _all _the time. There isn't much land in the
+principality, but there's enough: eight hundred acres in the graveyard
+and forty-two outside. It's a _sovereignty_--that's the main thing;
+_land's_ nothing. There's plenty land, Sahara's drugged with it.”
+
+Aleck glowed; she was profoundly happy. She said:
+
+“Think of it, Sally--it is a family that has never married outside the
+Royal and Imperial Houses of Europe: our grandchildren will sit upon
+thrones!”
+
+“True as you live, Aleck--and bear scepters, too; and handle them as
+naturally and nonchantly as I handle a yardstick. It's a grand catch,
+Aleck. He's corralled, is he? Can't get away? You didn't take him on a
+margin?”
+
+“No. Trust me for that. He's not a liability, he's an asset. So is the
+other one.”
+
+“Who is it, Aleck?”
+
+“His Royal Highness
+Sigismund-Siegfried-Lauenfeld-Dinkelspiel-Schwartzenberg Blutwurst,
+Hereditary Grand Duke of Katzenyammer.”
+
+“No! You can't mean it!”
+
+“It's as true as I'm sitting here, I give you my word,” she answered.
+
+His cup was full, and he hugged her to his heart with rapture, saying:
+
+“How wonderful it all seems, and how beautiful! It's one of the
+oldest and noblest of the three hundred and sixty-four ancient German
+principalities, and one of the few that was allowed to retain its royal
+estate when Bismarck got done trimming them. I know that farm, I've been
+there. It's got a rope-walk and a candle-factory and an army. Standing
+army. Infantry and cavalry. Three soldier and a horse. Aleck, it's been
+a long wait, and full of heartbreak and hope deferred, but God knows I
+am happy now. Happy, and grateful to you, my own, who have done it all.
+When is it to be?”
+
+“Next Sunday.”
+
+“Good. And we'll want to do these weddings up in the very regalest style
+that's going. It's properly due to the royal quality of the parties
+of the first part. Now as I understand it, there is only one kind of
+marriage that is sacred to royalty, exclusive to royalty: it's the
+morganatic.”
+
+“What do they call it that for, Sally?”
+
+“I don't know; but anyway it's royal, and royal only.”
+
+“Then we will insist upon it. More--I will compel it. It is morganatic
+marriage or none.”
+
+“That settles it!” said Sally, rubbing his hands with delight. “And it
+will be the very first in America. Aleck, it will make Newport sick.”
+
+Then they fell silent, and drifted away upon their dream wings to the
+far regions of the earth to invite all the crowned heads and their
+families and provide gratis transportation to them.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+During three days the couple walked upon air, with their heads in the
+clouds. They were but vaguely conscious of their surroundings; they saw
+all things dimly, as through a veil; they were steeped in dreams,
+often they did not hear when they were spoken to; they often did not
+understand when they heard; they answered confusedly or at random; Sally
+sold molasses by weight, sugar by the yard, and furnished soap when
+asked for candles, and Aleck put the cat in the wash and fed milk to
+the soiled linen. Everybody was stunned and amazed, and went about
+muttering, “What _can _be the matter with the Fosters?”
+
+Three days. Then came events! Things had taken a happy turn, and
+for forty-eight hours Aleck's imaginary corner had been booming. Up--up-
+-still up! Cost point was passed. Still up--and up--and up! Five points
+above cost--then ten--fifteen--twenty! Twenty points cold profit on the
+vast venture, now, and Aleck's imaginary brokers were shouting
+frantically by imaginary long-distance, “Sell! sell! for Heaven's sake
+_sell_!”
+
+She broke the splendid news to Sally, and he, too, said, “Sell!
+sell--oh, don't make a blunder, now, you own the earth!--sell, sell!”
+ But she set her iron will and lashed it amidships, and said she would
+hold on for five points more if she died for it.
+
+It was a fatal resolve. The very next day came the historic crash, the
+record crash, the devastating crash, when the bottom fell out of Wall
+Street, and the whole body of gilt-edged stocks dropped ninety-five
+points in five hours, and the multimillionaire was seen begging his
+bread in the Bowery. Aleck sternly held her grip and “put up” as long
+as she could, but at last there came a call which she was powerless to
+meet, and her imaginary brokers sold her out. Then, and not till then,
+the man in her was vanished, and the woman in her resumed sway. She put
+her arms about her husband's neck and wept, saying:
+
+“I am to blame, do not forgive me, I cannot bear it. We are paupers!
+Paupers, and I am so miserable. The weddings will never come off; all
+that is past; we could not even buy the dentist, now.”
+
+A bitter reproach was on Sally's tongue: “I _begged _you to sell, but
+you--” He did not say it; he had not the heart to add a hurt to that
+broken and repentant spirit. A nobler thought came to him and he said:
+
+“Bear up, my Aleck, all is not lost! You really never invested a penny
+of my uncle's bequest, but only its unmaterialized future; what we
+have lost was only the incremented harvest from that future by your
+incomparable financial judgment and sagacity. Cheer up, banish these
+griefs; we still have the thirty thousand untouched; and with the
+experience which you have acquired, think what you will be able to do
+with it in a couple years! The marriages are not off, they are only
+postponed.”
+
+These were blessed words. Aleck saw how true they were, and their
+influence was electric; her tears ceased to flow, and her great spirit
+rose to its full stature again. With flashing eye and grateful heart,
+and with hand uplifted in pledge and prophecy, she said:
+
+“Now and here I proclaim--”
+
+But she was interrupted by a visitor. It was the editor and proprietor
+of the _Sagamore_. He had happened into Lakeside to pay a duty-call upon
+an obscure grandmother of his who was nearing the end of her pilgrimage,
+and with the idea of combining business with grief he had looked up
+the Fosters, who had been so absorbed in other things for the past four
+years that they neglected to pay up their subscription. Six dollars due.
+No visitor could have been more welcome. He would know all about Uncle
+Tilbury and what his chances might be getting to be, cemeterywards. They
+could, of course, ask no questions, for that would squelch the bequest,
+but they could nibble around on the edge of the subject and hope for
+results. The scheme did not work. The obtuse editor did not know he was
+being nibbled at; but at last, chance accomplished what art had failed
+in. In illustration of something under discussion which required the
+help of metaphor, the editor said:
+
+“Land, it's as tough as Tilbury Foster!--as _we_ say.”
+
+It was sudden, and it made the Fosters jump. The editor noticed, and
+said, apologetically:
+
+“No harm intended, I assure you. It's just a saying; just a joke, you
+know--nothing in it. Relation of yours?”
+
+Sally crowded his burning eagerness down, and answered with all the
+indifference he could assume:
+
+“I--well, not that I know of, but we've heard of him.” The editor was
+thankful, and resumed his composure. Sally added: “Is he--is he--well?”
+
+“Is he _well_? Why, bless you he's in Sheol these five years!”
+
+The Fosters were trembling with grief, though it felt like joy. Sally
+said, non-committally--and tentatively:
+
+“Ah, well, such is life, and none can escape--not even the rich are
+spared.”
+
+The editor laughed.
+
+“If you are including Tilbury,” said he, “it don't apply. _He_ hadn't a
+cent; the town had to bury him.”
+
+The Fosters sat petrified for two minutes; petrified and cold. Then,
+white-faced and weak-voiced, Sally asked:
+
+“Is it true? Do you _know _it to be true?”
+
+“Well, I should say! I was one of the executors. He hadn't anything to
+leave but a wheelbarrow, and he left that to me. It hadn't any wheel,
+and wasn't any good. Still, it was something, and so, to square up, I
+scribbled off a sort of a little obituarial send-off for him, but it got
+crowded out.”
+
+The Fosters were not listening--their cup was full, it could contain
+no more. They sat with bowed heads, dead to all things but the ache at
+their hearts.
+
+An hour later. Still they sat there, bowed, motionless, silent, the
+visitor long ago gone, they unaware.
+
+Then they stirred, and lifted their heads wearily, and gazed at each
+other wistfully, dreamily, dazed; then presently began to twaddle to
+each other in a wandering and childish way. At intervals they lapsed
+into silences, leaving a sentence unfinished, seemingly either unaware
+of it or losing their way. Sometimes, when they woke out of these
+silences they had a dim and transient consciousness that something had
+happened to their minds; then with a dumb and yearning solicitude they
+would softly caress each other's hands in mutual compassion and support,
+as if they would say: “I am near you, I will not forsake you, we
+will bear it together; somewhere there is release and forgetfulness,
+somewhere there is a grave and peace; be patient, it will not be long.”
+
+They lived yet two years, in mental night, always brooding, steeped in
+vague regrets and melancholy dreams, never speaking; then release came
+to both on the same day.
+
+Toward the end the darkness lifted from Sally's ruined mind for a
+moment, and he said:
+
+“Vast wealth, acquired by sudden and unwholesome means, is a snare. It
+did us no good, transient were its feverish pleasures; yet for its
+sake we threw away our sweet and simple and happy life--let others take
+warning by us.”
+
+He lay silent awhile, with closed eyes; then as the chill of death crept
+upward toward his heart, and consciousness was fading from his brain, he
+muttered:
+
+“Money had brought him misery, and he took his revenge upon us, who had
+done him no harm. He had his desire: with base and cunning calculation
+he left us but thirty thousand, knowing we would try to increase it, and
+ruin our life and break our hearts. Without added expense he could
+have left us far above desire of increase, far above the temptation
+to speculate, and a kinder soul would have done it; but in him was no
+generous spirit, no pity, no--”
+
+
+
+A DOG'S TALE
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+My father was a St. Bernard, my mother was a collie, but I am a
+Presbyterian. This is what my mother told me, I do not know these
+nice distinctions myself. To me they are only fine large words meaning
+nothing. My mother had a fondness for such; she liked to say them, and
+see other dogs look surprised and envious, as wondering how she got
+so much education. But, indeed, it was not real education; it was only
+show: she got the words by listening in the dining-room and drawing-room
+when there was company, and by going with the children to Sunday-school
+and listening there; and whenever she heard a large word she said it
+over to herself many times, and so was able to keep it until there was
+a dogmatic gathering in the neighborhood, then she would get it off,
+and surprise and distress them all, from pocket-pup to mastiff, which
+rewarded her for all her trouble. If there was a stranger he was nearly
+sure to be suspicious, and when he got his breath again he would ask her
+what it meant. And she always told him. He was never expecting this but
+thought he would catch her; so when she told him, he was the one that
+looked ashamed, whereas he had thought it was going to be she. The
+others were always waiting for this, and glad of it and proud of her,
+for they knew what was going to happen, because they had had experience.
+When she told the meaning of a big word they were all so taken up with
+admiration that it never occurred to any dog to doubt if it was the
+right one; and that was natural, because, for one thing, she answered up
+so promptly that it seemed like a dictionary speaking, and for another
+thing, where could they find out whether it was right or not? for she
+was the only cultivated dog there was. By and by, when I was older, she
+brought home the word Unintellectual, one time, and worked it pretty
+hard all the week at different gatherings, making much unhappiness and
+despondency; and it was at this time that I noticed that during that
+week she was asked for the meaning at eight different assemblages, and
+flashed out a fresh definition every time, which showed me that she had
+more presence of mind than culture, though I said nothing, of course.
+She had one word which she always kept on hand, and ready, like a
+life-preserver, a kind of emergency word to strap on when she was likely
+to get washed overboard in a sudden way--that was the word Synonymous.
+When she happened to fetch out a long word which had had its day weeks
+before and its prepared meanings gone to her dump-pile, if there was a
+stranger there of course it knocked him groggy for a couple of minutes,
+then he would come to, and by that time she would be away down wind on
+another tack, and not expecting anything; so when he'd hail and ask her
+to cash in, I (the only dog on the inside of her game) could see her
+canvas flicker a moment--but only just a moment--then it would belly
+out taut and full, and she would say, as calm as a summer's day, “It's
+synonymous with supererogation,” or some godless long reptile of a
+word like that, and go placidly about and skim away on the next tack,
+perfectly comfortable, you know, and leave that stranger looking profane
+and embarrassed, and the initiated slatting the floor with their tails
+in unison and their faces transfigured with a holy joy.
+
+And it was the same with phrases. She would drag home a whole phrase,
+if it had a grand sound, and play it six nights and two matinees, and
+explain it a new way every time--which she had to, for all she cared for
+was the phrase; she wasn't interested in what it meant, and knew those
+dogs hadn't wit enough to catch her, anyway. Yes, she was a daisy! She
+got so she wasn't afraid of anything, she had such confidence in the
+ignorance of those creatures. She even brought anecdotes that she had
+heard the family and the dinner-guests laugh and shout over; and as
+a rule she got the nub of one chestnut hitched onto another chestnut,
+where, of course, it didn't fit and hadn't any point; and when she
+delivered the nub she fell over and rolled on the floor and laughed and
+barked in the most insane way, while I could see that she was wondering
+to herself why it didn't seem as funny as it did when she first heard
+it. But no harm was done; the others rolled and barked too, privately
+ashamed of themselves for not seeing the point, and never suspecting
+that the fault was not with them and there wasn't any to see.
+
+You can see by these things that she was of a rather vain and frivolous
+character; still, she had virtues, and enough to make up, I think. She
+had a kind heart and gentle ways, and never harbored resentments for
+injuries done her, but put them easily out of her mind and forgot them;
+and she taught her children her kindly way, and from her we learned also
+to be brave and prompt in time of danger, and not to run away, but face
+the peril that threatened friend or stranger, and help him the best we
+could without stopping to think what the cost might be to us. And she
+taught us not by words only, but by example, and that is the best way
+and the surest and the most lasting. Why, the brave things she did, the
+splendid things! she was just a soldier; and so modest about it--well,
+you couldn't help admiring her, and you couldn't help imitating her;
+not even a King Charles spaniel could remain entirely despicable in her
+society. So, as you see, there was more to her than her education.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+When I was well grown, at last, I was sold and taken away, and I never
+saw her again. She was broken-hearted, and so was I, and we cried; but
+she comforted me as well as she could, and said we were sent into
+this world for a wise and good purpose, and must do our duties without
+repining, take our life as we might find it, live it for the best good
+of others, and never mind about the results; they were not our affair.
+She said men who did like this would have a noble and beautiful reward
+by and by in another world, and although we animals would not go there,
+to do well and right without reward would give to our brief lives
+a worthiness and dignity which in itself would be a reward. She had
+gathered these things from time to time when she had gone to the
+Sunday-school with the children, and had laid them up in her memory more
+carefully than she had done with those other words and phrases; and she
+had studied them deeply, for her good and ours. One may see by this that
+she had a wise and thoughtful head, for all there was so much lightness
+and vanity in it.
+
+So we said our farewells, and looked our last upon each other through
+our tears; and the last thing she said--keeping it for the last to make
+me remember it the better, I think--was, “In memory of me, when there
+is a time of danger to another do not think of yourself, think of your
+mother, and do as she would do.”
+
+Do you think I could forget that? No.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+It was such a charming home!--my new one; a fine great house, with
+pictures, and delicate decorations, and rich furniture, and no gloom
+anywhere, but all the wilderness of dainty colors lit up with flooding
+sunshine; and the spacious grounds around it, and the great garden--oh,
+greensward, and noble trees, and flowers, no end! And I was the same as
+a member of the family; and they loved me, and petted me, and did not
+give me a new name, but called me by my old one that was dear to me
+because my mother had given it me--Aileen Mavoureen. She got it out of a
+song; and the Grays knew that song, and said it was a beautiful name.
+
+Mrs. Gray was thirty, and so sweet and so lovely, you cannot imagine
+it; and Sadie was ten, and just like her mother, just a darling slender
+little copy of her, with auburn tails down her back, and short frocks;
+and the baby was a year old, and plump and dimpled, and fond of me,
+and never could get enough of hauling on my tail, and hugging me, and
+laughing out its innocent happiness; and Mr. Gray was thirty-eight, and
+tall and slender and handsome, a little bald in front, alert, quick in
+his movements, business-like, prompt, decided, unsentimental, and with
+that kind of trim-chiseled face that just seems to glint and sparkle
+with frosty intellectuality! He was a renowned scientist. I do not know
+what the word means, but my mother would know how to use it and get
+effects. She would know how to depress a rat-terrier with it and make a
+lap-dog look sorry he came. But that is not the best one; the best one
+was Laboratory. My mother could organize a Trust on that one that would
+skin the tax-collars off the whole herd. The laboratory was not a
+book, or a picture, or a place to wash your hands in, as the college
+president's dog said--no, that is the lavatory; the laboratory is quite
+different, and is filled with jars, and bottles, and electrics, and
+wires, and strange machines; and every week other scientists came there
+and sat in the place, and used the machines, and discussed, and made
+what they called experiments and discoveries; and often I came, too,
+and stood around and listened, and tried to learn, for the sake of my
+mother, and in loving memory of her, although it was a pain to me, as
+realizing what she was losing out of her life and I gaining nothing at
+all; for try as I might, I was never able to make anything out of it at
+all.
+
+Other times I lay on the floor in the mistress's work-room and slept,
+she gently using me for a foot-stool, knowing it pleased me, for it
+was a caress; other times I spent an hour in the nursery, and got well
+tousled and made happy; other times I watched by the crib there, when
+the baby was asleep and the nurse out for a few minutes on the baby's
+affairs; other times I romped and raced through the grounds and the
+garden with Sadie till we were tired out, then slumbered on the grass in
+the shade of a tree while she read her book; other times I went visiting
+among the neighbor dogs--for there were some most pleasant ones not
+far away, and one very handsome and courteous and graceful one,
+a curly-haired Irish setter by the name of Robin Adair, who was a
+Presbyterian like me, and belonged to the Scotch minister.
+
+The servants in our house were all kind to me and were fond of me, and
+so, as you see, mine was a pleasant life. There could not be a happier
+dog that I was, nor a gratefuler one. I will say this for myself, for it
+is only the truth: I tried in all ways to do well and right, and honor
+my mother's memory and her teachings, and earn the happiness that had
+come to me, as best I could.
+
+By and by came my little puppy, and then my cup was full, my happiness
+was perfect. It was the dearest little waddling thing, and so smooth
+and soft and velvety, and had such cunning little awkward paws, and such
+affectionate eyes, and such a sweet and innocent face; and it made me
+so proud to see how the children and their mother adored it, and fondled
+it, and exclaimed over every little wonderful thing it did. It did seem
+to me that life was just too lovely to--
+
+Then came the winter. One day I was standing a watch in the nursery.
+That is to say, I was asleep on the bed. The baby was asleep in the
+crib, which was alongside the bed, on the side next the fireplace. It
+was the kind of crib that has a lofty tent over it made of gauzy stuff
+that you can see through. The nurse was out, and we two sleepers were
+alone. A spark from the wood-fire was shot out, and it lit on the slope
+of the tent. I suppose a quiet interval followed, then a scream from the
+baby awoke me, and there was that tent flaming up toward the ceiling!
+Before I could think, I sprang to the floor in my fright, and in a
+second was half-way to the door; but in the next half-second my mother's
+farewell was sounding in my ears, and I was back on the bed again.,
+I reached my head through the flames and dragged the baby out by the
+waist-band, and tugged it along, and we fell to the floor together in a
+cloud of smoke; I snatched a new hold, and dragged the screaming little
+creature along and out at the door and around the bend of the hall,
+and was still tugging away, all excited and happy and proud, when the
+master's voice shouted:
+
+“Begone you cursed beast!” and I jumped to save myself; but he was
+furiously quick, and chased me up, striking furiously at me with his
+cane, I dodging this way and that, in terror, and at last a strong
+blow fell upon my left foreleg, which made me shriek and fall, for
+the moment, helpless; the cane went up for another blow, but never
+descended, for the nurse's voice rang wildly out, “The nursery's on
+fire!” and the master rushed away in that direction, and my other bones
+were saved.
+
+The pain was cruel, but, no matter, I must not lose any time; he might
+come back at any moment; so I limped on three legs to the other end
+of the hall, where there was a dark little stairway leading up into a
+garret where old boxes and such things were kept, as I had heard say,
+and where people seldom went. I managed to climb up there, then I
+searched my way through the dark among the piles of things, and hid in
+the secretest place I could find. It was foolish to be afraid there, yet
+still I was; so afraid that I held in and hardly even whimpered, though
+it would have been such a comfort to whimper, because that eases the
+pain, you know. But I could lick my leg, and that did some good.
+
+For half an hour there was a commotion downstairs, and shoutings,
+and rushing footsteps, and then there was quiet again. Quiet for some
+minutes, and that was grateful to my spirit, for then my fears began
+to go down; and fears are worse than pains--oh, much worse. Then came a
+sound that froze me. They were calling me--calling me by name--hunting
+for me!
+
+It was muffled by distance, but that could not take the terror out of
+it, and it was the most dreadful sound to me that I had ever heard. It
+went all about, everywhere, down there: along the halls, through all
+the rooms, in both stories, and in the basement and the cellar; then
+outside, and farther and farther away--then back, and all about the
+house again, and I thought it would never, never stop. But at last it
+did, hours and hours after the vague twilight of the garret had long ago
+been blotted out by black darkness.
+
+Then in that blessed stillness my terrors fell little by little away,
+and I was at peace and slept. It was a good rest I had, but I woke
+before the twilight had come again. I was feeling fairly comfortable,
+and I could think out a plan now. I made a very good one; which was, to
+creep down, all the way down the back stairs, and hide behind the cellar
+door, and slip out and escape when the iceman came at dawn, while he was
+inside filling the refrigerator; then I would hide all day, and start
+on my journey when night came; my journey to--well, anywhere where they
+would not know me and betray me to the master. I was feeling almost
+cheerful now; then suddenly I thought: Why, what would life be without
+my puppy!
+
+That was despair. There was no plan for me; I saw that; I must say where
+I was; stay, and wait, and take what might come--it was not my affair;
+that was what life is--my mother had said it. Then--well, then the
+calling began again! All my sorrows came back. I said to myself, the
+master will never forgive. I did not know what I had done to make him so
+bitter and so unforgiving, yet I judged it was something a dog could not
+understand, but which was clear to a man and dreadful.
+
+They called and called--days and nights, it seemed to me. So long that
+the hunger and thirst near drove me mad, and I recognized that I was
+getting very weak. When you are this way you sleep a great deal, and I
+did. Once I woke in an awful fright--it seemed to me that the calling
+was right there in the garret! And so it was: it was Sadie's voice,
+and she was crying; my name was falling from her lips all broken, poor
+thing, and I could not believe my ears for the joy of it when I heard
+her say:
+
+“Come back to us--oh, come back to us, and forgive--it is all so sad
+without our--”
+
+I broke in with _such _a grateful little yelp, and the next moment
+Sadie was plunging and stumbling through the darkness and the lumber and
+shouting for the family to hear, “She's found, she's found!”
+
+The days that followed--well, they were wonderful. The mother and Sadie
+and the servants--why, they just seemed to worship me. They couldn't
+seem to make me a bed that was fine enough; and as for food, they
+couldn't be satisfied with anything but game and delicacies that were
+out of season; and every day the friends and neighbors flocked in to
+hear about my heroism--that was the name they called it by, and it
+means agriculture. I remember my mother pulling it on a kennel once, and
+explaining it in that way, but didn't say what agriculture was, except
+that it was synonymous with intramural incandescence; and a dozen times
+a day Mrs. Gray and Sadie would tell the tale to new-comers, and say I
+risked my life to save the baby's, and both of us had burns to prove it,
+and then the company would pass me around and pet me and exclaim about
+me, and you could see the pride in the eyes of Sadie and her mother; and
+when the people wanted to know what made me limp, they looked ashamed
+and changed the subject, and sometimes when people hunted them this way
+and that way with questions about it, it looked to me as if they were
+going to cry.
+
+And this was not all the glory; no, the master's friends came, a whole
+twenty of the most distinguished people, and had me in the laboratory,
+and discussed me as if I was a kind of discovery; and some of them said
+it was wonderful in a dumb beast, the finest exhibition of instinct they
+could call to mind; but the master said, with vehemence, “It's far above
+instinct; it's _reason_, and many a man, privileged to be saved and go
+with you and me to a better world by right of its possession, has less
+of it that this poor silly quadruped that's foreordained to perish”; and
+then he laughed, and said: “Why, look at me--I'm a sarcasm! bless you,
+with all my grand intelligence, the only thing I inferred was that
+the dog had gone mad and was destroying the child, whereas but for the
+beast's intelligence--it's _reason_, I tell you!--the child would have
+perished!”
+
+They disputed and disputed, and _I_ was the very center of subject of it
+all, and I wished my mother could know that this grand honor had come to
+me; it would have made her proud.
+
+Then they discussed optics, as they called it, and whether a certain
+injury to the brain would produce blindness or not, but they could not
+agree about it, and said they must test it by experiment by and by;
+and next they discussed plants, and that interested me, because in the
+summer Sadie and I had planted seeds--I helped her dig the holes, you
+know--and after days and days a little shrub or a flower came up there,
+and it was a wonder how that could happen; but it did, and I wished I
+could talk--I would have told those people about it and shown then how
+much I knew, and been all alive with the subject; but I didn't care for
+the optics; it was dull, and when they came back to it again it bored
+me, and I went to sleep.
+
+Pretty soon it was spring, and sunny and pleasant and lovely, and the
+sweet mother and the children patted me and the puppy good-by, and went
+away on a journey and a visit to their kin, and the master wasn't any
+company for us, but we played together and had good times, and the
+servants were kind and friendly, so we got along quite happily and
+counted the days and waited for the family.
+
+And one day those men came again, and said, now for the test, and they
+took the puppy to the laboratory, and I limped three-leggedly along,
+too, feeling proud, for any attention shown to the puppy was a pleasure
+to me, of course. They discussed and experimented, and then suddenly the
+puppy shrieked, and they set him on the floor, and he went staggering
+around, with his head all bloody, and the master clapped his hands and
+shouted:
+
+“There, I've won--confess it! He's a blind as a bat!”
+
+And they all said:
+
+“It's so--you've proved your theory, and suffering humanity owes you a
+great debt from henceforth,” and they crowded around him, and wrung his
+hand cordially and thankfully, and praised him.
+
+But I hardly saw or heard these things, for I ran at once to my little
+darling, and snuggled close to it where it lay, and licked the blood,
+and it put its head against mine, whimpering softly, and I knew in
+my heart it was a comfort to it in its pain and trouble to feel its
+mother's touch, though it could not see me. Then it dropped down,
+presently, and its little velvet nose rested upon the floor, and it was
+still, and did not move any more.
+
+Soon the master stopped discussing a moment, and rang in the footman,
+and said, “Bury it in the far corner of the garden,” and then went on
+with the discussion, and I trotted after the footman, very happy and
+grateful, for I knew the puppy was out of its pain now, because it
+was asleep. We went far down the garden to the farthest end, where the
+children and the nurse and the puppy and I used to play in the summer in
+the shade of a great elm, and there the footman dug a hole, and I saw he
+was going to plant the puppy, and I was glad, because it would grow
+and come up a fine handsome dog, like Robin Adair, and be a beautiful
+surprise for the family when they came home; so I tried to help him dig,
+but my lame leg was no good, being stiff, you know, and you have to have
+two, or it is no use. When the footman had finished and covered little
+Robin up, he patted my head, and there were tears in his eyes, and he
+said: “Poor little doggie, you saved _his _child!”
+
+I have watched two whole weeks, and he doesn't come up! This last week
+a fright has been stealing upon me. I think there is something terrible
+about this. I do not know what it is, but the fear makes me sick, and I
+cannot eat, though the servants bring me the best of food; and they pet
+me so, and even come in the night, and cry, and say, “Poor doggie--do
+give it up and come home; _don't_ break our hearts!” and all this
+terrifies me the more, and makes me sure something has happened. And
+I am so weak; since yesterday I cannot stand on my feet anymore. And
+within this hour the servants, looking toward the sun where it was
+sinking out of sight and the night chill coming on, said things I could
+not understand, but they carried something cold to my heart.
+
+“Those poor creatures! They do not suspect. They will come home in the
+morning, and eagerly ask for the little doggie that did the brave deed,
+and who of us will be strong enough to say the truth to them: 'The
+humble little friend is gone where go the beasts that perish.'”
+
+
+
+WAS IT HEAVEN? OR HELL?
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+“You told a _lie_?”
+
+“You confess it--you actually confess it--you told a lie!”
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+The family consisted of four persons: Margaret Lester, widow, aged
+thirty six; Helen Lester, her daughter, aged sixteen; Mrs. Lester's
+maiden aunts, Hannah and Hester Gray, twins, aged sixty-seven. Waking
+and sleeping, the three women spent their days and nights in adoring the
+young girl; in watching the movements of her sweet spirit in the mirror
+of her face; in refreshing their souls with the vision of her bloom
+and beauty; in listening to the music of her voice; in gratefully
+recognizing how rich and fair for them was the world with this presence
+in it; in shuddering to think how desolate it would be with this light
+gone out of it.
+
+By nature--and inside--the aged aunts were utterly dear and lovable and
+good, but in the matter of morals and conduct their training had been so
+uncompromisingly strict that it had made them exteriorly austere, not to
+say stern. Their influence was effective in the house; so effective
+that the mother and the daughter conformed to its moral and religious
+requirements cheerfully, contentedly, happily, unquestionably. To do
+this was become second nature to them. And so in this peaceful
+heaven there were no clashings, no irritations, no fault-finding, no
+heart-burnings.
+
+In it a lie had no place. In it a lie was unthinkable. In it speech
+was restricted to absolute truth, iron-bound truth, implacable and
+uncompromising truth, let the resulting consequences be what they might.
+At last, one day, under stress of circumstances, the darling of the
+house sullied her lips with a lie--and confessed it, with tears
+and self-upbraidings. There are not any words that can paint the
+consternation of the aunts. It was as if the sky had crumpled up and
+collapsed and the earth had tumbled to ruin with a crash. They sat side
+by side, white and stern, gazing speechless upon the culprit, who was on
+her knees before them with her face buried first in one lap and then the
+other, moaning and sobbing, and appealing for sympathy and forgiveness
+and getting no response, humbly kissing the hand of the one, then of the
+other, only to see it withdrawn as suffering defilement by those soiled
+lips.
+
+Twice, at intervals, Aunt Hester said, in frozen amazement:
+
+“You told a _lie_?”
+
+Twice, at intervals, Aunt Hannah followed with the muttered and amazed
+ejaculation:
+
+“You confess it--you actually confess it--you told a lie!”
+
+It was all they could say. The situation was new, unheard of,
+incredible; they could not understand it, they did not know how to take
+hold of it, it approximately paralyzed speech.
+
+At length it was decided that the erring child must be taken to her
+mother, who was ill, and who ought to know what had happened. Helen
+begged, besought, implored that she might be spared this further
+disgrace, and that her mother might be spared the grief and pain of
+it; but this could not be: duty required this sacrifice, duty takes
+precedence of all things, nothing can absolve one from a duty, with a
+duty no compromise is possible.
+
+Helen still begged, and said the sin was her own, her mother had had no
+hand in it--why must she be made to suffer for it?
+
+But the aunts were obdurate in their righteousness, and said the law
+that visited the sins of the parent upon the child was by all right
+and reason reversible; and therefore it was but just that the innocent
+mother of a sinning child should suffer her rightful share of the grief
+and pain and shame which were the allotted wages of the sin.
+
+The three moved toward the sick-room.
+
+At this time the doctor was approaching the house. He was still a good
+distance away, however. He was a good doctor and a good man, and he had
+a good heart, but one had to know him a year to get over hating him, two
+years to learn to endure him, three to learn to like him, and four and
+five to learn to love him. It was a slow and trying education, but it
+paid. He was of great stature; he had a leonine head, a leonine face, a
+rough voice, and an eye which was sometimes a pirate's and sometimes
+a woman's, according to the mood. He knew nothing about etiquette, and
+cared nothing about it; in speech, manner, carriage, and conduct he was
+the reverse of conventional. He was frank, to the limit; he had opinions
+on all subjects; they were always on tap and ready for delivery, and he
+cared not a farthing whether his listener liked them or didn't. Whom
+he loved he loved, and manifested it; whom he didn't love he hated, and
+published it from the housetops. In his young days he had been a sailor,
+and the salt-airs of all the seas blew from him yet. He was a sturdy and
+loyal Christian, and believed he was the best one in the land, and the
+only one whose Christianity was perfectly sound, healthy, full-charged
+with common sense, and had no decayed places in it. People who had an ax
+to grind, or people who for any reason wanted to get on the soft side
+of him, called him The Christian--a phrase whose delicate flattery was
+music to his ears, and whose capital T was such an enchanting and vivid
+object to him that he could _see _it when it fell out of a person's
+mouth even in the dark. Many who were fond of him stood on their
+consciences with both feet and brazenly called him by that large title
+habitually, because it was a pleasure to them to do anything that
+would please him; and with eager and cordial malice his extensive and
+diligently cultivated crop of enemies gilded it, beflowered it, expanded
+it to “The _only _Christian.” Of these two titles, the latter had the
+wider currency; the enemy, being greatly in the majority, attended to
+that. Whatever the doctor believed, he believed with all his heart,
+and would fight for it whenever he got the chance; and if the intervals
+between chances grew to be irksomely wide, he would invent ways of
+shortening them himself. He was severely conscientious, according to
+his rather independent lights, and whatever he took to be a duty he
+performed, no matter whether the judgment of the professional moralists
+agreed with his own or not. At sea, in his young days, he had used
+profanity freely, but as soon as he was converted he made a rule, which
+he rigidly stuck to ever afterward, never to use it except on the rarest
+occasions, and then only when duty commanded. He had been a hard
+drinker at sea, but after his conversion he became a firm and outspoken
+teetotaler, in order to be an example to the young, and from that time
+forth he seldom drank; never, indeed, except when it seemed to him to be
+a duty--a condition which sometimes occurred a couple of times a year,
+but never as many as five times.
+
+Necessarily, such a man is impressionable, impulsive, emotional. This
+one was, and had no gift at hiding his feelings; or if he had it he took
+no trouble to exercise it. He carried his soul's prevailing weather in
+his face, and when he entered a room the parasols or the umbrellas went
+up--figuratively speaking--according to the indications. When the soft
+light was in his eye it meant approval, and delivered a benediction;
+when he came with a frown he lowered the temperature ten degrees. He was
+a well-beloved man in the house of his friends, but sometimes a dreaded
+one.
+
+He had a deep affection for the Lester household and its several members
+returned this feeling with interest. They mourned over his kind of
+Christianity, and he frankly scoffed at theirs; but both parties went on
+loving each other just the same.
+
+He was approaching the house--out of the distance; the aunts and the
+culprit were moving toward the sick-chamber.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+The three last named stood by the bed; the aunts austere, the
+transgressor softly sobbing. The mother turned her head on the pillow;
+her tired eyes flamed up instantly with sympathy and passionate
+mother-love when they fell upon her child, and she opened the refuge and
+shelter of her arms.
+
+“Wait!” said Aunt Hannah, and put out her hand and stayed the girl from
+leaping into them.
+
+“Helen,” said the other aunt, impressively, “tell your mother all. Purge
+your soul; leave nothing unconfessed.”
+
+Standing stricken and forlorn before her judges, the young girl mourned
+her sorrowful tale through the end, then in a passion of appeal cried
+out:
+
+“Oh, mother, can't you forgive me? won't you forgive me?--I am so
+desolate!”
+
+“Forgive you, my darling? Oh, come to my arms!--there, lay your head
+upon my breast, and be at peace. If you had told a thousand lies--”
+
+There was a sound--a warning--the clearing of a throat. The aunts
+glanced up, and withered in their clothes--there stood the doctor, his
+face a thunder-cloud. Mother and child knew nothing of his presence;
+they lay locked together, heart to heart, steeped in immeasurable
+content, dead to all things else. The physician stood many moments
+glaring and glooming upon the scene before him; studying it, analyzing
+it, searching out its genesis; then he put up his hand and beckoned to
+the aunts. They came trembling to him, and stood humbly before him and
+waited. He bent down and whispered:
+
+“Didn't I tell you this patient must be protected from all excitement?
+What the hell have you been doing? Clear out of the place!”
+
+They obeyed. Half an hour later he appeared in the parlor, serene,
+cheery, clothed in sunshine, conducting Helen, with his arm about her
+waist, petting her, and saying gentle and playful things to her; and she
+also was her sunny and happy self again.
+
+“Now, then;” he said, “good-by, dear. Go to your room, and keep away
+from your mother, and behave yourself. But wait--put out your tongue.
+There, that will do--you're as sound as a nut!” He patted her cheek and
+added, “Run along now; I want to talk to these aunts.”
+
+She went from the presence. His face clouded over again at once; and as
+he sat down he said:
+
+“You too have been doing a lot of damage--and maybe some good. Some
+good, yes--such as it is. That woman's disease is typhoid! You've
+brought it to a show-up, I think, with your insanities, and that's a
+service--such as it is. I hadn't been able to determine what it was
+before.”
+
+With one impulse the old ladies sprang to their feet, quaking with
+terror.
+
+“Sit down! What are you proposing to do?”
+
+“Do? We must fly to her. We--”
+
+“You'll do nothing of the kind; you've done enough harm for one day. Do
+you want to squander all your capital of crimes and follies on a single
+deal? Sit down, I tell you. I have arranged for her to sleep; she needs
+it; if you disturb her without my orders, I'll brain you--if you've got
+the materials for it.”
+
+They sat down, distressed and indignant, but obedient, under compulsion.
+He proceeded:
+
+“Now, then, I want this case explained. _They _wanted to explain it to
+me--as if there hadn't been emotion or excitement enough already. You
+knew my orders; how did you dare to go in there and get up that riot?”
+
+Hester looked appealing at Hannah; Hannah returned a beseeching look
+at Hester--neither wanted to dance to this unsympathetic orchestra. The
+doctor came to their help. He said:
+
+“Begin, Hester.”
+
+Fingering at the fringes of her shawl, and with lowered eyes, Hester
+said, timidly:
+
+“We should not have disobeyed for any ordinary cause, but this was
+vital. This was a duty. With a duty one has no choice; one must put all
+lighter considerations aside and perform it. We were obliged to arraign
+her before her mother. She had told a lie.”
+
+The doctor glowered upon the woman a moment, and seemed to be trying
+to work up in his mind an understanding of a wholly incomprehensible
+proposition; then he stormed out:
+
+“She told a lie! _did _she? God bless my soul! I tell a million a day!
+And so does every doctor. And so does everybody--including you--for
+that matter. And _that _was the important thing that authorized you to
+venture to disobey my orders and imperil that woman's life! Look here,
+Hester Gray, this is pure lunacy; that girl _couldn't_ tell a lie that
+was intended to injure a person. The thing is impossible--absolutely
+impossible. You know it yourselves--both of you; you know it perfectly
+well.”
+
+Hannah came to her sister's rescue:
+
+“Hester didn't mean that it was that kind of a lie, and it wasn't. But
+it was a lie.”
+
+“Well, upon my word, I never heard such nonsense! Haven't you got sense
+enough to discriminate between lies! Don't you know the difference
+between a lie that helps and a lie that hurts?”
+
+“_All _lies are sinful,” said Hannah, setting her lips together like a
+vise; “all lies are forbidden.”
+
+The Only Christian fidgeted impatiently in his chair. He went to attack
+this proposition, but he did not quite know how or where to begin.
+Finally he made a venture:
+
+“Hester, wouldn't you tell a lie to shield a person from an undeserved
+injury or shame?”
+
+“No.”
+
+“Not even a friend?”
+
+“No.”
+
+“Not even your dearest friend?”
+
+“No. I would not.”
+
+The doctor struggled in silence awhile with this situation; then he
+asked:
+
+“Not even to save him from bitter pain and misery and grief?”
+
+“No. Not even to save his life.”
+
+Another pause. Then:
+
+“Nor his soul?”
+
+There was a hush--a silence which endured a measurable interval--then
+Hester answered, in a low voice, but with decision:
+
+“Nor his soul?”
+
+No one spoke for a while; then the doctor said:
+
+“Is it with you the same, Hannah?”
+
+“Yes,” she answered.
+
+“I ask you both--why?”
+
+“Because to tell such a lie, or any lie, is a sin, and could cost us
+the loss of our own souls--_would_, indeed, if we died without time to
+repent.”
+
+“Strange... strange... it is past belief.” Then he asked, roughly: “Is
+such a soul as that _worth _saving?” He rose up, mumbling and grumbling,
+and started for the door, stumping vigorously along. At the threshold he
+turned and rasped out an admonition: “Reform! Drop this mean and sordid
+and selfish devotion to the saving of your shabby little souls, and hunt
+up something to do that's got some dignity to it! _Risk _your souls!
+risk them in good causes; then if you lose them, why should you care?
+Reform!”
+
+The good old gentlewomen sat paralyzed, pulverized, outraged, insulted,
+and brooded in bitterness and indignation over these blasphemies. They
+were hurt to the heart, poor old ladies, and said they could never
+forgive these injuries.
+
+“Reform!”
+
+They kept repeating that word resentfully. “Reform--and learn to tell
+lies!”
+
+Time slipped along, and in due course a change came over their spirits.
+They had completed the human being's first duty--which is to think about
+himself until he has exhausted the subject, then he is in a condition
+to take up minor interests and think of other people. This changes the
+complexion of his spirits--generally wholesomely. The minds of the two
+old ladies reverted to their beloved niece and the fearful disease which
+had smitten her; instantly they forgot the hurts their self-love had
+received, and a passionate desire rose in their hearts to go to the help
+of the sufferer and comfort her with their love, and minister to
+her, and labor for her the best they could with their weak hands, and
+joyfully and affectionately wear out their poor old bodies in her dear
+service if only they might have the privilege.
+
+“And we shall have it!” said Hester, with the tears running down her
+face. “There are no nurses comparable to us, for there are no others
+that will stand their watch by that bed till they drop and die, and God
+knows we would do that.”
+
+“Amen,” said Hannah, smiling approval and endorsement through the mist
+of moisture that blurred her glasses. “The doctor knows us, and knows we
+will not disobey again; and he will call no others. He will not dare!”
+
+“Dare?” said Hester, with temper, and dashing the water from her eyes;
+“he will dare anything--that Christian devil! But it will do no good for
+him to try it this time--but, laws! Hannah! after all's said and
+done, he is gifted and wise and good, and he would not think of such a
+thing.... It is surely time for one of us to go to that room. What is
+keeping him? Why doesn't he come and say so?”
+
+They caught the sound of his approaching step. He entered, sat down, and
+began to talk.
+
+“Margaret is a sick woman,” he said. “She is still sleeping, but she
+will wake presently; then one of you must go to her. She will be worse
+before she is better. Pretty soon a night-and-day watch must be set. How
+much of it can you two undertake?”
+
+“All of it!” burst from both ladies at once.
+
+The doctor's eyes flashed, and he said, with energy:
+
+“You _do_ ring true, you brave old relics! And you _shall _do all of the
+nursing you can, for there's none to match you in that divine office in
+this town; but you can't do all of it, and it would be a crime to let
+you.” It was grand praise, golden praise, coming from such a source, and
+it took nearly all the resentment out of the aged twin's hearts. “Your
+Tilly and my old Nancy shall do the rest--good nurses both, white souls
+with black skins, watchful, loving, tender--just perfect nurses!--and
+competent liars from the cradle.... Look you! keep a little watch on
+Helen; she is sick, and is going to be sicker.”
+
+The ladies looked a little surprised, and not credulous; and Hester
+said:
+
+“How is that? It isn't an hour since you said she was as sound as a
+nut.”
+
+The doctor answered, tranquilly:
+
+“It was a lie.”
+
+The ladies turned upon him indignantly, and Hannah said:
+
+“How can you make an odious confession like that, in so indifferent a
+tone, when you know how we feel about all forms of--”
+
+“Hush! You are as ignorant as cats, both of you, and you don't know what
+you are talking about. You are like all the rest of the moral moles;
+you lie from morning till night, but because you don't do it with your
+mouths, but only with your lying eyes, your lying inflections, your
+deceptively misplaced emphasis, and your misleading gestures, you turn
+up your complacent noses and parade before God and the world as saintly
+and unsmirched Truth-Speakers, in whose cold-storage souls a lie would
+freeze to death if it got there! Why will you humbug yourselves with
+that foolish notion that no lie is a lie except a spoken one? What is
+the difference between lying with your eyes and lying with your mouth?
+There is none; and if you would reflect a moment you would see that it
+is so. There isn't a human being that doesn't tell a gross of lies every
+day of his life; and you--why, between you, you tell thirty thousand;
+yet you flare up here in a lurid hypocritical horror because I tell that
+child a benevolent and sinless lie to protect her from her imagination,
+which would get to work and warm up her blood to a fever in an hour, if
+I were disloyal enough to my duty to let it. Which I should probably do
+if I were interested in saving my soul by such disreputable means.
+
+“Come, let us reason together. Let us examine details. When you two were
+in the sick-room raising that riot, what would you have done if you had
+known I was coming?”
+
+“Well, what?”
+
+“You would have slipped out and carried Helen with you--wouldn't you?”
+
+The ladies were silent.
+
+“What would be your object and intention?”
+
+“Well, what?”
+
+“To keep me from finding out your guilt; to beguile me to infer that
+Margaret's excitement proceeded from some cause not known to you. In a
+word, to tell me a lie--a silent lie. Moreover, a possibly harmful one.”
+
+The twins colored, but did not speak.
+
+“You not only tell myriads of silent lies, but you tell lies with your
+mouths--you two.”
+
+“_That _is not so!”
+
+“It is so. But only harmless ones. You never dream of uttering a harmful
+one. Do you know that that is a concession--and a confession?”
+
+“How do you mean?”
+
+“It is an unconscious concession that harmless lies are not criminal;
+it is a confession that you constantly _make _that discrimination. For
+instance, you declined old Mrs. Foster's invitation last week to meet
+those odious Higbies at supper--in a polite note in which you expressed
+regret and said you were very sorry you could not go. It was a lie.
+It was as unmitigated a lie as was ever uttered. Deny it, Hester--with
+another lie.”
+
+Hester replied with a toss of her head.
+
+“That will not do. Answer. Was it a lie, or wasn't it?”
+
+The color stole into the cheeks of both women, and with a struggle and
+an effort they got out their confession:
+
+“It was a lie.”
+
+“Good--the reform is beginning; there is hope for you yet; you will not
+tell a lie to save your dearest friend's soul, but you will spew out
+one without a scruple to save yourself the discomfort of telling an
+unpleasant truth.”
+
+He rose. Hester, speaking for both, said; coldly:
+
+“We have lied; we perceive it; it will occur no more. To lie is a sin.
+We shall never tell another one of any kind whatsoever, even lies of
+courtesy or benevolence, to save any one a pang or a sorrow decreed for
+him by God.”
+
+“Ah, how soon you will fall! In fact, you have fallen already; for what
+you have just uttered is a lie. Good-by. Reform! One of you go to the
+sick-room now.”
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+Twelve days later.
+
+Mother and child were lingering in the grip of the hideous disease.
+Of hope for either there was little. The aged sisters looked white
+and worn, but they would not give up their posts. Their hearts
+were breaking, poor old things, but their grit was steadfast and
+indestructible. All the twelve days the mother had pined for the child,
+and the child for the mother, but both knew that the prayer of these
+longings could not be granted. When the mother was told--on the first
+day--that her disease was typhoid, she was frightened, and asked if
+there was danger that Helen could have contracted it the day before,
+when she was in the sick-chamber on that confession visit. Hester told
+her the doctor had poo-pooed the idea. It troubled Hester to say it,
+although it was true, for she had not believed the doctor; but when
+she saw the mother's joy in the news, the pain in her conscience
+lost something of its force--a result which made her ashamed of the
+constructive deception which she had practiced, though not ashamed
+enough to make her distinctly and definitely wish she had refrained from
+it. From that moment the sick woman understood that her daughter must
+remain away, and she said she would reconcile herself to the separation
+the best she could, for she would rather suffer death than have her
+child's health imperiled. That afternoon Helen had to take to her bed,
+ill. She grew worse during the night. In the morning her mother asked
+after her:
+
+“Is she well?”
+
+Hester turned cold; she opened her lips, but the words refused to come.
+The mother lay languidly looking, musing, waiting; suddenly she turned
+white and gasped out:
+
+“Oh, my God! what is it? is she sick?”
+
+Then the poor aunt's tortured heart rose in rebellion, and words came:
+
+“No--be comforted; she is well.”
+
+The sick woman put all her happy heart in her gratitude:
+
+“Thank God for those dear words! Kiss me. How I worship you for saying
+them!”
+
+Hester told this incident to Hannah, who received it with a rebuking
+look, and said, coldly:
+
+“Sister, it was a lie.”
+
+Hester's lips trembled piteously; she choked down a sob, and said:
+
+“Oh, Hannah, it was a sin, but I could not help it. I could not endure
+the fright and the misery that were in her face.”
+
+“No matter. It was a lie. God will hold you to account for it.”
+
+“Oh, I know it, I know it,” cried Hester, wringing her hands, “but even
+if it were now, I could not help it. I know I should do it again.”
+
+“Then take my place with Helen in the morning. I will make the report
+myself.”
+
+Hester clung to her sister, begging and imploring.
+
+“Don't, Hannah, oh, don't--you will kill her.”
+
+“I will at least speak the truth.”
+
+In the morning she had a cruel report to bear to the mother, and she
+braced herself for the trial. When she returned from her mission, Hester
+was waiting, pale and trembling, in the hall. She whispered:
+
+“Oh, how did she take it--that poor, desolate mother?”
+
+Hannah's eyes were swimming in tears. She said:
+
+“God forgive me, I told her the child was well!”
+
+Hester gathered her to her heart, with a grateful “God bless you,
+Hannah!” and poured out her thankfulness in an inundation of worshiping
+praises.
+
+After that, the two knew the limit of their strength, and accepted their
+fate. They surrendered humbly, and abandoned themselves to the hard
+requirements of the situation. Daily they told the morning lie, and
+confessed their sin in prayer; not asking forgiveness, as not being
+worthy of it, but only wishing to make record that they realized their
+wickedness and were not desiring to hide it or excuse it.
+
+Daily, as the fair young idol of the house sank lower and lower, the
+sorrowful old aunts painted her glowing bloom and her fresh young beauty
+to the wan mother, and winced under the stabs her ecstasies of joy and
+gratitude gave them.
+
+In the first days, while the child had strength to hold a pencil, she
+wrote fond little love-notes to her mother, in which she concealed her
+illness; and these the mother read and reread through happy eyes wet
+with thankful tears, and kissed them over and over again, and treasured
+them as precious things under her pillow.
+
+Then came a day when the strength was gone from the hand, and the mind
+wandered, and the tongue babbled pathetic incoherences. This was a sore
+dilemma for the poor aunts. There were no love-notes for the mother.
+They did not know what to do. Hester began a carefully studied and
+plausible explanation, but lost the track of it and grew confused;
+suspicion began to show in the mother's face, then alarm. Hester saw it,
+recognized the imminence of the danger, and descended to the emergency,
+pulling herself resolutely together and plucking victory from the open
+jaws of defeat. In a placid and convincing voice she said:
+
+“I thought it might distress you to know it, but Helen spent the night
+at the Sloanes'. There was a little party there, and, although she did
+not want to go, and you so sick, we persuaded her, she being young
+and needing the innocent pastimes of youth, and we believing you would
+approve. Be sure she will write the moment she comes.”
+
+“How good you are, and how dear and thoughtful for us both! Approve?
+Why, I thank you with all my heart. My poor little exile! Tell her I
+want her to have every pleasure she can--I would not rob her of one.
+Only let her keep her health, that is all I ask. Don't let that
+suffer; I could not bear it. How thankful I am that she escaped this
+infection--and what a narrow risk she ran, Aunt Hester! Think of that
+lovely face all dulled and burned with fever. I can't bear the thought
+of it. Keep her health. Keep her bloom! I can see her now, the dainty
+creature--with the big, blue, earnest eyes; and sweet, oh, so sweet and
+gentle and winning! Is she as beautiful as ever, dear Aunt Hester?”
+
+“Oh, more beautiful and bright and charming than ever she was before,
+if such a thing can be”--and Hester turned away and fumbled with the
+medicine-bottles, to hide her shame and grief.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+After a little, both aunts were laboring upon a difficult and baffling
+work in Helen's chamber. Patiently and earnestly, with their stiff old
+fingers, they were trying to forge the required note. They made failure
+after failure, but they improved little by little all the time. The
+pity of it all, the pathetic humor of it, there was none to see; they
+themselves were unconscious of it. Often their tears fell upon the notes
+and spoiled them; sometimes a single misformed word made a note risky
+which could have been ventured but for that; but at last Hannah produced
+one whose script was a good enough imitation of Helen's to pass any but
+a suspicious eye, and bountifully enriched it with the petting phrases
+and loving nicknames that had been familiar on the child's lips from her
+nursery days. She carried it to the mother, who took it with avidity,
+and kissed it, and fondled it, reading its precious words over and over
+again, and dwelling with deep contentment upon its closing paragraph:
+
+“Mousie darling, if I could only see you, and kiss your eyes, and feel
+your arms about me! I am so glad my practicing does not disturb you. Get
+well soon. Everybody is good to me, but I am so lonesome without you,
+dear mamma.”
+
+“The poor child, I know just how she feels. She cannot be quite happy
+without me; and I--oh, I live in the light of her eyes! Tell her she
+must practice all she pleases; and, Aunt Hannah--tell her I can't hear
+the piano this far, nor her dear voice when she sings: God knows I wish
+I could. No one knows how sweet that voice is to me; and to think--some
+day it will be silent! What are you crying for?”
+
+“Only because--because--it was just a memory. When I came away she was
+singing, 'Loch Lomond.' The pathos of it! It always moves me so when she
+sings that.”
+
+“And me, too. How heartbreakingly beautiful it is when some youthful
+sorrow is brooding in her breast and she sings it for the mystic healing
+it brings.... Aunt Hannah?”
+
+“Dear Margaret?”
+
+“I am very ill. Sometimes it comes over me that I shall never hear that
+dear voice again.”
+
+“Oh, don't--don't, Margaret! I can't bear it!”
+
+Margaret was moved and distressed, and said, gently:
+
+“There--there--let me put my arms around you. Don't cry. There--put your
+cheek to mine. Be comforted. I wish to live. I will live if I can. Ah,
+what could she do without me!... Does she often speak of me?--but I know
+she does.”
+
+“Oh, all the time--all the time!”
+
+“My sweet child! She wrote the note the moment she came home?”
+
+“Yes--the first moment. She would not wait to take off her things.”
+
+“I knew it. It is her dear, impulsive, affectionate way. I knew it
+without asking, but I wanted to hear you say it. The petted wife knows
+she is loved, but she makes her husband tell her so every day, just for
+the joy of hearing it.... She used the pen this time. That is better;
+the pencil-marks could rub out, and I should grieve for that. Did you
+suggest that she use the pen?”
+
+“Y--no--she--it was her own idea.”
+
+The mother looked her pleasure, and said:
+
+“I was hoping you would say that. There was never such a dear and
+thoughtful child!... Aunt Hannah?”
+
+“Dear Margaret?”
+
+“Go and tell her I think of her all the time, and worship her. Why--you
+are crying again. Don't be so worried about me, dear; I think there is
+nothing to fear, yet.”
+
+The grieving messenger carried her message, and piously delivered it
+to unheeding ears. The girl babbled on unaware; looking up at her with
+wondering and startled eyes flaming with fever, eyes in which was no
+light of recognition:
+
+“Are you--no, you are not my mother. I want her--oh, I want her! She was
+here a minute ago--I did not see her go. Will she come? will she come
+quickly? will she come now?... There are so many houses ... and they
+oppress me so... and everything whirls and turns and whirls... oh, my
+head, my head!”--and so she wandered on and on, in her pain, flitting
+from one torturing fancy to another, and tossing her arms about in a
+weary and ceaseless persecution of unrest.
+
+Poor old Hannah wetted the parched lips and softly stroked the hot brow,
+murmuring endearing and pitying words, and thanking the Father of all
+that the mother was happy and did not know.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+Daily the child sank lower and steadily lower towards the grave, and
+daily the sorrowing old watchers carried gilded tidings of her radiant
+health and loveliness to the happy mother, whose pilgrimage was also now
+nearing its end. And daily they forged loving and cheery notes in the
+child's hand, and stood by with remorseful consciences and bleeding
+hearts, and wept to see the grateful mother devour them and adore them
+and treasure them away as things beyond price, because of their sweet
+source, and sacred because her child's hand had touched them.
+
+At last came that kindly friend who brings healing and peace to all.
+The lights were burning low. In the solemn hush which precedes the dawn
+vague figures flitted soundless along the dim hall and gathered silent
+and awed in Helen's chamber, and grouped themselves about her bed, for
+a warning had gone forth, and they knew. The dying girl lay with closed
+lids, and unconscious, the drapery upon her breast faintly rising and
+falling as her wasting life ebbed away. At intervals a sigh or a muffled
+sob broke upon the stillness. The same haunting thought was in all minds
+there: the pity of this death, the going out into the great darkness,
+and the mother not here to help and hearten and bless.
+
+Helen stirred; her hands began to grope wistfully about as if they
+sought something--she had been blind some hours. The end was come; all
+knew it. With a great sob Hester gathered her to her breast, crying,
+“Oh, my child, my darling!” A rapturous light broke in the dying girl's
+face, for it was mercifully vouchsafed her to mistake those sheltering
+arms for another's; and she went to her rest murmuring, “Oh, mamma, I am
+so happy--I longed for you--now I can die.”
+
+Two hours later Hester made her report. The mother asked:
+
+“How is it with the child?”
+
+“She is well.”
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+A sheaf of white crape and black was hung upon the door of the house,
+and there it swayed and rustled in the wind and whispered its tidings.
+At noon the preparation of the dead was finished, and in the coffin lay
+the fair young form, beautiful, and in the sweet face a great peace. Two
+mourners sat by it, grieving and worshipping--Hannah and the black woman
+Tilly. Hester came, and she was trembling, for a great trouble was upon
+her spirit. She said:
+
+“She asks for a note.”
+
+Hannah's face blanched. She had not thought of this; it had seemed that
+that pathetic service was ended. But she realized now that that could
+not be. For a little while the two women stood looking into each other's
+face, with vacant eyes; then Hannah said:
+
+“There is no way out of it--she must have it; she will suspect, else.”
+
+“And she would find out.”
+
+“Yes. It would break her heart.” She looked at the dead face, and her
+eyes filled. “I will write it,” she said.
+
+Hester carried it. The closing line said:
+
+“Darling Mousie, dear sweet mother, we shall soon be together again. Is
+not that good news? And it is true; they all say it is true.”
+
+The mother mourned, saying:
+
+“Poor child, how will she bear it when she knows? I shall never see her
+again in life. It is hard, so hard. She does not suspect? You guard her
+from that?”
+
+“She thinks you will soon be well.”
+
+“How good you are, and careful, dear Aunt Hester! None goes near her who
+could carry the infection?”
+
+“It would be a crime.”
+
+“But you _see _her?”
+
+“With a distance between--yes.”
+
+“That is so good. Others one could not trust; but you two guardian
+angels--steel is not so true as you. Others would be unfaithful; and
+many would deceive, and lie.”
+
+Hester's eyes fell, and her poor old lips trembled.
+
+“Let me kiss you for her, Aunt Hester; and when I am gone, and the
+danger is past, place the kiss upon her dear lips some day, and say her
+mother sent it, and all her mother's broken heart is in it.”
+
+Within the hour, Hester, raining tears upon the dead face, performed her
+pathetic mission.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+Another day dawned, and grew, and spread its sunshine in the earth. Aunt
+Hannah brought comforting news to the failing mother, and a happy note,
+which said again, “We have but a little time to wait, darling mother,
+then we shall be together.”
+
+The deep note of a bell came moaning down the wind.
+
+“Aunt Hannah, it is tolling. Some poor soul is at rest. As I shall be
+soon. You will not let her forget me?”
+
+“Oh, God knows she never will!”
+
+“Do not you hear strange noises, Aunt Hannah? It sounds like the
+shuffling of many feet.”
+
+“We hoped you would not hear it, dear. It is a little company gathering,
+for--for Helen's sake, poor little prisoner. There will be music--and
+she loves it so. We thought you would not mind.”
+
+“Mind? Oh no, no--oh, give her everything her dear heart can desire. How
+good you two are to her, and how good to me! God bless you both always!”
+
+After a listening pause:
+
+“How lovely! It is her organ. Is she playing it herself, do you think?”
+ Faint and rich and inspiring the chords floating to her ears on the
+still air. “Yes, it is her touch, dear heart, I recognize it. They are
+singing. Why--it is a hymn! and the sacredest of all, the most touching,
+the most consoling.... It seems to open the gates of paradise to me....
+If I could die now....”
+
+Faint and far the words rose out of the stillness:
+
+
+Nearer, my God, to Thee,
+
+Nearer to Thee,
+
+E'en though it be a cross
+
+That raiseth me.
+
+With the closing of the hymn another soul passed to its rest, and they
+that had been one in life were not sundered in death. The sisters,
+mourning and rejoicing, said:
+
+“How blessed it was that she never knew!”
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+At midnight they sat together, grieving, and the angel of the Lord
+appeared in the midst transfigured with a radiance not of earth; and
+speaking, said:
+
+“For liars a place is appointed. There they burn in the fires of hell
+from everlasting unto everlasting. Repent!”
+
+The bereaved fell upon their knees before him and clasped their hands
+and bowed their gray heads, adoring. But their tongues clove to the roof
+of their mouths, and they were dumb.
+
+“Speak! that I may bear the message to the chancery of heaven and bring
+again the decree from which there is no appeal.”
+
+Then they bowed their heads yet lower, and one said:
+
+“Our sin is great, and we suffer shame; but only perfect and final
+repentance can make us whole; and we are poor creatures who have learned
+our human weakness, and we know that if we were in those hard straits
+again our hearts would fail again, and we should sin as before. The
+strong could prevail, and so be saved, but we are lost.”
+
+They lifted their heads in supplication. The angel was gone. While
+they marveled and wept he came again; and bending low, he whispered the
+decree.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+Was it Heaven? Or Hell?
+
+
+
+A CURE FOR THE BLUES
+
+By courtesy of Mr. Cable I came into possession of a singular book
+eight or ten years ago. It is likely that mine is now the only copy in
+existence. Its title-page, unabbreviated, reads as follows:
+
+“The Enemy Conquered; or, Love Triumphant. By G. Ragsdale McClintock,
+(1) author of 'An Address,' etc., delivered at Sunflower Hill, South
+Carolina, and member of the Yale Law School. New Haven: published by T.
+H. Pease, 83 Chapel Street, 1845.”
+
+No one can take up this book and lay it down again unread. Whoever reads
+one line of it is caught, is chained; he has become the contented slave
+of its fascinations; and he will read and read, devour and devour, and
+will not let it go out of his hand till it is finished to the last line,
+though the house be on fire over his head. And after a first reading he
+will not throw it aside, but will keep it by him, with his Shakespeare
+and his Homer, and will take it up many and many a time, when the
+world is dark and his spirits are low, and be straightway cheered and
+refreshed. Yet this work has been allowed to lie wholly neglected,
+unmentioned, and apparently unregretted, for nearly half a century.
+
+The reader must not imagine that he is to find in it wisdom, brilliancy,
+fertility of invention, ingenuity of construction, excellence of form,
+purity of style, perfection of imagery, truth to nature, clearness of
+statement, humanly possible situations, humanly possible people, fluent
+narrative, connected sequence of events--or philosophy, or logic, or
+sense. No; the rich, deep, beguiling charm of the book lies in the total
+and miraculous _absence _from it of all these qualities--a charm which
+is completed and perfected by the evident fact that the author, whose
+naive innocence easily and surely wins our regard, and almost our
+worship, does not know that they are absent, does not even suspect
+that they are absent. When read by the light of these helps to an
+understanding of the situation, the book is delicious--profoundly and
+satisfyingly delicious.
+
+I call it a book because the author calls it a book, I call it a work
+because he calls it a work; but, in truth, it is merely a duodecimo
+pamphlet of thirty-one pages. It was written for fame and money, as the
+author very frankly--yes, and very hopefully, too, poor fellow--says
+in his preface. The money never came--no penny of it ever came; and how
+long, how pathetically long, the fame has been deferred--forty-seven
+years! He was young then, it would have been so much to him then; but
+will he care for it now?
+
+As time is measured in America, McClintock's epoch is antiquity. In his
+long-vanished day the Southern author had a passion for “eloquence”;
+it was his pet, his darling. He would be eloquent, or perish. And he
+recognized only one kind of eloquence--the lurid, the tempestuous, the
+volcanic. He liked words--big words, fine words, grand words, rumbling,
+thundering, reverberating words; with sense attaching if it could be got
+in without marring the sound, but not otherwise. He loved to stand
+up before a dazed world, and pour forth flame and smoke and lava and
+pumice-stone into the skies, and work his subterranean thunders, and
+shake himself with earthquakes, and stench himself with sulphur fumes.
+If he consumed his own fields and vineyards, that was a pity, yes; but
+he would have his eruption at any cost. Mr. McClintock's eloquence--and
+he is always eloquent, his crater is always spouting--is of the pattern
+common to his day, but he departs from the custom of the time in one
+respect: his brethren allowed sense to intrude when it did not mar the
+sound, but he does not allow it to intrude at all. For example, consider
+this figure, which he used in the village “Address” referred to with
+such candid complacency in the title-page above quoted--“like the
+topmost topaz of an ancient tower.” Please read it again; contemplate
+it; measure it; walk around it; climb up it; try to get at an
+approximate realization of the size of it. Is the fellow to that to be
+found in literature, ancient or modern, foreign or domestic, living or
+dead, drunk or sober? One notices how fine and grand it sounds. We know
+that if it was loftily uttered, it got a noble burst of applause from
+the villagers; yet there isn't a ray of sense in it, or meaning to it.
+
+McClintock finished his education at Yale in 1843, and came to Hartford
+on a visit that same year. I have talked with men who at that time
+talked with him, and felt of him, and knew he was real. One needs to
+remember that fact and to keep fast hold of it; it is the only way to
+keep McClintock's book from undermining one's faith in McClintock's
+actuality.
+
+As to the book. The first four pages are devoted to an inflamed
+eulogy of Woman--simply Woman in general, or perhaps as an
+Institution--wherein, among other compliments to her details, he pays a
+unique one to her voice. He says it “fills the breast with fond alarms,
+echoed by every rill.” It sounds well enough, but it is not true. After
+the eulogy he takes up his real work and the novel begins. It begins in
+the woods, near the village of Sunflower Hill.
+
+Brightening clouds seemed to rise from the mist of the fair
+Chattahoochee, to spread their beauty over the thick forest, to guide
+the hero whose bosom beats with aspirations to conquer the enemy that
+would tarnish his name, and to win back the admiration of his long-tried
+friend.
+
+It seems a general remark, but it is not general; the hero mentioned is
+the to-be hero of the book; and in this abrupt fashion, and without
+name or description, he is shoveled into the tale. “With aspirations to
+conquer the enemy that would tarnish his name” is merely a phrase flung
+in for the sake of the sound--let it not mislead the reader. No one is
+trying to tarnish this person; no one has thought of it. The rest of the
+sentence is also merely a phrase; the man has no friend as yet, and
+of course has had no chance to try him, or win back his admiration, or
+disturb him in any other way.
+
+The hero climbs up over “Sawney's Mountain,” and down the other side,
+making for an old Indian “castle”--which becomes “the red man's hut”
+ in the next sentence; and when he gets there at last, he “surveys with
+wonder and astonishment” the invisible structure, “which time has buried
+in the dust, and thought to himself his happiness was not yet complete.”
+ One doesn't know why it wasn't, nor how near it came to being complete,
+nor what was still wanting to round it up and make it so. Maybe it was
+the Indian; but the book does not say. At this point we have an episode:
+
+Beside the shore of the brook sat a young man, about eighteen or twenty,
+who seemed to be reading some favorite book, and who had a remarkably
+noble countenance--eyes which betrayed more than a common mind. This
+of course made the youth a welcome guest, and gained him friends in
+whatever condition of his life he might be placed. The traveler observed
+that he was a well-built figure which showed strength and grace in every
+movement. He accordingly addressed him in quite a gentlemanly manner,
+and inquired of him the way to the village. After he had received the
+desired information, and was about taking his leave, the youth said,
+“Are you not Major Elfonzo, the great musician (2)--the champion of a
+noble cause--the modern Achilles, who gained so many victories in the
+Florida War?” “I bear that name,” said the Major, “and those titles,
+trusting at the same time that the ministers of grace will carry me
+triumphantly through all my laudable undertakings, and if,” continued
+the Major, “you, sir, are the patronizer of noble deeds, I should like
+to make you my confidant and learn your address.” The youth looked
+somewhat amazed, bowed low, mused for a moment, and began: “My name is
+Roswell. I have been recently admitted to the bar, and can only give a
+faint outline of my future success in that honorable profession; but I
+trust, sir, like the Eagle, I shall look down from the lofty rocks upon
+the dwellings of man, and shall ever be ready to give you any assistance
+in my official capacity, and whatever this muscular arm of mine can
+do, whenever it shall be called from its buried _greatness_.” The Major
+grasped him by the hand, and exclaimed: “O! thou exalted spirit of
+inspiration--thou flame of burning prosperity, may the Heaven-directed
+blaze be the glare of thy soul, and battle down every rampart that seems
+to impede your progress!”
+
+There is a strange sort of originality about McClintock; he imitates
+other people's styles, but nobody can imitate his, not even an idiot.
+Other people can be windy, but McClintock blows a gale; other people can
+blubber sentiment, but McClintock spews it; other people can mishandle
+metaphors, but only McClintock knows how to make a business of it.
+McClintock is always McClintock, he is always consistent, his style is
+always his own style. He does not make the mistake of being relevant on
+one page and irrelevant on another; he is irrelevant on all of them.
+He does not make the mistake of being lucid in one place and obscure
+in another; he is obscure all the time. He does not make the mistake
+of slipping in a name here and there that is out of character with
+his work; he always uses names that exactly and fantastically fit his
+lunatics. In the matter of undeviating consistency he stands alone in
+authorship. It is this that makes his style unique, and entitles it to
+a name of its own--McClintockian. It is this that protects it from being
+mistaken for anybody else's. Uncredited quotations from other writers
+often leave a reader in doubt as to their authorship, but McClintock is
+safe from that accident; an uncredited quotation from him would always
+be recognizable. When a boy nineteen years old, who had just been
+admitted to the bar, says, “I trust, sir, like the Eagle, I shall
+look down from lofty rocks upon the dwellings of man,” we know who is
+speaking through that boy; we should recognize that note anywhere. There
+be myriads of instruments in this world's literary orchestra, and a
+multitudinous confusion of sounds that they make, wherein fiddles
+are drowned, and guitars smothered, and one sort of drum mistaken
+for another sort; but whensoever the brazen note of the McClintockian
+trombone breaks through that fog of music, that note is recognizable,
+and about it there can be no blur of doubt.
+
+The novel now arrives at the point where the Major goes home to see his
+father. When McClintock wrote this interview he probably believed it was
+pathetic.
+
+The road which led to the town presented many attractions Elfonzo had
+bid farewell to the youth of deep feeling, and was now wending his way
+to the dreaming spot of his fondness. The south winds whistled through
+the woods, as the waters dashed against the banks, as rapid fire in the
+pent furnace roars. This brought him to remember while alone, that he
+quietly left behind the hospitality of a father's house, and gladly
+entered the world, with higher hopes than are often realized. But as he
+journeyed onward, he was mindful of the advice of his father, who had
+often looked sadly on the ground, when tears of cruelly deceived hope
+moistened his eyes. Elfonzo had been somewhat a dutiful son; yet fond
+of the amusements of life--had been in distant lands--had enjoyed the
+pleasure of the world, and had frequently returned to the scenes of
+his boyhood, almost destitute of many of the comforts of life. In this
+condition, he would frequently say to his father, “Have I offended you,
+that you look upon me as a stranger, and frown upon me with stinging
+looks? Will you not favor me with the sound of your voice? If I have
+trampled upon your veneration, or have spread a humid veil of darkness
+around your expectations, send me back into the world, where no heart
+beats for me--where the foot of man had never yet trod; but give me at
+least one kind word--allow me to come into the presence sometimes of
+thy winter-worn locks.” “Forbid it, Heaven, that I should be angry with
+thee,” answered the father, “my son, and yet I send thee back to the
+children of the world--to the cold charity of the combat, and to a
+land of victory. I read another destiny in thy countenance--I learn
+thy inclinations from the flame that has already kindled in my soul a
+strange sensation. It will seek thee, my dear _Elfonzo_, it will find
+thee--thou canst not escape that lighted torch, which shall blot out
+from the remembrance of men a long train of prophecies which they have
+foretold against thee. I once thought not so. Once, I was blind; but
+now the path of life is plain before me, and my sight is clear; yet,
+Elfonzo, return to thy worldly occupation--take again in thy hand that
+chord of sweet sounds--struggle with the civilized world and with your
+own heart; fly swiftly to the enchanted ground--let the night-_owl_ send
+forth its screams from the stubborn oak--let the sea sport upon the
+beach, and the stars sing together; but learn of these, Elfonzo, thy
+doom, and thy hiding-place. Our most innocent as well as our most lawful
+_desires_ must often be denied us, that we may learn to sacrifice them
+to a Higher will.”
+
+Remembering such admonitions with gratitude, Elfonzo was immediately
+urged by the recollection of his father's family to keep moving.
+
+McClintock has a fine gift in the matter of surprises; but as a rule
+they are not pleasant ones, they jar upon the feelings. His closing
+sentence in the last quotation is of that sort. It brings one down out
+of the tinted clouds in too sudden and collapsed a fashion. It incenses
+one against the author for a moment. It makes the reader want to take
+him by his winter-worn locks, and trample on his veneration, and deliver
+him over to the cold charity of combat, and blot him out with his own
+lighted torch. But the feeling does not last. The master takes again
+in his hand that concord of sweet sounds of his, and one is reconciled,
+pacified.
+
+His steps became quicker and quicker--he hastened through the _piny_
+woods, dark as the forest was, and with joy he very soon reached the
+little village of repose, in whose bosom rested the boldest chivalry.
+His close attention to every important object--his modest questions
+about whatever was new to him--his reverence for wise old age, and his
+ardent desire to learn many of the fine arts, soon brought him into
+respectable notice.
+
+One mild winter day, as he walked along the streets toward the Academy,
+which stood upon a small eminence, surrounded by native growth--some
+venerable in its appearance, others young and prosperous--all seemed
+inviting, and seemed to be the very place for learning as well as for
+genius to spend its research beneath its spreading shades. He entered
+its classic walls in the usual mode of southern manners.
+
+The artfulness of this man! None knows so well as he how to pique the
+curiosity of the reader--and how to disappoint it. He raises the hope,
+here, that he is going to tell all about how one enters a classic wall
+in the usual mode of Southern manners; but does he? No; he smiles in his
+sleeve, and turns aside to other matters.
+
+The principal of the Institution begged him to be seated and listen to
+the recitations that were going on. He accordingly obeyed the request,
+and seemed to be much pleased. After the school was dismissed, and the
+young hearts regained their freedom, with the songs of the evening,
+laughing at the anticipated pleasures of a happy home, while others
+tittered at the actions of the past day, he addressed the teacher in a
+tone that indicated a resolution--with an undaunted mind. He said he had
+determined to become a student, if he could meet with his approbation.
+“Sir,” said he, “I have spent much time in the world. I have traveled
+among the uncivilized inhabitants of America. I have met with friends,
+and combated with foes; but none of these gratify my ambition, or decide
+what is to be my destiny. I see the learned world have an influence
+with the voice of the people themselves. The despoilers of the remotest
+kingdoms of the earth refer their differences to this class of persons.
+This the illiterate and inexperienced little dream of; and now if you
+will receive me as I am, with these deficiencies--with all my misguided
+opinions, I will give you my honor, sir, that I will never disgrace the
+Institution, or those who have placed you in this honorable station.”
+ The instructor, who had met with many disappointments, knew how to
+feel for a stranger who had been thus turned upon the charities of an
+unfeeling community. He looked at him earnestly, and said: “Be of
+good cheer--look forward, sir, to the high destination you may attain.
+Remember, the more elevated the mark at which you aim, the more sure,
+the more glorious, the more magnificent the prize.” From wonder to
+wonder, his encouragement led the impatient listener. A strange nature
+bloomed before him--giant streams promised him success--gardens of
+hidden treasures opened to his view. All this, so vividly described,
+seemed to gain a new witchery from his glowing fancy.
+
+It seems to me that this situation is new in romance. I feel sure it has
+not been attempted before. Military celebrities have been disguised and
+set at lowly occupations for dramatic effect, but I think McClintock is
+the first to send one of them to school. Thus, in this book, you pass
+from wonder to wonder, through gardens of hidden treasure, where giant
+streams bloom before you, and behind you, and all around, and you feel
+as happy, and groggy, and satisfied with your quart of mixed metaphor
+aboard as you would if it had been mixed in a sample-room and delivered
+from a jug.
+
+Now we come upon some more McClintockian surprises--a sweetheart who is
+sprung upon us without any preparation, along with a name for her which
+is even a little more of a surprise than she herself is.
+
+In 1842 he entered the class, and made rapid progress in the English
+and Latin departments. Indeed, he continued advancing with such rapidity
+that he was like to become the first in his class, and made such
+unexpected progress, and was so studious, that he had almost forgotten
+the pictured saint of his affections. The fresh wreaths of the pine and
+cypress had waited anxiously to drop once more the dews of Heaven upon
+the heads of those who had so often poured forth the tender emotions of
+their souls under its boughs. He was aware of the pleasure that he had
+seen there. So one evening, as he was returning from his reading, he
+concluded he would pay a visit to this enchanting spot. Little did he
+think of witnessing a shadow of his former happiness, though no doubt
+he wished it might be so. He continued sauntering by the roadside,
+meditating on the past. The nearer he approached the spot, the more
+anxious he became. At that moment a tall female figure flitted across
+his path, with a bunch of roses in her hand; her countenance showed
+uncommon vivacity, with a resolute spirit; her ivory teeth already
+appeared as she smiled beautifully, promenading--while her ringlets of
+hair dangled unconsciously around her snowy neck. Nothing was wanting
+to complete her beauty. The tinge of the rose was in full bloom upon
+her cheek; the charms of sensibility and tenderness were always her
+associates. In Ambulinia's bosom dwelt a noble soul--one that never
+faded--one that never was conquered.
+
+Ambulinia! It can hardly be matched in fiction. The full name is
+Ambulinia Valeer. Marriage will presently round it out and perfect it.
+Then it will be Mrs. Ambulinia Valeer Elfonzo. It takes the chromo.
+
+Her heart yielded to no feeling but the love of Elfonzo, on whom she
+gazed with intense delight, and to whom she felt herself more closely
+bound, because he sought the hand of no other. Elfonzo was roused
+from his apparent reverie. His books no longer were his inseparable
+companions--his thoughts arrayed themselves to encourage him to the
+field of victory. He endeavored to speak to his supposed Ambulinia, but
+his speech appeared not in words. No, his effort was a stream of fire,
+that kindled his soul into a flame of admiration, and carried his senses
+away captive. Ambulinia had disappeared, to make him more mindful of
+his duty. As she walked speedily away through the piny woods, she calmly
+echoed: “O! Elfonzo, thou wilt now look from thy sunbeams. Thou shalt
+now walk in a new path--perhaps thy way leads through darkness; but fear
+not, the stars foretell happiness.”
+
+To McClintock that jingling jumble of fine words meant something, no
+doubt, or seemed to mean something; but it is useless for us to try to
+divine what it was. Ambulinia comes--we don't know whence nor why; she
+mysteriously intimates--we don't know what; and then she goes echoing
+away--we don't know whither; and down comes the curtain. McClintock's
+art is subtle; McClintock's art is deep.
+
+Not many days afterward, as surrounded by fragrant flowers she sat one
+evening at twilight, to enjoy the cool breeze that whispered notes of
+melody along the distant groves, the little birds perched on every
+side, as if to watch the movements of their new visitor. The bells were
+tolling, when Elfonzo silently stole along by the wild wood flowers,
+holding in his hand his favorite instrument of music--his eye
+continually searching for Ambulinia, who hardly seemed to perceive him,
+as she played carelessly with the songsters that hopped from branch to
+branch. Nothing could be more striking than the difference between the
+two. Nature seemed to have given the more tender soul to Elfonzo, and
+the stronger and more courageous to Ambulinia. A deep feeling spoke from
+the eyes of Elfonzo--such a feeling as can only be expressed by those
+who are blessed as admirers, and by those who are able to return the
+same with sincerity of heart. He was a few years older than Ambulinia:
+she had turned a little into her seventeenth. He had almost grown up
+in the Cherokee country, with the same equal proportions as one of the
+natives. But little intimacy had existed between them until the year
+forty-one--because the youth felt that the character of such a lovely
+girl was too exalted to inspire any other feeling than that of quiet
+reverence. But as lovers will not always be insulted, at all times and
+under all circumstances, by the frowns and cold looks of crabbed old
+age, which should continually reflect dignity upon those around, and
+treat the unfortunate as well as the fortunate with a graceful mien, he
+continued to use diligence and perseverance. All this lighted a spark
+in his heart that changed his whole character, and like the unyielding
+Deity that follows the storm to check its rage in the forest, he
+resolves for the first time to shake off his embarrassment and return
+where he had before only worshiped.
+
+At last we begin to get the Major's measure. We are able to put this
+and that casual fact together, and build the man up before our eyes,
+and look at him. And after we have got him built, we find him worth the
+trouble. By the above comparison between his age and Ambulinia's, we
+guess the war-worn veteran to be twenty-two; and the other facts stand
+thus: he had grown up in the Cherokee country with the same equal
+proportions as one of the natives--how flowing and graceful the
+language, and yet how tantalizing as to meaning!--he had been turned
+adrift by his father, to whom he had been “somewhat of a dutiful son”;
+he wandered in distant lands; came back frequently “to the scenes of his
+boyhood, almost destitute of many of the comforts of life,” in order to
+get into the presence of his father's winter-worn locks, and spread
+a humid veil of darkness around his expectations; but he was always
+promptly sent back to the cold charity of the combat again; he learned
+to play the fiddle, and made a name for himself in that line; he had
+dwelt among the wild tribes; he had philosophized about the despoilers
+of the kingdoms of the earth, and found out--the cunning creature--that
+they refer their differences to the learned for settlement; he had
+achieved a vast fame as a military chieftain, the Achilles of the
+Florida campaigns, and then had got him a spelling-book and started
+to school; he had fallen in love with Ambulinia Valeer while she was
+teething, but had kept it to himself awhile, out of the reverential awe
+which he felt for the child; but now at last, like the unyielding Deity
+who follows the storm to check its rage in the forest, he resolves to
+shake off his embarrassment, and to return where before he had only
+worshiped. The Major, indeed, has made up his mind to rise up and shake
+his faculties together, and to see if_ he_ can't do that thing himself.
+This is not clear. But no matter about that: there stands the hero,
+compact and visible; and he is no mean structure, considering that his
+creator had never created anything before, and hadn't anything but
+rags and wind to build with this time. It seems to me that no one can
+contemplate this odd creature, this quaint and curious blatherskite,
+without admiring McClintock, or, at any rate, loving him and feeling
+grateful to him; for McClintock made him, he gave him to us; without
+McClintock we could not have had him, and would now be poor.
+
+But we must come to the feast again. Here is a courtship scene, down
+there in the romantic glades among the raccoons, alligators, and things,
+that has merit, peculiar literary merit. See how Achilles woos.
+Dwell upon the second sentence (particularly the close of it) and the
+beginning of the third. Never mind the new personage, Leos, who is
+intruded upon us unheralded and unexplained. That is McClintock's way;
+it is his habit; it is a part of his genius; he cannot help it; he never
+interrupts the rush of his narrative to make introductions.
+
+It could not escape Ambulinia's penetrating eye that he sought an
+interview with her, which she as anxiously avoided, and assumed a more
+distant calmness than before, seemingly to destroy all hope. After many
+efforts and struggles with his own person, with timid steps the Major
+approached the damsel, with the same caution as he would have done in
+a field of battle. “Lady Ambulinia,” said he, trembling, “I have
+long desired a moment like this. I dare not let it escape. I fear the
+consequences; yet I hope your indulgence will at least hear my petition.
+Can you not anticipate what I would say, and what I am about to express?
+Will not you, like Minerva, who sprung from the brain of Jupiter,
+release me from thy winding chains or cure me--” “Say no more, Elfonzo,”
+ answered Ambulinia, with a serious look, raising her hand as if she
+intended to swear eternal hatred against the whole world; “another
+lady in my place would have perhaps answered your question in bitter
+coldness. I know not the little arts of my sex. I care but little for
+the vanity of those who would chide me, and am unwilling as well as
+ashamed to be guilty of anything that would lead you to think 'all is
+not gold that glitters'; so be not rash in your resolution. It is better
+to repent now, than to do it in a more solemn hour. Yes, I know what you
+would say. I know you have a costly gift for me--the noblest that man
+can make--_your heart!_ You should not offer it to one so unworthy.
+Heaven, you know, has allowed my father's house to be made a house of
+solitude, a home of silent obedience, which my parents say is more to
+be admired than big names and high-sounding titles. Notwithstanding all
+this, let me speak the emotions of an honest heart--allow me to say in
+the fullness of my hopes that I anticipate better days. The bird may
+stretch its wings toward the sun, which it can never reach; and flowers
+of the field appear to ascend in the same direction, because they cannot
+do otherwise; but man confides his complaints to the saints in whom he
+believes; for in their abodes of light they know no more sorrow. From
+your confession and indicative looks, I must be that person; if so
+deceive not yourself.”
+
+Elfonzo replied, “Pardon me, my dear madam, for my frankness. I have
+loved you from my earliest days--everything grand and beautiful hath
+borne the image of Ambulinia; while precipices on every hand surrounded
+me, your _guardian angel_ stood and beckoned me away from the deep
+abyss. In every trial, in every misfortune, I have met with your helping
+hand; yet I never dreamed or dared to cherish thy love, till a voice
+impaired with age encouraged the cause, and declared they who acquired
+thy favor should win a victory. I saw how Leos worshiped thee. I felt my
+own unworthiness. I began to _know jealously_, a strong guest--indeed,
+in my bosom,--yet I could see if I gained your admiration Leos was to be
+my rival. I was aware that he had the influence of your parents, and the
+wealth of a deceased relative, which is too often mistaken for permanent
+and regular tranquillity; yet I have determined by your permission
+to beg an interest in your prayers--to ask you to animate my drooping
+spirits by your smiles and your winning looks; for if you but speak I
+shall be conqueror, my enemies shall stagger like Olympus shakes. And
+though earth and sea may tremble, and the charioteer of the sun may
+forget his dashing steed, yet I am assured that it is only to arm me
+with divine weapons which will enable me to complete my long-tried
+intention.”
+
+“Return to yourself, Elfonzo,” said Ambulinia, pleasantly: “a dream
+of vision has disturbed your intellect; you are above the atmosphere,
+dwelling in the celestial regions; nothing is there that urges or
+hinders, nothing that brings discord into our present litigation. I
+entreat you to condescend a little, and be a man, and forget it all.
+When Homer describes the battle of the gods and noble men fighting with
+giants and dragons, they represent under this image our struggles with
+the delusions of our passions. You have exalted me, an unhappy girl, to
+the skies; you have called me a saint, and portrayed in your imagination
+an angel in human form. Let her remain such to you, let her continue to
+be as you have supposed, and be assured that she will consider a share
+in your esteem as her highest treasure. Think not that I would allure
+you from the path in which your conscience leads you; for you know I
+respect the conscience of others, as I would die for my own. Elfonzo, if
+I am worthy of thy love, let such conversation never again pass between
+us. Go, seek a nobler theme! we will seek it in the stream of time, as
+the sun set in the Tigris.” As she spake these words she grasped the
+hand of Elfonzo, saying at the same time--“Peace and prosperity
+attend you, my hero; be up and doing!” Closing her remarks with this
+expression, she walked slowly away, leaving Elfonzo astonished and
+amazed. He ventured not to follow or detain her. Here he stood alone,
+gazing at the stars; confounded as he was, here he stood.
+
+Yes; there he stood. There seems to be no doubt about that. Nearly half
+of this delirious story has now been delivered to the reader. It seems a
+pity to reduce the other half to a cold synopsis. Pity! it is more
+than a pity, it is a crime; for to synopsize McClintock is to reduce
+a sky-flushing conflagration to dull embers, it is to reduce barbaric
+splendor to ragged poverty. McClintock never wrote a line that was not
+precious; he never wrote one that could be spared; he never framed one
+from which a word could be removed without damage. Every sentence that
+this master has produced may be likened to a perfect set of teeth,
+white, uniform, beautiful. If you pull one, the charm is gone.
+
+Still, it is now necessary to begin to pull, and to keep it up; for lack
+of space requires us to synopsize.
+
+We left Elfonzo standing there amazed. At what, we do not know. Not at
+the girl's speech. No; we ourselves should have been amazed at it,
+of course, for none of us has ever heard anything resembling it; but
+Elfonzo was used to speeches made up of noise and vacancy, and could
+listen to them with undaunted mind like the “topmost topaz of an ancient
+tower”; he was used to making them himself; he--but let it go, it cannot
+be guessed out; we shall never know what it was that astonished him. He
+stood there awhile; then he said, “Alas! am I now Grief's disappointed
+son at last?” He did not stop to examine his mind, and to try to find
+out what he probably meant by that, because, for one reason, “a mixture
+of ambition and greatness of soul moved upon his young heart,” and
+started him for the village. He resumed his bench in school, “and
+reasonably progressed in his education.” His heart was heavy, but
+he went into society, and sought surcease of sorrow in its light
+distractions. He made himself popular with his violin, “which seemed to
+have a thousand chords--more symphonious than the Muses of Apollo, and
+more enchanting than the ghost of the Hills.” This is obscure, but let
+it go.
+
+During this interval Leos did some unencouraged courting, but at last,
+“choked by his undertaking,” he desisted.
+
+Presently “Elfonzo again wends his way to the stately walls and
+new-built village.” He goes to the house of his beloved; she opens the
+door herself. To my surprise--for Ambulinia's heart had still seemed
+free at the time of their last interview--love beamed from the girl's
+eyes. One sees that Elfonzo was surprised, too; for when he caught that
+light, “a halloo of smothered shouts ran through every vein.” A neat
+figure--a very neat figure, indeed! Then he kissed her. “The scene was
+overwhelming.” They went into the parlor. The girl said it was safe,
+for her parents were abed, and would never know. Then we have this
+fine picture--flung upon the canvas with hardly an effort, as you will
+notice.
+
+Advancing toward him, she gave a bright display of her rosy neck, and
+from her head the ambrosial locks breathed divine fragrance; her robe
+hung waving to his view, while she stood like a goddess confessed before
+him.
+
+There is nothing of interest in the couple's interview. Now at this
+point the girl invites Elfonzo to a village show, where jealousy is the
+motive of the play, for she wants to teach him a wholesome lesson, if he
+is a jealous person. But this is a sham, and pretty shallow. McClintock
+merely wants a pretext to drag in a plagiarism of his upon a scene or
+two in “Othello.”
+
+The lovers went to the play. Elfonzo was one of the fiddlers. He and
+Ambulinia must not be seen together, lest trouble follow with the girl's
+malignant father; we are made to understand that clearly. So the two sit
+together in the orchestra, in the midst of the musicians. This does not
+seem to be good art. In the first place, the girl would be in the way,
+for orchestras are always packed closely together, and there is no room
+to spare for people's girls; in the next place, one cannot conceal a
+girl in an orchestra without everybody taking notice of it. There can be
+no doubt, it seems to me, that this is bad art.
+
+Leos is present. Of course, one of the first things that catches his eye
+is the maddening spectacle of Ambulinia “leaning upon Elfonzo's chair.”
+ This poor girl does not seem to understand even the rudiments of
+concealment. But she is “in her seventeenth,” as the author phrases it,
+and that is her justification.
+
+Leos meditates, constructs a plan--with personal violence as a basis,
+of course. It was their way down there. It is a good plain plan, without
+any imagination in it. He will go out and stand at the front door, and
+when these two come out he will “arrest Ambulinia from the hands of the
+insolent Elfonzo,” and thus make for himself a “more prosperous field of
+immortality than ever was decreed by Omnipotence, or ever pencil drew
+or artist imagined.” But, dear me, while he is waiting there the couple
+climb out at the back window and scurry home! This is romantic enough,
+but there is a lack of dignity in the situation.
+
+At this point McClintock puts in the whole of his curious play--which we
+skip.
+
+Some correspondence follows now. The bitter father and the distressed
+lovers write the letters. Elopements are attempted. They are idiotically
+planned, and they fail. Then we have several pages of romantic powwow
+and confusion signifying nothing. Another elopement is planned; it is to
+take place on Sunday, when everybody is at church. But the “hero” cannot
+keep the secret; he tells everybody. Another author would have found
+another instrument when he decided to defeat this elopement; but that is
+not McClintock's way. He uses the person that is nearest at hand.
+
+The evasion failed, of course. Ambulinia, in her flight, takes refuge
+in a neighbor's house. Her father drags her home. The villagers gather,
+attracted by the racket.
+
+Elfonzo was moved at this sight. The people followed on to see what was
+going to become of Ambulinia, while he, with downcast looks, kept at
+a distance, until he saw them enter the abode of the father, thrusting
+her, that was the sigh of his soul, out of his presence into a solitary
+apartment, when she exclaimed, “Elfonzo! Elfonzo! oh, Elfonzo! where
+art thou, with all thy heroes? haste, oh! haste, come thou to my relief.
+Ride on the wings of the wind! Turn thy force loose like a tempest, and
+roll on thy army like a whirlwind, over this mountain of trouble and
+confusion. Oh friends! if any pity me, let your last efforts throng upon
+the green hills, and come to the relief of Ambulinia, who is guilty of
+nothing but innocent love.” Elfonzo called out with a loud voice, “My
+God, can I stand this! arouse up, I beseech you, and put an end to this
+tyranny. Come, my brave boys,” said he, “are you ready to go forth to
+your duty?” They stood around him. “Who,” said he, “will call us to
+arms? Where are my thunderbolts of war? Speak ye, the first who will
+meet the foe! Who will go forward with me in this ocean of grievous
+temptation? If there is one who desires to go, let him come and shake
+hands upon the altar of devotion, and swear that he will be a hero; yes,
+a Hector in a cause like this, which calls aloud for a speedy remedy.”
+ “Mine be the deed,” said a young lawyer, “and mine alone; Venus alone
+shall quit her station before I will forsake one jot or tittle of my
+promise to you; what is death to me? what is all this warlike army,
+if it is not to win a victory? I love the sleep of the lover and the
+mighty; nor would I give it over till the blood of my enemies should
+wreak with that of my own. But God forbid that our fame should soar
+on the blood of the slumberer.” Mr. Valeer stands at his door with the
+frown of a demon upon his brow, with his dangerous weapon (3) ready to
+strike the first man who should enter his door. “Who will arise and go
+forward through blood and carnage to the rescue of my Ambulinia?” said
+Elfonzo. “All,” exclaimed the multitude; and onward they went, with
+their implements of battle. Others, of a more timid nature, stood among
+the distant hills to see the result of the contest.
+
+It will hardly be believed that after all this thunder and lightning not
+a drop of rain fell; but such is the fact. Elfonzo and his gang stood up
+and black-guarded Mr. Valeer with vigor all night, getting their outlay
+back with interest; then in the early morning the army and its general
+retired from the field, leaving the victory with their solitary
+adversary and his crowbar. This is the first time this has happened in
+romantic literature. The invention is original. Everything in this book
+is original; there is nothing hackneyed about it anywhere. Always, in
+other romances, when you find the author leading up to a climax, you
+know what is going to happen. But in this book it is different; the
+thing which seems inevitable and unavoidable never happens; it is
+circumvented by the art of the author every time.
+
+Another elopement was attempted. It failed.
+
+We have now arrived at the end. But it is not exciting. McClintock
+thinks it is; but it isn't. One day Elfonzo sent Ambulinia another
+note--a note proposing elopement No. 16. This time the plan is
+admirable; admirable, sagacious, ingenious, imaginative, deep--oh,
+everything, and perfectly easy. One wonders why it was never thought of
+before. This is the scheme. Ambulinia is to leave the breakfast-table,
+ostensibly to “attend to the placing of those flowers, which should have
+been done a week ago”--artificial ones, of course; the others wouldn't
+keep so long--and then, instead of fixing the flowers, she is to walk
+out to the grove, and go off with Elfonzo. The invention of this plan
+overstrained the author that is plain, for he straightway shows failing
+powers. The details of the plan are not many or elaborate. The author
+shall state them himself--this good soul, whose intentions are always
+better than his English:
+
+“You walk carelessly toward the academy grove, where you will find me
+with a lightning steed, elegantly equipped to bear you off where we
+shall be joined in wedlock with the first connubial rights.”
+
+Last scene of all, which the author, now much enfeebled, tries to
+smarten up and make acceptable to his spectacular heart by introducing
+some new properties--silver bow, golden harp, olive branch--things that
+can all come good in an elopement, no doubt, yet are not to be compared
+to an umbrella for real handiness and reliability in an excursion of
+that kind.
+
+And away she ran to the sacred grove, surrounded with glittering pearls,
+that indicated her coming. Elfonzo hails her with his silver bow and his
+golden harp. They meet--Ambulinia's countenance brightens--Elfonzo leads
+up the winged steed. “Mount,” said he, “ye true-hearted, ye fearless
+soul--the day is ours.” She sprang upon the back of the young
+thunderbolt, a brilliant star sparkles upon her head, with one hand she
+grasps the reins, and with the other she holds an olive branch. “Lend
+thy aid, ye strong winds,” they exclaimed, “ye moon, ye sun, and all ye
+fair host of heaven, witness the enemy conquered.” “Hold,” said Elfonzo,
+“thy dashing steed.” “Ride on,” said Ambulinia, “the voice of thunder is
+behind us.” And onward they went, with such rapidity that they very soon
+arrived at Rural Retreat, where they dismounted, and were united with
+all the solemnities that usually attended such divine operations.
+
+There is but one Homer, there is but one Shakespeare, there is but one
+McClintock--and his immortal book is before you. Homer could not have
+written this book, Shakespeare could not have written it, I could not
+have done it myself. There is nothing just like it in the literature of
+any country or of any epoch. It stands alone; it is monumental. It
+adds G. Ragsdale McClintock's to the sum of the republic's imperishable
+names.
+
+1. The name here given is a substitute for the one actually attached to
+the pamphlet.
+
+2. Further on it will be seen that he is a country expert on the fiddle,
+and has a three-township fame.
+
+3. It is a crowbar.
+
+
+
+THE CURIOUS BOOK
+
+COMPLETE
+
+(The foregoing review of the great work of G. Ragsdale McClintock is
+liberally illuminated with sample extracts, but these cannot appease the
+appetite. Only the complete book, unabridged, can do that. Therefore it
+is here printed.--M.T.)
+
+THE ENEMY CONQUERED; OR, LOVE TRIUMPHANT
+
+
+Sweet girl, thy smiles are full of charms,
+
+Thy voice is sweeter still,
+
+It fills the breast with fond alarms,
+
+Echoed by every rill.
+
+I begin this little work with an eulogy upon woman, who has ever been
+distinguished for her perseverance, her constancy, and her devoted
+attention to those upon whom she has been pleased to place her
+_affections_. Many have been the themes upon which writers and public
+speakers have dwelt with intense and increasing interest. Among these
+delightful themes stands that of woman, the balm to all our sighs and
+disappointments, and the most pre-eminent of all other topics. Here the
+poet and orator have stood and gazed with wonder and with admiration;
+they have dwelt upon her innocence, the ornament of all her virtues.
+First viewing her external charms, such as set forth in her form and
+benevolent countenance, and then passing to the deep hidden springs of
+loveliness and disinterested devotion. In every clime, and in every age,
+she has been the pride of her _nation_. Her watchfulness is untiring;
+she who guarded the sepulcher was the first to approach it, and the last
+to depart from its awful yet sublime scene. Even here, in this highly
+favored land, we look to her for the security of our institutions, and
+for our future greatness as a nation. But, strange as it may appear,
+woman's charms and virtues are but slightly appreciated by thousands.
+Those who should raise the standard of female worth, and paint her value
+with her virtues, in living colors, upon the banners that are fanned by
+the zephyrs of heaven, and hand them down to posterity as emblematical
+of a rich inheritance, do not properly estimate them.
+
+Man is not sensible, at all times, of the nature and the emotions which
+bear that name; he does not understand, he will not comprehend; his
+intelligence has not expanded to that degree of glory which drinks in
+the vast revolution of humanity, its end, its mighty destination, and
+the causes which operated, and are still operating, to produce a
+more elevated station, and the objects which energize and enliven its
+consummation. This he is a stranger to; he is not aware that woman is
+the recipient of celestial love, and that man is dependent upon her
+to perfect his character; that without her, philosophically and truly
+speaking, the brightest of his intelligence is but the coldness of a
+winter moon, whose beams can produce no fruit, whose solar light is not
+its own, but borrowed from the great dispenser of effulgent beauty. We
+have no disposition in the world to flatter the fair sex, we would raise
+them above those dastardly principles which only exist in little souls,
+contracted hearts, and a distracted brain. Often does she unfold herself
+in all her fascinating loveliness, presenting the most captivating
+charms; yet we find man frequently treats such purity of purpose with
+indifference. Why does he do it? Why does he baffle that which is
+inevitably the source of his better days? Is he so much of a stranger
+to those excellent qualities as not to appreciate woman, as not to have
+respect to her dignity? Since her art and beauty first captivated man,
+she has been his delight and his comfort; she has shared alike in his
+misfortunes and in his prosperity.
+
+Whenever the billows of adversity and the tumultuous waves of trouble
+beat high, her smiles subdue their fury. Should the tear of sorrow and
+the mournful sigh of grief interrupt the peace of his mind, her voice
+removes them all, and she bends from her circle to encourage him onward.
+When darkness would obscure his mind, and a thick cloud of gloom would
+bewilder its operations, her intelligent eye darts a ray of streaming
+light into his heart. Mighty and charming is that disinterested devotion
+which she is ever ready to exercise toward man, not waiting till
+the last moment of his danger, but seeks to relieve him in his early
+afflictions. It gushes forth from the expansive fullness of a tender and
+devoted heart, where the noblest, the purest, and the most elevated and
+refined feelings are matured and developed in those many kind offices
+which invariably make her character.
+
+In the room of sorrow and sickness, this unequaled characteristic
+may always been seen, in the performance of the most charitable acts;
+nothing that she can do to promote the happiness of him who she claims
+to be her protector will be omitted; all is invigorated by the animating
+sunbeams which awaken the heart to songs of gaiety. Leaving this point,
+to notice another prominent consideration, which is generally one of
+great moment and of vital importance. Invariably she is firm and steady
+in all her pursuits and aims. There is required a combination of forces
+and extreme opposition to drive her from her position; she takes her
+stand, not to be moved by the sound of Apollo's lyre or the curved bow
+of pleasure.
+
+Firm and true to what she undertakes, and that which she requires by
+her own aggrandizement, and regards as being within the strict rules of
+propriety, she will remain stable and unflinching to the last. A more
+genuine principle is not to be found in the most determined, resolute
+heart of man. For this she deserves to be held in the highest
+commendation, for this she deserves the purest of all other blessings,
+and for this she deserves the most laudable reward of all others. It is
+a noble characteristic and is worthy of imitation of any age. And when
+we look at it in one particular aspect, it is still magnified, and grows
+brighter and brighter the more we reflect upon its eternal duration.
+What will she not do, when her word as well as her affections and _love
+_are pledged to her lover? Everything that is dear to her on earth,
+all the hospitalities of kind and loving parents, all the sincerity and
+loveliness of sisters, and the benevolent devotion of brothers, who have
+surrounded her with every comfort; she will forsake them all, quit the
+harmony and sweet sound of the lute and the harp, and throw herself upon
+the affections of some devoted admirer, in whom she fondly hopes to
+find more than she has left behind, which is not often realized by many.
+Truth and virtue all combined! How deserving our admiration and love! Ah
+cruel would it be in man, after she has thus manifested such an unshaken
+confidence in him, and said by her determination to abandon all the
+endearments and blandishments of home, to act a villainous part, and
+prove a traitor in the revolution of his mission, and then turn Hector
+over the innocent victim whom he swore to protect, in the presence of
+Heaven, recorded by the pen of an angel.
+
+Striking as this trait may unfold itself in her character, and as
+pre-eminent as it may stand among the fair display of her other
+qualities, yet there is another, which struggles into existence, and
+adds an additional luster to what she already possesses. I mean that
+disposition in woman which enables her, in sorrow, in grief, and in
+distress, to bear all with enduring patience. This she has done, and
+can and will do, amid the din of war and clash of arms. Scenes and
+occurrences which, to every appearance, are calculated to rend the heart
+with the profoundest emotions of trouble, do not fetter that exalted
+principle imbued in her very nature. It is true, her tender and feeling
+heart may often be moved (as she is thus constituted), but she is not
+conquered, she has not given up to the harlequin of disappointments, her
+energies have not become clouded in the last movement of misfortune, but
+she is continually invigorated by the archetype of her affections. She
+may bury her face in her hands, and let the tear of anguish roll, she
+may promenade the delightful walks of some garden, decorated with all
+the flowers of nature, or she may steal out along some gently rippling
+stream, and there, as the silver waters uninterruptedly move forward,
+shed her silent tears; they mingle with the waves, and take a last
+farewell of their agitated home, to seek a peaceful dwelling among
+the rolling floods; yet there is a voice rushing from her breast,
+that proclaims _victory _along the whole line and battlement of her
+affections. That voice is the voice of patience and resignation; that
+voice is one that bears everything calmly and dispassionately, amid the
+most distressing scenes; when the fates are arrayed against her peace,
+and apparently plotting for her destruction, still she is resigned.
+
+Woman's affections are deep, consequently her troubles may be made to
+sink deep. Although you may not be able to mark the traces of her grief
+and the furrowings of her anguish upon her winning countenance, yet be
+assured they are nevertheless preying upon her inward person, sapping
+the very foundation of that heart which alone was made for the weal and
+not the woe of man. The deep recesses of the soul are fields for their
+operation. But they are not destined simply to take the regions of
+the heart for their dominion, they are not satisfied merely with
+interrupting her better feelings; but after a while you may see the
+blooming cheek beginning to droop and fade, her intelligent eye no
+longer sparkles with the starry light of heaven, her vibrating pulse
+long since changed its regular motion, and her palpitating bosom beats
+once more for the midday of her glory. Anxiety and care ultimately throw
+her into the arms of the haggard and grim monster death. But, oh, how
+patient, under every pining influence! Let us view the matter in bolder
+colors; see her when the dearest object of her affections recklessly
+seeks every bacchanalian pleasure, contents himself with the last
+rubbish of creation. With what solicitude she awaits his return! Sleep
+fails to perform its office--she weeps while the nocturnal shades of the
+night triumph in the stillness. Bending over some favorite book, whilst
+the author throws before her mind the most beautiful imagery, she
+startles at every sound. The midnight silence is broken by the solemn
+announcement of the return of another morning. He is still absent; she
+listens for that voice which has so often been greeted by the melodies
+of her own; but, alas! stern silence is all that she receives for her
+vigilance.
+
+Mark her unwearied watchfulness, as the night passes away. At last,
+brutalized by the accursed thing, he staggers along with rage, and,
+shivering with cold, he makes his appearance. Not a murmur is heard from
+her lips. On the contrary, she meets him with a smile--she caresses him
+with tender arms, with all the gentleness and softness of her sex. Here,
+then, is seen her disposition, beautifully arrayed. Woman, thou art more
+to be admired than the spicy gales of Arabia, and more sought for than
+the gold of Golconda. We believe that Woman should associate freely with
+man, and we believe that it is for the preservation of her rights. She
+should become acquainted with the metaphysical designs of those who
+condescended to sing the siren song of flattery. This, we think, should
+be according to the unwritten law of decorum, which is stamped upon
+every innocent heart. The precepts of prudery are often steeped in the
+guilt of contamination, which blasts the expectations of better moments.
+Truth, and beautiful dreams--loveliness, and delicacy of character, with
+cherished affections of the ideal woman--gentle hopes and aspirations,
+are enough to uphold her in the storms of darkness, without the
+transferred colorings of a stained sufferer. How often have we seen it
+in our public prints, that woman occupies a false station in the world!
+and some have gone so far as to say it was an unnatural one. So long has
+she been regarded a weak creature, by the rabble and illiterate--they
+have looked upon her as an insufficient actress on the great stage of
+human life--a mere puppet, to fill up the drama of human existence--a
+thoughtless, inactive being--that she has too often come to the same
+conclusion herself, and has sometimes forgotten her high destination, in
+the meridian of her glory. We have but little sympathy or patience for
+those who treat her as a mere Rosy Melindi--who are always fishing for
+pretty complements--who are satisfied by the gossamer of Romance,
+and who can be allured by the verbosity of high-flown words, rich in
+language, but poor and barren in sentiment. Beset, as she has been, by
+the intellectual vulgar, the selfish, the designing, the cunning, the
+hidden, and the artful--no wonder she has sometimes folded her wings
+in despair, and forgotten her _heavenly _mission in the delirium of
+imagination; no wonder she searches out some wild desert, to find a
+peaceful home. But this cannot always continue. A new era is moving
+gently onward, old things are rapidly passing away; old superstitions,
+old prejudices, and old notions are now bidding farewell to their old
+associates and companions, and giving way to one whose wings are plumed
+with the light of heaven and tinged by the dews of the morning. There
+is a remnant of blessedness that clings to her in spite of all evil
+influence, there is enough of the Divine Master left to accomplish the
+noblest work ever achieved under the canopy of the vaulted skies; and
+that time is fast approaching, when the picture of the true woman will
+shine from its frame of glory, to captivate, to win back, to restore,
+and to call into being once more, _the object of her mission_.
+
+
+Star of the brave! thy glory shed, O'er all the earth, thy army led--
+Bold meteor of immortal birth! Why come from Heaven to dwell on Earth?
+
+Mighty and glorious are the days of youth; happy the moments of the
+_lover_, mingled with smiles and tears of his devoted, and long to be
+remembered are the achievements which he gains with a palpitating heart
+and a trembling hand. A bright and lovely dawn, the harbinger of a fair
+and prosperous day, had arisen over the beautiful little village
+of Cumming, which is surrounded by the most romantic scenery in the
+Cherokee country. Brightening clouds seemed to rise from the mist of
+the fair Chattahoochee, to spread their beauty over the thick forest, to
+guide the hero whose bosom beats with aspirations to conquer the enemy
+that would tarnish his name, and to win back the admiration of his
+long-tried friend. He endeavored to make his way through Sawney's
+Mountain, where many meet to catch the gales that are continually
+blowing for the refreshment of the stranger and the traveler. Surrounded
+as he was by hills on every side, naked rocks dared the efforts of his
+energies. Soon the sky became overcast, the sun buried itself in the
+clouds, and the fair day gave place to gloomy twilight, which lay
+heavily on the Indian Plains. He remembered an old Indian Castle, that
+once stood at the foot of the mountain. He thought if he could make his
+way to this, he would rest contented for a short time. The mountain
+air breathed fragrance--a rosy tinge rested on the glassy waters that
+murmured at its base. His resolution soon brought him to the remains of
+the red man's hut: he surveyed with wonder and astonishment the decayed
+building, which time had buried in the dust, and thought to himself,
+his happiness was not yet complete. Beside the shore of the brook sat
+a young man, about eighteen or twenty, who seemed to be reading some
+favorite book, and who had a remarkably noble countenance--eyes which
+betrayed more than a common mind. This of course made the youth a
+welcome guest, and gained him friends in whatever condition of life he
+might be placed. The traveler observed that he was a well-built figure,
+which showed strength and grace in every movement. He accordingly
+addressed him in quite a gentlemanly manner, and inquired of him the way
+to the village. After he had received the desired information, and was
+about taking his leave, the youth said, “Are you not Major Elfonzo, the
+great musician--the champion of a noble cause--the modern Achilles, who
+gained so many victories in the Florida War?” “I bear that name,”
+ said the Major, “and those titles, trusting at the same time that the
+ministers of grace will carry me triumphantly through all my laudable
+undertakings, and if,” continued the Major, “you, sir, are the
+patronizer of noble deeds, I should like to make you my confidant and
+learn your address.” The youth looked somewhat amazed, bowed low, mused
+for a moment, and began: “My name is Roswell. I have been recently
+admitted to the bar, and can only give a faint outline of my future
+success in that honorable profession; but I trust, sir, like the Eagle,
+I shall look down from lofty rocks upon the dwellings of man, and shall
+ever be ready to give you any assistance in my official capacity, and
+whatever this muscular arm of mine can do, whenever it shall be called
+from its buried _greatness_.” The Major grasped him by the hand, and
+exclaimed: “O! thou exalted spirit of inspiration--thou flame of burning
+prosperity, may the Heaven-directed blaze be the glare of thy soul, and
+battle down every rampart that seems to impede your progress!”
+
+The road which led to the town presented many attractions. Elfonzo had
+bid farewell to the youth of deep feeling, and was now wending his way
+to the dreaming spot of his fondness. The south winds whistled through
+the woods, as the waters dashed against the banks, as rapid fire in the
+pent furnace roars. This brought him to remember while alone, that he
+quietly left behind the hospitality of a father's house, and gladly
+entered the world, with higher hopes than are often realized. But as he
+journeyed onward, he was mindful of the advice of his father, who had
+often looked sadly on the ground when tears of cruelly deceived hope
+moistened his eye. Elfonzo had been somewhat of a dutiful son; yet fond
+of the amusements of life--had been in distant lands--had enjoyed the
+pleasure of the world and had frequently returned to the scenes of
+his boyhood, almost destitute of many of the comforts of life. In this
+condition, he would frequently say to his father, “Have I offended you,
+that you look upon me as a stranger, and frown upon me with stinging
+looks? Will you not favor me with the sound of your voice? If I have
+trampled upon your veneration, or have spread a humid veil of darkness
+around your expectations, send me back into the world where no heart
+beats for me--where the foot of man has never yet trod; but give me at
+least one kind word--allow me to come into the presence sometimes of
+thy winter-worn locks.” “Forbid it, Heaven, that I should be angry with
+thee,” answered the father, “my son, and yet I send thee back to the
+children of the world--to the cold charity of the combat, and to a
+land of victory. I read another destiny in thy countenance--I learn
+thy inclinations from the flame that has already kindled in my soul a
+strange sensation. It will seek thee, my dear _Elfonzo_, it will find
+thee--thou canst not escape that lighted torch, which shall blot out
+from the remembrance of men a long train of prophecies which they have
+foretold against thee. I once thought not so. Once, I was blind; but now
+the path of life is plain before me, and my sight is clear; yet Elfonzo,
+return to thy worldly occupation--take again in thy hand that chord
+of sweet sounds--struggle with the civilized world, and with your own
+heart; fly swiftly to the enchanted ground--let the night-_owl_ send forth
+its screams from the stubborn oak--let the sea sport upon the beach, and
+the stars sing together; but learn of these, Elfonzo, thy doom, and
+thy hiding-place. Our most innocent as well as our most lawful _desires
+_must often be denied us, that we may learn to sacrifice them to a
+Higher will.”
+
+Remembering such admonitions with gratitude, Elfonzo was immediately
+urged by the recollection of his father's family to keep moving. His
+steps became quicker and quicker--he hastened through the _piny _woods,
+dark as the forest was, and with joy he very soon reached the little
+village of repose, in whose bosom rested the boldest chivalry. His close
+attention to every important object--his modest questions about whatever
+was new to him--his reverence for wise old age, and his ardent desire to
+learn many of the fine arts, soon brought him into respectable notice.
+
+One mild winter day as he walked along the streets toward the Academy,
+which stood upon a small eminence, surrounded by native growth--some
+venerable in its appearance, others young and prosperous--all seemed
+inviting, and seemed to be the very place for learning as well as for
+genius to spend its research beneath its spreading shades. He entered
+its classic walls in the usual mode of southern manners. The principal
+of the Institution begged him to be seated and listen to the recitations
+that were going on. He accordingly obeyed the request, and seemed to
+be much pleased. After the school was dismissed, and the young hearts
+regained their freedom, with the songs of the evening, laughing at the
+anticipated pleasures of a happy home, while others tittered at the
+actions of the past day, he addressed the teacher in a tone that
+indicated a resolution--with an undaunted mind. He said he had
+determined to become a student, if he could meet with his approbation.
+“Sir,” said he, “I have spent much time in the world. I have traveled
+among the uncivilized inhabitants of America. I have met with friends,
+and combated with foes; but none of these gratify my ambition, or decide
+what is to be my destiny. I see the learned would have an influence
+with the voice of the people themselves. The despoilers of the remotest
+kingdoms of the earth refer their differences to this class of persons.
+This the illiterate and inexperienced little dream of; and now if you
+will receive me as I am, with these deficiencies--with all my misguided
+opinions, I will give you my honor, sir, that I will never disgrace the
+Institution, or those who have placed you in this honorable station.”
+ The instructor, who had met with many disappointments, knew how to
+feel for a stranger who had been thus turned upon the charities of an
+unfeeling community. He looked at him earnestly, and said: “Be of
+good cheer--look forward, sir, to the high destination you may attain.
+Remember, the more elevated the mark at which you aim, the more sure,
+the more glorious, the more magnificent the prize.” From wonder to
+wonder, his encouragement led the impatient listener. A strange nature
+bloomed before him--giant streams promised him success--gardens of
+hidden treasures opened to his view. All this, so vividly described,
+seemed to gain a new witchery from his glowing fancy.
+
+In 1842 he entered the class, and made rapid progress in the English
+and Latin departments. Indeed, he continued advancing with such rapidity
+that he was like to become the first in his class, and made such
+unexpected progress, and was so studious, that he had almost forgotten
+the pictured saint of his affections. The fresh wreaths of the pine and
+cypress had waited anxiously to drop once more the dews of Heavens upon
+the heads of those who had so often poured forth the tender emotions of
+their souls under its boughs. He was aware of the pleasure that he had
+seen there. So one evening, as he was returning from his reading, he
+concluded he would pay a visit to this enchanting spot. Little did he
+think of witnessing a shadow of his former happiness, though no doubt
+he wished it might be so. He continued sauntering by the roadside,
+meditating on the past. The nearer he approached the spot, the more
+anxious he became. At the moment a tall female figure flitted across his
+path, with a bunch of roses in her hand; her countenance showed uncommon
+vivacity, with a resolute spirit; her ivory teeth already appeared as
+she smiled beautifully, promenading--while her ringlets of hair dangled
+unconsciously around her snowy neck. Nothing was wanting to complete
+her beauty. The tinge of the rose was in full bloom upon her cheek; the
+charms of sensibility and tenderness were always her associates.. In
+Ambulinia's bosom dwelt a noble soul--one that never faded--one that
+never was conquered. Her heart yielded to no feeling but the love of
+Elfonzo, on whom she gazed with intense delight, and to whom she felt
+herself more closely bound, because he sought the hand of no other.
+Elfonzo was roused from his apparent reverie. His books no longer were
+his inseparable companions--his thoughts arrayed themselves to encourage
+him in the field of victory. He endeavored to speak to his supposed
+Ambulinia, but his speech appeared not in words. No, his effort was a
+stream of fire, that kindled his soul into a flame of admiration, and
+carried his senses away captive. Ambulinia had disappeared, to make him
+more mindful of his duty. As she walked speedily away through the
+piny woods she calmly echoed: “O! Elfonzo, thou wilt now look from
+thy sunbeams. Thou shalt now walk in a new path--perhaps thy way leads
+through darkness; but fear not, the stars foretell happiness.”
+
+Not many days afterward, as surrounded by fragrant flowers she sat one
+evening at twilight, to enjoy the cool breeze that whispered notes of
+melody along the distant groves, the little birds perched on every
+side, as if to watch the movements of their new visitor. The bells were
+tolling when Elfonzo silently stole along by the wild wood flowers,
+holding in his hand his favorite instrument of music--his eye
+continually searching for Ambulinia, who hardly seemed to perceive him,
+as she played carelessly with the songsters that hopped from branch to
+branch. Nothing could be more striking than the difference between the
+two. Nature seemed to have given the more tender soul to Elfonzo, and
+the stronger and more courageous to Ambulinia. A deep feeling spoke from
+the eyes of Elfonzo--such a feeling as can only be expressed by those
+who are blessed as admirers, and by those who are able to return the
+same with sincerity of heart. He was a few years older than Ambulinia:
+she had turned a little into her seventeenth. He had almost grown up
+in the Cherokee country, with the same equal proportions as one of the
+natives. But little intimacy had existed between them until the year
+forty-one--because the youth felt that the character of such a lovely
+girl was too exalted to inspire any other feeling than that of quiet
+reverence. But as lovers will not always be insulted, at all times and
+under all circumstances, by the frowns and cold looks of crabbed old
+age, which should continually reflect dignity upon those around, and
+treat unfortunate as well as the fortunate with a graceful mien, he
+continued to use diligence and perseverance. All this lighted a spark
+in his heart that changed his whole character, and like the unyielding
+Deity that follows the storm to check its rage in the forest, he
+resolves for the first time to shake off his embarrassment and return
+where he had before only worshiped.
+
+It could not escape Ambulinia's penetrating eye that he sought an
+interview with her, which she as anxiously avoided, and assumed a more
+distant calmness than before, seemingly to destroy all hope. After many
+efforts and struggles with his own person, with timid steps the Major
+approached the damsel, with the same caution as he would have done in
+a field of battle. “Lady Ambulinia,” said he, trembling, “I have
+long desired a moment like this. I dare not let it escape. I fear the
+consequences; yet I hope your indulgence will at least hear my petition.
+Can you not anticipate what I would say, and what I am about to express?
+Will not you, like Minerva, who sprung from the brain of Jupiter,
+release me from thy winding chains or cure me--” “Say no more, Elfonzo,”
+ answered Ambulinia, with a serious look, raising her hand as if she
+intended to swear eternal hatred against the whole world; “another
+lady in my place would have perhaps answered your question in bitter
+coldness. I know not the little arts of my sex. I care but little for
+the vanity of those who would chide me, and am unwilling as well as
+shamed to be guilty of anything that would lead you to think 'all is not
+gold that glitters'; so be not rash in your resolution. It is better
+to repent now than to do it in a more solemn hour. Yes, I know what you
+would say. I know you have a costly gift for me--the noblest that man
+can make--_your heart!_ you should not offer it to one so unworthy.
+Heaven, you know, has allowed my father's house to be made a house of
+solitude, a home of silent obedience, which my parents say is more to
+be admired than big names and high-sounding titles. Notwithstanding all
+this, let me speak the emotions of an honest heart; allow me to say in
+the fullness of my hopes that I anticipate better days. The bird may
+stretch its wings toward the sun, which it can never reach; and flowers
+of the field appear to ascend in the same direction, because they cannot
+do otherwise; but man confides his complaints to the saints in whom he
+believes; for in their abodes of light they know no more sorrow. From
+your confession and indicative looks, I must be that person; if so,
+deceive not yourself.”
+
+Elfonzo replied, “Pardon me, my dear madam, for my frankness. I have
+loved you from my earliest days; everything grand and beautiful hath
+borne the image of Ambulinia; while precipices on every hand surrounded
+me, your _guardian angel_ stood and beckoned me away from the deep
+abyss. In every trial, in every misfortune, I have met with your helping
+hand; yet I never dreamed or dared to cherish thy love till a voice
+impaired with age encouraged the cause, and declared they who acquired
+thy favor should win a victory. I saw how Leos worshipped thee. I felt
+my own unworthiness. I began to _know jealousy_--a strong guest, indeed,
+in my bosom--yet I could see if I gained your admiration Leos was to be
+my rival. I was aware that he had the influence of your parents, and the
+wealth of a deceased relative, which is too often mistaken for permanent
+and regular tranquillity; yet I have determined by your permission
+to beg an interest in your prayers--to ask you to animate my drooping
+spirits by your smiles and your winning looks; for if you but speak I
+shall be conqueror, my enemies shall stagger like Olympus shakes. And
+though earth and sea may tremble, and the charioteer of the sun may
+forget his dashing steed, yet I am assured that it is only to arm me
+with divine weapons which will enable me to complete my long-tried
+intention.”
+
+“Return to your self, Elfonzo,” said Ambulinia, pleasantly; “a dream
+of vision has disturbed your intellect; you are above the atmosphere,
+dwelling in the celestial regions; nothing is there that urges or
+hinders, nothing that brings discord into our present litigation. I
+entreat you to condescend a little, and be a man, and forget it all.
+When Homer describes the battle of the gods and noble men fighting with
+giants and dragons, they represent under this image our struggles with
+the delusions of our passions. You have exalted me, an unhappy girl, to
+the skies; you have called me a saint, and portrayed in your imagination
+an angel in human form. Let her remain such to you, let her continue to
+be as you have supposed, and be assured that she will consider a share
+in your esteem as her highest treasure. Think not that I would allure
+you from the path in which your conscience leads you; for you know I
+respect the conscience of others, as I would die for my own. Elfonzo, if
+I am worthy of thy love, let such conversation never again pass between
+us. Go, seek a nobler theme! we will seek it in the stream of time as
+the sun set in the Tigris.” As she spake these words she grasped the
+hand of Elfonzo, saying at the same time, “Peace and prosperity
+attend you, my hero: be up and doing!” Closing her remarks with this
+expression, she walked slowly away, leaving Elfonzo astonished and
+amazed. He ventured not to follow or detain her. Here he stood alone,
+gazing at the stars; confounded as he was, here he stood. The rippling
+stream rolled on at his feet. Twilight had already begun to draw her
+sable mantle over the earth, and now and then the fiery smoke would
+ascend from the little town which lay spread out before him. The
+citizens seemed to be full of life and good-humor; but poor Elfonzo saw
+not a brilliant scene. No; his future life stood before him, stripped of
+the hopes that once adorned all his sanguine desires. “Alas!” said he,
+“am I now Grief's disappointed son at last.” Ambulinia's image rose
+before his fancy. A mixture of ambition and greatness of soul moved upon
+his young heart, and encouraged him to bear all his crosses with the
+patience of a Job, notwithstanding he had to encounter with so many
+obstacles. He still endeavored to prosecute his studies, and reasonably
+progressed in his education. Still, he was not content; there was
+something yet to be done before his happiness was complete. He would
+visit his friends and acquaintances. They would invite him to social
+parties, insisting that he should partake of the amusements that were
+going on. This he enjoyed tolerably well. The ladies and gentlemen were
+generally well pleased with the Major; as he delighted all with his
+violin, which seemed to have a thousand chords--more symphonious than
+the Muses of Apollo and more enchanting than the ghost of the Hills.
+He passed some days in the country. During that time Leos had made many
+calls upon Ambulinia, who was generally received with a great deal of
+courtesy by the family. They thought him to be a young man worthy of
+attention, though he had but little in his soul to attract the attention
+or even win the affections of her whose graceful manners had almost made
+him a slave to every bewitching look that fell from her eyes. Leos made
+several attempts to tell her of his fair prospects--how much he loved
+her, and how much it would add to his bliss if he could but think she
+would be willing to share these blessings with him; but, choked by his
+undertaking, he made himself more like an inactive drone than he did
+like one who bowed at beauty's shrine.
+
+Elfonzo again wends his way to the stately walls and new-built village.
+He now determines to see the end of the prophesy which had been foretold
+to him. The clouds burst from his sight; he believes if he can but see
+his Ambulinia, he can open to her view the bloody altars that have
+been misrepresented to stigmatize his name. He knows that her breast is
+transfixed with the sword of reason, and ready at all times to detect
+the hidden villainy of her enemies. He resolves to see her in her own
+home, with the consoling theme: “'I can but perish if I go.' Let
+the consequences be what they may,” said he, “if I die, it shall be
+contending and struggling for my own rights.”
+
+Night had almost overtaken him when he arrived in town. Colonel Elder, a
+noble-hearted, high-minded, and independent man, met him at his door as
+usual, and seized him by the hand. “Well, Elfonzo,” said the Colonel,
+“how does the world use you in your efforts?” “I have no objection to
+the world,” said Elfonzo, “but the people are rather singular in some of
+their opinions.” “Aye, well,” said the Colonel, “you must remember that
+creation is made up of many mysteries; just take things by the right
+handle; be always sure you know which is the smooth side before you
+attempt your polish; be reconciled to your fate, be it what it may;
+and never find fault with your condition, unless your complaining will
+benefit it. Perseverance is a principle that should be commendable
+in those who have judgment to govern it. I should never have been so
+successful in my hunting excursions had I waited till the deer, by some
+magic dream, had been drawn to the muzzle of the gun before I made an
+attempt to fire at the game that dared my boldness in the wild forest.
+The great mystery in hunting seems to be--a good marksman, a resolute
+mind, a fixed determination, and my word for it, you will never return
+home without sounding your horn with the breath of a new victory. And
+so with every other undertaking. Be confident that your ammunition is of
+the right kind--always pull your trigger with a steady hand, and so soon
+as you perceive a calm, touch her off, and the spoils are yours.”
+
+This filled him with redoubled vigor, and he set out with a stronger
+anxiety than ever to the home of Ambulinia. A few short steps soon
+brought him to the door, half out of breath. He rapped gently.
+Ambulinia, who sat in the parlor alone, suspecting Elfonzo was near,
+ventured to the door, opened it, and beheld the hero, who stood in an
+humble attitude, bowed gracefully, and as they caught each other's looks
+the light of peace beamed from the eyes of Ambulinia. Elfonzo caught the
+expression; a halloo of smothered shouts ran through every vein, and for
+the first time he dared to impress a kiss upon her cheek. The scene was
+overwhelming; had the temptation been less animating, he would not have
+ventured to have acted so contrary to the desired wish of his Ambulinia;
+but who could have withstood the irrestistable temptation! What society
+condemns the practice but a cold, heartless, uncivilized people that
+know nothing of the warm attachments of refined society? Here the dead
+was raised to his long-cherished hopes, and the lost was found. Here
+all doubt and danger were buried in the vortex of oblivion; sectional
+differences no longer disunited their opinions; like the freed bird from
+the cage, sportive claps its rustling wings, wheels about to heaven in a
+joyful strain, and raises its notes to the upper sky. Ambulinia insisted
+upon Elfonzo to be seated, and give her a history of his unnecessary
+absence; assuring him the family had retired, consequently they would
+ever remain ignorant of his visit. Advancing toward him, she gave a
+bright display of her rosy neck, and from her head the ambrosial locks
+breathed divine fragrance; her robe hung waving to his view, while she
+stood like a goddess confessed before him.
+
+“It does seem to me, my dear sir,” said Ambulinia, “that you have been
+gone an age. Oh, the restless hours I have spent since I last saw you,
+in yon beautiful grove. There is where I trifled with your feelings for
+the express purpose of trying your attachment for me. I now find you are
+devoted; but ah! I trust you live not unguarded by the powers of Heaven.
+Though oft did I refuse to join my hand with thine, and as oft did
+I cruelly mock thy entreaties with borrowed shapes: yes, I feared to
+answer thee by terms, in words sincere and undissembled. O! could I
+pursue, and you have leisure to hear the annals of my woes, the evening
+star would shut Heaven's gates upon the impending day before my
+tale would be finished, and this night would find me soliciting your
+forgiveness.”
+
+“Dismiss thy fears and thy doubts,” replied Elfonzo.
+
+“Look, O! look: that angelic look of thine--bathe not thy visage in
+tears; banish those floods that are gathering; let my confession and my
+presence bring thee some relief.” “Then, indeed, I will be cheerful,”
+ said Ambulinia, “and I think if we will go to the exhibition this
+evening, we certainly will see something worthy of our attention. One
+of the most tragical scenes is to be acted that has ever been witnessed,
+and one that every jealous-hearted person should learn a lesson from. It
+cannot fail to have a good effect, as it will be performed by those who
+are young and vigorous, and learned as well as enticing. You are aware,
+Major Elfonzo, who are to appear on the stage, and what the characters
+are to represent.” “I am acquainted with the circumstances,” replied
+Elfonzo, “and as I am to be one of the musicians upon that interesting
+occasion, I should be much gratified if you would favor me with your
+company during the hours of the exercises.”
+
+“What strange notions are in your mind?” inquired Ambulinia. “Now I know
+you have something in view, and I desire you to tell me why it is that
+you are so anxious that I should continue with you while the exercises
+are going on; though if you think I can add to your happiness and
+predilections, I have no particular objection to acquiesce in your
+request. Oh, I think I foresee, now, what you anticipate.” “And will
+you have the goodness to tell me what you think it will be?” inquired
+Elfonzo. “By all means,” answered Ambulinia; “a rival, sir, you would
+fancy in your own mind; but let me say for you, fear not! fear not! I
+will be one of the last persons to disgrace my sex by thus encouraging
+every one who may feel disposed to visit me, who may honor me with their
+graceful bows and their choicest compliments. It is true that young men
+too often mistake civil politeness for the finer emotions of the heart,
+which is tantamount to courtship; but, ah! how often are they deceived,
+when they come to test the weight of sunbeams with those on whose
+strength hangs the future happiness of an untried life.”
+
+The people were now rushing to the Academy with impatient anxiety; the
+band of music was closely followed by the students; then the parents
+and guardians; nothing interrupted the glow of spirits which ran through
+every bosom, tinged with the songs of a Virgil and the tide of a Homer.
+Elfonzo and Ambulinia soon repaired to the scene, and fortunately for
+them both the house was so crowded that they took their seats together
+in the music department, which was not in view of the auditory. This
+fortuitous circumstances added more the bliss of the Major than a
+thousand such exhibitions would have done. He forgot that he was man;
+music had lost its charms for him; whenever he attempted to carry his
+part, the string of the instrument would break, the bow became stubborn,
+and refused to obey the loud calls of the audience. Here, he said, was
+the paradise of his home, the long-sought-for opportunity; he felt as
+though he could send a million supplications to the throne of Heaven for
+such an exalted privilege. Poor Leos, who was somewhere in the crowd,
+looking as attentively as if he was searching for a needle in a
+haystack; here he stood, wondering to himself why Ambulinia was not
+there. “Where can she be? Oh! if she was only here, how I could relish
+the scene! Elfonzo is certainly not in town; but what if he is? I have
+got the wealth, if I have not the dignity, and I am sure that the squire
+and his lady have always been particular friends of mine, and I think
+with this assurance I shall be able to get upon the blind side of the
+rest of the family and make the heaven-born Ambulinia the mistress of
+all I possess.” Then, again, he would drop his head, as if attempting
+to solve the most difficult problem in Euclid. While he was thus
+conjecturing in his own mind, a very interesting part of the exhibition
+was going on, which called the attention of all present. The curtains
+of the stage waved continually by the repelled forces that were given
+to them, which caused Leos to behold Ambulinia leaning upon the chair
+of Elfonzo. Her lofty beauty, seen by the glimmering of the chandelier,
+filled his heart with rapture, he knew not how to contain himself; to go
+where they were would expose him to ridicule; to continue where he was,
+with such an object before him, without being allowed an explanation in
+that trying hour, would be to the great injury of his mental as well as
+of his physical powers; and, in the name of high heaven, what must he
+do? Finally, he resolved to contain himself as well as he conveniently
+could, until the scene was over, and then he would plant himself at the
+door, to arrest Ambulinia from the hands of the insolent Elfonzo, and
+thus make for himself a more prosperous field of immortality than ever
+was decreed by Omnipotence, or ever pencil drew or artist imagined.
+Accordingly he made himself sentinel, immediately after the performance
+of the evening--retained his position apparently in defiance of all the
+world; he waited, he gazed at every lady, his whole frame trembled; here
+he stood, until everything like human shape had disappeared from the
+institution, and he had done nothing; he had failed to accomplish that
+which he so eagerly sought for. Poor, unfortunate creature! he had
+not the eyes of an Argus, or he might have seen his Juno and Elfonzo,
+assisted by his friend Sigma, make their escape from the window, and,
+with the rapidity of a race-horse, hurry through the blast of the storm
+to the residence of her father, without being recognized. He did not
+tarry long, but assured Ambulinia the endless chain of their existence
+was more closely connected than ever, since he had seen the virtuous,
+innocent, imploring, and the constant Amelia murdered by the
+jealous-hearted Farcillo, the accursed of the land.
+
+The following is the tragical scene, which is only introduced to show
+the subject-matter that enabled Elfonzo to come to such a determinate
+resolution that nothing of the kind should ever dispossess him of his
+true character, should he be so fortunate as to succeed in his present
+undertaking.
+
+Amelia was the wife of Farcillo, and a virtuous woman; Gracia, a young
+lady, was her particular friend and confidant. Farcillo grew jealous
+of Amelia, murders her, finds out that he was deceived, _and stabs
+himself_. Amelia appears alone, talking to herself.
+
+A. Hail, ye solitary ruins of antiquity, ye sacred tombs and silent
+walks! it is your aid I invoke; it is to you, my soul, wrapt in deep
+mediation, pours forth its prayer. Here I wander upon the stage of
+mortality, since the world hath turned against me. Those whom I believed
+to be my friends, alas! are now my enemies, planting thorns in all my
+paths, poisoning all my pleasures, and turning the past to pain. What a
+lingering catalogue of sighs and tears lies just before me, crowding
+my aching bosom with the fleeting dream of humanity, which must shortly
+terminate. And to what purpose will all this bustle of life, these
+agitations and emotions of the heart have conduced, if it leave behind
+it nothing of utility, if it leave no traces of improvement? Can it be
+that I am deceived in my conclusions? No, I see that I have nothing to
+hope for, but everything to fear, which tends to drive me from the walks
+of time.
+
+
+Oh! in this dead night, if loud winds arise,
+
+To lash the surge and bluster in the skies,
+
+May the west its furious rage display,
+
+Toss me with storms in the watery way.
+
+(Enter Gracia.)
+
+G. Oh, Amelia, is it you, the object of grief, the daughter of opulence,
+of wisdom and philosophy, that thus complaineth? It cannot be you are
+the child of misfortune, speaking of the monuments of former ages, which
+were allotted not for the reflection of the distressed, but for the
+fearless and bold.
+
+A. Not the child of poverty, Gracia, or the heir of glory and peace, but
+of fate. Remember, I have wealth more than wit can number; I have had
+power more than kings could emcompass; yet the world seems a desert; all
+nature appears an afflictive spectacle of warring passions. This blind
+fatality, that capriciously sports with the rules and lives of mortals,
+tells me that the mountains will never again send forth the water of
+their springs to my thirst. Oh, that I might be freed and set at liberty
+from wretchedness! But I fear, I fear this will never be.
+
+G. Why, Amelia, this untimely grief? What has caused the sorrows that
+bespeak better and happier days, to those lavish out such heaps of
+misery? You are aware that your instructive lessons embellish the mind
+with holy truths, by wedding its attention to none but great and noble
+affections.
+
+A. This, of course, is some consolation. I will ever love my own species
+with feelings of a fond recollection, and while I am studying to advance
+the universal philanthropy, and the spotless name of my own sex, I will
+try to build my own upon the pleasing belief that I have accelerated the
+advancement of one who whispers of departed confidence.
+
+
+And I, like some poor peasant fated to reside
+
+Remote from friends, in a forest wide.
+
+Oh, see what woman's woes and human wants require,
+
+Since that great day hath spread the seed of sinful fire.
+
+G. Look up, thou poor disconsolate; you speak of quitting earthly
+enjoyments. Unfold thy bosom to a friend, who would be willing to
+sacrifice every enjoyment for the restoration of the dignity and
+gentleness of mind which used to grace your walks, and which is so
+natural to yourself; not only that, but your paths were strewed with
+flowers of every hue and of every order.
+
+
+With verdant green the mountains glow,
+
+For thee, for thee, the lilies grow;
+
+Far stretched beneath the tented hills,
+
+A fairer flower the valley fills.
+
+A. Oh, would to Heaven I could give you a short narrative of my
+former prospects for happiness, since you have acknowledged to be an
+unchangeable confidant--the richest of all other blessings. Oh, ye names
+forever glorious, ye celebrated scenes, ye renowned spot of my hymeneal
+moments; how replete is your chart with sublime reflections! How many
+profound vows, decorated with immaculate deeds, are written upon the
+surface of that precious spot of earth where I yielded up my life of
+celibacy, bade youth with all its beauties a final adieu, took a last
+farewell of the laurels that had accompanied me up the hill of my
+juvenile career. It was then I began to descend toward the valley of
+disappointment and sorrow; it was then I cast my little bark upon a
+mysterious ocean of wedlock, with him who then smiled and caressed me,
+but, alas! now frowns with bitterness, and has grown jealous and cold
+toward me, because the ring he gave me is misplaced or lost. Oh, bear
+me, ye flowers of memory, softly through the eventful history of past
+times; and ye places that have witnessed the progression of man in
+the circle of so many societies, and, of, aid my recollection, while I
+endeavor to trace the vicissitudes of a life devoted in endeavoring to
+comfort him that I claim as the object of my wishes.
+
+
+Ah! ye mysterious men, of all the world, how few
+
+Act just to Heaven and to your promise true!
+
+But He who guides the stars with a watchful eye,
+
+The deeds of men lay open without disguise;
+
+Oh, this alone will avenge the wrongs I bear,
+
+For all the oppressed are His peculiar care.
+
+(F. makes a slight noise.)
+
+A. Who is there--Farcillo?
+
+G. Then I must gone. Heaven protect you. Oh, Amelia, farewell, be of
+good cheer.
+
+
+May you stand like Olympus' towers,
+
+Against earth and all jealous powers!
+
+May you, with loud shouts ascend on high
+
+Swift as an eagle in the upper sky.
+
+A. Why so cold and distant tonight, Farcillo? Come, let us each other
+greet, and forget all the past, and give security for the future.
+
+F. Security! talk to me about giving security for the future--what an
+insulting requisition! Have you said your prayers tonight, Madam Amelia?
+
+A. Farcillo, we sometimes forget our duty, particularly when we expect
+to be caressed by others.
+
+F. If you bethink yourself of any crime, or of any fault, that is yet
+concealed from the courts of Heaven and the thrones of grace, I bid you
+ask and solicit forgiveness for it now.
+
+A. Oh, be kind, Farcillo, don't treat me so. What do you mean by all
+this?
+
+F. Be kind, you say; you, madam, have forgot that kindness you owe to
+me, and bestowed it upon another; you shall suffer for your conduct
+when you make your peace with your God. I would not slay thy unprotected
+spirit. I call to Heaven to be my guard and my watch--I would not kill
+thy soul, in which all once seemed just, right, and perfect; but I must
+be brief, woman.
+
+A. What, talk you of killing? Oh, Farcillo, Farcillo, what is the
+matter?
+
+F. Aye, I do, without doubt; mark what I say, Amelia.
+
+A. Then, O God, O Heaven, and Angels, be propitious, and have mercy upon
+me.
+
+F. Amen to that, madam, with all my heart, and with all my soul.
+
+A. Farcillo, listen to me one moment; I hope you will not kill me.
+
+F. Kill you, aye, that I will; attest it, ye fair host of light, record
+it, ye dark imps of hell!
+
+A. Oh, I fear you--you are fatal when darkness covers your brow; yet I
+know not why I should fear, since I never wronged you in all my life. I
+stand, sir, guiltless before you.
+
+F. You pretend to say you are guiltless! Think of thy sins, Amelia;
+think, oh, think, hidden woman.
+
+A. Wherein have I not been true to you? That death is unkind, cruel, and
+unnatural, that kills for living.
+
+F. Peace, and be still while I unfold to thee.
+
+A. I will, Farcillo, and while I am thus silent, tell me the cause of
+such cruel coldness in an hour like this.
+
+F. That _ring_, oh, that ring I so loved, and gave thee as the ring of
+my heart; the allegiance you took to be faithful, when it was presented;
+the kisses and smiles with which you honored it. You became tired of
+the donor, despised it as a plague, and finally gave it to Malos, the
+hidden, the vile traitor.
+
+A. No, upon my word and honor, I never did; I appeal to the Most High to
+bear me out in this matter. Send for Malos, and ask him.
+
+F. Send for Malos, aye! Malos you wish to see; I thought so. I knew you
+could not keep his name concealed. Amelia, sweet Amelia, take heed,
+take heed of perjury; you are on the stage of death, to suffer for _your
+sins_.
+
+A. What, not to die I hope, my Farcillo, my ever beloved.
+
+F. Yes, madam, to die a traitor's death. Shortly your spirit shall take
+its exit; therefore confess freely thy sins, for to deny tends only to
+make me groan under the bitter cup thou hast made for me. Thou art to
+die with the name of traitor on thy brow!
+
+A. Then, O Lord, have mercy upon me; give me courage, give me grace and
+fortitude to stand this hour of trial.
+
+F. Amen, I say, with all my heart.
+
+A. And, oh, Farcillo, will you have mercy, too? I never intentionally
+offended you in all my life, never _loved _Malos, never gave him cause
+to think so, as the high court of Justice will acquit me before its
+tribunal.
+
+F. Oh, false, perjured woman, thou didst chill my blood, and makest me a
+demon like thyself. I saw the ring.
+
+A. He found it, then, or got it clandestinely; send for him, and let him
+confess the truth; let his confession be sifted.
+
+F. And you still wish to see him! I tell you, madam, he hath already
+confessed, and thou knowest the darkness of thy heart.
+
+A. What, my deceived Farcillo, that I gave him the ring, in which all my
+affections were concentrated? Oh, surely not.
+
+F. Aye, he did. Ask thy conscience, and it will speak with a voice of
+thunder to thy soul.
+
+A. He will not say so, he dare not, he cannot.
+
+F. No, he will not say so now, because his mouth, I trust, is hushed in
+death, and his body stretched to the four winds of heaven, to be torn to
+pieces by carnivorous birds.
+
+A. What, he is dead, and gone to the world of spirits with that
+declaration in his mouth? Oh, unhappy man! Oh, insupportable hour!
+
+F. Yes, and had all his sighs and looks and tears been lives, my great
+revenge could have slain them all, without the least condemnation.
+
+A. Alas! he is ushered into eternity without testing the matter for
+which I am abused and sentenced and condemned to die.
+
+F. Cursed, infernal woman! Weepest thou for him to my face? He that hath
+robbed me of my peace, my energy, the whole love of my life? Could I
+call the fabled Hydra, I would have him live and perish, survive and
+die, until the sun itself would grow dim with age. I would make him
+have the thirst of a Tantalus, and roll the wheel of an Ixion, until the
+stars of heaven should quit their brilliant stations.
+
+A. Oh, invincible God, save me! Oh, unsupportable moment! Oh, heavy
+hour! Banish me, Farcillo--send me where no eye can ever see me, where
+no sound shall ever great my ear; but, oh, slay me not, Farcillo; vent
+thy rage and thy spite upon this emaciated frame of mine, only spare my
+life.
+
+F. Your petitions avail nothing, cruel Amelia.
+
+A. Oh, Farcillo, perpetrate the dark deed tomorrow; let me live till
+then, for my past kindness to you, and it may be some kind angel will
+show to you that I am not only the object of innocence, but one who
+never loved another but your noble self.
+
+F. Amelia, the decree has gone forth, it is to be done, and that
+quickly; thou art to die, madam.
+
+A. But half an hour allow me, to see my father and my only child, to
+tell her the treachery and vanity of this world.
+
+F. There is no alternative, there is no pause: my daughter shall not see
+its deceptive mother die; your father shall not know that his daughter
+fell disgraced, despised by all but her enchanting Malos.
+
+A. Oh, Farcillo, put up thy threatening dagger into its scabbard; let
+it rest and be still, just while I say one prayer for thee and for my
+child.
+
+F. It is too late, thy doom is fixed, thou hast not confessed to Heaven
+or to me, my child's protector--thou art to die. Ye powers of earth and
+heaven, protect and defend me in this alone. (_Stabs her while imploring
+for mercy._)
+
+A. Oh, Farcillo, Farcillo, a guiltless death I die.
+
+F. Die! die! die!
+
+(Gracia enters running, falls on her knees weeping, and kisses Amelia.)
+
+G. Oh, Farcillo, Farcillo! oh, Farcillo!
+
+F. I am here, the genius of the age, and the avenger of my wrongs.
+
+G. Oh, lady, speak once more; sweet Amelia, oh, speak again. Gone,
+gone--yes, forever gone! Farcillo, oh, cold-hearted Farcillo, some evil
+fiend hath urged you to do this, Farcillo.
+
+F. Say not so again, or you shall receive the same fate. I did the
+glorious deed, madam--beware, then, how you talk.
+
+G. I fear not your implements of war; I will let you know you have not
+the power to do me harm. If you have a heart of triple brass, it shall
+be reached and melted, and thy blood shall chill thy veins and grow
+stiff in thy arteries. Here is the ring of the virtuous and innocent
+murdered Amelia; I obtained it from Malos, who yet lives, in hopes
+that he will survive the wound given him, and says he got it
+clandestinely--declares Amelia to be the princess of truth and virtue,
+invulnerable to anything like forgetting her first devotion to thee.
+The world has heard of your conduct and your jealousy, and with one
+universal voice declares her to be the best of all in piety; that she is
+the star of this great universe, and a more virtuous woman never lived
+since the wheels of time began. Oh, had you waited till tomorrow, or
+until I had returned, some kind window would have been opened to her
+relief. But, alas! she is gone--yes, forever gone, to try the realities
+of an unknown world!
+
+(Farcillo leaning over the body of Amelia.)
+
+F. Malos not dead, and here is my ring! Oh, Amelia! falsely murdered!
+Oh, bloody deed! Oh, wretch that I am! Oh, angels forgive me! Oh, God,
+withhold thy vengeance! Oh, Amelia! if Heaven would make a thousand
+worlds like this, set with diamonds, and all of one perfect chrysolite,
+I would not have done this for them all, I would not have frowned and
+cursed as I did. Oh, she was heavenly true, nursed in the very lap
+of bright angels! Cursed slave that I am! Jealousy, oh! thou infernal
+demon! Lost, lost to every sense of honor! Oh! Amelia--heaven-born
+Amelia--dead, dead! Oh! oh! oh!--then let me die with thee. Farewell!
+farewell! ye world that deceived me! (_Stabs himself_.)
+
+Soon after the excitement of this tragical scene was over, and the
+enlisted feeling for Amelia had grown more buoyant with Elfonzo and
+Ambulinia, he determined to visit his retired home, and make the
+necessary improvements to enjoy a better day; consequently he conveyed
+the following lines to Ambulinia:
+
+
+Go tell the world that hope is glowing,
+
+Go bid the rocks their silence break,
+
+Go tell the stars that love is glowing,
+
+Then bid the hero his lover take.
+
+In the region where scarcely the foot of man hath ever trod, where the
+woodman hath not found his way, lies a blooming grove, seen only by the
+sun when he mounts his lofty throne, visited only by the light of the
+stars, to whom are entrusted the guardianship of earth, before the
+sun sinks to rest in his rosy bed. High cliffs of rocks surround the
+romantic place, and in the small cavity of the rocky wall grows the
+daffodil clear and pure; and as the wind blows along the enchanting
+little mountain which surrounds the lonely spot, it nourishes the
+flowers with the dew-drops of heaven. Here is the seat of Elfonzo;
+darkness claims but little victory over this dominion, and in vain does
+she spread out her gloomy wings. Here the waters flow perpetually, and
+the trees lash their tops together to bid the welcome visitor a happy
+muse. Elfonzo, during his short stay in the country, had fully persuaded
+himself that it was his duty to bring this solemn matter to an issue.
+A duty that he individually owed, as a gentleman, to the parents of
+Ambulinia, a duty in itself involving not only his own happiness and
+his own standing in society, but one that called aloud the act of the
+parties to make it perfect and complete. How he should communicate his
+intentions to get a favorable reply, he was at a loss to know; he knew
+not whether to address Esq. Valeer in prose or in poetry, in a jocular
+or an argumentative manner, or whether he should use moral suasion,
+legal injunction, or seizure and take by reprisal; if it was to do the
+latter, he would have no difficulty in deciding in his own mind, but his
+gentlemanly honor was at stake; so he concluded to address the following
+letter to the father and mother of Ambulinia, as his address in person
+he knew would only aggravate the old gentleman, and perhaps his lady.
+
+Cumming, Ga., January 22, 1844
+
+Mr. and Mrs. Valeer--
+
+Again I resume the pleasing task of addressing you, and once more beg
+an immediate answer to my many salutations. From every circumstance that
+has taken place, I feel in duty bound to comply with my obligations; to
+forfeit my word would be more than I dare do; to break my pledge, and my
+vows that have been witnessed, sealed, and delivered in the presence of
+an unseen Deity, would be disgraceful on my part, as well as ruinous to
+Ambulinia. I wish no longer to be kept in suspense about this matter. I
+wish to act gentlemanly in every particular. It is true, the promises I
+have made are unknown to any but Ambulinia, and I think it unnecessary
+to here enumerate them, as they who promise the most generally perform
+the least. Can you for a moment doubt my sincerity or my character? My
+only wish is, sir, that you may calmly and dispassionately look at
+the situation of the case, and if your better judgment should dictate
+otherwise, my obligations may induce me to pluck the flower that you
+so diametrically opposed. We have sworn by the saints--by the gods
+of battle, and by that faith whereby just men are made perfect--to be
+united. I hope, my dear sir, you will find it convenient as well as
+agreeable to give me a favorable answer, with the signature of Mrs.
+Valeer, as well as yourself.
+
+With very great esteem,
+
+your humble servant,
+
+J. I. Elfonzo.
+
+The moon and stars had grown pale when Ambulinia had retired to rest. A
+crowd of unpleasant thoughts passed through her bosom. Solitude dwelt
+in her chamber--no sound from the neighboring world penetrated its
+stillness; it appeared a temple of silence, of repose, and of mystery.
+At that moment she heard a still voice calling her father. In an
+instant, like the flash of lightning, a thought ran through her mind
+that it must be the bearer of Elfonzo's communication. “It is not a
+dream!” she said, “no, I cannot read dreams. Oh! I would to Heaven I was
+near that glowing eloquence--that poetical language--it charms the
+mind in an inexpressible manner, and warms the coldest heart.” While
+consoling herself with this strain, her father rushed into her room
+almost frantic with rage, exclaiming: “Oh, Ambulinia! Ambulinia!!
+undutiful, ungrateful daughter! What does this mean? Why does this
+letter bear such heart-rending intelligence? Will you quit a father's
+house with this debased wretch, without a place to lay his distracted
+head; going up and down the country, with every novel object that may
+chance to wander through this region. He is a pretty man to make love
+known to his superiors, and you, Ambulinia, have done but little credit
+to yourself by honoring his visits. Oh, wretchedness! can it be that
+my hopes of happiness are forever blasted! Will you not listen to a
+father's entreaties, and pay some regard to a mother's tears. I know,
+and I do pray that God will give me fortitude to bear with this sea
+of troubles, and rescue my daughter, my Ambulinia, as a brand from the
+eternal burning.” “Forgive me, father, oh! forgive thy child,” replied
+Ambulinia. “My heart is ready to break, when I see you in this grieved
+state of agitation. Oh! think not so meanly of me, as that I mourn for
+my own danger. Father, I am only woman. Mother, I am only the templement
+of thy youthful years, but will suffer courageously whatever punishment
+you think proper to inflict upon me, if you will but allow me to comply
+with my most sacred promises--if you will but give me my personal right
+and my personal liberty. Oh, father! if your generosity will but give me
+these, I ask nothing more. When Elfonzo offered me his heart, I gave
+him my hand, never to forsake him, and now may the mighty God banish me
+before I leave him in adversity. What a heart must I have to rejoice in
+prosperity with him whose offers I have accepted, and then, when poverty
+comes, haggard as it may be, for me to trifle with the oracles of
+Heaven, and change with every fluctuation that may interrupt our
+happiness--like the politician who runs the political gantlet for office
+one day, and the next day, because the horizon is darkened a little,
+he is seen running for his life, for fear he might perish in its ruins.
+Where is the philosophy, where is the consistency, where is the charity,
+in conduct like this? Be happy then, my beloved father, and forget me;
+let the sorrow of parting break down the wall of separation and make
+us equal in our feeling; let me now say how ardently I love you; let
+me kiss that age-worn cheek, and should my tears bedew thy face, I will
+wipe them away. Oh, I never can forget you; no, never, never!”
+
+“Weep not,” said the father, “Ambulinia. I will forbid Elfonzo my house,
+and desire that you may keep retired a few days. I will let him know
+that my friendship for my family is not linked together by cankered
+chains; and if he ever enters upon my premises again, I will send him
+to his long home.” “Oh, father! let me entreat you to be calm upon this
+occasion, and though Elfonzo may be the sport of the clouds and winds,
+yet I feel assured that no fate will send him to the silent tomb until
+the God of the Universe calls him hence with a triumphant voice.”
+
+Here the father turned away, exclaiming: “I will answer his letter in a
+very few words, and you, madam, will have the goodness to stay at home
+with your mother; and remember, I am determined to protect you from the
+consuming fire that looks so fair to your view.”
+
+Cumming, January 22, 1844.
+
+Sir--In regard to your request, I am as I ever have been, utterly
+opposed to your marrying into my family; and if you have any regard for
+yourself, or any gentlemanly feeling, I hope you will mention it to me
+no more; but seek some other one who is not so far superior to you in
+standing.
+
+W. W. Valeer.
+
+When Elfonzo read the above letter, he became so much depressed in
+spirits that many of his friends thought it advisable to use other means
+to bring about the happy union. “Strange,” said he, “that the contents
+of this diminutive letter should cause me to have such depressed
+feelings; but there is a nobler theme than this. I know not why my
+_military title_ is not as great as that of _Squire Valeer_. For my life
+I cannot see that my ancestors are inferior to those who are so bitterly
+opposed to my marriage with Ambulinia. I know I have seen huge mountains
+before me, yet, when I think that I know gentlemen will insult me upon
+this delicate matter, should I become angry at fools and babblers, who
+pride themselves in their impudence and ignorance? No. My equals! I
+know not where to find them. My inferiors! I think it beneath me; and my
+superiors! I think it presumption; therefore, if this youthful heart is
+protected by any of the divine rights, I never will betray my trust.”
+
+He was aware that Ambulinia had a confidence that was, indeed, as firm
+and as resolute as she was beautiful and interesting. He hastened to the
+cottage of Louisa, who received him in her usual mode of pleasantness,
+and informed him that Ambulinia had just that moment left. “Is it
+possible?” said Elfonzo. “Oh, murdered hours! Why did she not remain and
+be the guardian of my secrets? But hasten and tell me how she has stood
+this trying scene, and what are her future determinations.” “You know,”
+ said Louisa, “Major Elfonzo, that you have Ambulinia's first love, which
+is of no small consequence. She came here about twilight, and shed many
+precious tears in consequence of her own fate with yours. We walked
+silently in yon little valley you see, where we spent a momentary
+repose. She seemed to be quite as determined as ever, and before we left
+that beautiful spot she offered up a prayer to Heaven for thee.” “I will
+see her then,” replied Elfonzo, “though legions of enemies may oppose.
+She is mine by foreordination--she is mine by prophesy--she is mine
+by her own free will, and I will rescue her from the hands of her
+oppressors. Will you not, Miss Louisa, assist me in my capture?”
+
+“I will certainly, by the aid of Divine Providence,” answered Louisa,
+“endeavor to break those slavish chains that bind the richest of prizes;
+though allow me, Major, to entreat you to use no harsh means on this
+important occasion; take a decided stand, and write freely to Ambulinia
+upon this subject, and I will see that no intervening cause hinders its
+passage to her. God alone will save a mourning people. Now is the day
+and now is the hour to obey a command of such valuable worth.” The Major
+felt himself grow stronger after this short interview with Louisa. He
+felt as if he could whip his weight in wildcats--he knew he was master
+of his own feelings, and could now write a letter that would bring this
+litigation to _an issue._
+
+Cumming, January 24, 1844.
+
+Dear Ambulinia--
+
+We have now reached the most trying moment of our lives; we are pledged
+not to forsake our trust; we have waited for a favorable hour to
+come, thinking your friends would settle the matter agreeably among
+themselves, and finally be reconciled to our marriage; but as I have
+waited in vain, and looked in vain, I have determined in my own mind to
+make a proposition to you, though you may think it not in accord with
+your station, or compatible with your rank; yet, “sub hoc signo
+vinces.” You know I cannot resume my visits, in consequence of the utter
+hostility that your father has to me; therefore the consummation of
+our union will have to be sought for in a more sublime sphere, at the
+residence of a respectable friend of this village. You cannot have
+any scruples upon this mode of proceeding, if you will but remember it
+emanates from one who loves you better than his own life--who is more
+than anxious to bid you welcome to a new and happy home. Your warmest
+associates say come; the talented, the learned, the wise, and the
+experienced say come;--all these with their friends say, come. Viewing
+these, with many other inducements, I flatter myself that you will come
+to the embraces of your Elfonzo; for now is the time of your acceptance
+of the day of your liberation. You cannot be ignorant, Ambulinia, that
+thou art the desire of my heart; its thoughts are too noble, and too
+pure, to conceal themselves from you. I shall wait for your answer to
+this impatiently, expecting that you will set the time to make your
+departure, and to be in readiness at a moment's warning to share the
+joys of a more preferable life. This will be handed to you by Louisa,
+who will take a pleasure in communicating anything to you that may
+relieve your dejected spirits, and will assure you that I now stand
+ready, willing, and waiting to make good my vows.
+
+I am, dear Ambulinia, yours
+
+truly, and forever,
+
+J. I. Elfonzo.
+
+Louisa made it convenient to visit Mr. Valeer's, though they did not
+suspect her in the least the bearer of love epistles; consequently,
+she was invited in the room to console Ambulinia, where they were left
+alone. Ambulinia was seated by a small table--her head resting on her
+hand--her brilliant eyes were bathed in tears. Louisa handed her the
+letter of Elfonzo, when another spirit animated her features--the
+spirit of renewed confidence that never fails to strengthen the
+female character in an hour of grief and sorrow like this, and as she
+pronounced the last accent of his name, she exclaimed, “And does he love
+me yet! I never will forget your generosity, Louisa. Oh, unhappy and yet
+blessed Louisa! may you never feel what I have felt--may you never know
+the pangs of love. Had I never loved, I never would have been unhappy;
+but I turn to Him who can save, and if His wisdom does not will my
+expected union, I know He will give me strength to bear my lot. Amuse
+yourself with this little book, and take it as an apology for my
+silence,” said Ambulinia, “while I attempt to answer this volume of
+consolation.” “Thank you,” said Louisa, “you are excusable upon this
+occasion; but I pray you, Ambulinia, to be expert upon this momentous
+subject, that there may be nothing mistrustful upon my part.” “I will,”
+ said Ambulinia, and immediately resumed her seat and addressed the
+following to Elfonzo:
+
+Cumming, Ga., January 28, 1844.
+
+Devoted Elfonzo--
+
+I hail your letter as a welcome messenger of faith, and can now say
+truly and firmly that my feelings correspond with yours. Nothing shall
+be wanting on my part to make my obedience your fidelity. Courage and
+perseverance will accomplish success. Receive this as my oath, that
+while I grasp your hand in my own imagination, we stand united before a
+higher tribunal than any on earth. All the powers of my life, soul, and
+body, I devote to thee. Whatever dangers may threaten me, I fear not to
+encounter them. Perhaps I have determined upon my own destruction, by
+leaving the house of the best of parents; be it so; I flee to you; I
+share your destiny, faithful to the end. The day that I have concluded
+upon for this task is _sabbath _next, when the family with the citizens
+are generally at church. For Heaven's sake let not that day pass
+unimproved: trust not till tomorrow, it is the cheat of life--the future
+that never comes--the grave of many noble births--the cavern of ruined
+enterprise: which like the lightning's flash is born, and dies, and
+perishes, ere the voice of him who sees can cry, _behold! behold!!_ You
+may trust to what I say, no power shall tempt me to betray confidence.
+Suffer me to add one word more.
+
+
+I will soothe thee, in all thy grief,
+
+Beside the gloomy river;
+
+And though thy love may yet be brief;
+
+Mine is fixed forever.
+
+Receive the deepest emotions of my heart for thy constant love, and
+may the power of inspiration be thy guide, thy portion, and thy all. In
+great haste,
+
+Yours faithfully,
+
+Ambulinia.
+
+“I now take my leave of you, sweet girl,” said Louisa, “sincerely
+wishing you success on Sabbath next.” When Ambulinia's letter was handed
+to Elfonzo, he perused it without doubting its contents. Louisa charged
+him to make but few confidants; but like most young men who happened to
+win the heart of a beautiful girl, he was so elated with the idea that
+he felt as a commanding general on parade, who had confidence in all,
+consequently gave orders to all. The appointed Sabbath, with a delicious
+breeze and cloudless sky, made its appearance. The people gathered in
+crowds to the church--the streets were filled with neighboring citizens,
+all marching to the house of worship. It is entirely useless for me
+to attempt to describe the feelings of Elfonzo and Ambulinia, who were
+silently watching the movements of the multitude, apparently counting
+them as then entered the house of God, looking for the last one to
+darken the door. The impatience and anxiety with which they waited,
+and the bliss they anticipated on the eventful day, is altogether
+indescribable. Those that have been so fortunate as to embark in such a
+noble enterprise know all its realities; and those who have not had this
+inestimable privilege will have to taste its sweets before they can tell
+to others its joys, its comforts, and its Heaven-born worth. Immediately
+after Ambulinia had assisted the family off to church, she took
+advantage of that opportunity to make good her promises. She left a home
+of enjoyment to be wedded to one whose love had been justifiable. A few
+short steps brought her to the presence of Louisa, who urged her to make
+good use of her time, and not to delay a moment, but to go with her to
+her brother's house, where Elfonzo would forever make her happy. With
+lively speed, and yet a graceful air, she entered the door and found
+herself protected by the champion of her confidence. The necessary
+arrangements were fast making to have the two lovers united--everything
+was in readiness except the parson; and as they are generally very
+sanctimonious on such occasions, the news got to the parents of
+Ambulinia before the everlasting knot was tied, and they both came
+running, with uplifted hands and injured feelings, to arrest their
+daughter from an unguarded and hasty resolution. Elfonzo desired to
+maintain his ground, but Ambulinia thought it best for him to leave, to
+prepare for a greater contest. He accordingly obeyed, as it would have
+been a vain endeavor for him to have battled against a man who was armed
+with deadly weapons; and besides, he could not resist the request of
+such a pure heart. Ambulinia concealed herself in the upper story of
+the house, fearing the rebuke of her father; the door was locked, and no
+chastisement was now expected. Esquire Valeer, whose pride was already
+touched, resolved to preserve the dignity of his family. He entered
+the house almost exhausted, looking wildly for Ambulinia. “Amazed and
+astonished indeed I am,” said he, “at a people who call themselves
+civilized, to allow such behavior as this. Ambulinia, Ambulinia!”
+ he cried, “come to the calls of your first, your best, and your only
+friend. I appeal to you, sir,” turning to the gentleman of the house,
+“to know where Ambulinia has gone, or where is she?” “Do you mean
+to insult me, sir, in my own house?” inquired the gentleman. “I will
+burst,” said Mr. V., “asunder every door in your dwelling, in search of
+my daughter, if you do not speak quickly, and tell me where she is.
+I care nothing about that outcast rubbish of creation, that mean,
+low-lived Elfonzo, if I can but obtain Ambulinia. Are you not going to
+open this door?” said he. “By the Eternal that made Heaven and earth!
+I will go about the work instantly, if this is not done!” The confused
+citizens gathered from all parts of the village, to know the cause of
+this commotion. Some rushed into the house; the door that was locked
+flew open, and there stood Ambulinia, weeping. “Father, be still,” said
+she, “and I will follow thee home.” But the agitated man seized her, and
+bore her off through the gazing multitude. “Father!” she exclaimed, “I
+humbly beg your pardon--I will be dutiful--I will obey thy commands.
+Let the sixteen years I have lived in obedience to thee be my future
+security.” “I don't like to be always giving credit, when the old score
+is not paid up, madam,” said the father. The mother followed almost in a
+state of derangement, crying and imploring her to think beforehand, and
+ask advice from experienced persons, and they would tell her it was a
+rash undertaking. “Oh!” said she, “Ambulinia, my daughter, did you know
+what I have suffered--did you know how many nights I have whiled away in
+agony, in pain, and in fear, you would pity the sorrows of a heartbroken
+mother.”
+
+“Well, mother,” replied Ambulinia, “I know I have been disobedient; I
+am aware that what I have done might have been done much better; but
+oh! what shall I do with my honor? it is so dear to me; I am pledged
+to Elfonzo. His high moral worth is certainly worth some attention;
+moreover, my vows, I have no doubt, are recorded in the book of life,
+and must I give these all up? must my fair hopes be forever blasted?
+Forbid it, father; oh! forbid it, mother; forbid it, Heaven.” “I have
+seen so many beautiful skies overclouded,” replied the mother, “so many
+blossoms nipped by the frost, that I am afraid to trust you to the
+care of those fair days, which may be interrupted by thundering and
+tempestuous nights. You no doubt think as I did--life's devious ways
+were strewn with sweet-scented flowers, but ah! how long they have
+lingered around me and took their flight in the vivid hope that laughs
+at the drooping victims it has murdered.” Elfonzo was moved at this
+sight. The people followed on to see what was going to become of
+Ambulinia, while he, with downcast looks, kept at a distance, until he
+saw them enter the abode of the father, thrusting her, that was the sigh
+of his soul, out of his presence into a solitary apartment, when she
+exclaimed, “Elfonzo! Elfonzo! oh, Elfonzo! where art thou, with all thy
+heroes? haste, oh! haste, come thou to my relief. Ride on the wings of
+the wind! Turn thy force loose like a tempest, and roll on thy army like
+a whirlwind, over this mountain of trouble and confusion. Oh, friends!
+if any pity me, let your last efforts throng upon the green hills, and
+come to the relief of Ambulinia, who is guilty of nothing but innocent
+love.” Elfonzo called out with a loud voice, “My God, can I stand this!
+arise up, I beseech you, and put an end to this tyranny. Come, my brave
+boys,” said he, “are you ready to go forth to your duty?” They stood
+around him. “Who,” said he, “will call us to arms? Where are my
+thunderbolts of war? Speak ye, the first who will meet the foe! Who will
+go forward with me in this ocean of grievous temptation? If there is
+one who desires to go, let him come and shake hands upon the altar of
+devotion, and swear that he will be a hero; yes, a Hector in a cause
+like this, which calls aloud for a speedy remedy.” “Mine be the deed,”
+ said a young lawyer, “and mine alone; Venus alone shall quit her station
+before I will forsake one jot or tittle of my promise to you; what
+is death to me? what is all this warlike army, if it is not to win a
+victory? I love the sleep of the lover and the mighty; nor would I give
+it over till the blood of my enemies should wreak with that of my own.
+But God forbid that our fame should soar on the blood of the slumberer.”
+ Mr. Valeer stands at his door with the frown of a demon upon his brow,
+with his dangerous weapon ready to strike the first man who should enter
+his door. “Who will arise and go forward through blood and carnage
+to the rescue of my Ambulinia?” said Elfonzo. “All,” exclaimed the
+multitude; and onward they went, with their implements of battle.
+Others, of a more timid nature, stood among the distant hills to see the
+result of the contest.
+
+Elfonzo took the lead of his band. Night arose in clouds; darkness
+concealed the heavens; but the blazing hopes that stimulated them
+gleamed in every bosom. All approached the anxious spot; they rushed to
+the front of the house and, with one exclamation, demanded Ambulinia.
+“Away, begone, and disturb my peace no more,” said Mr. Valeer. “You are
+a set of base, insolent, and infernal rascals. Go, the northern star
+points your path through the dim twilight of the night; go, and vent
+your spite upon the lonely hills; pour forth your love, you poor,
+weak-minded wretch, upon your idleness and upon your guitar, and your
+fiddle; they are fit subjects for your admiration, for let me assure
+you, though this sword and iron lever are cankered, yet they frown in
+sleep, and let one of you dare to enter my house this night and you
+shall have the contents and the weight of these instruments.” “Never
+yet did base dishonor blur my name,” said Elfonzo; “mine is a cause of
+renown; here are my warriors; fear and tremble, for this night, though
+hell itself should oppose, I will endeavor to avenge her whom thou hast
+banished in solitude. The voice of Ambulinia shall be heard from that
+dark dungeon.” At that moment Ambulinia appeared at the window above,
+and with a tremulous voice said, “Live, Elfonzo! oh! live to raise my
+stone of moss! why should such language enter your heart? why should
+thy voice rend the air with such agitation? I bid thee live, once more
+remembering these tears of mine are shed alone for thee, in this dark
+and gloomy vault, and should I perish under this load of trouble, join
+the song of thrilling accents with the raven above my grave, and lay
+this tattered frame beside the banks of the Chattahoochee or the stream
+of Sawney's brook; sweet will be the song of death to your Ambulinia. My
+ghost shall visit you in the smiles of Paradise, and tell your high
+fame to the minds of that region, which is far more preferable than this
+lonely cell. My heart shall speak for thee till the latest hour; I know
+faint and broken are the sounds of sorrow, yet our souls, Elfonzo, shall
+hear the peaceful songs together. One bright name shall be ours on high,
+if we are not permitted to be united here; bear in mind that I still
+cherish my old sentiments, and the poet will mingle the names of Elfonzo
+and Ambulinia in the tide of other days.” “Fly, Elfonzo,” said the
+voices of his united band, “to the wounded heart of your beloved. All
+enemies shall fall beneath thy sword. Fly through the clefts, and the
+dim spark shall sleep in death.” Elfonzo rushes forward and strikes
+his shield against the door, which was barricaded, to prevent any
+intercourse. His brave sons throng around him. The people pour along
+the streets, both male and female, to prevent or witness the melancholy
+scene.
+
+“To arms, to arms!” cried Elfonzo; “here is a victory to be won, a prize
+to be gained that is more to me that the whole world beside.” “It
+cannot be done tonight,” said Mr. Valeer. “I bear the clang of death; my
+strength and armor shall prevail. My Ambulinia shall rest in this hall
+until the break of another day, and if we fall, we fall together. If we
+die, we die clinging to our tattered rights, and our blood alone shall
+tell the mournful tale of a murdered daughter and a ruined father.” Sure
+enough, he kept watch all night, and was successful in defending his
+house and family. The bright morning gleamed upon the hills, night
+vanished away, the Major and his associates felt somewhat ashamed that
+they had not been as fortunate as they expected to have been; however,
+they still leaned upon their arms in dispersed groups; some were walking
+the streets, others were talking in the Major's behalf. Many of
+the citizen suspended business, as the town presented nothing but
+consternation. A novelty that might end in the destruction of some
+worthy and respectable citizens. Mr. Valeer ventured in the streets,
+though not without being well armed. Some of his friends congratulated
+him on the decided stand he had taken, and hoped he would settle the
+matter amicably with Elfonzo, without any serious injury. “Me,” he
+replied, “what, me, condescend to fellowship with a coward, and a
+low-lived, lazy, undermining villain? no, gentlemen, this cannot be; I
+had rather be borne off, like the bubble upon the dark blue ocean, with
+Ambulinia by my side, than to have him in the ascending or descending
+line of relationship. Gentlemen,” continued he, “if Elfonzo is so much
+of a distinguished character, and is so learned in the fine arts, why do
+you not patronize such men? why not introduce him into your families, as
+a gentleman of taste and of unequaled magnanimity? why are you so very
+anxious that he should become a relative of mine? Oh, gentlemen, I fear
+you yet are tainted with the curiosity of our first parents, who were
+beguiled by the poisonous kiss of an old ugly serpent, and who, for
+one _apple, damned_ all mankind. I wish to divest myself, as far as
+possible, of that untutored custom. I have long since learned that the
+perfection of wisdom, and the end of true philosophy, is to proportion
+our wants to our possessions, our ambition to our capacities; we will
+then be a happy and a virtuous people.” Ambulinia was sent off to
+prepare for a long and tedious journey. Her new acquaintances had been
+instructed by her father how to treat her, and in what manner, and to
+keep the anticipated visit entirely secret. Elfonzo was watching the
+movements of everybody; some friends had told him of the plot that was
+laid to carry off Ambulinia. At night, he rallied some two or three of
+his forces, and went silently along to the stately mansion; a faint and
+glimmering light showed through the windows; lightly he steps to the
+door; there were many voices rallying fresh in fancy's eye; he tapped
+the shutter; it was opened instantly, and he beheld once more, seated
+beside several ladies, the hope of all his toils; he rushed toward
+her, she rose from her seat, rejoicing; he made one mighty grasp, when
+Ambulinia exclaimed, “Huzza for Major Elfonzo! I will defend myself and
+you, too, with this conquering instrument I hold in my hand; huzza, I
+say, I now invoke time's broad wing to shed around us some dewdrops of
+verdant spring.”
+
+But the hour had not come for this joyous reunion; her friends struggled
+with Elfonzo for some time, and finally succeeded in arresting her from
+his hands. He dared not injure them, because they were matrons whose
+courage needed no spur; she was snatched from the arms of Elfonzo, with
+so much eagerness, and yet with such expressive signification, that he
+calmly withdrew from this lovely enterprise, with an ardent hope that he
+should be lulled to repose by the zephyrs which whispered peace to his
+soul. Several long days and nights passed unmolested, all seemed to have
+grounded their arms of rebellion, and no callidity appeared to be going
+on with any of the parties. Other arrangements were made by Ambulinia;
+she feigned herself to be entirely the votary of a mother's care, and
+she, by her graceful smiles, that manhood might claim his stern dominion
+in some other region, where such boisterous love was not so prevalent.
+This gave the parents a confidence that yielded some hours of sober joy;
+they believed that Ambulinia would now cease to love Elfonzo, and that
+her stolen affections would now expire with her misguided opinions. They
+therefore declined the idea of sending her to a distant land. But oh!
+they dreamed not of the rapture that dazzled the fancy of Ambulinia, who
+would say, when alone, youth should not fly away on his rosy pinions,
+and leave her to grapple in the conflict with unknown admirers.
+
+
+No frowning age shall control
+
+The constant current of my soul,
+
+Nor a tear from pity's eye
+
+Shall check my sympathetic sigh.
+
+With this resolution fixed in her mind, one dark and dreary night, when
+the winds whistled and the tempest roared, she received intelligence
+that Elfonzo was then waiting, and every preparation was then ready, at
+the residence of Dr. Tully, and for her to make a quick escape while
+the family was reposing. Accordingly she gathered her books, went the
+wardrobe supplied with a variety of ornamental dressing, and ventured
+alone in the streets to make her way to Elfonzo, who was near at hand,
+impatiently looking and watching her arrival. “What forms,” said she,
+“are those rising before me? What is that dark spot on the clouds? I do
+wonder what frightful ghost that is, gleaming on the red tempest? Oh,
+be merciful and tell me what region you are from. Oh, tell me, ye strong
+spirits, or ye dark and fleeting clouds, that I yet have a friend.” “A
+friend,” said a low, whispering voice. “I am thy unchanging, thy aged,
+and thy disappointed mother. Why brandish in that hand of thine a
+javelin of pointed steel? Why suffer that lip I have kissed a thousand
+times to equivocate? My daughter, let these tears sink deep into thy
+soul, and no longer persist in that which may be your destruction and
+ruin. Come, my dear child, retract your steps, and bear me company to
+your welcome home.” Without one retorting word, or frown from her brow,
+she yielded to the entreaties of her mother, and with all the mildness
+of her former character she went along with the silver lamp of age, to
+the home of candor and benevolence. Her father received her cold and
+formal politeness--“Where has Ambulinia been, this blustering evening,
+Mrs. Valeer?” inquired he. “Oh, she and I have been taking a solitary
+walk,” said the mother; “all things, I presume, are now working for the
+best.”
+
+Elfonzo heard this news shortly after it happened. “What,” said he,
+“has heaven and earth turned against me? I have been disappointed times
+without number. Shall I despair?--must I give it over? Heaven's decrees
+will not fade; I will write again--I will try again; and if it traverses
+a gory field, I pray forgiveness at the altar of justice.”
+
+Desolate Hill, Cumming, Geo., 1844.
+
+Unconquered and Beloved Ambulinia-- I have only time to say to you, not
+to despair; thy fame shall not perish; my visions are brightening before
+me. The whirlwind's rage is past, and we now shall subdue our enemies
+without doubt. On Monday morning, when your friends are at breakfast,
+they will not suspect your departure, or even mistrust me being in town,
+as it has been reported advantageously that I have left for the west.
+You walk carelessly toward the academy grove, where you will find me
+with a lightning steed, elegantly equipped to bear you off where we
+shall be joined in wedlock with the first connubial rights. Fail not
+to do this--think not of the tedious relations of our wrongs--be
+invincible. You alone occupy all my ambition, and I alone will make you
+my happy spouse, with the same unimpeached veracity. I remain, forever,
+your devoted friend and admirer, J. I. Elfonzo.
+
+The appointed day ushered in undisturbed by any clouds; nothing
+disturbed Ambulinia's soft beauty. With serenity and loveliness she
+obeys the request of Elfonzo. The moment the family seated themselves
+at the table--“Excuse my absence for a short time,” said she, “while I
+attend to the placing of those flowers, which should have been done
+a week ago.” And away she ran to the sacred grove, surrounded with
+glittering pearls, that indicated her coming. Elfonzo hails her with
+his silver bow and his golden harp. They meet--Ambulinia's countenance
+brightens--Elfonzo leads up his winged steed. “Mount,” said he, “ye
+true-hearted, ye fearless soul--the day is ours.” She sprang upon the
+back of the young thunder bolt, a brilliant star sparkles upon her head,
+with one hand she grasps the reins, and with the other she holds an
+olive branch. “Lend thy aid, ye strong winds,” they exclaimed, “ye moon,
+ye sun, and all ye fair host of heaven, witness the enemy conquered.”
+ “Hold,” said Elfonzo, “thy dashing steed.” “Ride on,” said Ambulinia,
+“the voice of thunder is behind us.” And onward they went, with such
+rapidity that they very soon arrived at Rural Retreat, where they
+dismounted, and were united with all the solemnities that usually attend
+such divine operations. They passed the day in thanksgiving and great
+rejoicing, and on that evening they visited their uncle, where many of
+their friends and acquaintances had gathered to congratulate them in the
+field of untainted bliss. The kind old gentleman met them in the yard:
+“Well,” said he, “I wish I may die, Elfonzo, if you and Ambulinia
+haven't tied a knot with your tongue that you can't untie with your
+teeth. But come in, come in, never mind, all is right--the world still
+moves on, and no one has fallen in this great battle.”
+
+Happy now is their lot! Unmoved by misfortune, they live among the fair
+beauties of the South. Heaven spreads their peace and fame upon the arch
+of the rainbow, and smiles propitiously at their triumph, _through the
+tears of the storm._
+
+
+
+THE CALIFORNIAN'S TALE
+
+Thirty-five years ago I was out prospecting on the Stanislaus, tramping
+all day long with pick and pan and horn, and washing a hatful of dirt
+here and there, always expecting to make a rich strike, and never doing
+it. It was a lovely region, woodsy, balmy, delicious, and had once been
+populous, long years before, but now the people had vanished and the
+charming paradise was a solitude. They went away when the surface
+diggings gave out. In one place, where a busy little city with banks
+and newspapers and fire companies and a mayor and aldermen had been, was
+nothing but a wide expanse of emerald turf, with not even the faintest
+sign that human life had ever been present there. This was down toward
+Tuttletown. In the country neighborhood thereabouts, along the dusty
+roads, one found at intervals the prettiest little cottage homes, snug
+and cozy, and so cobwebbed with vines snowed thick with roses that the
+doors and windows were wholly hidden from sight--sign that these were
+deserted homes, forsaken years ago by defeated and disappointed families
+who could neither sell them nor give them away. Now and then, half an
+hour apart, one came across solitary log cabins of the earliest
+mining days, built by the first gold-miners, the predecessors of the
+cottage-builders. In some few cases these cabins were still occupied;
+and when this was so, you could depend upon it that the occupant was the
+very pioneer who had built the cabin; and you could depend on another
+thing, too--that he was there because he had once had his opportunity
+to go home to the States rich, and had not done it; had rather lost
+his wealth, and had then in his humiliation resolved to sever all
+communication with his home relatives and friends, and be to them
+thenceforth as one dead. Round about California in that day were
+scattered a host of these living dead men--pride-smitten poor fellows,
+grizzled and old at forty, whose secret thoughts were made all of
+regrets and longings--regrets for their wasted lives, and longings to be
+out of the struggle and done with it all.
+
+It was a lonesome land! Not a sound in all those peaceful expanses of
+grass and woods but the drowsy hum of insects; no glimpse of man or
+beast; nothing to keep up your spirits and make you glad to be alive.
+And so, at last, in the early part of the afternoon, when I caught sight
+of a human creature, I felt a most grateful uplift. This person was a
+man about forty-five years old, and he was standing at the gate of one
+of those cozy little rose-clad cottages of the sort already referred to.
+However, this one hadn't a deserted look; it had the look of being lived
+in and petted and cared for and looked after; and so had its front yard,
+which was a garden of flowers, abundant, gay, and flourishing. I was
+invited in, of course, and required to make myself at home--it was the
+custom of the country.
+
+It was delightful to be in such a place, after long weeks of daily and
+nightly familiarity with miners' cabins--with all which this implies of
+dirt floor, never-made beds, tin plates and cups, bacon and beans and
+black coffee, and nothing of ornament but war pictures from the
+Eastern illustrated papers tacked to the log walls. That was all hard,
+cheerless, materialistic desolation, but here was a nest which had
+aspects to rest the tired eye and refresh that something in one's nature
+which, after long fasting, recognizes, when confronted by the
+belongings of art, howsoever cheap and modest they may be, that it has
+unconsciously been famishing and now has found nourishment. I could not
+have believed that a rag carpet could feast me so, and so content me;
+or that there could be such solace to the soul in wall-paper and framed
+lithographs, and bright-colored tidies and lamp-mats, and Windsor
+chairs, and varnished what-nots, with sea-shells and books and china
+vases on them, and the score of little unclassifiable tricks and touches
+that a woman's hand distributes about a home, which one sees without
+knowing he sees them, yet would miss in a moment if they were taken
+away. The delight that was in my heart showed in my face, and the man
+saw it and was pleased; saw it so plainly that he answered it as if it
+had been spoken.
+
+“All her work,” he said, caressingly; “she did it all herself--every
+bit,” and he took the room in with a glance which was full of
+affectionate worship. One of those soft Japanese fabrics with which
+women drape with careful negligence the upper part of a picture-frame
+was out of adjustment. He noticed it, and rearranged it with cautious
+pains, stepping back several times to gauge the effect before he got it
+to suit him. Then he gave it a light finishing pat or two with his hand,
+and said: “She always does that. You can't tell just what it lacks, but
+it does lack something until you've done that--you can see it yourself
+after it's done, but that is all you know; you can't find out the law of
+it. It's like the finishing pats a mother gives the child's hair after
+she's got it combed and brushed, I reckon. I've seen her fix all these
+things so much that I can do them all just her way, though I don't know
+the law of any of them. But she knows the law. She knows the why and the
+how both; but I don't know the why; I only know the how.”
+
+He took me into a bedroom so that I might wash my hands; such a bedroom
+as I had not seen for years: white counterpane, white pillows, carpeted
+floor, papered walls, pictures, dressing-table, with mirror and
+pin-cushion and dainty toilet things; and in the corner a wash-stand,
+with real china-ware bowl and pitcher, and with soap in a china dish,
+and on a rack more than a dozen towels--towels too clean and white for
+one out of practice to use without some vague sense of profanation. So
+my face spoke again, and he answered with gratified words:
+
+“All her work; she did it all herself--every bit. Nothing here that
+hasn't felt the touch of her hand. Now you would think--But I mustn't
+talk so much.”
+
+By this time I was wiping my hands and glancing from detail to detail
+of the room's belongings, as one is apt to do when he is in a new place,
+where everything he sees is a comfort to his eye and his spirit; and
+I became conscious, in one of those unaccountable ways, you know, that
+there was something there somewhere that the man wanted me to discover
+for myself. I knew it perfectly, and I knew he was trying to help me by
+furtive indications with his eye, so I tried hard to get on the right
+track, being eager to gratify him. I failed several times, as I could
+see out of the corner of my eye without being told; but at last I knew I
+must be looking straight at the thing--knew it from the pleasure issuing
+in invisible waves from him. He broke into a happy laugh, and rubbed his
+hands together, and cried out:
+
+“That's it! You've found it. I knew you would. It's her picture.”
+
+I went to the little black-walnut bracket on the farther wall, and
+did find there what I had not yet noticed--a daguerreotype-case. It
+contained the sweetest girlish face, and the most beautiful, as it
+seemed to me, that I had ever seen. The man drank the admiration from my
+face, and was fully satisfied.
+
+“Nineteen her last birthday,” he said, as he put the picture back; “and
+that was the day we were married. When you see her--ah, just wait till
+you see her!”
+
+“Where is she? When will she be in?”
+
+“Oh, she's away now. She's gone to see her people. They live forty or
+fifty miles from here. She's been gone two weeks today.”
+
+“When do you expect her back?”
+
+“This is Wednesday. She'll be back Saturday, in the evening--about nine
+o'clock, likely.”
+
+I felt a sharp sense of disappointment.
+
+“I'm sorry, because I'll be gone then,” I said, regretfully.
+
+“Gone? No--why should you go? Don't go. She'll be disappointed.”
+
+She would be disappointed--that beautiful creature! If she had said the
+words herself they could hardly have blessed me more. I was feeling
+a deep, strong longing to see her--a longing so supplicating, so
+insistent, that it made me afraid. I said to myself: “I will go straight
+away from this place, for my peace of mind's sake.”
+
+“You see, she likes to have people come and stop with us--people who
+know things, and can talk--people like you. She delights in it; for she
+knows--oh, she knows nearly everything herself, and can talk, oh, like
+a bird--and the books she reads, why, you would be astonished. Don't go;
+it's only a little while, you know, and she'll be so disappointed.”
+
+I heard the words, but hardly noticed them, I was so deep in my
+thinkings and strugglings. He left me, but I didn't know. Presently he
+was back, with the picture case in his hand, and he held it open before
+me and said:
+
+“There, now, tell her to her face you could have stayed to see her, and
+you wouldn't.”
+
+That second glimpse broke down my good resolution. I would stay and take
+the risk. That night we smoked the tranquil pipe, and talked till late
+about various things, but mainly about her; and certainly I had had no
+such pleasant and restful time for many a day. The Thursday followed and
+slipped comfortably away. Toward twilight a big miner from three miles
+away came--one of the grizzled, stranded pioneers--and gave us warm
+salutation, clothed in grave and sober speech. Then he said:
+
+“I only just dropped over to ask about the little madam, and when is she
+coming home. Any news from her?”
+
+“Oh, yes, a letter. Would you like to hear it, Tom?”
+
+“Well, I should think I would, if you don't mind, Henry!”
+
+Henry got the letter out of his wallet, and said he would skip some of
+the private phrases, if we were willing; then he went on and read the
+bulk of it--a loving, sedate, and altogether charming and gracious
+piece of handiwork, with a postscript full of affectionate regards
+and messages to Tom, and Joe, and Charley, and other close friends and
+neighbors.
+
+As the reader finished, he glanced at Tom, and cried out:
+
+“Oho, you're at it again! Take your hands away, and let me see your
+eyes. You always do that when I read a letter from her. I will write and
+tell her.”
+
+“Oh no, you mustn't, Henry. I'm getting old, you know, and any little
+disappointment makes me want to cry. I thought she'd be here herself,
+and now you've got only a letter.”
+
+“Well, now, what put that in your head? I thought everybody knew she
+wasn't coming till Saturday.”
+
+“Saturday! Why, come to think, I did know it. I wonder what's the matter
+with me lately? Certainly I knew it. Ain't we all getting ready for her?
+Well, I must be going now. But I'll be on hand when she comes, old man!”
+
+Late Friday afternoon another gray veteran tramped over from his cabin a
+mile or so away, and said the boys wanted to have a little gaiety and
+a good time Saturday night, if Henry thought she wouldn't be too tired
+after her journey to be kept up.
+
+“Tired? She tired! Oh, hear the man! Joe, _you _know she'd sit up six
+weeks to please any one of you!”
+
+When Joe heard that there was a letter, he asked to have it read, and
+the loving messages in it for him broke the old fellow all up; but he
+said he was such an old wreck that _that _would happen to him if she
+only just mentioned his name. “Lord, we miss her so!” he said.
+
+Saturday afternoon I found I was taking out my watch pretty often. Henry
+noticed it, and said, with a startled look:
+
+“You don't think she ought to be here soon, do you?”
+
+I felt caught, and a little embarrassed; but I laughed, and said it was
+a habit of mine when I was in a state of expenctancy. But he didn't seem
+quite satisfied; and from that time on he began to show uneasiness. Four
+times he walked me up the road to a point whence we could see a long
+distance; and there he would stand, shading his eyes with his hand, and
+looking. Several times he said:
+
+“I'm getting worried, I'm getting right down worried. I know she's not
+due till about nine o'clock, and yet something seems to be trying
+to warn me that something's happened. You don't think anything has
+happened, do you?”
+
+I began to get pretty thoroughly ashamed of him for his childishness;
+and at last, when he repeated that imploring question still another
+time, I lost my patience for the moment, and spoke pretty brutally to
+him. It seemed to shrivel him up and cow him; and he looked so wounded
+and so humble after that, that I detested myself for having done the
+cruel and unnecessary thing. And so I was glad when Charley, another
+veteran, arrived toward the edge of the evening, and nestled up to
+Henry to hear the letter read, and talked over the preparations for the
+welcome. Charley fetched out one hearty speech after another, and did
+his best to drive away his friend's bodings and apprehensions.
+
+“Anything _happened _to her? Henry, that's pure nonsense. There isn't
+anything going to happen to her; just make your mind easy as to that.
+What did the letter say? Said she was well, didn't it? And said she'd
+be here by nine o'clock, didn't it? Did you ever know her to fail of her
+word? Why, you know you never did. Well, then, don't you fret; she'll_
+be_ here, and that's absolutely certain, and as sure as you are born.
+Come, now, let's get to decorating--not much time left.”
+
+Pretty soon Tom and Joe arrived, and then all hands set about adorning
+the house with flowers. Toward nine the three miners said that as they
+had brought their instruments they might as well tune up, for the
+boys and girls would soon be arriving now, and hungry for a good,
+old-fashioned break-down. A fiddle, a banjo, and a clarinet--these were
+the instruments. The trio took their places side by side, and began to
+play some rattling dance-music, and beat time with their big boots.
+
+It was getting very close to nine. Henry was standing in the door with
+his eyes directed up the road, his body swaying to the torture of his
+mental distress. He had been made to drink his wife's health and safety
+several times, and now Tom shouted:
+
+“All hands stand by! One more drink, and she's here!”
+
+Joe brought the glasses on a waiter, and served the party. I reached for
+one of the two remaining glasses, but Joe growled under his breath:
+
+“Drop that! Take the other.”
+
+Which I did. Henry was served last. He had hardly swallowed his drink
+when the clock began to strike. He listened till it finished, his face
+growing pale and paler; then he said:
+
+“Boys, I'm sick with fear. Help me--I want to lie down!”
+
+They helped him to the sofa. He began to nestle and drowse, but
+presently spoke like one talking in his sleep, and said: “Did I hear
+horses' feet? Have they come?”
+
+One of the veterans answered, close to his ear: “It was Jimmy Parish
+come to say the party got delayed, but they're right up the road a
+piece, and coming along. Her horse is lame, but she'll be here in half
+an hour.”
+
+“Oh, I'm_ so_ thankful nothing has happened!”
+
+He was asleep almost before the words were out of his mouth. In a moment
+those handy men had his clothes off, and had tucked him into his bed in
+the chamber where I had washed my hands. They closed the door and came
+back. Then they seemed preparing to leave; but I said: “Please don't go,
+gentlemen. She won't know me; I am a stranger.”
+
+They glanced at each other. Then Joe said:
+
+“She? Poor thing, she's been dead nineteen years!”
+
+“Dead?”
+
+“That or worse. She went to see her folks half a year after she was
+married, and on her way back, on a Saturday evening, the Indians
+captured her within five miles of this place, and she's never been heard
+of since.”
+
+“And he lost his mind in consequence?”
+
+“Never has been sane an hour since. But he only gets bad when that time
+of year comes round. Then we begin to drop in here, three days before
+she's due, to encourage him up, and ask if he's heard from her,
+and Saturday we all come and fix up the house with flowers, and get
+everything ready for a dance. We've done it every year for nineteen
+years. The first Saturday there was twenty-seven of us, without counting
+the girls; there's only three of us now, and the girls are gone. We
+drug him to sleep, or he would go wild; then he's all right for another
+year--thinks she's with him till the last three or four days come round;
+then he begins to look for her, and gets out his poor old letter, and we
+come and ask him to read it to us. Lord, she was a darling!”
+
+
+
+A HELPLESS SITUATION
+
+Once or twice a year I get a letter of a certain pattern, a pattern that
+never materially changes, in form and substance, yet I cannot get used
+to that letter--it always astonishes me. It affects me as the locomotive
+always affects me: I say to myself, “I have seen you a thousand times,
+you always look the same way, yet you are always a wonder, and you are
+always impossible; to contrive you is clearly beyond human genius--you
+can't exist, you don't exist, yet here you are!”
+
+I have a letter of that kind by me, a very old one. I yearn to print it,
+and where is the harm? The writer of it is dead years ago, no doubt, and
+if I conceal her name and address--her this-world address--I am sure
+her shade will not mind. And with it I wish to print the answer which
+I wrote at the time but probably did not send. If it went--which is not
+likely--it went in the form of a copy, for I find the original still
+here, pigeonholed with the said letter. To that kind of letters we all
+write answers which we do not send, fearing to hurt where we have no
+desire to hurt; I have done it many a time, and this is doubtless a case
+of the sort.
+
+THE LETTER
+
+X------, California, JUNE 3, 1879.
+
+Mr. S. L. Clemens, HARTFORD, CONN.:
+
+Dear Sir,--You will doubtless be surprised to know who has presumed to
+write and ask a favor of you. Let your memory go back to your days in
+the Humboldt mines--'62-'63. You will remember, you and Clagett and
+Oliver and the old blacksmith Tillou lived in a lean-to which was
+half-way up the gulch, and there were six log cabins in the camp--strung
+pretty well separated up the gulch from its mouth at the desert to where
+the last claim was, at the divide. The lean-to you lived in was the one
+with a canvas roof that the cow fell down through one night, as told
+about by you in _Roughing It_--my uncle Simmons remembers it very well.
+He lived in the principal cabin, half-way up the divide, along with
+Dixon and Parker and Smith. It had two rooms, one for kitchen and the
+other for bunks, and was the only one that had. You and your party
+were there on the great night, the time they had dried-apple-pie, Uncle
+Simmons often speaks of it. It seems curious that dried-apple-pie
+should have seemed such a great thing, but it was, and it shows how far
+Humboldt was out of the world and difficult to get to, and how slim the
+regular bill of fare was. Sixteen years ago--it is a long time. I was a
+little girl then, only fourteen. I never saw you, I lived in Washoe. But
+Uncle Simmons ran across you every now and then, all during those weeks
+that you and party were there working your claim which was like the
+rest. The camp played out long and long ago, there wasn't silver enough
+in it to make a button. You never saw my husband, but he was there after
+you left, _and lived in that very lean-to_, a bachelor then but married
+to me now. He often wishes there had been a photographer there in
+those days, he would have taken the lean-to. He got hurt in the old Hal
+Clayton claim that was abandoned like the others, putting in a blast and
+not climbing out quick enough, though he scrambled the best he could.
+It landed him clear down on the train and hit a Piute. For weeks they
+thought he would not get over it but he did, and is all right, now. Has
+been ever since. This is a long introduction but it is the only way
+I can make myself known. The favor I ask I feel assured your generous
+heart will grant: Give me some advice about a book I have written. I do
+not claim anything for it only it is mostly true and as interesting as
+most of the books of the times. I am unknown in the literary world and
+you know what that means unless one has some one of influence (like
+yourself) to help you by speaking a good word for you. I would like to
+place the book on royalty basis plan with any one you would suggest.
+
+This is a secret from my husband and family. I intend it as a surprise
+in case I get it published.
+
+Feeling you will take an interest in this and if possible write me a
+letter to some publisher, or, better still, if you could see them for me
+and then let me hear.
+
+I appeal to you to grant me this favor. With deepest gratitude I think
+you for your attention.
+
+One knows, without inquiring, that the twin of that embarrassing letter
+is forever and ever flying in this and that and the other direction
+across the continent in the mails, daily, nightly, hourly, unceasingly,
+unrestingly. It goes to every well-known merchant, and railway official,
+and manufacturer, and capitalist, and Mayor, and Congressman, and
+Governor, and editor, and publisher, and author, and broker, and
+banker--in a word, to every person who is supposed to have “influence.”
+ It always follows the one pattern: “You do not know me, _but you once
+knew a relative of mine,_” etc., etc. We should all like to help the
+applicants, we should all be glad to do it, we should all like to return
+the sort of answer that is desired, but--Well, there is not a thing we
+can do that would be a help, for not in any instance does that latter
+ever come from anyone who _can _be helped. The struggler whom you _could
+_help does his own helping; it would not occur to him to apply to you,
+stranger. He has talent and knows it, and he goes into his fight eagerly
+and with energy and determination--all alone, preferring to be alone.
+That pathetic letter which comes to you from the incapable, the
+unhelpable--how do you who are familiar with it answer it? What do you
+find to say? You do not want to inflict a wound; you hunt ways to avoid
+that. What do you find? How do you get out of your hard place with a
+content conscience? Do you try to explain? The old reply of mine to such
+a letter shows that I tried that once. Was I satisfied with the result?
+Possibly; and possibly not; probably not; almost certainly not. I have
+long ago forgotten all about it. But, anyway, I append my effort:
+
+THE REPLY
+
+I know Mr. H., and I will go to him, dear madam, if upon reflection you
+find you still desire it. There will be a conversation. I know the form
+it will take. It will be like this:
+
+MR. H. How do her books strike you?
+
+MR. CLEMENS. I am not acquainted with them.
+
+H. Who has been her publisher?
+
+C. I don't know.
+
+H. She _has _one, I suppose?
+
+C. I--I think not.
+
+H. Ah. You think this is her first book?
+
+C. Yes--I suppose so. I think so.
+
+H. What is it about? What is the character of it?
+
+C. I believe I do not know.
+
+H. Have you seen it?
+
+C. Well--no, I haven't.
+
+H. Ah-h. How long have you known her?
+
+C. I don't know her.
+
+H. Don't know her?
+
+C. No.
+
+H. Ah-h. How did you come to be interested in her book, then?
+
+C. Well, she--she wrote and asked me to find a publisher for her, and
+mentioned you.
+
+H. Why should she apply to you instead of me?
+
+C. She wished me to use my influence.
+
+H. Dear me, what has _influence _to do with such a matter?
+
+C. Well, I think she thought you would be more likely to examine her
+book if you were influenced.
+
+H. Why, what we are here _for _is to examine books--anybody's book
+that comes along. It's our _business_. Why should we turn away a book
+unexamined because it's a stranger's? It would be foolish. No publisher
+does it. On what ground did she request your influence, since you do not
+know her? She must have thought you knew her literature and could speak
+for it. Is that it?
+
+C. No; she knew I didn't.
+
+H. Well, what then? She had a reason of _some _sort for believing you
+competent to recommend her literature, and also under obligations to do
+it?
+
+C. Yes, I--I knew her uncle.
+
+H. Knew her _uncle_?
+
+C. Yes.
+
+H. Upon my word! So, you knew her uncle; her uncle knows her literature;
+he endorses it to you; the chain is complete, nothing further needed;
+you are satisfied, and therefore--
+
+C._ No_, that isn't all, there are other ties. I know the cabin her
+uncle lived in, in the mines; I knew his partners, too; also I came
+near knowing her husband before she married him, and I _did _know the
+abandoned shaft where a premature blast went off and he went flying
+through the air and clear down to the trail and hit an Indian in the
+back with almost fatal consequences.
+
+H. To _him_, or to the Indian?
+
+C. She didn't say which it was.
+
+H. (_With a sigh_). It certainly beats the band! You don't know _her_,
+you don't know her literature, you don't know who got hurt when the
+blast went off, you don't know a single thing for us to build an
+estimate of her book upon, so far as I--
+
+C. I knew her uncle. You are forgetting her uncle.
+
+H. Oh, what use is_ he_? Did you know him long? How long was it?
+
+C. Well, I don't know that I really knew him, but I must have met him,
+anyway. I think it was that way; you can't tell about these things, you
+know, except when they are recent.
+
+H. Recent? When was all this?
+
+C. Sixteen years ago.
+
+H. What a basis to judge a book upon! As first you said you knew him,
+and now you don't know whether you did or not.
+
+C. Oh yes, I know him; anyway, I think I thought I did; I'm perfectly
+certain of it.
+
+H. What makes you think you thought you knew him?
+
+C. Why, she says I did, herself.
+
+H._ She_ says so!
+
+C. Yes, she does, and I _did _know him, too, though I don't remember it
+now.
+
+H. Come--how can you know it when you don't remember it.
+
+C. _I_ don't know. That is, I don't know the process, but I_ do_ know
+lots of things that I don't remember, and remember lots of things that I
+don't know. It's so with every educated person.
+
+H. (_After a pause_). Is your time valuable?
+
+C. No--well, not very.
+
+H. Mine is.
+
+So I came away then, because he was looking tired. Overwork, I reckon; I
+never do that; I have seen the evil effects of it. My mother was always
+afraid I would overwork myself, but I never did.
+
+Dear madam, you see how it would happen if I went there. He would ask
+me those questions, and I would try to answer them to suit him, and he
+would hunt me here and there and yonder and get me embarrassed more
+and more all the time, and at last he would look tired on account of
+overwork, and there it would end and nothing done. I wish I could be
+useful to you, but, you see, they do not care for uncles or any of those
+things; it doesn't move them, it doesn't have the least effect, they
+don't care for anything but the literature itself, and they as good as
+despise influence. But they do care for books, and are eager to get them
+and examine them, no matter whence they come, nor from whose pen. If you
+will send yours to a publisher--any publisher--he will certainly examine
+it, I can assure you of that.
+
+
+
+A TELEPHONIC CONVERSATION
+
+Consider that a conversation by telephone--when you are simply sitting
+by and not taking any part in that conversation--is one of the solemnest
+curiosities of modern life. Yesterday I was writing a deep article on a
+sublime philosophical subject while such a conversation was going on
+in the room. I notice that one can always write best when somebody is
+talking through a telephone close by. Well, the thing began in this way.
+A member of our household came in and asked me to have our house put
+into communication with Mr. Bagley's downtown. I have observed, in many
+cities, that the sex always shrink from calling up the central office
+themselves. I don't know why, but they do. So I touched the bell, and
+this talk ensued:
+
+_Central Office. (Gruffly.)_ Hello!
+
+I. Is it the Central Office?
+
+C. O. Of course it is. What do you want?
+
+I. Will you switch me on to the Bagleys, please?
+
+C. O. All right. Just keep your ear to the telephone.
+
+Then I heard _k-look, k-look, k'look--klook-klook-klook-look-look!_ then a
+horrible “gritting” of teeth, and finally a piping female voice: Y-e-s?
+(_Rising inflection._) Did you wish to speak to me?
+
+Without answering, I handed the telephone to the applicant, and sat
+down. Then followed that queerest of all the queer things in this
+world--a conversation with only one end to it. You hear questions asked;
+you don't hear the answer. You hear invitations given; you hear no
+thanks in return. You have listening pauses of dead silence, followed by
+apparently irrelevant and unjustifiable exclamations of glad surprise or
+sorrow or dismay. You can't make head or tail of the talk, because you
+never hear anything that the person at the other end of the wire says.
+Well, I heard the following remarkable series of observations, all from
+the one tongue, and all shouted--for you can't ever persuade the sex to
+speak gently into a telephone:
+
+Yes? Why, how did _that _happen?
+
+Pause.
+
+What did you say?
+
+Pause.
+
+Oh no, I don't think it was.
+
+Pause.
+
+_ No_! Oh no, I didn't mean _that_. I meant, put it in while it is still
+boiling--or just before it _comes _to a boil.
+
+Pause.
+
+_What_?
+
+Pause.
+
+I turned it over with a backstitch on the selvage edge.
+
+Pause.
+
+Yes, I like that way, too; but I think it's better to baste it on with
+Valenciennes or bombazine, or something of that sort. It gives it such
+an air--and attracts so much noise.
+
+Pause.
+
+It's forty-ninth Deuteronomy, sixty-forth to ninety-seventh inclusive. I
+think we ought all to read it often.
+
+Pause.
+
+Perhaps so; I generally use a hair pin.
+
+Pause.
+
+What did you say? (_Aside_.) Children, do be quiet!
+
+Pause
+
+_Oh!_ B _flat!_ Dear me, I thought you said it was the cat!
+
+Pause.
+
+Since _when_?
+
+Pause.
+
+Why, _I_ never heard of it.
+
+Pause.
+
+You astound me! It seems utterly impossible!
+
+Pause.
+
+_Who _did?
+
+Pause.
+
+Good-ness gracious!
+
+Pause.
+
+Well, what_ is_ this world coming to? Was it right in _church_?
+
+Pause.
+
+And was her _mother _there?
+
+Pause.
+
+Why, Mrs. Bagley, I should have died of humiliation! What did they_ do_?
+
+Long pause.
+
+I can't be perfectly sure, because I haven't the notes by me; but
+I think it goes something like this: te-rolly-loll-loll, loll
+lolly-loll-loll, O tolly-loll-loll-_lee-ly-li_-i-do! And then _repeat_,
+you know.
+
+Pause.
+
+Yes, I think it_ is_ very sweet--and very solemn and impressive, if you
+get the andantino and the pianissimo right.
+
+Pause.
+
+Oh, gum-drops, gum-drops! But I never allow them to eat striped candy.
+And of course they _can't_, till they get their teeth, anyway.
+
+Pause.
+
+_What_?
+
+Pause.
+
+Oh, not in the least--go right on. He's here writing--it doesn't bother
+_him_.
+
+Pause.
+
+Very well, I'll come if I canI'll come if I can. (_Aside_.) Dear me, how it does tire a
+person's arm to hold this thing up so long! I wish she'd--
+
+Pause.
+
+Oh no, not at all; I _like _to talk--but I'm afraid I'm keeping you from
+your affairs.
+
+Pause.
+
+Visitors?
+
+Pause.
+
+No, we never use butter on them.
+
+Pause.
+
+Yes, that is a very good way; but all the cook-books say they are very
+unhealthy when they are out of season. And_ he_ doesn't like them,
+anyway--especially canned.
+
+Pause.
+
+Oh, I think that is too high for them; we have never paid over fifty
+cents a bunch.
+
+Pause.
+
+_Must _you go? Well, _good_-by.
+
+Pause.
+
+Yes, I think so. _good_-by.
+
+Pause.
+
+Four o'clock, then--I'll be ready. _good_-by.
+
+Pause.
+
+Thank you ever so much. _good_-by.
+
+Pause.
+
+Oh, not at all!--just as fresh--_which_? Oh, I'm glad to hear you say
+that. _Good_-by.
+
+(Hangs up the telephone and says, “Oh, it _does _tire a person's arm
+so!”)
+
+A man delivers a single brutal “Good-by,” and that is the end of it.
+Not so with the gentle sex--I say it in their praise; they cannot abide
+abruptness.
+
+
+
+EDWARD MILLS AND GEORGE BENTON: A TALE
+
+These two were distantly related to each other--seventh cousins, or
+something of that sort. While still babies they became orphans, and were
+adopted by the Brants, a childless couple, who quickly grew very fond
+of them. The Brants were always saying: “Be pure, honest, sober,
+industrious, and considerate of others, and success in life is assured.”
+ The children heard this repeated some thousands of times before they
+understood it; they could repeat it themselves long before they could
+say the Lord's Prayer; it was painted over the nursery door, and was
+about the first thing they learned to read. It was destined to be the
+unswerving rule of Edward Mills's life. Sometimes the Brants changed
+the wording a little, and said: “Be pure, honest, sober, industrious,
+considerate, and you will never lack friends.”
+
+Baby Mills was a comfort to everybody about him. When he wanted candy
+and could not have it, he listened to reason, and contented himself
+without it. When Baby Benton wanted candy, he cried for it until he got
+it. Baby Mills took care of his toys; Baby Benton always destroyed his
+in a very brief time, and then made himself so insistently disagreeable
+that, in order to have peace in the house, little Edward was persuaded
+to yield up his play-things to him.
+
+When the children were a little older, Georgie became a heavy expense
+in one respect: he took no care of his clothes; consequently, he shone
+frequently in new ones, which was not the case with Eddie. The boys
+grew apace. Eddie was an increasing comfort, Georgie an increasing
+solicitude. It was always sufficient to say, in answer to Eddie's
+petitions, “I would rather you would not do it”--meaning swimming,
+skating, picnicking, berrying, circusing, and all sorts of things which
+boys delight in. But_ no_ answer was sufficient for Georgie; he had
+to be humored in his desires, or he would carry them with a high hand.
+Naturally, no boy got more swimming skating, berrying, and so forth than
+he; no body ever had a better time. The good Brants did not allow the
+boys to play out after nine in summer evenings; they were sent to bed at
+that hour; Eddie honorably remained, but Georgie usually slipped out
+of the window toward ten, and enjoyed himself until midnight. It seemed
+impossible to break Georgie of this bad habit, but the Brants managed
+it at last by hiring him, with apples and marbles, to stay in. The good
+Brants gave all their time and attention to vain endeavors to regulate
+Georgie; they said, with grateful tears in their eyes, that Eddie needed
+no efforts of theirs, he was so good, so considerate, and in all ways so
+perfect.
+
+By and by the boys were big enough to work, so they were apprenticed to
+a trade: Edward went voluntarily; George was coaxed and bribed. Edward
+worked hard and faithfully, and ceased to be an expense to the good
+Brants; they praised him, so did his master; but George ran away, and it
+cost Mr. Brant both money and trouble to hunt him up and get him back.
+By and by he ran away again--more money and more trouble. He ran away
+a third time--and stole a few things to carry with him. Trouble and
+expense for Mr. Brant once more; and, besides, it was with the greatest
+difficulty that he succeeded in persuading the master to let the youth
+go unprosecuted for the theft.
+
+Edward worked steadily along, and in time became a full partner in his
+master's business. George did not improve; he kept the loving hearts of
+his aged benefactors full of trouble, and their hands full of inventive
+activities to protect him from ruin. Edward, as a boy, had interested
+himself in Sunday-schools, debating societies, penny missionary affairs,
+anti-tobacco organizations, anti-profanity associations, and all such
+things; as a man, he was a quiet but steady and reliable helper in the
+church, the temperance societies, and in all movements looking to
+the aiding and uplifting of men. This excited no remark, attracted no
+attention--for it was his “natural bent.”
+
+Finally, the old people died. The will testified their loving pride in
+Edward, and left their little property to George--because he “needed
+it”; whereas, “owing to a bountiful Providence,” such was not the case
+with Edward. The property was left to George conditionally: he must
+buy out Edward's partner with it; else it must go to a benevolent
+organization called the Prisoner's Friend Society. The old people left
+a letter, in which they begged their dear son Edward to take their place
+and watch over George, and help and shield him as they had done.
+
+Edward dutifully acquiesced, and George became his partner in the
+business. He was not a valuable partner: he had been meddling with drink
+before; he soon developed into a constant tippler now, and his flesh and
+eyes showed the fact unpleasantly. Edward had been courting a sweet
+and kindly spirited girl for some time. They loved each other dearly,
+and--But about this period George began to haunt her tearfully and
+imploringly, and at last she went crying to Edward, and said her high
+and holy duty was plain before her--she must not let her own selfish
+desires interfere with it: she must marry “poor George” and “reform
+him.” It would break her heart, she knew it would, and so on; but duty
+was duty. So she married George, and Edward's heart came very near
+breaking, as well as her own. However, Edward recovered, and married
+another girl--a very excellent one she was, too.
+
+Children came to both families. Mary did her honest best to reform her
+husband, but the contract was too large. George went on drinking, and by
+and by he fell to misusing her and the little ones sadly. A great many
+good people strove with George--they were always at it, in fact--but he
+calmly took such efforts as his due and their duty, and did not mend his
+ways. He added a vice, presently--that of secret gambling. He got deeply
+in debt; he borrowed money on the firm's credit, as quietly as he could,
+and carried this system so far and so successfully that one morning the
+sheriff took possession of the establishment, and the two cousins found
+themselves penniless.
+
+Times were hard, now, and they grew worse. Edward moved his family into
+a garret, and walked the streets day and night, seeking work. He begged
+for it, but it was really not to be had. He was astonished to see how
+soon his face became unwelcome; he was astonished and hurt to see how
+quickly the ancient interest which people had had in him faded out and
+disappeared. Still, he _must _get work; so he swallowed his chagrin, and
+toiled on in search of it. At last he got a job of carrying bricks up a
+ladder in a hod, and was a grateful man in consequence; but after that
+_nobody _knew him or cared anything about him. He was not able to keep
+up his dues in the various moral organizations to which he belonged,
+and had to endure the sharp pain of seeing himself brought under the
+disgrace of suspension.
+
+But the faster Edward died out of public knowledge and interest, the
+faster George rose in them. He was found lying, ragged and drunk, in the
+gutter one morning. A member of the Ladies' Temperance Refuge fished him
+out, took him in hand, got up a subscription for him, kept him sober
+a whole week, then got a situation for him. An account of it was
+published.
+
+General attention was thus drawn to the poor fellow, and a great many
+people came forward and helped him toward reform with their countenance
+and encouragement. He did not drink a drop for two months, and meantime
+was the pet of the good. Then he fell--in the gutter; and there was
+general sorrow and lamentation. But the noble sisterhood rescued him
+again. They cleaned him up, they fed him, they listened to the mournful
+music of his repentances, they got him his situation again. An account
+of this, also, was published, and the town was drowned in happy tears
+over the re-restoration of the poor beast and struggling victim of
+the fatal bowl. A grand temperance revival was got up, and after some
+rousing speeches had been made the chairman said, impressively: “We are
+not about to call for signers; and I think there is a spectacle in
+store for you which not many in this house will be able to view with dry
+eyes.” There was an eloquent pause, and then George Benton, escorted
+by a red-sashed detachment of the Ladies of the Refuge, stepped forward
+upon the platform and signed the pledge. The air was rent with applause,
+and everybody cried for joy. Everybody wrung the hand of the new convert
+when the meeting was over; his salary was enlarged next day; he was the
+talk of the town, and its hero. An account of it was published.
+
+George Benton fell, regularly, every three months, but was faithfully
+rescued and wrought with, every time, and good situations were found for
+him. Finally, he was taken around the country lecturing, as a reformed
+drunkard, and he had great houses and did an immense amount of good.
+
+He was so popular at home, and so trusted--during his sober
+intervals--that he was enabled to use the name of a principal citizen,
+and get a large sum of money at the bank. A mighty pressure was brought
+to bear to save him from the consequences of his forgery, and it was
+partially successful--he was “sent up” for only two years. When, at the
+end of a year, the tireless efforts of the benevolent were crowned
+with success, and he emerged from the penitentiary with a pardon in
+his pocket, the Prisoner's Friend Society met him at the door with a
+situation and a comfortable salary, and all the other benevolent people
+came forward and gave him advice, encouragement and help. Edward Mills
+had once applied to the Prisoner's Friend Society for a situation, when
+in dire need, but the question, “Have you been a prisoner?” made brief
+work of his case.
+
+While all these things were going on, Edward Mills had been quietly
+making head against adversity. He was still poor, but was in receipt of
+a steady and sufficient salary, as the respected and trusted cashier
+of a bank. George Benton never came near him, and was never heard to
+inquire about him. George got to indulging in long absences from the
+town; there were ill reports about him, but nothing definite.
+
+One winter's night some masked burglars forced their way into the bank,
+and found Edward Mills there alone. They commanded him to reveal the
+“combination,” so that they could get into the safe. He refused. They
+threatened his life. He said his employers trusted him, and he could not
+be traitor to that trust. He could die, if he must, but while he lived
+he would be faithful; he would not yield up the “combination.” The
+burglars killed him.
+
+The detectives hunted down the criminals; the chief one proved to be
+George Benton. A wide sympathy was felt for the widow and orphans of the
+dead man, and all the newspapers in the land begged that all the banks
+in the land would testify their appreciation of the fidelity and heroism
+of the murdered cashier by coming forward with a generous contribution
+of money in aid of his family, now bereft of support. The result was
+a mass of solid cash amounting to upward of five hundred dollars--an
+average of nearly three-eights of a cent for each bank in the Union. The
+cashier's own bank testified its gratitude by endeavoring to show (but
+humiliatingly failed in it) that the peerless servant's accounts were
+not square, and that he himself had knocked his brains out with a
+bludgeon to escape detection and punishment.
+
+George Benton was arraigned for trial. Then everybody seemed to forget
+the widow and orphans in their solicitude for poor George. Everything
+that money and influence could do was done to save him, but it all
+failed; he was sentenced to death. Straightway the Governor was besieged
+with petitions for commutation or pardon; they were brought by tearful
+young girls; by sorrowful old maids; by deputations of pathetic widows;
+by shoals of impressive orphans. But no, the Governor--for once--would
+not yield.
+
+Now George Benton experienced religion. The glad news flew all around.
+From that time forth his cell was always full of girls and women and
+fresh flowers; all the day long there was prayer, and hymn-singing,
+and thanksgiving, and homilies, and tears, with never an interruption,
+except an occasional five-minute intermission for refreshments.
+
+This sort of thing continued up to the very gallows, and George Benton
+went proudly home, in the black cap, before a wailing audience of the
+sweetest and best that the region could produce. His grave had fresh
+flowers on it every day, for a while, and the head-stone bore these
+words, under a hand pointing aloft: “He has fought the good fight.”
+
+The brave cashier's head-stone has this inscription: “Be pure, honest,
+sober, industrious, considerate, and you will never--”
+
+Nobody knows who gave the order to leave it that way, but it was so
+given.
+
+The cashier's family are in stringent circumstances, now, it is said;
+but no matter; a lot of appreciative people, who were not willing that
+an act so brave and true as his should go unrewarded, have collected
+forty-two thousand dollars--and built a Memorial Church with it.
+
+
+
+THE FIVE BOONS OF LIFE
+
+
+
+Chapter I
+
+In the morning of life came a good fairy with her basket, and said:
+
+“Here are gifts. Take one, leave the others. And be wary, choose wisely;
+oh, choose wisely! for only one of them is valuable.”
+
+The gifts were five: Fame, Love, Riches, Pleasure, Death. The youth
+said, eagerly:
+
+“There is no need to consider”; and he chose Pleasure.
+
+He went out into the world and sought out the pleasures that youth
+delights in. But each in its turn was short-lived and disappointing,
+vain and empty; and each, departing, mocked him. In the end he said:
+“These years I have wasted. If I could but choose again, I would choose
+wisely.”
+
+
+
+Chapter II
+
+The fairy appeared, and said:
+
+“Four of the gifts remain. Choose once more; and oh, remember--time is
+flying, and only one of them is precious.”
+
+The man considered long, then chose Love; and did not mark the tears
+that rose in the fairy's eyes.
+
+After many, many years the man sat by a coffin, in an empty home. And he
+communed with himself, saying: “One by one they have gone away and left
+me; and now she lies here, the dearest and the last. Desolation after
+desolation has swept over me; for each hour of happiness the treacherous
+trader, Love, has sold me I have paid a thousand hours of grief. Out of
+my heart of hearts I curse him.”
+
+
+
+Chapter III
+
+“Choose again.” It was the fairy speaking.
+
+“The years have taught you wisdom--surely it must be so. Three gifts
+remain. Only one of them has any worth--remember it, and choose warily.”
+
+The man reflected long, then chose Fame; and the fairy, sighing, went
+her way.
+
+Years went by and she came again, and stood behind the man where he sat
+solitary in the fading day, thinking. And she knew his thought:
+
+“My name filled the world, and its praises were on every tongue, and it
+seemed well with me for a little while. How little a while it was! Then
+came envy; then detraction; then calumny; then hate; then persecution.
+Then derision, which is the beginning of the end. And last of all came
+pity, which is the funeral of fame. Oh, the bitterness and misery of
+renown! target for mud in its prime, for contempt and compassion in its
+decay.”
+
+
+
+Chapter IV
+
+“Chose yet again.” It was the fairy's voice.
+
+“Two gifts remain. And do not despair. In the beginning there was but
+one that was precious, and it is still here.”
+
+“Wealth--which is power! How blind I was!” said the man. “Now, at last,
+life will be worth the living. I will spend, squander, dazzle. These
+mockers and despisers will crawl in the dirt before me, and I will feed
+my hungry heart with their envy. I will have all luxuries, all joys, all
+enchantments of the spirit, all contentments of the body that man holds
+dear. I will buy, buy, buy! deference, respect, esteem, worship--every
+pinchbeck grace of life the market of a trivial world can furnish forth.
+I have lost much time, and chosen badly heretofore, but let that pass; I
+was ignorant then, and could but take for best what seemed so.”
+
+Three short years went by, and a day came when the man sat shivering in
+a mean garret; and he was gaunt and wan and hollow-eyed, and clothed in
+rags; and he was gnawing a dry crust and mumbling:
+
+“Curse all the world's gifts, for mockeries and gilded lies! And
+miscalled, every one. They are not gifts, but merely lendings. Pleasure,
+Love, Fame, Riches: they are but temporary disguises for lasting
+realities--Pain, Grief, Shame, Poverty. The fairy said true; in all her
+store there was but one gift which was precious, only one that was not
+valueless. How poor and cheap and mean I know those others now to be,
+compared with that inestimable one, that dear and sweet and kindly one,
+that steeps in dreamless and enduring sleep the pains that persecute the
+body, and the shames and griefs that eat the mind and heart. Bring it! I
+am weary, I would rest.”
+
+
+
+Chapter V
+
+The fairy came, bringing again four of the gifts, but Death was wanting.
+She said:
+
+“I gave it to a mother's pet, a little child. It was ignorant, but
+trusted me, asking me to choose for it. You did not ask me to choose.”
+
+“Oh, miserable me! What is left for me?”
+
+“What not even you have deserved: the wanton insult of Old Age.”
+
+
+
+THE FIRST WRITING-MACHINES
+
+From My Unpublished Autobiography
+
+Some days ago a correspondent sent in an old typewritten sheet, faded by
+age, containing the following letter over the signature of Mark Twain:
+
+“Hartford, March 10, 1875.
+
+“Please do not use my name in any way. Please do not even divulge that
+fact that I own a machine. I have entirely stopped using the typewriter,
+for the reason that I never could write a letter with it to anybody
+without receiving a request by return mail that I would not only
+describe the machine, but state what progress I had made in the use of
+it, etc., etc. I don't like to write letters, and so I don't want people
+to know I own this curiosity-breeding little joker.”
+
+A note was sent to Mr. Clemens asking him if the letter was genuine
+and whether he really had a typewriter as long ago as that. Mr.
+Clemens replied that his best answer is the following chapter from his
+unpublished autobiography:
+
+1904. VILLA QUARTO, FLORENCE, JANUARY.
+
+Dictating autobiography to a typewriter is a new experience for me, but
+it goes very well, and is going to save time and “language”--the kind of
+language that soothes vexation.
+
+I have dictated to a typewriter before--but not autobiography. Between
+that experience and the present one there lies a mighty gap--more than
+thirty years! It is a sort of lifetime. In that wide interval much
+has happened--to the type-machine as well as to the rest of us. At the
+beginning of that interval a type-machine was a curiosity. The person
+who owned one was a curiosity, too. But now it is the other way about:
+the person who _doesn't_ own one is a curiosity. I saw a type-machine
+for the first time in--what year? I suppose it was 1873--because
+Nasby was with me at the time, and it was in Boston. We must have been
+lecturing, or we could not have been in Boston, I take it. I quitted the
+platform that season.
+
+But never mind about that, it is no matter. Nasby and I saw the machine
+through a window, and went in to look at it. The salesman explained it
+to us, showed us samples of its work, and said it could do fifty-seven
+words a minute--a statement which we frankly confessed that we did not
+believe. So he put his type-girl to work, and we timed her by the
+watch. She actually did the fifty-seven in sixty seconds. We were partly
+convinced, but said it probably couldn't happen again. But it did. We
+timed the girl over and over again--with the same result always: she won
+out. She did her work on narrow slips of paper, and we pocketed them as
+fast as she turned them out, to show as curiosities. The price of the
+machine was one hundred and twenty-five dollars. I bought one, and we
+went away very much excited.
+
+At the hotel we got out our slips and were a little disappointed to find
+that they contained the same words. The girl had economized time
+and labor by using a formula which she knew by heart. However, we
+argued--safely enough--that the _first _type-girl must naturally take
+rank with the first billiard-player: neither of them could be expected
+to get out of the game any more than a third or a half of what was in
+it. If the machine survived--_if_ it survived--experts would come to the
+front, by and by, who would double the girl's output without a doubt.
+They would do one hundred words a minute--my talking speed on the
+platform. That score has long ago been beaten.
+
+At home I played with the toy, repeating and repeating and repeating
+“The Boy stood on the Burning Deck,” until I could turn that boy's
+adventure out at the rate of twelve words a minute; then I resumed the
+pen, for business, and only worked the machine to astonish inquiring
+visitors. They carried off many reams of the boy and his burning deck.
+
+By and by I hired a young woman, and did my first dictating (letters,
+merely), and my last until now. The machine did not do both capitals and
+lower case (as now), but only capitals. Gothic capitals they were, and
+sufficiently ugly. I remember the first letter I dictated, it was to
+Edward Bok, who was a boy then. I was not acquainted with him at that
+time. His present enterprising spirit is not new--he had it in that
+early day. He was accumulating autographs, and was not content with mere
+signatures, he wanted a whole autograph _letter_. I furnished it--in
+type-written capitals, _signature and all._ It was long; it was a
+sermon; it contained advice; also reproaches. I said writing was my
+_trade_, my bread-and-butter; I said it was not fair to ask a man
+to give away samples of his trade; would he ask the blacksmith for a
+horseshoe? would he ask the doctor for a corpse?
+
+Now I come to an important matter--as I regard it. In the year '74
+the young woman copied a considerable part of a book of mine _on the
+machine_. In a previous chapter of this Autobiography I have claimed
+that I was the first person in the world that ever had a telephone
+in the house for practical purposes; I will now claim--until
+dispossessed--that I was the first person in the world to _apply the
+type-machine to literature_. That book must have been _The Adventures Of
+Tom Sawyer._ I wrote the first half of it in '72, the rest of it in '74.
+My machinist type-copied a book for me in '74, so I concluded it was
+that one.
+
+That early machine was full of caprices, full of defects--devilish ones.
+It had as many immoralities as the machine of today has virtues. After
+a year or two I found that it was degrading my character, so I thought
+I would give it to Howells. He was reluctant, for he was suspicious of
+novelties and unfriendly toward them, and he remains so to this day. But
+I persuaded him. He had great confidence in me, and I got him to believe
+things about the machine that I did not believe myself. He took it home
+to Boston, and my morals began to improve, but his have never recovered.
+
+He kept it six months, and then returned it to me. I gave it away twice
+after that, but it wouldn't stay; it came back. Then I gave it to our
+coachman, Patrick McAleer, who was very grateful, because he did not
+know the animal, and thought I was trying to make him wiser and better.
+As soon as he got wiser and better he traded it to a heretic for a
+side-saddle which he could not use, and there my knowledge of its
+history ends.
+
+
+
+ITALIAN WITHOUT A MASTER
+
+It is almost a fortnight now that I am domiciled in a medieval villa in
+the country, a mile or two from Florence. I cannot speak the language;
+I am too old now to learn how, also too busy when I am busy, and too
+indolent when I am not; wherefore some will imagine that I am having a
+dull time of it. But it is not so. The “help” are all natives; they talk
+Italian to me, I answer in English; I do not understand them, they
+do not understand me, consequently no harm is done, and everybody is
+satisfied. In order to be just and fair, I throw in an Italian word when
+I have one, and this has a good influence. I get the word out of the
+morning paper. I have to use it while it is fresh, for I find that
+Italian words do not keep in this climate. They fade toward night, and
+next morning they are gone. But it is no matter; I get a new one out of
+the paper before breakfast, and thrill the domestics with it while it
+lasts. I have no dictionary, and I do not want one; I can select words
+by the sound, or by orthographic aspect. Many of them have French or
+German or English look, and these are the ones I enslave for the day's
+service. That is, as a rule. Not always. If I find a learnable phrase
+that has an imposing look and warbles musically along I do not care to
+know the meaning of it; I pay it out to the first applicant, knowing
+that if I pronounce it carefully_ he_ will understand it, and that's
+enough.
+
+Yesterday's word was _avanti_. It sounds Shakespearian, and probably
+means Avaunt and quit my sight. Today I have a whole phrase: _sono
+dispiacentissimo_. I do not know what it means, but it seems to fit
+in everywhere and give satisfaction. Although as a rule my words and
+phrases are good for one day and train only, I have several that stay by
+me all the time, for some unknown reason, and these come very handy
+when I get into a long conversation and need things to fire up with
+in monotonous stretches. One of the best ones is _dov è il gatto_. It
+nearly always produces a pleasant surprise, therefore I save it up for
+places where I want to express applause or admiration. The fourth word
+has a French sound, and I think the phrase means “that takes the cake.”
+
+During my first week in the deep and dreamy stillness of this woodsy
+and flowery place I was without news of the outside world, and was well
+content without it. It had been four weeks since I had seen a newspaper,
+and this lack seemed to give life a new charm and grace, and to saturate
+it with a feeling verging upon actual delight. Then came a change that
+was to be expected: the appetite for news began to rise again, after
+this invigorating rest. I had to feed it, but I was not willing to let
+it make me its helpless slave again; I determined to put it on a diet,
+and a strict and limited one. So I examined an Italian paper, with
+the idea of feeding it on that, and on that exclusively. On that
+exclusively, and without help of a dictionary. In this way I should
+surely be well protected against overloading and indigestion.
+
+A glance at the telegraphic page filled me with encouragement. There
+were no scare-heads. That was good--supremely good. But there were
+headings--one-liners and two-liners--and that was good too; for without
+these, one must do as one does with a German paper--pay out precious
+time in finding out what an article is about, only to discover, in many
+cases, that there is nothing in it of interest to you. The headline is a
+valuable thing.
+
+Necessarily we are all fond of murders, scandals, swindles, robberies,
+explosions, collisions, and all such things, when we know the people,
+and when they are neighbors and friends, but when they are strangers we
+do not get any great pleasure out of them, as a rule. Now the trouble
+with an American paper is that it has no discrimination; it rakes the
+whole earth for blood and garbage, and the result is that you are daily
+overfed and suffer a surfeit. By habit you stow this muck every day, but
+you come by and by to take no vital interest in it--indeed, you
+almost get tired of it. As a rule, forty-nine-fiftieths of it concerns
+strangers only--people away off yonder, a thousand miles, two thousand
+miles, ten thousand miles from where you are. Why, when you come to
+think of it, who cares what becomes of those people? I would not give
+the assassination of one personal friend for a whole massacre of those
+others. And, to my mind, one relative or neighbor mixed up in a scandal
+is more interesting than a whole Sodom and Gomorrah of outlanders gone
+rotten. Give me the home product every time.
+
+Very well. I saw at a glance that the Florentine paper would suit me:
+five out of six of its scandals and tragedies were local; they were
+adventures of one's very neighbors, one might almost say one's friends.
+In the matter of world news there was not too much, but just about
+enough. I subscribed. I have had no occasion to regret it. Every morning
+I get all the news I need for the day; sometimes from the headlines,
+sometimes from the text. I have never had to call for a dictionary yet.
+I read the paper with ease. Often I do not quite understand, often some
+of the details escape me, but no matter, I get the idea. I will cut out
+a passage or two, then you see how limpid the language is:
+
+Il ritorno dei Beati d'Italia
+
+Elargizione del Re all' Ospedale italiano
+
+The first line means that the Italian sovereigns are coming back--they
+have been to England. The second line seems to mean that they enlarged
+the King at the Italian hospital. With a banquet, I suppose. An English
+banquet has that effect. Further:
+
+_Il ritorno dei sovrani_
+
+a Roma
+
+ROMA, 24, ore 22,50.--_I Sovrani e le Principessine Reali si attendono a
+Roma domani alle ore_ 15,51.
+
+Return of the sovereigns to Rome, you see. Date of the telegram, Rome,
+November 24, ten minutes before twenty-three o'clock. The telegram seems
+to say, “The Sovereigns and the Royal Children expect themselves at Rome
+tomorrow at fifty-one minutes after fifteen o'clock.”
+
+I do not know about Italian time, but I judge it begins at midnight
+and runs through the twenty-four hours without breaking bulk. In the
+following ad, the theaters open at half-past twenty. If these are not
+matinees, 20.30 must mean 8.30 P.M., by my reckoning.
+
+Spettacolli del di 25
+
+TEATRO DELLA PERGOLA--(Ore 20,30)--Opera. BOHEME. TEATRO
+ALFIERI.--Compagnia drammatica Drago--(Ore 20,30)--LA LEGGE.
+ALHAMBRA--(Ore 20,30)--Spettacolo variato. SALA EDISON--Grandioso
+spettacolo Cinematografico: QUO-VADIS?--Inaugurazione della
+Chiesa Russa -- In coda al Direttissimo -- Vedute di Firenze con gran
+movimeno -- America: Transporto tronchi giganteschi--I ladri in casa del
+Diavolo -- Scene comiche. CINEMATOGRAFO -- Via Brunelleschi n. 4.--Programma
+straordinario, DON CHISCIOTTE -- Prezzi populari.
+
+The whole of that is intelligible to me--and sane and rational,
+too--except the remark about the Inauguration of a Russian Cheese. That
+one oversizes my hand. Gimme me five cards.
+
+This is a four-page paper; and as it is set in long primer leaded
+and has a page of advertisements, there is no room for the crimes,
+disasters, and general sweepings of the outside world--thanks be! Today
+I find only a single importation of the off-color sort:
+
+Una Principessa
+
+che fugge con un cocchiere
+
+PARIGI, 24.--Il MATIN ha da Berlino che la principessa
+Schovenbare-Waldenbure scomparve il 9 novembre. Sarebbe partita col suo
+cocchiere.
+
+La Principassa ha 27 anni.
+
+Twenty-seven years old, and scomparve--scampered--on the 9th November.
+You see by the added detail that she departed with her coachman. I hope
+Sarebbe has not made a mistake, but I am afraid the chances are that she
+has. _Sono dispiacentissimo_.
+
+There are several fires: also a couple of accidents. This is one of
+them:
+
+Grave disgrazia sul Ponte Vecchio
+
+Stammattina, circe le 7,30, mentre Giuseppe Sciatti, di anni 55, di
+Casellina e Torri, passava dal Ponte Vecchio, stando seduto sopra un
+barroccio carico di verdura, perse l' equilibrio e cadde al suolo,
+rimanendo con la gamba destra sotto una ruota del veicolo.
+
+Lo Sciatti fu subito raccolto da alcuni cittadini, che, per mezzo della
+pubblica vettura n. 365, lo transporto a San Giovanni di Dio.
+
+Ivi il medico di guardia gli riscontro la frattura della gamba destra
+e alcune lievi escoriazioni giudicandolo guaribile in 50 giorni salvo
+complicazioni.
+
+What it seems to say is this: “Serious Disgrace on the Old Old Bridge.
+This morning about 7.30, Mr. Joseph Sciatti, aged 55, of Casellina and
+Torri, while standing up in a sitting posture on top of a carico barrow
+of vedure (foliage? hay? vegetables?), lost his equilibrium and fell
+on himself, arriving with his left leg under one of the wheels of the
+vehicle.
+
+“Said Sciatti was suddenly harvested (gathered in?) by several citizens,
+who by means of public cab No. 365 transported him to St. John of God.”
+
+Paragraph No. 3 is a little obscure, but I think it says that the medico
+set the broken left leg--right enough, since there was nothing the
+matter with the other one--and that several are encouraged to hope that
+fifty days well fetch him around in quite giudicandolo-guaribile way, if
+no complications intervene.
+
+I am sure I hope so myself.
+
+There is a great and peculiar charm about reading news-scraps in a
+language which you are not acquainted with--the charm that always goes
+with the mysterious and the uncertain. You can never be absolutely
+sure of the meaning of anything you read in such circumstances; you are
+chasing an alert and gamy riddle all the time, and the baffling turns
+and dodges of the prey make the life of the hunt. A dictionary would
+spoil it. Sometimes a single word of doubtful purport will cast a veil
+of dreamy and golden uncertainty over a whole paragraph of cold and
+practical certainties, and leave steeped in a haunting and adorable
+mystery an incident which had been vulgar and commonplace but for that
+benefaction. Would you be wise to draw a dictionary on that gracious
+word? would you be properly grateful?
+
+After a couple of days' rest I now come back to my subject and seek
+a case in point. I find it without trouble, in the morning paper; a
+cablegram from Chicago and Indiana by way of Paris. All the words save
+one are guessable by a person ignorant of Italian:
+
+Revolverate in teatro
+
+PARIGI, 27.--La PATRIE ha da Chicago:
+
+Il guardiano del teatro dell'opera di Walace (Indiana), avendo voluto
+espellare uno spettatore che continuava a fumare malgrado il diviety,
+questo spalleggiato dai suoi amici tir`o diversi colpi di rivoltella.
+Il guardiano ripose. Nacque una scarica generale. Grande panico tra gli
+spettatori. Nessun ferito.
+
+_Translation._--“Revolveration in Theater. _Paris, 27th. La Patrie_ has
+from Chicago: The cop of the theater of the opera of Wallace, Indiana,
+had willed to expel a spectator which continued to smoke in spite of the
+prohibition, who, spalleggiato by his friends, tire (_Fr. Tire, Anglice
+Pulled_) manifold revolver-shots; great panic among the spectators.
+Nobody hurt.”
+
+It is bettable that that harmless cataclysm in the theater of the opera
+of Wallace, Indiana, excited not a person in Europe but me, and so came
+near to not being worth cabling to Florence by way of France. But it
+does excite me. It excites me because I cannot make out, for sure, what
+it was that moved the spectator to resist the officer. I was gliding
+along smoothly and without obstruction or accident, until I came to that
+word “spalleggiato,” then the bottom fell out. You notice what a rich
+gloom, what a somber and pervading mystery, that word sheds all over the
+whole Wallachian tragedy. That is the charm of the thing, that is the
+delight of it. This is where you begin, this is where you revel. You can
+guess and guess, and have all the fun you like; you need not be afraid
+there will be an end to it; none is possible, for no amount of guessing
+will ever furnish you a meaning for that word that you can be sure is
+the right one. All the other words give you hints, by their form, their
+sound, or their spelling--this one doesn't, this one throws out no
+hints, this one keeps its secret. If there is even the slightest slight
+shadow of a hint anywhere, it lies in the very meagerly suggestive fact
+that “spalleggiato” carries our word “egg” in its stomach. Well, make
+the most out of it, and then where are you at? You conjecture that
+the spectator which was smoking in spite of the prohibition and become
+reprohibited by the guardians, was “egged on” by his friends, and that
+was owing to that evil influence that he initiated the revolveration in
+theater that has galloped under the sea and come crashing through the
+European press without exciting anybody but me. But are you sure, are
+you dead sure, that that was the way of it? No. Then the uncertainty
+remains, the mystery abides, and with it the charm. Guess again.
+
+If I had a phrase-book of a really satisfactory sort I would study it,
+and not give all my free time to undictionarial readings, but there is
+no such work on the market. The existing phrase-books are inadequate.
+They are well enough as far as they go, but when you fall down and skin
+your leg they don't tell you what to say.
+
+
+
+ITALIAN WITH GRAMMAR
+
+I found that a person of large intelligence could read this beautiful
+language with considerable facility without a dictionary, but I
+presently found that to such a person a grammar could be of use at
+times. It is because, if he does not know the _were's_ and the
+_was's_ and the _maybe's_ and the _has-beens's_ apart, confusions and
+uncertainties can arise. He can get the idea that a thing is going to
+happen next week when the truth is that it has already happened week
+before last. Even more previously, sometimes. Examination and inquiry
+showed me that the adjectives and such things were frank and fair-minded
+and straightforward, and did not shuffle; it was the Verb that mixed the
+hands, it was the Verb that lacked stability, it was the Verb that had
+no permanent opinion about anything, it was the Verb that was always
+dodging the issue and putting out the light and making all the trouble.
+
+Further examination, further inquiry, further reflection, confirmed this
+judgment, and established beyond peradventure the fact that the Verb was
+the storm-center. This discovery made plain the right and wise course to
+pursue in order to acquire certainty and exactness in understanding the
+statements which the newspaper was daily endeavoring to convey to me: I
+must catch a Verb and tame it. I must find out its ways, I must spot
+its eccentricities, I must penetrate its disguises, I must intelligently
+foresee and forecast at least the commoner of the dodges it was likely
+to try upon a stranger in given circumstances, I must get in on its main
+shifts and head them off, I must learn its game and play the limit.
+
+I had noticed, in other foreign languages, that verbs are bred in
+families, and that the members of each family have certain features or
+resemblances that are common to that family and distinguish it from the
+other families--the other kin, the cousins and what not. I had noticed
+that this family-mark is not usually the nose or the hair, so to speak,
+but the tail--the Termination--and that these tails are quite definitely
+differentiated; insomuch that an expert can tell a Pluperfect from a
+Subjunctive by its tail as easily and as certainly as a cowboy can tell
+a cow from a horse by the like process, the result of observation and
+culture. I should explain that I am speaking of legitimate verbs, those
+verbs which in the slang of the grammar are called Regular. There are
+others--I am not meaning to conceal this; others called Irregulars, born
+out of wedlock, of unknown and uninteresting parentage, and naturally
+destitute of family resemblances, as regards to all features, tails
+included. But of these pathetic outcasts I have nothing to say. I do not
+approve of them, I do not encourage them; I am prudishly delicate and
+sensitive, and I do not allow them to be used in my presence.
+
+But, as I have said, I decided to catch one of the others and break it
+into harness. One is enough. Once familiar with its assortment of tails,
+you are immune; after that, no regular verb can conceal its specialty
+from you and make you think it is working the past or the future or the
+conditional or the unconditional when it is engaged in some other line
+of business--its tail will give it away. I found out all these things by
+myself, without a teacher.
+
+I selected the verb _amare, to love._ Not for any personal reason, for
+I am indifferent about verbs; I care no more for one verb than for
+another, and have little or no respect for any of them; but in foreign
+languages you always begin with that one. Why, I don't know. It is
+merely habit, I suppose; the first teacher chose it, Adam was satisfied,
+and there hasn't been a successor since with originality enough to start
+a fresh one. For they _are _a pretty limited lot, you will admit that?
+Originality is not in their line; they can't think up anything new,
+anything to freshen up the old moss-grown dullness of the language
+lesson and put life and “go” into it, and charm and grace and
+picturesqueness.
+
+I knew I must look after those details myself; therefore I thought them
+out and wrote them down, and sent for the _facchino _and explained them
+to him, and said he must arrange a proper plant, and get together a
+good stock company among the _contadini_, and design the costumes, and
+distribute the parts; and drill the troupe, and be ready in three days
+to begin on this Verb in a shipshape and workman-like manner. I told him
+to put each grand division of it under a foreman, and each subdivision
+under a subordinate of the rank of sergeant or corporal or something
+like that, and to have a different uniform for each squad, so that I
+could tell a Pluperfect from a Compound Future without looking at the
+book; the whole battery to be under his own special and particular
+command, with the rank of Brigadier, and I to pay the freight.
+
+I then inquired into the character and possibilities of the selected
+verb, and was much disturbed to find that it was over my size, it being
+chambered for fifty-seven rounds--fifty-seven ways of saying I _love_
+without reloading; and yet none of them likely to convince a girl that
+was laying for a title, or a title that was laying for rocks.
+
+It seemed to me that with my inexperience it would be foolish to go into
+action with this mitrailleuse, so I ordered it to the rear and told the
+facchino to provide something a little more primitive to start with,
+something less elaborate, some gentle old-fashioned flint-lock,
+smooth-bore, double-barreled thing, calculated to cripple at two hundred
+yards and kill at forty--an arrangement suitable for a beginner who
+could be satisfied with moderate results on the offstart and did not
+wish to take the whole territory in the first campaign.
+
+But in vain. He was not able to mend the matter, all the verbs being
+of the same build, all Gatlings, all of the same caliber and delivery,
+fifty-seven to the volley, and fatal at a mile and a half. But he said
+the auxiliary verb _avere, to have_, was a tidy thing, and easy to
+handle in a seaway, and less likely to miss stays in going about than
+some of the others; so, upon his recommendation I chose that one,
+and told him to take it along and scrape its bottom and break out its
+spinnaker and get it ready for business.
+
+I will explain that a facchino is a general-utility domestic. Mine was a
+horse-doctor in his better days, and a very good one.
+
+At the end of three days the facchino-doctor-brigadier was ready. I was
+also ready, with a stenographer. We were in a room called the Rope-Walk.
+This is a formidably long room, as is indicated by its facetious name,
+and is a good place for reviews. At 9:30 the F.-D.-B. took his place
+near me and gave the word of command; the drums began to rumble and
+thunder, the head of the forces appeared at an upper door, and the
+“march-past” was on. Down they filed, a blaze of variegated color, each
+squad gaudy in a uniform of its own and bearing a banner inscribed with
+its verbal rank and quality: first the Present Tense in Mediterranean
+blue and old gold, then the Past Definite in scarlet and black, then the
+Imperfect in green and yellow, then the Indicative Future in the stars
+and stripes, then the Old Red Sandstone Subjunctive in purple
+and silver--and so on and so on, fifty-seven privates and twenty
+commissioned and non-commissioned officers; certainly one of the most
+fiery and dazzling and eloquent sights I have ever beheld. I could not
+keep back the tears. Presently:
+
+“Halt!” commanded the Brigadier.
+
+“Front--face!”
+
+“Right dress!”
+
+“Stand at ease!”
+
+“One--two--three. In unison--_recite!_”
+
+It was fine. In one noble volume of sound of all the fifty-seven
+Haves in the Italian language burst forth in an exalting and splendid
+confusion. Then came commands:
+
+“About--face! Eyes--front! Helm alee--hard aport! Forward--march!” and
+the drums let go again.
+
+When the last Termination had disappeared, the commander said the
+instruction drill would now begin, and asked for suggestions. I said:
+
+“They say _I have, thou hast, he has_, and so on, but they don't say
+_what_. It will be better, and more definite, if they have something to
+have; just an object, you know, a something--anything will do; anything
+that will give the listener a sort of personal as well as grammatical
+interest in their joys and complaints, you see.”
+
+He said:
+
+“It is a good point. Would a dog do?”
+
+I said I did not know, but we could try a dog and see. So he sent out an
+aide-de-camp to give the order to add the dog.
+
+The six privates of the Present Tense now filed in, in charge of
+Sergeant Avere (_to have_), and displaying their banner. They formed in
+line of battle, and recited, one at a time, thus:
+
+“_Io ho un cane,_ I have a dog.”
+
+“_Tu hai un cane_, thou hast a dog.”
+
+_“Egli ha un cane, _he has a dog.”
+
+_“Noi abbiamo un cane_, we have a dog.”
+
+“_Voi avete un cane_, you have a dog.”
+
+“_Eglino hanno un cane,_ they have a dog.”
+
+No comment followed. They returned to camp, and I reflected a while. The
+commander said:
+
+“I fear you are disappointed.”
+
+“Yes,” I said; “they are too monotonous, too singsong, to
+dead-and-alive; they have no expression, no elocution. It isn't natural;
+it could never happen in real life. A person who had just acquired a dog
+is either blame' glad or blame' sorry. He is not on the fence. I never
+saw a case. What the nation do you suppose is the matter with these
+people?”
+
+He thought maybe the trouble was with the dog. He said:
+
+“These are _contadini_, you know, and they have a prejudice against
+dogs--that is, against marimane. Marimana dogs stand guard over people's
+vines and olives, you know, and are very savage, and thereby a grief and
+an inconvenience to persons who want other people's things at night. In
+my judgment they have taken this dog for a marimana, and have soured on
+him.”
+
+I saw that the dog was a mistake, and not functionable: we must try
+something else; something, if possible, that could evoke sentiment,
+interest, feeling.
+
+“What is cat, in Italian?” I asked.
+
+“Gatto.”
+
+“Is it a gentleman cat, or a lady?”
+
+“Gentleman cat.”
+
+“How are these people as regards that animal?”
+
+“We-ll, they--they--”
+
+“You hesitate: that is enough. How are they about chickens?”
+
+He tilted his eyes toward heaven in mute ecstasy. I understood.
+
+“What is chicken, in Italian?” I asked.
+
+“Pollo, _Podere._” (Podere is Italian for master. It is a title of
+courtesy, and conveys reverence and admiration.) “Pollo is one chicken
+by itself; when there are enough present to constitute a plural, it is
+_polli._”
+
+“Very well, polli will do. Which squad is detailed for duty next?”
+
+“The Past Definite.”
+
+“Send out and order it to the front--with chickens. And let them
+understand that we don't want any more of this cold indifference.”
+
+He gave the order to an aide, adding, with a haunting tenderness in his
+tone and a watering mouth in his aspect:
+
+“Convey to them the conception that these are unprotected chickens.” He
+turned to me, saluting with his hand to his temple, and explained, “It
+will inflame their interest in the poultry, sire.”
+
+A few minutes elapsed. Then the squad marched in and formed up, their
+faces glowing with enthusiasm, and the file-leader shouted:
+
+“_Ebbi polli_, I had chickens!”
+
+“Good!” I said. “Go on, the next.”
+
+“_Avest polli_, thou hadst chickens!”
+
+“Fine! Next!”
+
+“_Ebbe polli_, he had chickens!”
+
+“Moltimoltissimo! Go on, the next!”
+
+“_Avemmo polli,_ we had chickens!”
+
+“Basta-basta aspettatto avanti--last man--_charge_!”
+
+“_Ebbero polli_, they had chickens!”
+
+Then they formed in echelon, by columns of fours, refused the left, and
+retired in great style on the double-quick. I was enchanted, and said:
+
+“Now, doctor, that is something _like_! Chickens are the ticket, there
+is no doubt about it. What is the next squad?”
+
+“The Imperfect.”
+
+“How does it go?”
+
+“_Io Aveva_, I had, _tu avevi_, thou hadst, _egli aveva_, he had, _noi
+av_--”
+
+“Wait--we've just _had _the hads. What are you giving me?”
+
+“But this is another breed.”
+
+“What do we want of another breed? Isn't one breed enough? _Had_ is
+_had_, and your tricking it out in a fresh way of spelling isn't going
+to make it any hadder than it was before; now you know that yourself.”
+
+“But there is a distinction--they are not just the same Hads.”
+
+“How do you make it out?”
+
+“Well, you use that first Had when you are referring to something that
+happened at a named and sharp and perfectly definite moment; you use the
+other when the thing happened at a vaguely defined time and in a more
+prolonged and indefinitely continuous way.”
+
+“Why, doctor, it is pure nonsense; you know it yourself. Look here: If
+I have had a had, or have wanted to have had a had, or was in a position
+right then and there to have had a had that hadn't had any chance to go
+out hadding on account of this foolish discrimination which lets one Had
+go hadding in any kind of indefinite grammatical weather but restricts
+the other one to definite and datable meteoric convulsions, and keeps it
+pining around and watching the barometer all the time, and liable to
+get sick through confinement and lack of exercise, and all that sort of
+thing, why--why, the inhumanity of it is enough, let alone the
+wanton superfluity and uselessness of any such a loafing consumptive
+hospital-bird of a Had taking up room and cumbering the place for
+nothing. These finical refinements revolt me; it is not right, it is not
+honorable; it is constructive nepotism to keep in office a Had that is
+so delicate it can't come out when the wind's in the nor'west--I won't
+have this dude on the payroll. Cancel his exequator; and look here--”
+
+“But you miss the point. It is like this. You see--”
+
+“Never mind explaining, I don't care anything about it. Six Hads is
+enough for me; anybody that needs twelve, let him subscribe; I don't
+want any stock in a Had Trust. Knock out the Prolonged and Indefinitely
+Continuous; four-fifths of it is water, anyway.”
+
+“But I beg you, podere! It is often quite indispensable in cases
+where--”
+
+“Pipe the next squad to the assault!”
+
+But it was not to be; for at that moment the dull boom of the noon
+gun floated up out of far-off Florence, followed by the usual softened
+jangle of church-bells, Florentine and suburban, that bursts out in
+murmurous response; by labor-union law the _colazione_ (1) must stop;
+stop promptly, stop instantly, stop definitely, like the chosen and best
+of the breed of Hads.
+
+1. Colazione is Italian for a collection, a meeting, a seance, a
+sitting.--M.T.
+
+
+
+A BURLESQUE BIOGRAPHY
+
+Two or three persons having at different times intimated that if I would
+write an autobiography they would read it when they got leisure, I yield
+at last to this frenzied public demand and herewith tender my history.
+
+Ours is a noble house, and stretches a long way back into antiquity.
+The earliest ancestor the Twains have any record of was a friend of the
+family by the name of Higgins. This was in the eleventh century, when
+our people were living in Aberdeen, county of Cork, England. Why it is
+that our long line has ever since borne the maternal name (except when
+one of them now and then took a playful refuge in an alias to avert
+foolishness), instead of Higgins, is a mystery which none of us has ever
+felt much desire to stir. It is a kind of vague, pretty romance, and we
+leave it alone. All the old families do that way.
+
+Arthour Twain was a man of considerable note--a solicitor on the highway
+in William Rufus's time. At about the age of thirty he went to one of
+those fine old English places of resort called Newgate, to see about
+something, and never returned again. While there he died suddenly.
+
+Augustus Twain seems to have made something of a stir about the year
+1160. He was as full of fun as he could be, and used to take his old
+saber and sharpen it up, and get in a convenient place on a dark night,
+and stick it through people as they went by, to see them jump. He was a
+born humorist. But he got to going too far with it; and the first time
+he was found stripping one of these parties, the authorities removed one
+end of him, and put it up on a nice high place on Temple Bar, where it
+could contemplate the people and have a good time. He never liked any
+situation so much or stuck to it so long.
+
+Then for the next two hundred years the family tree shows a succession
+of soldiers--noble, high-spirited fellows, who always went into battle
+singing, right behind the army, and always went out a-whooping, right
+ahead of it.
+
+This is a scathing rebuke to old dead Froissart's poor witticism that
+our family tree never had but one limb to it, and that that one stuck
+out at right angles, and bore fruit winter and summer.
+
+Early in the fifteenth century we have Beau Twain, called “the Scholar.”
+ He wrote a beautiful, beautiful hand. And he could imitate anybody's
+hand so closely that it was enough to make a person laugh his head off
+to see it. He had infinite sport with his talent. But by and by he took
+a contract to break stone for a road, and the roughness of the work
+spoiled his hand. Still, he enjoyed life all the time he was in the
+stone business, which, with inconsiderable intervals, was some forty-two
+years. In fact, he died in harness. During all those long years he gave
+such satisfaction that he never was through with one contract a week
+till the government gave him another. He was a perfect pet. And he was
+always a favorite with his fellow-artists, and was a conspicuous member
+of their benevolent secret society, called the Chain Gang. He always
+wore his hair short, had a preference for striped clothes, and died
+lamented by the government. He was a sore loss to his country. For he
+was so regular.
+
+Some years later we have the illustrious John Morgan Twain. He came over
+to this country with Columbus in 1492 as a passenger. He appears to have
+been of a crusty, uncomfortable disposition. He complained of the food
+all the way over, and was always threatening to go ashore unless there
+was a change. He wanted fresh shad. Hardly a day passed over his head
+that he did not go idling about the ship with his nose in the air,
+sneering about the commander, and saying he did not believe Columbus
+knew where he was going to or had ever been there before. The memorable
+cry of “Land ho!” thrilled every heart in the ship but his. He gazed
+awhile through a piece of smoked glass at the penciled line lying on the
+distant water, and then said: “Land be hanged--it's a raft!”
+
+When this questionable passenger came on board the ship, he brought
+nothing with him but an old newspaper containing a handkerchief marked
+“B. G.,” one cotton sock marked “L. W. C.,” one woolen one marked “D.
+F.,” and a night-shirt marked “O. M. R.” And yet during the voyage he
+worried more about his “trunk,” and gave himself more airs about it,
+than all the rest of the passengers put together. If the ship was “down
+by the head,” and would not steer, he would go and move his “trunk”
+ further aft, and then watch the effect. If the ship was “by the stern,”
+ he would suggest to Columbus to detail some men to “shift that baggage.”
+ In storms he had to be gagged, because his wailings about his “trunk”
+ made it impossible for the men to hear the orders. The man does not
+appear to have been openly charged with any gravely unbecoming thing,
+but it is noted in the ship's log as a “curious circumstance” that
+albeit he brought his baggage on board the ship in a newspaper, he took
+it ashore in four trunks, a queensware crate, and a couple of champagne
+baskets. But when he came back insinuating, in an insolent, swaggering
+way, that some of this things were missing, and was going to search
+the other passengers' baggage, it was too much, and they threw him
+overboard. They watched long and wonderingly for him to come up, but not
+even a bubble rose on the quietly ebbing tide. But while every one was
+most absorbed in gazing over the side, and the interest was momentarily
+increasing, it was observed with consternation that the vessel was
+adrift and the anchor-cable hanging limp from the bow. Then in the
+ship's dimmed and ancient log we find this quaint note:
+
+“In time it was discouvered yt ye troblesome passenger hadde gone downe
+and got ye anchor, and toke ye same and solde it to ye dam sauvages from
+ye interior, saying yt he hadde founde it, ye sonne of a ghun!”
+
+Yet this ancestor had good and noble instincts, and it is with pride
+that we call to mind the fact that he was the first white person who
+ever interested himself in the work of elevating and civilizing our
+Indians. He built a commodious jail and put up a gallows, and to
+his dying day he claimed with satisfaction that he had had a more
+restraining and elevating influence on the Indians than any other
+reformer that ever labored among them. At this point the chronicle
+becomes less frank and chatty, and closes abruptly by saying that the
+old voyager went to see his gallows perform on the first white man ever
+hanged in America, and while there received injuries which terminated in
+his death.
+
+The great-grandson of the “Reformer” flourished in sixteen hundred and
+something, and was known in our annals as “the old Admiral,” though in
+history he had other titles. He was long in command of fleets of swift
+vessels, well armed and manned, and did great service in hurrying up
+merchantmen. Vessels which he followed and kept his eagle eye on, always
+made good fair time across the ocean. But if a ship still loitered
+in spite of all he could do, his indignation would grow till he could
+contain himself no longer--and then he would take that ship home where
+he lived and keep it there carefully, expecting the owners to come for
+it, but they never did. And he would try to get the idleness and sloth
+out of the sailors of that ship by compelling them to take invigorating
+exercise and a bath. He called it “walking a plank.” All the pupils
+liked it. At any rate, they never found any fault with it after trying
+it. When the owners were late coming for their ships, the Admiral always
+burned them, so that the insurance money should not be lost. At last
+this fine old tar was cut down in the fullness of his years and honors.
+And to her dying day, his poor heart-broken widow believed that if
+he had been cut down fifteen minutes sooner he might have been
+resuscitated.
+
+Charles Henry Twain lived during the latter part of the seventeenth
+century, and was a zealous and distinguished missionary. He converted
+sixteen thousand South Sea islanders, and taught them that a dog-tooth
+necklace and a pair of spectacles was not enough clothing to come to
+divine service in. His poor flock loved him very, very dearly; and
+when his funeral was over, they got up in a body (and came out of the
+restaurant) with tears in their eyes, and saying, one to another, that
+he was a good tender missionary, and they wished they had some more of
+him.
+
+Pah-go-to-wah-wah-pukketekeewis (Mighty-Hunter-with-a-Hog-Eye-Twain)
+adorned the middle of the eighteenth century, and aided General Braddock
+with all his heart to resist the oppressor Washington. It was this
+ancestor who fired seventeen times at our Washington from behind a tree.
+So far the beautiful romantic narrative in the moral story-books is
+correct; but when that narrative goes on to say that at the seventeenth
+round the awe-stricken savage said solemnly that that man was being
+reserved by the Great Spirit for some mighty mission, and he dared not
+lift his sacrilegious rifle against him again, the narrative seriously
+impairs the integrity of history. What he did say was:
+
+“It ain't no (hic) no use. 'At man's so drunk he can't stan' still long
+enough for a man to hit him. I (hic) I can't 'ford to fool away any more
+am'nition on him.”
+
+That was why he stopped at the seventeenth round, and it was a good,
+plain, matter-of-fact reason, too, and one that easily commends itself
+to us by the eloquent, persuasive flavor of probability there is about
+it.
+
+I also enjoyed the story-book narrative, but I felt a marring misgiving
+that every Indian at Braddock's Defeat who fired at a soldier a couple
+of times (two easily grows to seventeen in a century), and missed
+him, jumped to the conclusion that the Great Spirit was reserving that
+soldier for some grand mission; and so I somehow feared that the only
+reason why Washington's case is remembered and the others forgotten is,
+that in his the prophecy came true, and in that of the others it
+didn't. There are not books enough on earth to contain the record of the
+prophecies Indians and other unauthorized parties have made; but one may
+carry in his overcoat pockets the record of all the prophecies that have
+been fulfilled.
+
+I will remark here, in passing, that certain ancestors of mine are so
+thoroughly well-known in history by their aliases, that I have not felt
+it to be worth while to dwell upon them, or even mention them in the
+order of their birth. Among these may be mentioned Richard Brinsley
+Twain, alias Guy Fawkes; John Wentworth Twain, alias Sixteen-String
+Jack; William Hogarth Twain, alias Jack Sheppard; Ananias Twain, alias
+Baron Munchausen; John George Twain, alias Captain Kydd; and then there
+are George Francis Twain, Tom Pepper, Nebuchadnezzar, and Baalam's
+Ass--they all belong to our family, but to a branch of it somewhat
+distinctly removed from the honorable direct line--in fact, a collateral
+branch, whose members chiefly differ from the ancient stock in that, in
+order to acquire the notoriety we have always yearned and hungered for,
+they have got into a low way of going to jail instead of getting hanged.
+
+It is not well, when writing an autobiography, to follow your ancestry
+down too close to your own time--it is safest to speak only vaguely of
+your great-grandfather, and then skip from there to yourself, which I
+now do.
+
+I was born without teeth--and there Richard III. had the advantage of
+me; but I was born without a humpback, likewise, and there I had the
+advantage of him. My parents were neither very poor nor conspicuously
+honest.
+
+But now a thought occurs to me. My own history would really seem so tame
+contrasted with that of my ancestors, that it is simply wisdom to leave
+it unwritten until I am hanged. If some other biographies I have read
+had stopped with the ancestry until a like event occurred, it would have
+been a felicitous thing for the reading public. How does it strike you?
+
+
+
+HOW TO TELL A STORY
+
+The Humorous Story an American Development.--Its Difference from Comic
+and Witty Stories
+
+I do not claim that I can tell a story as it ought to be told. I only
+claim to know how a story ought to be told, for I have been almost daily
+in the company of the most expert story-tellers for many years.
+
+There are several kinds of stories, but only one difficult kind--the
+humorous. I will talk mainly about that one. The humorous story is
+American, the comic story is English, the witty story is French. The
+humorous story depends for its effect upon the _manner _of the telling;
+the comic story and the witty story upon the _matter_.
+
+The humorous story may be spun out to great length, and may wander
+around as much as it pleases, and arrive nowhere in particular; but the
+comic and witty stories must be brief and end with a point. The humorous
+story bubbles gently along, the others burst.
+
+The humorous story is strictly a work of art--high and delicate art--and
+only an artist can tell it; but no art is necessary in telling the comic
+and the witty story; anybody can do it. The art of telling a humorous
+story--understand, I mean by word of mouth, not print--was created in
+America, and has remained at home.
+
+The humorous story is told gravely; the teller does his best to conceal
+the fact that he even dimly suspects that there is anything funny about
+it; but the teller of the comic story tells you beforehand that it is
+one of the funniest things he has ever heard, then tells it with eager
+delight, and is the first person to laugh when he gets through. And
+sometimes, if he has had good success, he is so glad and happy that
+he will repeat the “nub” of it and glance around from face to face,
+collecting applause, and then repeat it again. It is a pathetic thing to
+see.
+
+Very often, of course, the rambling and disjointed humorous story
+finishes with a nub, point, snapper, or whatever you like to call it.
+Then the listener must be alert, for in many cases the teller will
+divert attention from that nub by dropping it in a carefully casual and
+indifferent way, with the pretense that he does not know it is a nub.
+
+Artemus Ward used that trick a good deal; then when the belated audience
+presently caught the joke he would look up with innocent surprise, as if
+wondering what they had found to laugh at. Dan Setchell used it before
+him, Nye and Riley and others use it today.
+
+But the teller of the comic story does not slur the nub; he shouts it at
+you--every time. And when he prints it, in England, France, Germany, and
+Italy, he italicizes it, puts some whopping exclamation-points after
+it, and sometimes explains it in a parenthesis. All of which is very
+depressing, and makes one want to renounce joking and lead a better
+life.
+
+Let me set down an instance of the comic method, using an anecdote which
+has been popular all over the world for twelve or fifteen hundred years.
+The teller tells it in this way:
+
+THE WOUNDED SOLDIER
+
+In the course of a certain battle a soldier whose leg had been shot
+off appealed to another soldier who was hurrying by to carry him to the
+rear, informing him at the same time of the loss which he had sustained;
+whereupon the generous son of Mars, shouldering the unfortunate,
+proceeded to carry out his desire. The bullets and cannon-balls were
+flying in all directions, and presently one of the latter took the
+wounded man's head off--without, however, his deliverer being aware of
+it. In no long time he was hailed by an officer, who said:
+
+“Where are you going with that carcass?”
+
+“To the rear, sir--he's lost his leg!”
+
+“His leg, forsooth?” responded the astonished officer; “you mean his
+head, you booby.”
+
+Whereupon the soldier dispossessed himself of his burden, and stood
+looking down upon it in great perplexity. At length he said:
+
+“It is true, sir, just as you have said.” Then after a pause he added,
+“_But he TOLD me IT WAS HIS LEG!!!!!_”
+
+Here the narrator bursts into explosion after explosion of thunderous
+horse-laughter, repeating that nub from time to time through his gasping
+and shriekings and suffocatings.
+
+It takes only a minute and a half to tell that in its comic-story form;
+and isn't worth the telling, after all. Put into the humorous-story
+form it takes ten minutes, and is about the funniest thing I have ever
+listened to--as James Whitcomb Riley tells it.
+
+He tells it in the character of a dull-witted old farmer who has just
+heard it for the first time, thinks it is unspeakably funny, and is
+trying to repeat it to a neighbor. But he can't remember it; so he gets
+all mixed up and wanders helplessly round and round, putting in tedious
+details that don't belong in the tale and only retard it; taking them
+out conscientiously and putting in others that are just as useless;
+making minor mistakes now and then and stopping to correct them and
+explain how he came to make them; remembering things which he forgot
+to put in in their proper place and going back to put them in there;
+stopping his narrative a good while in order to try to recall the name
+of the soldier that was hurt, and finally remembering that the soldier's
+name was not mentioned, and remarking placidly that the name is of no
+real importance, anyway--better, of course, if one knew it, but not
+essential, after all--and so on, and so on, and so on.
+
+The teller is innocent and happy and pleased with himself, and has
+to stop every little while to hold himself in and keep from laughing
+outright; and does hold in, but his body quakes in a jelly-like way with
+interior chuckles; and at the end of the ten minutes the audience have
+laughed until they are exhausted, and the tears are running down their
+faces.
+
+The simplicity and innocence and sincerity and unconsciousness of the
+old farmer are perfectly simulated, and the result is a performance
+which is thoroughly charming and delicious. This is art--and fine and
+beautiful, and only a master can compass it; but a machine could tell
+the other story.
+
+To string incongruities and absurdities together in a wandering and
+sometimes purposeless way, and seem innocently unaware that they
+are absurdities, is the basis of the American art, if my position is
+correct. Another feature is the slurring of the point. A third is the
+dropping of a studied remark apparently without knowing it, as if one
+where thinking aloud. The fourth and last is the pause.
+
+Artemus Ward dealt in numbers three and four a good deal. He would begin
+to tell with great animation something which he seemed to think was
+wonderful; then lose confidence, and after an apparently absent-minded
+pause add an incongruous remark in a soliloquizing way; and that was the
+remark intended to explode the mine--and it did.
+
+For instance, he would say eagerly, excitedly, “I once knew a man in New
+Zealand who hadn't a tooth in his head”--here his animation would
+die out; a silent, reflective pause would follow, then he would say
+dreamily, and as if to himself, “and yet that man could beat a drum
+better than any man I ever saw.”
+
+The pause is an exceedingly important feature in any kind of story, and
+a frequently recurring feature, too. It is a dainty thing, and delicate,
+and also uncertain and treacherous; for it must be exactly the right
+length--no more and no less--or it fails of its purpose and makes
+trouble. If the pause is too short the impressive point is passed, and
+the audience have had time to divine that a surprise is intended--and
+then you can't surprise them, of course.
+
+On the platform I used to tell a negro ghost story that had a pause in
+front of the snapper on the end, and that pause was the most important
+thing in the whole story. If I got it the right length precisely, I
+could spring the finishing ejaculation with effect enough to make some
+impressible girl deliver a startled little yelp and jump out of her
+seat--and that was what I was after. This story was called “The
+Golden Arm,” and was told in this fashion. You can practice with it
+yourself--and mind you look out for the pause and get it right.
+
+
+THE GOLDEN ARM
+
+Once 'pon a time dey wuz a monsus mean man, en he live 'way out in de
+prairie all 'lone by hisself, 'cep'n he had a wife. En bimeby she died,
+en he tuck en toted her way out dah in de prairie en buried her. Well,
+she had a golden arm--all solid gold, fum de shoulder down. He wuz
+pow'ful mean--pow'ful; en dat night he couldn't sleep, caze he want dat
+golden arm so bad.
+
+When it come midnight he couldn't stan' it no mo'; so he git up, he did,
+en tuck his lantern en shoved out thoo de storm en dug her up en got de
+golden arm; en he bent his head down 'gin de win', en plowed en plowed
+en plowed thoo de snow. Den all on a sudden he stop (make a considerable
+pause here, and look startled, and take a listening attitude) en say:
+“My _lan'_, what's dat?”
+
+En he listen--en listen--en de win' say (set your teeth together and
+imitate the wailing and wheezing singsong of the wind), “Bzzz-z-zzz”--en
+den, way back yonder whah de grave is, he hear a _voice_!--he hear
+a voice all mix' up in de win'--can't hardly tell 'em 'part--
+“Bzzz--zzz--W-h-o--g-o-t--m-y--g-o-l-d-e-n _arm?_” (You must begin to
+shiver violently now.)
+
+En he begin to shiver en shake, en say, “Oh, my! _Oh_, my lan'!” en de
+win' blow de lantern out, en de snow en sleet blow in his face en mos'
+choke him, en he start a-plowin' knee-deep toward home mos' dead, he so
+sk'yerd--en pooty soon he hear de voice agin, en (pause) it 'us comin
+_after _him! “Bzzz--zzz--zzz W-h-o--g-o-t--m-y--g-o-l-d-e-n--_arm_?”
+
+When he git to de pasture he hear it agin--closter now, en
+_a-comin'!_--a-comin' back dah in de dark en de storm--(repeat the wind
+and the voice). When he git to de house he rush upstairs en jump in de
+bed en kiver up, head and years, en lay da shiverin' en shakin'--en
+den way out dah he hear it _agin!_--en a-_comin'_! En bimeby he hear
+(pause--awed, listening attitude)--pat--pat--pat _Hit's a-comin'
+upstairs!_ Den he hear de latch, en he _know _it's in de room!
+
+Den pooty soon he know it's a-_stannin' by de bed!_ (Pause.) Den--he
+know it's a-_bendin' down over him_--en he cain't skasely git his
+breath! Den--den--he seem to feel someth'n' _c-o-l-d_, right down 'most
+agin his head! (Pause.)
+
+Den de voice say, _right at his year_--“W-h-o--g-o-t--m-y g-o-l-d-e-n
+_arm?_” (You must wail it out very plaintively and accusingly; then
+you stare steadily and impressively into the face of the farthest-gone
+auditor--a girl, preferably--and let that awe-inspiring pause begin to
+build itself in the deep hush. When it has reached exactly the right
+length, jump suddenly at that girl and yell, “_You've_ got it!”)
+
+If you've got the _pause _right, she'll fetch a dear little yelp and
+spring right out of her shoes. But you _must _get the pause right; and
+you will find it the most troublesome and aggravating and uncertain
+thing you ever undertook.
+
+
+
+GENERAL WASHINGTON'S NEGRO BODY-SERVANT
+
+A Biographical Sketch
+
+The stirring part of this celebrated colored man's life properly began
+with his death--that is to say, the notable features of his biography
+began with the first time he died. He had been little heard of up to
+that time, but since then we have never ceased to hear of him; we have
+never ceased to hear of him at stated, unfailing intervals. His was a
+most remarkable career, and I have thought that its history would make
+a valuable addition to our biographical literature. Therefore, I
+have carefully collated the materials for such a work, from authentic
+sources, and here present them to the public. I have rigidly excluded
+from these pages everything of a doubtful character, with the object in
+view of introducing my work into the schools for the instruction of the
+youth of my country.
+
+The name of the famous body-servant of General Washington was George.
+After serving his illustrious master faithfully for half a century, and
+enjoying throughout this long term his high regard and confidence, it
+became his sorrowful duty at last to lay that beloved master to rest in
+his peaceful grave by the Potomac. Ten years afterward--in 1809--full
+of years and honors, he died himself, mourned by all who knew him. The
+_Boston Gazette_ of that date thus refers to the event:
+
+George, the favorite body-servant of the lamented Washington, died in
+Richmond, Va., last Tuesday, at the ripe age of 95 years. His intellect
+was unimpaired, and his memory tenacious, up to within a few minutes of
+his decease. He was present at the second installation of Washington as
+President, and also at his funeral, and distinctly remembered all the
+prominent incidents connected with those noted events.
+
+From this period we hear no more of the favorite body-servant of General
+Washington until May, 1825, at which time he died again. A Philadelphia
+paper thus speaks of the sad occurrence:
+
+At Macon, Ga., last week, a colored man named George, who was the
+favorite body-servant of General Washington, died at the advanced age
+of 95 years. Up to within a few hours of his dissolution he was in full
+possession of all his faculties, and could distinctly recollect the
+second installation of Washington, his death and burial, the surrender
+of Cornwallis, the battle of Trenton, the griefs and hardships of Valley
+Forge, etc. Deceased was followed to the grave by the entire population
+of Macon.
+
+On the Fourth of July, 1830, and also of 1834 and 1836, the subject of
+this sketch was exhibited in great state upon the rostrum of the
+orator of the day, and in November of 1840 he died again. The St. Louis
+_Republican_ of the 25th of that month spoke as follows:
+
+“ANOTHER RELIC OF THE REVOLUTION GONE.”
+
+“George, once the favorite body-servant of General Washington, died
+yesterday at the house of Mr. John Leavenworth in this city, at
+the venerable age of 95 years. He was in the full possession of his
+faculties up to the hour of his death, and distinctly recollected the
+first and second installations and death of President Washington,
+the surrender of Cornwallis, the battles of Trenton and Monmouth, the
+sufferings of the patriot army at Valley Forge, the proclamation of the
+Declaration of Independence, the speech of Patrick Henry in the Virginia
+House of Delegates, and many other old-time reminiscences of stirring
+interest. Few white men die lamented as was this aged negro. The funeral
+was very largely attended.”
+
+During the next ten or eleven years the subject of this sketch appeared
+at intervals at Fourth-of-July celebrations in various parts of the
+country, and was exhibited upon the rostrum with flattering success. But
+in the fall of 1855 he died again. The California papers thus speak of
+the event:
+
+ANOTHER OLD HERO GONE
+
+Died, at Dutch Flat, on the 7th of March, George (once the confidential
+body-servant of General Washington), at the great age of 95 years. His
+memory, which did not fail him till the last, was a wonderful storehouse
+of interesting reminiscences. He could distinctly recollect the
+first and second installations and death of President Washington, the
+surrender of Cornwallis, the battles of Trenton and Monmouth, and
+Bunker Hill, the proclamation of the Declaration of Independence, and
+Braddock's defeat. George was greatly respected in Dutch Flat, and it is
+estimated that there were 10,000 people present at his funeral.
+
+The last time the subject of this sketch died was in June, 1864;
+and until we learn the contrary, it is just to presume that he died
+permanently this time. The Michigan papers thus refer to the sorrowful
+event:
+
+ANOTHER CHERISHED REMNANT OF THE REVOLUTION GONE
+
+George, a colored man, and once the favorite body-servant of George
+Washington, died in Detroit last week, at the patriarchal age of 95
+years. To the moment of his death his intellect was unclouded, and he
+could distinctly remember the first and second installations and death
+of Washington, the surrender of Cornwallis, the battles of Trenton
+and Monmouth, and Bunker Hill, the proclamation of the Declaration of
+Independence, Braddock's defeat, the throwing over of the tea in Boston
+harbor, and the landing of the Pilgrims. He died greatly respected, and
+was followed to the grave by a vast concourse of people.
+
+The faithful old servant is gone! We shall never see him more until
+he turns up again. He has closed his long and splendid career of
+dissolution, for the present, and sleeps peacefully, as only they sleep
+who have earned their rest. He was in all respects a remarkable man. He
+held his age better than any celebrity that has figured in history; and
+the longer he lived the stronger and longer his memory grew. If he lives
+to die again, he will distinctly recollect the discovery of America.
+
+The above resume of his biography I believe to be substantially correct,
+although it is possible that he may have died once or twice in obscure
+places where the event failed of newspaper notoriety. One fault I find
+in all the notices of his death I have quoted, and this ought to be
+corrected. In them he uniformly and impartially died at the age of 95.
+This could not have been. He might have done that once, or maybe twice,
+but he could not have continued it indefinitely. Allowing that when he
+first died, he died at the age of 95, he was 151 years old when he died
+last, in 1864. But his age did not keep pace with his recollections.
+When he died the last time, he distinctly remembered the landing of the
+Pilgrims, which took place in 1620. He must have been about twenty years
+old when he witnessed that event, wherefore it is safe to assert that
+the body-servant of General Washington was in the neighborhood of
+two hundred and sixty or seventy years old when he departed this life
+finally.
+
+Having waited a proper length of time, to see if the subject of his
+sketch had gone from us reliably and irrevocably, I now publish his
+biography with confidence, and respectfully offer it to a mourning
+nation.
+
+P.S.--I see by the papers that this infamous old fraud has just died
+again, in Arkansas. This makes six times that he is known to have died,
+and always in a new place. The death of Washington's body-servant has
+ceased to be a novelty; it's charm is gone; the people are tired of
+it; let it cease. This well-meaning but misguided negro has now put six
+different communities to the expense of burying him in state, and has
+swindled tens of thousands of people into following him to the grave
+under the delusion that a select and peculiar distinction was being
+conferred upon them. Let him stay buried for good now; and let that
+newspaper suffer the severest censure that shall ever, in all the future
+time, publish to the world that General Washington's favorite colored
+body-servant has died again.
+
+
+
+WIT INSPIRATIONS OF THE “TWO-YEAR-OLDS”
+
+All infants appear to have an impertinent and disagreeable fashion
+nowadays of saying “smart” things on most occasions that offer, and
+especially on occasions when they ought not to be saying anything at
+all. Judging by the average published specimens of smart sayings, the
+rising generation of children are little better than idiots. And the
+parents must surely be but little better than the children, for in most
+cases they are the publishers of the sunbursts of infantile imbecility
+which dazzle us from the pages of our periodicals. I may seem to speak
+with some heat, not to say a suspicion of personal spite; and I do admit
+that it nettles me to hear about so many gifted infants in these days,
+and remember that I seldom said anything smart when I was a child. I
+tried it once or twice, but it was not popular. The family were not
+expecting brilliant remarks from me, and so they snubbed me sometimes
+and spanked me the rest. But it makes my flesh creep and my blood run
+cold to think what might have happened to me if I had dared to utter
+some of the smart things of this generation's “four-year-olds” where my
+father could hear me. To have simply skinned me alive and considered his
+duty at an end would have seemed to him criminal leniency toward one
+so sinning. He was a stern, unsmiling man, and hated all forms of
+precocity. If I had said some of the things I have referred to, and said
+them in his hearing, he would have destroyed me. He would, indeed. He
+would, provided the opportunity remained with him. But it would not, for
+I would have had judgment enough to take some strychnine first and say
+my smart thing afterward. The fair record of my life has been tarnished
+by just one pun. My father overheard that, and he hunted me over four
+or five townships seeking to take my life. If I had been full-grown, of
+course he would have been right; but, child as I was, I could not know
+how wicked a thing I had done.
+
+I made one of those remarks ordinarily called “smart things” before
+that, but it was not a pun. Still, it came near causing a serious
+rupture between my father and myself. My father and mother, my uncle
+Ephraim and his wife, and one or two others were present, and the
+conversation turned on a name for me. I was lying there trying some
+India-rubber rings of various patterns, and endeavoring to make a
+selection, for I was tired of trying to cut my teeth on people's
+fingers, and wanted to get hold of something that would enable me to
+hurry the thing through and get something else. Did you ever notice
+what a nuisance it was cutting your teeth on your nurse's finger, or how
+back-breaking and tiresome it was trying to cut them on your big toe?
+And did you never get out of patience and wish your teeth were in Jerico
+long before you got them half cut? To me it seems as if these things
+happened yesterday. And they did, to some children. But I digress. I
+was lying there trying the India-rubber rings. I remember looking at the
+clock and noticing that in an hour and twenty-five minutes I would be
+two weeks old, and thinking how little I had done to merit the blessings
+that were so unsparingly lavished upon me. My father said:
+
+“Abraham is a good name. My grandfather was named Abraham.”
+
+My mother said:
+
+“Abraham is a good name. Very well. Let us have Abraham for one of his
+names.”
+
+I said:
+
+“Abraham suits the subscriber.”
+
+My father frowned, my mother looked pleased; my aunt said:
+
+“What a little darling it is!”
+
+My father said:
+
+“Isaac is a good name, and Jacob is a good name.”
+
+My mother assented, and said:
+
+“No names are better. Let us add Isaac and Jacob to his names.”
+
+I said:
+
+“All right. Isaac and Jacob are good enough for yours truly. Pass me
+that rattle, if you please. I can't chew India-rubber rings all day.”
+
+Not a soul made a memorandum of these sayings of mine, for publication.
+I saw that, and did it myself, else they would have been utterly lost.
+So far from meeting with a generous encouragement like other children
+when developing intellectually, I was now furiously scowled upon by my
+father; my mother looked grieved and anxious, and even my aunt had about
+her an expression of seeming to think that maybe I had gone too far. I
+took a vicious bite out of an India-rubber ring, and covertly broke the
+rattle over the kitten's head, but said nothing. Presently my father
+said:
+
+“Samuel is a very excellent name.”
+
+I saw that trouble was coming. Nothing could prevent it. I laid down my
+rattle; over the side of the cradle I dropped my uncle's silver watch,
+the clothes-brush, the toy dog, my tin soldier, the nutmeg-grater, and
+other matters which I was accustomed to examine, and meditate upon and
+make pleasant noises with, and bang and batter and break when I needed
+wholesome entertainment. Then I put on my little frock and my little
+bonnet, and took my pygmy shoes in one hand and my licorice in the
+other, and climbed out on the floor. I said to myself, Now, if the worse
+comes to worst, I am ready. Then I said aloud, in a firm voice:
+
+“Father, I cannot, cannot wear the name of Samuel.”
+
+“My son!”
+
+“Father, I mean it. I cannot.”
+
+“Why?”
+
+“Father, I have an invincible antipathy to that name.”
+
+“My son, this is unreasonable. Many great and good men have been named
+Samuel.”
+
+“Sir, I have yet to hear of the first instance.”
+
+“What! There was Samuel the prophet. Was not he great and good?”
+
+“Not so very.”
+
+“My son! With His own voice the Lord called him.”
+
+“Yes, sir, and had to call him a couple times before he could come!”
+
+And then I sallied forth, and that stern old man sallied forth after
+me. He overtook me at noon the following day, and when the interview
+was over I had acquired the name of Samuel, and a thrashing, and other
+useful information; and by means of this compromise my father's wrath
+was appeased and a misunderstanding bridged over which might have become
+a permanent rupture if I had chosen to be unreasonable. But just judging
+by this episode, what would my father have done to me if I had
+ever uttered in his hearing one of the flat, sickly things these
+“two-years-olds” say in print nowadays? In my opinion there would have
+been a case of infanticide in our family.
+
+
+
+AN ENTERTAINING ARTICLE
+
+I take the following paragraph from an article in the Boston
+_Advertiser_:
+
+AN ENGLISH CRITIC ON MARK TWAIN
+
+Perhaps the most successful flights of humor of Mark Twain have been
+descriptions of the persons who did not appreciate his humor at all. We
+have become familiar with the Californians who were thrilled with terror
+by his burlesque of a newspaper reporter's way of telling a story,
+and we have heard of the Pennsylvania clergyman who sadly returned his
+_Innocents Abroad_ to the book-agent with the remark that “the man who
+could shed tears over the tomb of Adam must be an idiot.” But Mark Twain
+may now add a much more glorious instance to his string of trophies.
+The _Saturday Review,_ in its number of October 8th, reviews his book
+of travels, which has been republished in England, and reviews it
+seriously. We can imagine the delight of the humorist in reading this
+tribute to his power; and indeed it is so amusing in itself that he can
+hardly do better than reproduce the article in full in his next monthly
+Memoranda.
+
+(Publishing the above paragraph thus, gives me a sort of authority for
+reproducing the _Saturday Review's_ article in full in these pages. I
+dearly wanted to do it, for I cannot write anything half so delicious
+myself. If I had a cast-iron dog that could read this English criticism
+and preserve his austerity, I would drive him off the door-step.)
+
+(From the London “Saturday Review.”)
+
+REVIEWS OF NEW BOOKS
+
+_The Innocents Abroad_. A Book of Travels. By Mark Twain. London:
+Hotten, publisher. 1870.
+
+Lord Macaulay died too soon. We never felt this so deeply as when we
+finished the last chapter of the above-named extravagant work. Macaulay
+died too soon--for none but he could mete out complete and comprehensive
+justice to the insolence, the impertinence, the presumption, the
+mendacity, and, above all, the majestic ignorance of this author.
+
+To say that _The Innocents Abroad_ is a curious book, would be to use
+the faintest language--would be to speak of the Matterhorn as a neat
+elevation or of Niagara as being “nice” or “pretty.” “Curious” is too
+tame a word wherewith to describe the imposing insanity of this work.
+There is no word that is large enough or long enough. Let us, therefore,
+photograph a passing glimpse of book and author, and trust the rest to
+the reader. Let the cultivated English student of human nature
+picture to himself this Mark Twain as a person capable of doing the
+following-described things--and not only doing them, but with incredible
+innocence _printing them_ calmly and tranquilly in a book. For instance:
+
+He states that he entered a hair-dresser's in Paris to get shaved, and
+the first “rake” the barber gave him with his razor it _loosened his
+“hide”_ and _lifted him out of the chair._
+
+This is unquestionably exaggerated. In Florence he was so annoyed by
+beggars that he pretends to have seized and eaten one in a frantic
+spirit of revenge. There is, of course, no truth in this. He gives at
+full length a theatrical program seventeen or eighteen hundred years
+old, which he professes to have found in the ruins of the Coliseum,
+among the dirt and mold and rubbish. It is a sufficient comment upon
+this statement to remark that even a cast-iron program would not have
+lasted so long under such circumstances. In Greece he plainly betrays
+both fright and flight upon one occasion, but with frozen effrontery
+puts the latter in this falsely tamed form: “We _sidled _toward the
+Piraeus.” “Sidled,” indeed! He does not hesitate to intimate that at
+Ephesus, when his mule strayed from the proper course, he got down, took
+him under his arm, carried him to the road again, pointed him right,
+remounted, and went to sleep contentedly till it was time to restore the
+beast to the path once more. He states that a growing youth among his
+ship's passengers was in the constant habit of appeasing his hunger with
+soap and oakum between meals. In Palestine he tells of ants that
+came eleven miles to spend the summer in the desert and brought their
+provisions with them; yet he shows by his description of the country
+that the feat was an impossibility. He mentions, as if it were the most
+commonplace of matters, that he cut a Moslem in two in broad daylight
+in Jerusalem, with Godfrey de Bouillon's sword, and would have shed
+more blood _if he had had a graveyard of his own._ These statements are
+unworthy a moment's attention. Mr. Twain or any other foreigner who did
+such a thing in Jerusalem would be mobbed, and would infallibly lose his
+life. But why go on? Why repeat more of his audacious and exasperating
+falsehoods? Let us close fittingly with this one: he affirms that “in
+the mosque of St. Sophia at Constantinople I got my feet so stuck up
+with a complication of gums, slime, and general impurity, that I wore
+out more than two thousand pair of bootjacks getting my boots off that
+night, and even then some Christian hide peeled off with them.” It is
+monstrous. Such statements are simply lies--there is no other name
+for them. Will the reader longer marvel at the brutal ignorance that
+pervades the American nation when we tell him that we are informed
+upon perfectly good authority that this extravagant compilation of
+falsehoods, this exhaustless mine of stupendous lies, this _Innocents
+Abroad_, has actually been adopted by the schools and colleges of
+several of the states as a text-book!
+
+But if his falsehoods are distressing, his innocence and his ignorance
+are enough to make one burn the book and despise the author. In one
+place he was so appalled at the sudden spectacle of a murdered man,
+unveiled by the moonlight, that he jumped out of the window, going
+through sash and all, and then remarks with the most childlike
+simplicity that he “was not scared, but was considerably agitated.”
+ It puts us out of patience to note that the simpleton is densely
+unconscious that Lucrezia Borgia ever existed off the stage. He is
+vulgarly ignorant of all foreign languages, but is frank enough to
+criticize, the Italians' use of their own tongue. He says they spell the
+name of their great painter “Vinci, but pronounce it Vinchy”--and then
+adds with a naivete possible only to helpless ignorance, “foreigners
+always spell better than they pronounce.” In another place he commits
+the bald absurdity of putting the phrase “tare an ouns” into an
+Italian's mouth. In Rome he unhesitatingly believes the legend that St.
+Philip Neri's heart was so inflamed with divine love that it burst
+his ribs--believes it wholly because an author with a learned list of
+university degrees strung after his name endorses it--“otherwise,” says
+this gentle idiot, “I should have felt a curiosity to know what Philip
+had for dinner.” Our author makes a long, fatiguing journey to the
+Grotto del Cane on purpose to test its poisoning powers on a dog--got
+elaborately ready for the experiment, and then discovered that he had no
+dog. A wiser person would have kept such a thing discreetly to himself,
+but with this harmless creature everything comes out. He hurts his foot
+in a rut two thousand years old in exhumed Pompeii, and presently, when
+staring at one of the cinder-like corpses unearthed in the next square,
+conceives the idea that maybe it is the remains of the ancient Street
+Commissioner, and straightway his horror softens down to a sort of
+chirpy contentment with the condition of things. In Damascus he visits
+the well of Ananias, three thousand years old, and is as surprised and
+delighted as a child to find that the water is “as pure and fresh as if
+the well had been dug yesterday.” In the Holy Land he gags desperately
+at the hard Arabic and Hebrew Biblical names, and finally concludes to
+call them Baldwinsville, Williamsburgh, and so on, “for convenience of
+spelling.”
+
+We have thus spoken freely of this man's stupefying simplicity and
+innocence, but we cannot deal similarly with his colossal ignorance. We
+do not know where to begin. And if we knew where to begin, we certainly
+would not know where to leave off. We will give one specimen, and one
+only. He did not know, until he got to Rome, that Michael Angelo
+was dead! And then, instead of crawling away and hiding his shameful
+ignorance somewhere, he proceeds to express a pious, grateful sort of
+satisfaction that he is gone and out of his troubles!
+
+No, the reader may seek out the author's exhibition of his uncultivation
+for himself. The book is absolutely dangerous, considering the magnitude
+and variety of its misstatements, and the convincing confidence with
+which they are made. And yet it is a text-book in the schools of
+America.
+
+The poor blunderer mouses among the sublime creations of the Old
+Masters, trying to acquire the elegant proficiency in art-knowledge,
+which he has a groping sort of comprehension is a proper thing for a
+traveled man to be able to display. But what is the manner of his study?
+And what is the progress he achieves? To what extent does he
+familiarize himself with the great pictures of Italy, and what degree of
+appreciation does he arrive at? Read:
+
+“When we see a monk going about with a lion and looking up into heaven,
+we know that that is St. Mark. When we see a monk with a book and a pen,
+looking tranquilly up to heaven, trying to think of a word, we know
+that that is St. Matthew. When we see a monk sitting on a rock, looking
+tranquilly up to heaven, with a human skull beside him, and without
+other baggage, we know that that is St. Jerome. Because we know that
+he always went flying light in the matter of baggage. When we see other
+monks looking tranquilly up to heaven, but having no trade-mark, we
+always ask who those parties are. We do this because we humbly wish to
+learn.”
+
+He then enumerates the thousands and thousand of copies of these several
+pictures which he has seen, and adds with accustomed simplicity that he
+feels encouraged to believe that when he has seen “Some More” of each,
+and had a larger experience, he will eventually “begin to take an
+absorbing interest in them”--the vulgar boor.
+
+That we have shown this to be a remarkable book, we think no one
+will deny. That it is a pernicious book to place in the hands of the
+confiding and uniformed, we think we have also shown. That the book is
+a deliberate and wicked creation of a diseased mind, is apparent upon
+every page. Having placed our judgment thus upon record, let us close
+with what charity we can, by remarking that even in this volume there is
+some good to be found; for whenever the author talks of his own country
+and lets Europe alone, he never fails to make himself interesting, and
+not only interesting but instructive. No one can read without benefit
+his occasional chapters and paragraphs, about life in the gold and
+silver mines of California and Nevada; about the Indians of the plains
+and deserts of the West, and their cannibalism; about the raising of
+vegetables in kegs of gunpowder by the aid of two or three teaspoons of
+guano; about the moving of small arms from place to place at night in
+wheelbarrows to avoid taxes; and about a sort of cows and mules in
+the Humboldt mines, that climb down chimneys and disturb the people at
+night. These matters are not only new, but are well worth knowing. It is
+a pity the author did not put in more of the same kind. His book is well
+written and is exceedingly entertaining, and so it just barely escaped
+being quite valuable also.
+
+(One month later)
+
+Latterly I have received several letters, and see a number of newspaper
+paragraphs, all upon a certain subject, and all of about the same tenor.
+I here give honest specimens. One is from a New York paper, one is from
+a letter from an old friend, and one is from a letter from a New York
+publisher who is a stranger to me. I humbly endeavor to make these bits
+toothsome with the remark that the article they are praising (which
+appeared in the December _Galaxy_, and _pretended _to be a criticism
+from the London _Saturday Review_ on my _Innocents Abroad_) _was written
+by myself, every line of it_:
+
+The _Herald _says the richest thing out is the “serious critique” in the
+London _Saturday Review_, on Mark Twain's _Innocents Abroad_. We thought
+before we read it that it must be “serious,” as everybody said so, and
+were even ready to shed a few tears; but since perusing it, we are bound
+to confess that next to Mark Twain's “_Jumping Frog_” it's the finest
+bit of humor and sarcasm that we've come across in many a day.
+
+(I do not get a compliment like that every day.)
+
+I used to think that your writings were pretty good, but after reading
+the criticism in _The Galaxy_ from the _London Review_, have discovered
+what an ass I must have been. If suggestions are in order, mine is,
+that you put that article in your next edition of the _Innocents_, as
+an extra chapter, if you are not afraid to put your own humor in
+competition with it. It is as rich a thing as I ever read.
+
+(Which is strong commendation from a book publisher.)
+The London Reviewer, my friend, is not the stupid, “serious” creature he
+pretends to be, _I_ think; but, on the contrary, has a keen appreciation
+and enjoyment of your book. As I read his article in _The Galaxy_, I
+could imagine him giving vent to many a hearty laugh. But he is writing
+for Catholics and Established Church people, and high-toned, antiquated,
+conservative gentility, whom it is a delight to him to help you shock,
+while he pretends to shake his head with owlish density. He is a
+magnificent humorist himself.
+
+(Now that is graceful and handsome. I take off my hat to my life-long
+friend and comrade, and with my feet together and my fingers spread over
+my heart, I say, in the language of Alabama, “You do me proud.”)
+
+I stand guilty of the authorship of the article, but I did not mean any
+harm. I saw by an item in the Boston _Advertiser_ that a solemn, serious
+critique on the English edition of my book had appeared in the London
+_Saturday Review_, and the idea of _such _a literary breakfast by a
+stolid, ponderous British ogre of the quill was too much for a naturally
+weak virtue, and I went home and burlesqued it--reveled in it, I may
+say. I never saw a copy of the real _Saturday Review_ criticism until
+after my burlesque was written and mailed to the printer. But when I
+did get hold of a copy, I found it to be vulgar, awkwardly written,
+ill-natured, and entirely serious and in earnest. The gentleman who
+wrote the newspaper paragraph above quoted had not been misled as to its
+character.
+
+If any man doubts my word now, I will kill him. No, I will not kill him;
+I will win his money. I will bet him twenty to one, and let any New York
+publisher hold the stakes, that the statements I have above made as to
+the authorship of the article in question are entirely true. Perhaps
+I may get wealthy at this, for I am willing to take all the bets that
+offer; and if a man wants larger odds, I will give him all he requires.
+But he ought to find out whether I am betting on what is termed “a sure
+thing” or not before he ventures his money, and he can do that by
+going to a public library and examining the London _Saturday Review_ of
+October 8th, which contains the real critique.
+
+Bless me, some people thought that _I_ was the “sold” person!
+
+P.S.--I cannot resist the temptation to toss in this most savory thing
+of all--this easy, graceful, philosophical disquisition, with his happy,
+chirping confidence. It is from the Cincinnati _Enquirer_:
+
+Nothing is more uncertain than the value of a fine cigar. Nine smokers
+out of ten would prefer an ordinary domestic article, three for a
+quarter, to a fifty-cent Partaga, if kept in ignorance of the cost of
+the latter. The flavor of the Partaga is too delicate for palates that
+have been accustomed to Connecticut seed leaf. So it is with humor. The
+finer it is in quality, the more danger of its not being recognized
+at all. Even Mark Twain has been taken in by an English review of his
+_Innocents Abroad_. Mark Twain is by no means a coarse humorist, but the
+Englishman's humor is so much finer than his, that he mistakes it for
+solid earnest, and “larfs most consumedly.”
+
+A man who cannot learn stands in his own light. Hereafter, when I write
+an article which I know to be good, but which I may have reason to fear
+will not, in some quarters, be considered to amount to much, coming
+from an American, I will aver that an Englishman wrote it and that it
+is copied from a London journal. And then I will occupy a back seat and
+enjoy the cordial applause.
+
+(Still later)
+
+Mark Twain at last sees that the _Saturday Review's_ criticism of his
+_Innocents Abroad_ was not serious, and he is intensely mortified at the
+thought of having been so badly sold. He takes the only course left him,
+and in the last _Galaxy _claims that _he _wrote the criticism himself,
+and published it in _The Galaxy_ to sell the public. This is ingenious,
+but unfortunately it is not true. If any of our readers will take the
+trouble to call at this office we sill show them the original article
+in the _Saturday Review_ of October 8th, which, on comparison, will be
+found to be identical with the one published in _The Galaxy._ The best
+thing for Mark to do will be to admit that he was sold, and say no more
+about it.
+
+
+The above is from the Cincinnati _Enquirer_, and is a falsehood. Come to
+the proof. If the _Enquirer _people, through any agent, will produce
+at _The Galaxy_ office a London _Saturday Review_ of October 8th,
+containing an article which, on comparison, will be found to be
+identical with the one published in _The Galaxy_, I will pay to that
+agent five hundred dollars cash. Moreover, if at any specified time I
+fail to produce at the same place a copy of the London _Saturday Review_
+of October 8th, containing a lengthy criticism upon the _Innocents
+Abroad_, entirely different, in every paragraph and sentence, from the
+one I published in _The Galaxy,_ I will pay to the _Enquirer_ agent
+another five hundred dollars cash. I offer Sheldon & Co., publishers,
+500 Broadway, New York, as my “backers.” Any one in New York, authorized
+by the _Enquirer_, will receive prompt attention. It is an easy and
+profitable way for the _Enquirer _people to prove that they have not
+uttered a pitiful, deliberate falsehood in the above paragraphs. Will
+they swallow that falsehood ignominiously, or will they send an agent to
+_ The Galaxy _office. I think the Cincinnati _Enquirer _must be edited
+by children.
+
+
+
+A LETTER TO THE SECRETARY OF THE TREASURY
+
+Riverdale-on-the-Hudson, OCTOBER 15, 1902.
+
+_The Hon. The Secretary Of The Treasury,_ WASHINGTON, D. C.:
+
+Sir,--Prices for the customary kinds of winter fuel having reached
+an altitude which puts them out of the reach of literary persons in
+straitened circumstances, I desire to place with you the following
+order:
+
+Forty-five tons best old dry government bonds, suitable for furnace,
+gold 7 per cents., 1864, preferred.
+
+Twelve tons early greenbacks, range size, suitable for cooking.
+
+Eight barrels seasoned 25 and 50 cent postal currency, vintage of 1866,
+eligible for kindlings.
+
+Please deliver with all convenient despatch at my house in Riverdale at
+lowest rates for spot cash, and send bill to
+
+Your obliged servant,
+
+Mark Twain, Who will be very grateful, and will vote right.
+
+
+
+AMENDED OBITUARIES
+
+TO THE EDITOR:
+
+Sir,--I am approaching seventy; it is in sight; it is only three years
+away. Necessarily, I must go soon. It is but matter-of-course wisdom,
+then, that I should begin to set my worldly house in order now, so that
+it may be done calmly and with thoroughness, in place of waiting until
+the last day, when, as we have often seen, the attempt to set both
+houses in order at the same time has been marred by the necessity for
+haste and by the confusion and waste of time arising from the inability
+of the notary and the ecclesiastic to work together harmoniously, taking
+turn about and giving each other friendly assistance--not perhaps in
+fielding, which could hardly be expected, but at least in the minor
+offices of keeping game and umpiring; by consequence of which conflict
+of interests and absence of harmonious action a draw has frequently
+resulted where this ill-fortune could not have happened if the houses
+had been set in order one at a time and hurry avoided by beginning in
+season, and giving to each the amount of time fairly and justly proper
+to it.
+
+In setting my earthly house in order I find it of moment that I should
+attend in person to one or two matters which men in my position have
+long had the habit of leaving wholly to others, with consequences often
+most regrettable. I wish to speak of only one of these matters at this
+time: Obituaries. Of necessity, an Obituary is a thing which cannot be
+so judiciously edited by any hand as by that of the subject of it. In
+such a work it is not the Facts that are of chief importance, but the
+light which the obituarist shall throw upon them, the meaning which he
+shall dress them in, the conclusions which he shall draw from them,
+and the judgments which he shall deliver upon them. The Verdicts, you
+understand: that is the danger-line.
+
+In considering this matter, in view of my approaching change, it has
+seemed to me wise to take such measures as may be feasible, to acquire,
+by courtesy of the press, access to my standing obituaries, with the
+privilege--if this is not asking too much--of editing, not their Facts,
+but their Verdicts. This, not for the present profit, further than as
+concerns my family, but as a favorable influence usable on the Other
+Side, where there are some who are not friendly to me.
+
+With this explanation of my motives, I will now ask you of your courtesy
+to make an appeal for me to the public press. It is my desire that
+such journals and periodicals as have obituaries of me lying in their
+pigeonholes, with a view to sudden use some day, will not wait longer,
+but will publish them now, and kindly send me a marked copy. My address
+is simply New York City--I have no other that is permanent and not
+transient.
+
+I will correct them--not the Facts, but the Verdicts--striking out such
+clauses as could have a deleterious influence on the Other Side, and
+replacing them with clauses of a more judicious character. I should,
+of course, expect to pay double rates for both the omissions and the
+substitutions; and I should also expect to pay quadruple rates for
+all obituaries which proved to be rightly and wisely worded in the
+originals, thus requiring no emendations at all.
+
+It is my desire to leave these Amended Obituaries neatly bound behind
+me as a perennial consolation and entertainment to my family, and as an
+heirloom which shall have a mournful but definite commercial value for
+my remote posterity.
+
+I beg, sir, that you will insert this Advertisement (1t-eow, agate,
+inside), and send the bill to
+
+Yours very respectfully.
+
+Mark Twain.
+
+P.S.--For the best Obituary--one suitable for me to read in public, and
+calculated to inspire regret--I desire to offer a Prize, consisting of
+a Portrait of me done entirely by myself in pen and ink without previous
+instructions. The ink warranted to be the kind used by the very best
+artists.
+
+
+
+A MONUMENT TO ADAM
+
+Some one has revealed to the _Tribune _that I once suggested to Rev.
+Thomas K. Beecher, of Elmira, New York, that we get up a monument to
+Adam, and that Mr. Beecher favored the project. There is more to it
+than that. The matter started as a joke, but it came somewhat near to
+materializing.
+
+It is long ago--thirty years. Mr. Darwin's _Descent of Man_ has been in
+print five or six years, and the storm of indignation raised by it was
+still raging in pulpits and periodicals. In tracing the genesis of the
+human race back to its sources, Mr. Darwin had left Adam out altogether.
+We had monkeys, and “missing links,” and plenty of other kinds of
+ancestors, but no Adam. Jesting with Mr. Beecher and other friends in
+Elmira, I said there seemed to be a likelihood that the world would
+discard Adam and accept the monkey, and that in the course of time
+Adam's very name would be forgotten in the earth; therefore this
+calamity ought to be averted; a monument would accomplish this, and
+Elmira ought not to waste this honorable opportunity to do Adam a favor
+and herself a credit.
+
+Then the unexpected happened. Two bankers came forward and took hold of
+the matter--not for fun, not for sentiment, but because they saw in the
+monument certain commercial advantages for the town. The project had
+seemed gently humorous before--it was more than that now, with this
+stern business gravity injected into it. The bankers discussed the
+monument with me. We met several times. They proposed an indestructible
+memorial, to cost twenty-five thousand dollars. The insane oddity of a
+monument set up in a village to preserve a name that would outlast the
+hills and the rocks without any such help, would advertise Elmira to the
+ends of the earth--and draw custom. It would be the only monument on the
+planet to Adam, and in the matter of interest and impressiveness could
+never have a rival until somebody should set up a monument to the Milky
+Way.
+
+People would come from every corner of the globe and stop off to look
+at it, no tour of the world would be complete that left out Adam's
+monument. Elmira would be a Mecca; there would be pilgrim ships at
+pilgrim rates, pilgrim specials on the continent's railways; libraries
+would be written about the monument, every tourist would kodak it,
+models of it would be for sale everywhere in the earth, its form would
+become as familiar as the figure of Napoleon.
+
+One of the bankers subscribed five thousand dollars, and I think the
+other one subscribed half as much, but I do not remember with certainty
+now whether that was the figure or not. We got designs made--some of
+them came from Paris.
+
+In the beginning--as a detail of the project when it was yet a joke--I
+had framed a humble and beseeching and perfervid petition to Congress
+begging the government to build the monument, as a testimony of the
+Great Republic's gratitude to the Father of the Human Race and as a
+token of her loyalty to him in this dark day of humiliation when his
+older children were doubting and deserting him. It seemed to me that
+this petition ought to be presented, now--it would be widely and
+feelingly abused and ridiculed and cursed, and would advertise our
+scheme and make our ground-floor stock go off briskly. So I sent it
+to General Joseph R. Hawley, who was then in the House, and he said he
+would present it. But he did not do it. I think he explained that when
+he came to read it he was afraid of it: it was too serious, to gushy,
+too sentimental--the House might take it for earnest.
+
+We ought to have carried out our monument scheme; we could have managed
+it without any great difficulty, and Elmira would now be the most
+celebrated town in the universe.
+
+Very recently I began to build a book in which one of the minor
+characters touches incidentally upon a project for a monument to Adam,
+and now the _Tribune _has come upon a trace of the forgotten jest of
+thirty years ago. Apparently mental telegraphy is still in business. It
+is odd; but the freaks of mental telegraphy are usually odd.
+
+
+
+A HUMANE WORD FROM SATAN
+
+(The following letter, signed by Satan and purporting to come from
+him, we have reason to believe was not written by him, but by Mark
+Twain.--Editor.)
+
+TO THE EDITOR OF HARPER'S WEEKLY:
+
+Dear Sir and Kinsman,--Let us have done with this frivolous talk.
+The American Board accepts contributions from me every year: then why
+shouldn't it from Mr. Rockefeller? In all the ages, three-fourths of the
+support of the great charities has been conscience-money, as my books
+will show: then what becomes of the sting when that term is applied to
+Mr. Rockefeller's gift? The American Board's trade is financed mainly
+from the graveyards. Bequests, you understand. Conscience-money.
+Confession of an old crime and deliberate perpetration of a new one;
+for deceased's contribution is a robbery of his heirs. Shall the Board
+decline bequests because they stand for one of these offenses every time
+and generally for both?
+
+Allow me to continue. The charge most persistently and resentfully
+and remorselessly dwelt upon is that Mr. Rockefeller's contribution is
+incurably tainted by perjury--perjury proved against him in the courts.
+_It makes us smile_--down in my place! Because there isn't a rich man
+in your vast city who doesn't perjure himself every year before the tax
+board. They are all caked with perjury, many layers thick. Iron-clad,
+so to speak. If there is one that isn't, I desire to acquire him for my
+museum, and will pay Dinosaur rates. Will you say it isn't infraction
+of the law, but only annual evasion of it? Comfort yourselves with that
+nice distinction if you like--_for the present_. But by and by, when
+you arrive, I will show you something interesting: a whole hell-full
+of evaders! Sometimes a frank law-breaker turns up elsewhere, but I get
+those others every time.
+
+To return to my muttons. I wish you to remember that my rich perjurers
+are contributing to the American Board with frequency: it is money
+filched from the sworn-off personal tax; therefore it is the wages of
+sin; therefore it is my money; therefore it is _I_ that contribute it;
+and, finally, it is therefore as I have said: since the Board daily
+accepts contributions from me, why should it decline them from Mr.
+Rockefeller, who is as good as I am, let the courts say what they may?
+
+Satan.
+
+
+
+INTRODUCTION TO “THE NEW GUIDE OF THE CONVERSATION IN PORTUGUESE AND
+ENGLISH”
+
+by Pedro Carolino
+
+In this world of uncertainties, there is, at any rate, one thing which
+may be pretty confidently set down as a certainty: and that is, that
+this celebrated little phrase-book will never die while the English
+language lasts. Its delicious unconscious ridiculousness, and its
+enchanting naivete, are as supreme and unapproachable, in their way,
+as are Shakespeare's sublimities. Whatsoever is perfect in its kind, in
+literature, is imperishable: nobody can imitate it successfully, nobody
+can hope to produce its fellow; it is perfect, it must and will stand
+alone: its immortality is secure.
+
+It is one of the smallest books in the world, but few big books have
+received such wide attention, and been so much pondered by the grave and
+learned, and so much discussed and written about by the thoughtful,
+the thoughtless, the wise, and the foolish. Long notices of it have
+appeared, from time to time, in the great English reviews, and in
+erudite and authoritative philological periodicals; and it has been
+laughed at, danced upon, and tossed in a blanket by nearly every
+newspaper and magazine in the English-speaking world. Every scribbler,
+almost, has had his little fling at it, at one time or another; I had
+mine fifteen years ago. The book gets out of print, every now and then,
+and one ceases to hear of it for a season; but presently the nations and
+near and far colonies of our tongue and lineage call for it once more,
+and once more it issues from some London or Continental or American
+press, and runs a new course around the globe, wafted on its way by the
+wind of a world's laughter.
+
+Many persons have believed that this book's miraculous stupidities
+were studied and disingenuous; but no one can read the volume carefully
+through and keep that opinion. It was written in serious good faith and
+deep earnestness, by an honest and upright idiot who believed he knew
+something of the English language, and could impart his knowledge to
+others. The amplest proof of this crops out somewhere or other upon each
+and every page. There are sentences in the book which could have been
+manufactured by a man in his right mind, and with an intelligent and
+deliberate purposes to seem innocently ignorant; but there are other
+sentences, and paragraphs, which no mere pretended ignorance could ever
+achieve--nor yet even the most genuine and comprehensive ignorance, when
+unbacked by inspiration.
+
+It is not a fraud who speaks in the following paragraph of the author's
+Preface, but a good man, an honest man, a man whose conscience is at
+rest, a man who believes he has done a high and worthy work for his
+nation and his generation, and is well pleased with his performance:
+
+We expect then, who the little book (for the care what we wrote him, and
+for her typographical correction) that may be worth the acceptation of
+the studious persons, and especially of the Youth, at which we dedicate
+him particularly.
+
+One cannot open this book anywhere and not find richness. To prove that
+this is true, I will open it at random and copy the page I happen to
+stumble upon. Here is the result:
+
+DIALOGUE 16
+
+For To See the Town
+
+Anothony, go to accompany they gentilsmen, do they see the town.
+
+We won't to see all that is it remarquable here.
+
+Come with me, if you please. I shall not folget nothing what can to
+merit your attention. Here we are near to cathedral; will you come in
+there?
+
+We will first to see him in oudside, after we shall go in there for to
+look the interior.
+
+Admire this master piece gothic architecture's.
+
+The chasing of all they figures is astonishing' indeed.
+
+The cupola and the nave are not less curious to see.
+
+What is this palace how I see yonder?
+
+It is the town hall.
+
+And this tower here at this side?
+
+It is the Observatory.
+
+The bridge is very fine, it have ten arches, and is constructed of free
+stone.
+
+The streets are very layed out by line and too paved.
+
+What is the circuit of this town?
+
+Two leagues.
+
+There is it also hospitals here?
+
+It not fail them.
+
+What are then the edifices the worthest to have seen?
+
+It is the arsnehal, the spectacle's hall, the Cusiomhouse, and the
+Purse.
+
+We are going too see the others monuments such that the public
+pawnbroker's office, the plants garden's, the money office's, the
+library.
+
+That it shall be for another day; we are tired.
+
+DIALOGUE 17
+
+To Inform One'self of a Person
+
+How is that gentilman who you did speak by and by?
+
+Is a German.
+
+I did think him Englishman.
+
+He is of the Saxony side.
+
+He speak the french very well.
+
+Tough he is German, he speak so much well italyan, french, spanish and
+english, that among the Italyans, they believe him Italyan, he speak
+the frenche as the Frenches himselves. The Spanishesmen believe him
+Spanishing, and the Englishes, Englishman. It is difficult to enjoy well
+so much several languages.
+
+The last remark contains a general truth; but it ceases to be a truth
+when one contracts it and applies it to an individual--provided that that
+individual is the author of this book, Senhor Pedro Carolino. I am
+sure I should not find it difficult “to enjoy well so much several
+languages”--or even a thousand of them--if he did the translating for me
+from the originals into his ostensible English.
+
+
+
+ADVICE TO LITTLE GIRLS
+
+Good little girls ought not to make mouths at their teachers for every
+trifling offense. This retaliation should only be resorted to under
+peculiarly aggravated circumstances.
+
+If you have nothing but a rag-doll stuffed with sawdust, while one of
+your more fortunate little playmates has a costly China one, you should
+treat her with a show of kindness nevertheless. And you ought not to
+attempt to make a forcible swap with her unless your conscience would
+justify you in it, and you know you are able to do it.
+
+You ought never to take your little brother's “chewing-gum” away from
+him by main force; it is better to rope him in with the promise of
+the first two dollars and a half you find floating down the river on a
+grindstone. In the artless simplicity natural to this time of life, he
+will regard it as a perfectly fair transaction. In all ages of the
+world this eminently plausible fiction has lured the obtuse infant to
+financial ruin and disaster.
+
+If at any time you find it necessary to correct your brother, do not
+correct him with mud--never, on any account, throw mud at him, because
+it will spoil his clothes. It is better to scald him a little, for then
+you obtain desirable results. You secure his immediate attention to the
+lessons you are inculcating, and at the same time your hot water will
+have a tendency to move impurities from his person, and possibly the
+skin, in spots.
+
+If your mother tells you to do a thing, it is wrong to reply that you
+won't. It is better and more becoming to intimate that you will do as
+she bids you, and then afterward act quietly in the matter according to
+the dictates of your best judgment.
+
+You should ever bear in mind that it is to your kind parents that you
+are indebted for your food, and for the privilege of staying home from
+school when you let on that you are sick. Therefore you ought to respect
+their little prejudices, and humor their little whims, and put up with
+their little foibles until they get to crowding you too much.
+
+Good little girls always show marked deference for the aged. You ought
+never to “sass” old people unless they “sass” you first.
+
+
+
+POST-MORTEM POETRY (1)
+
+In Philadelphia they have a custom which it would be pleasant to see
+adopted throughout the land. It is that of appending to published
+death-notices a little verse or two of comforting poetry. Any one who is
+in the habit of reading the daily Philadelphia _Ledger _must frequently
+be touched by these plaintive tributes to extinguished worth. In
+Philadelphia, the departure of a child is a circumstance which is not
+more surely followed by a burial than by the accustomed solacing poesy
+in the _Public Ledger_. In that city death loses half its terror because
+the knowledge of its presence comes thus disguised in the sweet drapery
+of verse. For instance, in a late _Ledger _I find the following (I
+change the surname):
+
+DIED
+
+Hawks.--On the 17th inst., Clara, the daughter of Ephraim and Laura
+Hawks, aged 21 months and 2 days.
+
+
+That merry shout no more I hear, No laughing child I see, No little arms
+are around my neck, No feet upon my knee;
+
+No kisses drop upon my cheek, These lips are sealed to me. Dear Lord,
+how could I give Clara up To any but to Thee?
+
+A child thus mourned could not die wholly discontented. From the _Ledger
+_of the same date I make the following extract, merely changing the
+surname, as before:
+
+Becket.--On Sunday morning, 19th inst., John P., infant son of George
+and Julia Becket, aged 1 year, 6 months, and 15 days.
+
+
+That merry shout no more I hear, No laughing child I see, No little arms
+are round my neck, No feet upon my knee;
+
+No kisses drop upon my cheek; These lips are sealed to me. Dear Lord,
+how could I give Johnnie up To any but to Thee?
+
+The similarity of the emotions as produced in the mourners in these two
+instances is remarkably evidenced by the singular similarity of thought
+which they experienced, and the surprising coincidence of language used
+by them to give it expression.
+
+In the same journal, of the same date, I find the following (surname
+suppressed, as before):
+
+Wagner.--On the 10th inst., Ferguson G., the son of William L. and
+Martha Theresa Wagner, aged 4 weeks and 1 day.
+
+
+That merry shout no more I hear, No laughing child I see, No little arms
+are round my neck, No feet upon my knee;
+
+No kisses drop upon my cheek, These lips are sealed to me. Dear Lord,
+how could I give Ferguson up To any but to Thee?
+
+It is strange what power the reiteration of an essentially poetical
+thought has upon one's feelings. When we take up the _Ledger _and read
+the poetry about little Clara, we feel an unaccountable depression of
+the spirits. When we drift further down the column and read the poetry
+about little Johnnie, the depression and spirits acquires an added
+emphasis, and we experience tangible suffering. When we saunter along
+down the column further still and read the poetry about little Ferguson,
+the word torture but vaguely suggests the anguish that rends us.
+
+In the _Ledger _(same copy referred to above) I find the following (I
+alter surname, as usual):
+
+Welch.--On the 5th inst., Mary C. Welch, wife of William B. Welch, and
+daughter of Catharine and George W. Markland, in the 29th year of her
+age.
+
+
+A mother dear, a mother kind, Has gone and left us all behind. Cease to
+weep, for tears are vain, Mother dear is out of pain.
+
+Farewell, husband, children dear, Serve thy God with filial fear, And
+meet me in the land above, Where all is peace, and joy, and love.
+
+What could be sweeter than that? No collection of salient facts (without
+reduction to tabular form) could be more succinctly stated than is done
+in the first stanza by the surviving relatives, and no more concise and
+comprehensive program of farewells, post-mortuary general orders, etc.,
+could be framed in any form than is done in verse by deceased in the
+last stanza. These things insensibly make us wiser and tenderer, and
+better. Another extract:
+
+Ball.--On the morning of the 15th inst., Mary E., daughter of John and
+Sarah F. Ball.
+
+
+'Tis sweet to rest in lively hope That when my change shall come Angels
+will hover round my bed, To waft my spirit home.
+
+The following is apparently the customary form for heads of families:
+
+Burns.--On the 20th inst., Michael Burns, aged 40 years.
+
+
+Dearest father, thou hast left us, Here thy loss we deeply feel; But
+'tis God that has bereft us, He can all our sorrows heal.
+
+Funeral at 2 o'clock sharp.
+
+There is something very simple and pleasant about the following, which,
+in Philadelphia, seems to be the usual form for consumptives of long
+standing. (It deplores four distinct cases in the single copy of the
+_Ledger _which lies on the Memoranda editorial table):
+
+Bromley.--On the 29th inst., of consumption, Philip Bromley, in the 50th
+year of his age.
+
+
+Affliction sore long time he bore, Physicians were in vain-- Till God at
+last did hear him mourn, And eased him of his pain.
+
+That friend whom death from us has torn, We did not think so soon to
+part; An anxious care now sinks the thorn Still deeper in our bleeding
+heart.
+
+This beautiful creation loses nothing by repetition. On the
+contrary, the oftener one sees it in the _Ledger_, the more grand and
+awe-inspiring it seems.
+
+With one more extract I will close:
+
+Doble.--On the 4th inst., Samuel Pervil Worthington Doble, aged 4 days.
+
+
+Our little Sammy's gone, His tiny spirit's fled; Our little boy we loved
+so dear Lies sleeping with the dead.
+
+A tear within a father's eye, A mother's aching heart, Can only tell the
+agony How hard it is to part.
+
+Could anything be more plaintive than that, without requiring further
+concessions of grammar? Could anything be likely to do more toward
+reconciling deceased to circumstances, and making him willing to go?
+Perhaps not. The power of song can hardly be estimated. There is an
+element about some poetry which is able to make even physical suffering
+and death cheerful things to contemplate and consummations to be
+desired. This element is present in the mortuary poetry of Philadelphia,
+and in a noticeable degree of development.
+
+The custom I have been treating of is one that should be adopted in all
+the cities of the land.
+
+It is said that once a man of small consequence died, and the Rev. T.
+K. Beecher was asked to preach the funeral sermon--a man who abhors the
+lauding of people, either dead or alive, except in dignified and simple
+language, and then only for merits which they actually possessed or
+possess, not merits which they merely ought to have possessed. The
+friends of the deceased got up a stately funeral. They must have had
+misgivings that the corpse might not be praised strongly enough, for
+they prepared some manuscript headings and notes in which nothing was
+left unsaid on that subject that a fervid imagination and an unabridged
+dictionary could compile, and these they handed to the minister as he
+entered the pulpit. They were merely intended as suggestions, and so the
+friends were filled with consternation when the minister stood in the
+pulpit and proceeded to read off the curious odds and ends in ghastly
+detail and in a loud voice! And their consternation solidified to
+petrification when he paused at the end, contemplated the multitude
+reflectively, and then said, impressively:
+
+“The man would be a fool who tried to add anything to that. Let us
+pray!”
+
+And with the same strict adhesion to truth it can be said that the man
+would be a fool who tried to add anything to the following transcendent
+obituary poem. There is something so innocent, so guileless, so
+complacent, so unearthly serene and self-satisfied about this peerless
+“hog-wash,” that the man must be made of stone who can read it without a
+dulcet ecstasy creeping along his backbone and quivering in his marrow.
+There is no need to say that this poem is genuine and in earnest, for
+its proofs are written all over its face. An ingenious scribbler
+might imitate it after a fashion, but Shakespeare himself could not
+counterfeit it. It is noticeable that the country editor who published
+it did not know that it was a treasure and the most perfect thing of its
+kind that the storehouses and museums of literature could show. He did
+not dare to say no to the dread poet--for such a poet must have been
+something of an apparition--but he just shoveled it into his paper
+anywhere that came handy, and felt ashamed, and put that disgusted
+“Published by Request” over it, and hoped that his subscribers would
+overlook it or not feel an impulse to read it:
+
+(Published by Request)
+
+LINES
+
+Composed on the death of Samuel and Catharine Belknap's children
+
+by M. A. Glaze
+
+
+Friends and neighbors all draw near, And listen to what I have to say;
+And never leave your children dear When they are small, and go away.
+
+But always think of that sad fate, That happened in year of '63; Four
+children with a house did burn, Think of their awful agony.
+
+Their mother she had gone away, And left them there alone to stay; The
+house took fire and down did burn; Before their mother did return.
+
+Their piteous cry the neighbors heard, And then the cry of fire was
+given; But, ah! before they could them reach, Their little spirits had
+flown to heaven.
+
+Their father he to war had gone, And on the battle-field was slain; But
+little did he think when he went away, But what on earth they would meet
+again.
+
+The neighbors often told his wife Not to leave his children there,
+Unless she got some one to stay, And of the little ones take care.
+
+The oldest he was years not six, And the youngest only eleven months
+old, But often she had left them there alone, As, by the neighbors, I
+have been told.
+
+How can she bear to see the place. Where she so oft has left them there,
+Without a single one to look to them, Or of the little ones to take good
+care.
+
+Oh, can she look upon the spot, Whereunder their little burnt bones lay,
+But what she thinks she hears them say, ''Twas God had pity, and took us
+on high.'
+
+And there may she kneel down and pray, And ask God her to forgive; And
+she may lead a different life While she on earth remains to live.
+
+Her husband and her children too, God has took from pain and woe. May
+she reform and mend her ways, That she may also to them go.
+
+And when it is God's holy will, O, may she be prepared To meet her God
+and friends in peace, And leave this world of care.
+
+1. Written in 1870.
+
+
+
+THE DANGER OF LYING IN BED
+
+The man in the ticket-office said:
+
+“Have an accident insurance ticket, also?”
+
+“No,” I said, after studying the matter over a little. “No, I believe
+not; I am going to be traveling by rail all day today. However, tomorrow
+I don't travel. Give me one for tomorrow.”
+
+The man looked puzzled. He said:
+
+“But it is for accident insurance, and if you are going to travel by
+rail--”
+
+“If I am going to travel by rail I sha'n't need it. Lying at home in bed
+is the thing _I_ am afraid of.”
+
+I had been looking into this matter. Last year I traveled twenty
+thousand miles, almost entirely by rail; the year before, I traveled
+over twenty-five thousand miles, half by sea and half by rail; and the
+year before that I traveled in the neighborhood of ten thousand miles,
+exclusively by rail. I suppose if I put in all the little odd journeys
+here and there, I may say I have traveled sixty thousand miles during
+the three years I have mentioned. _And never an accident._
+
+For a good while I said to myself every morning: “Now I have escaped
+thus far, and so the chances are just that much increased that I shall
+catch it this time. I will be shrewd, and buy an accident ticket.” And
+to a dead moral certainty I drew a blank, and went to bed that night
+without a joint started or a bone splintered. I got tired of that sort
+of daily bother, and fell to buying accident tickets that were good
+for a month. I said to myself, “A man _can't_ buy thirty blanks in one
+bundle.”
+
+But I was mistaken. There was never a prize in the the lot. I could read
+of railway accidents every day--the newspaper atmosphere was foggy with
+them; but somehow they never came my way. I found I had spent a good
+deal of money in the accident business, and had nothing to show for it.
+My suspicions were aroused, and I began to hunt around for somebody that
+had won in this lottery. I found plenty of people who had invested,
+but not an individual that had ever had an accident or made a cent. I
+stopped buying accident tickets and went to ciphering. The result was
+astounding. THE PERIL LAY NOT IN TRAVELING, BUT IN STAYING AT HOME.
+
+I hunted up statistics, and was amazed to find that after all the
+glaring newspaper headlines concerning railroad disasters, less than
+_three hundred_ people had really lost their lives by those disasters
+in the preceding twelve months. The Erie road was set down as the most
+murderous in the list. It had killed forty-six--or twenty-six, I do not
+exactly remember which, but I know the number was double that of any
+other road. But the fact straightway suggested itself that the Erie was
+an immensely long road, and did more business than any other line in
+the country; so the double number of killed ceased to be matter for
+surprise.
+
+By further figuring, it appeared that between New York and Rochester the
+Erie ran eight passenger-trains each way every day--16 altogether; and
+carried a daily average of 6,000 persons. That is about a million in six
+months--the population of New York City. Well, the Erie kills from 13 to
+23 persons of _its_ million in six months; and in the same time 13,000
+of New York's million die in their beds! My flesh crept, my hair stood
+on end. “This is appalling!” I said. “The danger isn't in traveling by
+rail, but in trusting to those deadly beds. I will never sleep in a bed
+again.”
+
+I had figured on considerably less than one-half the length of the Erie
+road. It was plain that the entire road must transport at least eleven
+or twelve thousand people every day. There are many short roads running
+out of Boston that do fully half as much; a great many such roads. There
+are many roads scattered about the Union that do a prodigious passenger
+business. Therefore it was fair to presume that an average of 2,500
+passengers a day for each road in the country would be almost correct.
+There are 846 railway lines in our country, and 846 times 2,500 are
+2,115,000. So the railways of America move more than two millions of
+people every day; six hundred and fifty millions of people a year,
+without counting the Sundays. They do that, too--there is no question
+about it; though where they get the raw material is clear beyond the
+jurisdiction of my arithmetic; for I have hunted the census through and
+through, and I find that there are not that many people in the United
+States, by a matter of six hundred and ten millions at the very least.
+They must use some of the same people over again, likely.
+
+San Francisco is one-eighth as populous as New York; there are 60 deaths
+a week in the former and 500 a week in the latter--if they have luck.
+That is 3,120 deaths a year in San Francisco, and eight times as many
+in New York--say about 25,000 or 26,000. The health of the two places is
+the same. So we will let it stand as a fair presumption that this will
+hold good all over the country, and that consequently 25,000 out of
+every million of people we have must die every year. That amounts to
+one-fortieth of our total population. One million of us, then, die
+annually. Out of this million ten or twelve thousand are stabbed, shot,
+drowned, hanged, poisoned, or meet a similarly violent death in some
+other popular way, such as perishing by kerosene-lamp and hoop-skirt
+conflagrations, getting buried in coal-mines, falling off house-tops,
+breaking through church, or lecture-room floors, taking patent
+medicines, or committing suicide in other forms. The Erie railroad kills
+23 to 46; the other 845 railroads kill an average of one-third of a man
+each; and the rest of that million, amounting in the aggregate to that
+appalling figure of 987,631 corpses, die naturally in their beds!
+
+You will excuse me from taking any more chances on those beds. The
+railroads are good enough for me.
+
+And my advice to all people is, Don't stay at home any more than you can
+help; but when you have _got _to stay at home a while, buy a package of
+those insurance tickets and sit up nights. You cannot be too cautious.
+
+(One can see now why I answered that ticket-agent in the manner recorded
+at the top of this sketch.)
+
+The moral of this composition is, that thoughtless people grumble more
+than is fair about railroad management in the United States. When we
+consider that every day and night of the year full fourteen thousand
+railway-trains of various kinds, freighted with life and armed with
+death, go thundering over the land, the marvel is, _not _that they kill
+three hundred human beings in a twelvemonth, but that they do not kill
+three hundred times three hundred!
+
+
+
+PORTRAIT OF KING WILLIAM III
+
+I never can look at those periodical portraits in _The Galaxy_ magazine
+without feeling a wild, tempestuous ambition to be an artist. I have
+seen thousands and thousands of pictures in my time--acres of them here
+and leagues of them in the galleries of Europe--but never any that moved
+me as these portraits do.
+
+There is a portrait of Monsignore Capel in the November number, now
+_could_ anything be sweeter than that? And there was Bismarck's, in the
+October number; who can look at that without being purer and stronger
+and nobler for it? And Thurlow and Weed's picture in the September
+number; I would not have died without seeing that, no, not for anything
+this world can give. But look back still further and recall my own
+likeness as printed in the August number; if I had been in my grave a
+thousand years when that appeared, I would have got up and visited the
+artist.
+
+I sleep with all these portraits under my pillow every night, so that I
+can go on studying them as soon as the day dawns in the morning. I know
+them all as thoroughly as if I had made them myself; I know every line
+and mark about them. Sometimes when company are present I shuffle the
+portraits all up together, and then pick them out one by one and call
+their names, without referring to the printing on the bottom. I seldom
+make a mistake--never, when I am calm.
+
+I have had the portraits framed for a long time, waiting till my aunt
+gets everything ready for hanging them up in the parlor. But first one
+thing and then another interferes, and so the thing is delayed. Once she
+said they would have more of the peculiar kind of light they needed in
+the attic. The old simpleton! it is as dark as a tomb up there. But she
+does not know anything about art, and so she has no reverence for it.
+When I showed her my “Map of the Fortifications of Paris,” she said it
+was rubbish.
+
+Well, from nursing those portraits so long, I have come at last to have
+a perfect infatuation for art. I have a teacher now, and my enthusiasm
+continually and tumultuously grows, as I learn to use with more and
+more facility the pencil, brush, and graver. I am studying under De
+Mellville, the house and portrait painter. (His name was Smith when he
+lived in the West.) He does any kind of artist work a body wants, having
+a genius that is universal, like Michael Angelo. Resembles that great
+artist, in fact. The back of his head is like his, and he wears his
+hat-brim tilted down on his nose to expose it.
+
+I have been studying under De Mellville several months now. The first
+month I painted fences, and gave general satisfaction. The next month I
+white-washed a barn. The third, I was doing tin roofs; the forth, common
+signs; the fifth, statuary to stand before cigar shops. This present
+month is only the sixth, and I am already in portraits!
+
+The humble offering which accompanies these remarks (see figure)--the
+portrait of his Majesty William III., King of Prussia--is my fifth
+attempt in portraits, and my greatest success. It has received unbounded
+praise from all classes of the community, but that which gratifies me
+most is the frequent and cordial verdict that it resembles the _Galaxy_
+portraits. Those were my first love, my earliest admiration, the
+original source and incentive of my art-ambition. Whatever I am in Art
+today, I owe to these portraits. I ask no credit for myself--I deserve
+none. And I never take any, either. Many a stranger has come to my
+exhibition (for I have had my portrait of King William on exhibition at
+one dollar a ticket), and would have gone away blessing_ me_, if I had
+let him, but I never did. I always stated where I got the idea.
+
+King William wears large bushy side-whiskers, and some critics have
+thought that this portrait would be more complete if they were added.
+But it was not possible. There was not room for side-whiskers and
+epaulets both, and so I let the whiskers go, and put in the epaulets,
+for the sake of style. That thing on his hat is an eagle. The Prussian
+eagle--it is a national emblem. When I say hat I mean helmet; but it
+seems impossible to make a picture of a helmet that a body can have
+confidence in.
+
+I wish kind friends everywhere would aid me in my endeavor to attract a
+little attention to the _Galaxy _portraits. I feel persuaded it can be
+accomplished, if the course to be pursued be chosen with judgment. I
+write for that magazine all the time, and so do many abler men, and if
+I can get these portraits into universal favor, it is all I ask; the
+reading-matter will take care of itself.
+
+
+
+COMMENDATIONS OF THE PORTRAIT
+
+There is nothing like it in the Vatican. Pius IX.
+
+It has none of that vagueness, that dreamy spirituality about it, which
+many of the first critics of Arkansas have objected to in the Murillo
+school of Art. Ruskin.
+
+The expression is very interesting. J.W. Titian.
+
+(Keeps a macaroni store in Venice, at the old family stand.)
+
+It is the neatest thing in still life I have seen for years.
+
+Rosa Bonheur.
+
+The smile may be almost called unique. Bismarck.
+
+I never saw such character portrayed in a picture face before. De
+Mellville.
+
+There is a benignant simplicity about the execution of this work which
+warms the heart toward it as much, full as much, as it fascinates the
+eye. Landseer.
+
+One cannot see it without longing to contemplate the artist.
+
+Frederick William.
+
+Send me the entire edition--together with the plate and the original
+portrait--and name your own price. And--would you like to come over and
+stay awhile with Napoleon at Wilhelmshohe? It shall not cost you a cent.
+William III.
+
+
+
+DOES THE RACE OF MAN LOVE A LORD?
+
+Often a quite assified remark becomes sanctified by use and petrified by
+custom; it is then a permanency, its term of activity a geologic period.
+
+The day after the arrival of Prince Henry I met an English friend, and
+he rubbed his hands and broke out with a remark that was charged to the
+brim with joy--joy that was evidently a pleasant salve to an old sore
+place:
+
+“Many a time I've had to listen without retort to an old saying that is
+irritatingly true, and until now seemed to offer no chance for a return
+jibe: 'An Englishman does dearly love a lord'; but after this I shall
+talk back, and say, 'How about the Americans?'”
+
+It is a curious thing, the currency that an idiotic saying can get. The
+man that first says it thinks he has made a discovery. The man he
+says it to, thinks the same. It departs on its travels, is received
+everywhere with admiring acceptance, and not only as a piece of rare and
+acute observation, but as being exhaustively true and profoundly wise;
+and so it presently takes its place in the world's list of recognized
+and established wisdoms, and after that no one thinks of examining it to
+see whether it is really entitled to its high honors or not. I call to
+mind instances of this in two well-established proverbs, whose dullness
+is not surpassed by the one about the Englishman and his love for a
+lord: one of them records the American's Adoration of the Almighty
+Dollar, the other the American millionaire-girl's ambition to trade cash
+for a title, with a husband thrown in.
+
+It isn't merely the American that adores the Almighty Dollar, it is the
+human race. The human race has always adored the hatful of shells, or
+the bale of calico, or the half-bushel of brass rings, or the handful of
+steel fish-hooks, or the houseful of black wives, or the zareba full of
+cattle, or the two-score camels and asses, or the factory, or the farm,
+or the block of buildings, or the railroad bonds, or the bank stock, or
+the hoarded cash, or--anything that stands for wealth and consideration
+and independence, and can secure to the possessor that most precious of
+all things, another man's envy. It was a dull person that invented the
+idea that the American's devotion to the dollar is more strenuous than
+another's.
+
+Rich American girls do buy titles, but they did not invent that idea;
+it had been worn threadbare several hundred centuries before America
+was discovered. European girls still exploit it as briskly as ever;
+and, when a title is not to be had for the money in hand, they buy the
+husband without it. They must put up the “dot,” or there is no trade.
+The commercialization of brides is substantially universal, except in
+America. It exists with us, to some little extent, but in no degree
+approaching a custom.
+
+“The Englishman dearly loves a lord.”
+
+What is the soul and source of this love? I think the thing could be
+more correctly worded:
+
+“The human race dearly envies a lord.”
+
+That is to say, it envies the lord's place. Why? On two accounts, I
+think: its Power and its Conspicuousness.
+
+Where Conspicuousness carries with it a Power which, by the light of our
+own observation and experience, we are able to measure and comprehend, I
+think our envy of the possessor is as deep and as passionate as is
+that of any other nation. No one can care less for a lord than the
+backwoodsman, who has had no personal contact with lords and has seldom
+heard them spoken of; but I will not allow that any Englishman has a
+profounder envy of a lord than has the average American who has lived
+long years in a European capital and fully learned how immense is the
+position the lord occupies.
+
+Of any ten thousand Americans who eagerly gather, at vast inconvenience,
+to get a glimpse of Prince Henry, all but a couple of hundred will be
+there out of an immense curiosity; they are burning up with desire to
+see a personage who is so much talked about. They envy him; but it is
+Conspicuousness they envy mainly, not the Power that is lodged in his
+royal quality and position, for they have but a vague and spectral
+knowledge and appreciation of that; through their environment and
+associations they have been accustomed to regard such things lightly,
+and as not being very real; consequently, they are not able to value
+them enough to consumingly envy them.
+
+But, whenever an American (or other human being) is in the presence,
+for the first time, of a combination of great Power and Conspicuousness
+which he thoroughly understands and appreciates, his eager curiosity and
+pleasure will be well-sodden with that other passion--envy--whether he
+suspects it or not. At any time, on any day, in any part of America,
+you can confer a happiness upon any passing stranger by calling his
+attention to any other passing stranger and saying:
+
+“Do you see that gentleman going along there? It is Mr. Rockefeller.”
+
+Watch his eye. It is a combination of power and conspicuousness which
+the man understands.
+
+When we understand rank, we always like to rub against it. When a man
+is conspicuous, we always want to see him. Also, if he will pay us an
+attention we will manage to remember it. Also, we will mention it now
+and then, casually; sometimes to a friend, or if a friend is not handy,
+we will make out with a stranger.
+
+Well, then, what is rank, and what is conspicuousness? At once we
+think of kings and aristocracies, and of world-wide celebrities in
+soldierships, the arts, letters, etc., and we stop there. But that is a
+mistake. Rank holds its court and receives its homage on every round of
+the ladder, from the emperor down to the rat-catcher; and distinction,
+also, exists on every round of the ladder, and commands its due of
+deference and envy.
+
+To worship rank and distinction is the dear and valued privilege of all
+the human race, and it is freely and joyfully exercised in democracies
+as well as in monarchies--and even, to some extent, among those
+creatures whom we impertinently call the Lower Animals. For even they
+have some poor little vanities and foibles, though in this matter they
+are paupers as compared to us.
+
+A Chinese Emperor has the worship of his four hundred millions of
+subjects, but the rest of the world is indifferent to him. A Christian
+Emperor has the worship of his subjects and of a large part of
+the Christian world outside of his domains; but he is a matter of
+indifference to all China. A king, class A, has an extensive worship; a
+king, class B, has a less extensive worship; class C, class D, class
+E get a steadily diminishing share of worship; class L (Sultan of
+Zanzibar), class P (Sultan of Sulu), and class W (half-king of Samoa),
+get no worship at all outside their own little patch of sovereignty.
+
+Take the distinguished people along down. Each has his group of
+homage-payers. In the navy, there are many groups; they start with the
+Secretary and the Admiral, and go down to the quartermaster--and below;
+for there will be groups among the sailors, and each of these groups
+will have a tar who is distinguished for his battles, or his strength,
+or his daring, or his profanity, and is admired and envied by his group.
+The same with the army; the same with the literary and journalistic
+craft; the publishing craft; the cod-fishery craft; Standard Oil; U. S.
+Steel; the class A hotel--and the rest of the alphabet in that line; the
+class A prize-fighter--and the rest of the alphabet in his line--clear
+down to the lowest and obscurest six-boy gang of little gamins, with
+its one boy that can thrash the rest, and to whom he is king of Samoa,
+bottom of the royal race, but looked up to with a most ardent admiration
+and envy.
+
+There is something pathetic, and funny, and pretty, about this human
+race's fondness for contact with power and distinction, and for the
+reflected glory it gets out of it. The king, class A, is happy in the
+state banquet and the military show which the emperor provides for him,
+and he goes home and gathers the queen and the princelings around him in
+the privacy of the spare room, and tells them all about it, and says:
+
+“His Imperial Majesty put his hand upon my shoulder in the most friendly
+way--just as friendly and familiar, oh, you can't imagine it!--and
+everybody _seeing _him do it; charming, perfectly charming!”
+
+The king, class G, is happy in the cold collation and the police parade
+provided for him by the king, class B, and goes home and tells the
+family all about it, and says:
+
+“And His Majesty took me into his own private cabinet for a smoke and a
+chat, and there we sat just as sociable, and talking away and laughing
+and chatting, just the same as if we had been born in the same bunk; and
+all the servants in the anteroom could see us doing it! Oh, it was too
+lovely for anything!”
+
+The king, class Q, is happy in the modest entertainment furnished him by
+the king, class M, and goes home and tells the household about it,
+and is as grateful and joyful over it as were his predecessors in the
+gaudier attentions that had fallen to their larger lot.
+
+Emperors, kings, artisans, peasants, big people, little people--at the
+bottom we are all alike and all the same; all just alike on the inside,
+and when our clothes are off, nobody can tell which of us is which. We
+are unanimous in the pride we take in good and genuine compliments paid
+us, and distinctions conferred upon us, in attentions shown. There is
+not one of us, from the emperor down, but is made like that. Do I
+mean attentions shown us by the guest? No, I mean simply flattering
+attentions, let them come whence they may. We despise no source that can
+pay us a pleasing attention--there is no source that is humble enough
+for that. You have heard a dear little girl say to a frowzy and
+disreputable dog: “He came right to me and let me pat him on the head,
+and he wouldn't let the others touch him!” and you have seen her eyes
+dance with pride in that high distinction. You have often seen that. If
+the child were a princess, would that random dog be able to confer the
+like glory upon her with his pretty compliment? Yes; and even in her
+mature life and seated upon a throne, she would still remember it, still
+recall it, still speak of it with frank satisfaction. That charming
+and lovable German princess and poet, Carmen Sylva, Queen of Roumania,
+remembers yet that the flowers of the woods and fields “talked to her”
+ when she was a girl, and she sets it down in her latest book; and that
+the squirrels conferred upon her and her father the valued compliment of
+not being afraid of them; and “once one of them, holding a nut between
+its sharp little teeth, ran right up against my father”--it has the very
+note of “He came right to me and let me pat him on the head”--“and when
+it saw itself reflected in his boot it was very much surprised,
+and stopped for a long time to contemplate itself in the polished
+leather”--then it went its way. And the birds! she still remembers with
+pride that “they came boldly into my room,” when she had neglected her
+“duty” and put no food on the window-sill for them; she knew all the
+wild birds, and forgets the royal crown on her head to remember with
+pride that they knew her; also that the wasp and the bee were personal
+friends of hers, and never forgot that gracious relationship to her
+injury: “never have I been stung by a wasp or a bee.” And here is that
+proud note again that sings in that little child's elation in being
+singled out, among all the company of children, for the random dog's
+honor-conferring attentions. “Even in the very worst summer for wasps,
+when, in lunching out of doors, our table was covered with them and
+every one else was stung, they never hurt me.”
+
+When a queen whose qualities of mind and heart and character are able to
+add distinction to so distinguished a place as a throne, remembers
+with grateful exultation, after thirty years, honors and distinctions
+conferred upon her by the humble, wild creatures of the forest, we are
+helped to realize that complimentary attentions, homage,
+distinctions, are of no caste, but are above all cast--that they are a
+nobility-conferring power apart.
+
+We all like these things. When the gate-guard at the railway-station
+passes me through unchallenged and examines other people's tickets, I
+feel as the king, class A, felt when the emperor put the imperial hand
+on his shoulder, “everybody seeing him do it”; and as the child felt
+when the random dog allowed her to pat his head and ostracized the
+others; and as the princess felt when the wasps spared her and stung
+the rest; and I felt just so, four years ago in Vienna (and remember it
+yet), when the helmeted police shut me off, with fifty others, from a
+street which the Emperor was to pass through, and the captain of the
+squad turned and saw the situation and said indignantly to that guard:
+
+“Can't you see it is the Herr Mark Twain? Let him through!”
+
+It was four years ago; but it will be four hundred before I forget the
+wind of self-complacency that rose in me, and strained my buttons when I
+marked the deference for me evoked in the faces of my fellow-rabble, and
+noted, mingled with it, a puzzled and resentful expression which said,
+as plainly as speech could have worded it: “And who in the nation is the
+Herr Mark Twain _um gotteswillen?_”
+
+How many times in your life have you heard this boastful remark:
+
+“I stood as close to him as I am to you; I could have put out my hand
+and touched him.”
+
+We have all heard it many and many a time. It was a proud distinction
+to be able to say those words. It brought envy to the speaker, a kind of
+glory; and he basked in it and was happy through all his veins. And
+who was it he stood so close to? The answer would cover all the grades.
+Sometimes it was a king; sometimes it was a renowned highwayman;
+sometimes it was an unknown man killed in an extraordinary way and made
+suddenly famous by it; always it was a person who was for the moment the
+subject of public interest of a village.
+
+“I was there, and I saw it myself.” That is a common and envy-compelling
+remark. It can refer to a battle; to a hanging; to a coronation; to the
+killing of Jumbo by the railway-train; to the arrival of Jenny Lind at
+the Battery; to the meeting of the President and Prince Henry; to the
+chase of a murderous maniac; to the disaster in the tunnel; to the
+explosion in the subway; to a remarkable dog-fight; to a village
+church struck by lightning. It will be said, more or less causally, by
+everybody in America who has seen Prince Henry do anything, or try to.
+The man who was absent and didn't see him to anything, will scoff. It
+is his privilege; and he can make capital out of it, too; he will seem,
+even to himself, to be different from other Americans, and better.
+As his opinion of his superior Americanism grows, and swells, and
+concentrates and coagulates, he will go further and try to belittle the
+distinction of those that saw the Prince do things, and will spoil their
+pleasure in it if he can. My life has been embittered by that kind of
+person. If you are able to tell of a special distinction that has fallen
+to your lot, it gravels them; they cannot bear it; and they try to make
+believe that the thing you took for a special distinction was nothing
+of the kind and was meant in quite another way. Once I was received in
+private audience by an emperor. Last week I was telling a jealous person
+about it, and I could see him wince under it, see him bite, see
+him suffer. I revealed the whole episode to him with considerable
+elaboration and nice attention to detail. When I was through, he asked
+me what had impressed me most. I said:
+
+“His Majesty's delicacy. They told me to be sure and back out from the
+presence, and find the door-knob as best I could; it was not allowable
+to face around. Now the Emperor knew it would be a difficult ordeal for
+me, because of lack of practice; and so, when it was time to part, he
+turned, with exceeding delicacy, and pretended to fumble with things on
+his desk, so I could get out in my own way, without his seeing me.”
+
+It went home! It was vitriol! I saw the envy and disgruntlement rise
+in the man's face; he couldn't keep it down. I saw him try to fix up
+something in his mind to take the bloom off that distinction. I enjoyed
+that, for I judged that he had his work cut out for him. He struggled
+along inwardly for quite a while; then he said, with a manner of a
+person who has to say something and hasn't anything relevant to say:
+
+“You said he had a handful of special-brand cigars on the table?”
+
+“Yes; _I_ never saw anything to match them.”
+
+I had him again. He had to fumble around in his mind as much as another
+minute before he could play; then he said in as mean a way as I ever
+heard a person say anything:
+
+“He could have been counting the cigars, you know.”
+
+I cannot endure a man like that. It is nothing to him how unkind he is,
+so long as he takes the bloom off. It is all he cares for.
+
+“An Englishman (or other human being) does dearly love a lord,” (or
+other conspicuous person.) It includes us all. We love to be noticed by
+the conspicuous person; we love to be associated with such, or with
+a conspicuous event, even in a seventh-rate fashion, even in the
+forty-seventh, if we cannot do better. This accounts for some of our
+curious tastes in mementos. It accounts for the large private trade in
+the Prince of Wales's hair, which chambermaids were able to drive in
+that article of commerce when the Prince made the tour of the world in
+the long ago--hair which probably did not always come from his brush,
+since enough of it was marketed to refurnish a bald comet; it accounts
+for the fact that the rope which lynches a negro in the presence of
+ten thousand Christian spectators is salable five minutes later at
+two dollars and inch; it accounts for the mournful fact that a royal
+personage does not venture to wear buttons on his coat in public.
+
+We do love a lord--and by that term I mean any person whose situation
+is higher than our own. The lord of the group, for instance: a group of
+peers, a group of millionaires, a group of hoodlums, a group of sailors,
+a group of newsboys, a group of saloon politicians, a group of college
+girls. No royal person has ever been the object of a more delirious
+loyalty and slavish adoration than is paid by the vast Tammany herd to
+its squalid idol of Wantage. There is not a bifurcated animal in that
+menagerie that would not be proud to appear in a newspaper picture in
+his company. At the same time, there are some in that organization who
+would scoff at the people who have been daily pictured in company with
+Prince Henry, and would say vigorously that _they _would not consent
+to be photographed with him--a statement which would not be true in any
+instance. There are hundreds of people in America who would frankly say
+to you that they would not be proud to be photographed in a group
+with the Prince, if invited; and some of these unthinking people would
+believe it when they said it; yet in no instance would it be true. We
+have a large population, but we have not a large enough one, by several
+millions, to furnish that man. He has not yet been begotten, and in fact
+he is not begettable.
+
+You may take any of the printed groups, and there isn't a person in the
+dim background who isn't visibly trying to be vivid; if it is a crowd of
+ten thousand--ten thousand proud, untamed democrats, horny-handed sons
+of toil and of politics, and fliers of the eagle--there isn't one who
+is trying to keep out of range, there isn't one who isn't plainly
+meditating a purchase of the paper in the morning, with the intention of
+hunting himself out in the picture and of framing and keeping it if he
+shall find so much of his person in it as his starboard ear.
+
+We all love to get some of the drippings of Conspicuousness, and we
+will put up with a single, humble drip, if we can't get any more. We may
+pretend otherwise, in conversation; but we can't pretend it to ourselves
+privately--and we don't. We do confess in public that we are the
+noblest work of God, being moved to it by long habit, and teaching,
+and superstition; but deep down in the secret places of our souls we
+recognize that, if we _are _the noblest work, the less said about it the
+better.
+
+We of the North poke fun at the South for its fondness of titles--a
+fondness for titles pure and simple, regardless of whether they are
+genuine or pinchbeck. We forget that whatever a Southerner likes the
+rest of the human race likes, and that there is no law of predilection
+lodged in one people that is absent from another people. There is no
+variety in the human race. We are all children, all children of the one
+Adam, and we love toys. We can soon acquire that Southern disease if
+some one will give it a start. It already has a start, in fact. I have
+been personally acquainted with over eighty-four thousand persons who,
+at one time or another in their lives, have served for a year or two
+on the staffs of our multitudinous governors, and through that
+fatality have been generals temporarily, and colonels temporarily, and
+judge-advocates temporarily; but I have known only nine among them who
+could be hired to let the title go when it ceased to be legitimate. I
+know thousands and thousands of governors who ceased to be governors
+away back in the last century; but I am acquainted with only three who
+would answer your letter if you failed to call them “Governor” in it.
+I know acres and acres of men who have done time in a legislature in
+prehistoric days, but among them is not half an acre whose resentment
+you would not raise if you addressed them as “Mr.” instead of “Hon.”
+ The first thing a legislature does is to convene in an impressive
+legislative attitude, and get itself photographed. Each member
+frames his copy and takes it to the woods and hangs it up in the most
+aggressively conspicuous place in his house; and if you visit the house
+and fail to inquire what that accumulation is, the conversation will be
+brought around to it by that aforetime legislator, and he will show you
+a figure in it which in the course of years he has almost obliterated
+with the smut of his finger-marks, and say with a solemn joy, “It's me!”
+
+Have you ever seen a country Congressman enter the hotel breakfast-room
+in Washington with his letters?--and sit at his table and let on to
+read them?--and wrinkle his brows and frown statesman-like?--keeping a
+furtive watch-out over his glasses all the while to see if he is being
+observed and admired?--those same old letters which he fetches in every
+morning? Have you seen it? Have you seen him show off? It is _the_
+sight of the national capital. Except one; a pathetic one. That is the
+ex-Congressman: the poor fellow whose life has been ruined by a two-year
+taste of glory and of fictitious consequence; who has been superseded,
+and ought to take his heartbreak home and hide it, but cannot tear
+himself away from the scene of his lost little grandeur; and so he
+lingers, and still lingers, year after year, unconsidered, sometimes
+snubbed, ashamed of his fallen estate, and valiantly trying to look
+otherwise; dreary and depressed, but counterfeiting breeziness and
+gaiety, hailing with chummy familiarity, which is not always welcomed,
+the more-fortunates who are still in place and were once his mates. Have
+you seen him? He clings piteously to the one little shred that is left
+of his departed distinction--the “privilege of the floor”; and works it
+hard and gets what he can out of it. That is the saddest figure I know
+of.
+
+Yes, we do so love our little distinctions! And then we loftily scoff
+at a Prince for enjoying his larger ones; forgetting that if we only had
+his chance--ah! “Senator” is not a legitimate title. A Senator has no
+more right to be addressed by it than have you or I; but, in the several
+state capitals and in Washington, there are five thousand Senators who
+take very kindly to that fiction, and who purr gratefully when you call
+them by it--which you may do quite unrebuked. Then those same Senators
+smile at the self-constructed majors and generals and judges of the
+South!
+
+Indeed, we do love our distinctions, get them how we may. And we work
+them for all they are worth. In prayer we call ourselves “worms of the
+dust,” but it is only on a sort of tacit understanding that the remark
+shall not be taken at par._ We_--worms of the dust! Oh, no, we are
+not that. Except in fact; and we do not deal much in fact when we are
+contemplating ourselves.
+
+As a race, we do certainly love a lord--let him be Croker, or a duke, or
+a prize-fighter, or whatever other personage shall chance to be the head
+of our group. Many years ago, I saw a greasy youth in overalls standing
+by the _Herald _office, with an expectant look in his face. Soon a large
+man passed out, and gave him a pat on the shoulder. That was what the
+boy was waiting for--the large man's notice. The pat made him proud and
+happy, and the exultation inside of him shone out through his eyes; and
+his mates were there to see the pat and envy it and wish they could have
+that glory. The boy belonged down cellar in the press-room, the large
+man was king of the upper floors, foreman of the composing-room. The
+light in the boy's face was worship, the foreman was his lord, head of
+his group. The pat was an accolade. It was as precious to the boy as it
+would have been if he had been an aristocrat's son and the accolade had
+been delivered by his sovereign with a sword. The quintessence of the
+honor was all there; there was no difference in values; in truth there
+was no difference present except an artificial one--clothes.
+
+All the human race loves a lord--that is, loves to look upon or be
+noticed by the possessor of Power or Conspicuousness; and sometimes
+animals, born to better things and higher ideals, descend to man's level
+in this matter. In the Jardin des Plantes I have see a cat that was so
+vain of being the personal friend of an elephant that I was ashamed of
+her.
+
+
+
+EXTRACTS FROM ADAM'S DIARY
+
+MONDAY.--This new creature with the long hair is a good deal in the way.
+It is always hanging around and following me about. I don't like this; I
+am not used to company. I wish it would stay with the other animals....
+Cloudy today, wind in the east; think we shall have rain.... _We?_ Where
+did I get that word--the new creature uses it.
+
+TUESDAY.--Been examining the great waterfall. It is the finest thing on
+the estate, I think. The new creature calls it Niagara Falls--why, I am
+sure I do not know. Says it _looks _like Niagara Falls. That is not a
+reason, it is mere waywardness and imbecility. I get no chance to name
+anything myself. The new creature names everything that comes along,
+before I can get in a protest. And always that same pretext is
+offered--it _looks _like the thing. There is a dodo, for instance. Says
+the moment one looks at it one sees at a glance that it “looks like a
+dodo.” It will have to keep that name, no doubt. It wearies me to fret
+about it, and it does no good, anyway. Dodo! It looks no more like a
+dodo than I do.
+
+WEDNESDAY.--Built me a shelter against the rain, but could not have it
+to myself in peace. The new creature intruded. When I tried to put it
+out it shed water out of the holes it looks with, and wiped it away with
+the back of its paws, and made a noise such as some of the other animals
+make when they are in distress. I wish it would not talk; it is always
+talking. That sounds like a cheap fling at the poor creature, a slur;
+but I do not mean it so. I have never heard the human voice before, and
+any new and strange sound intruding itself here upon the solemn hush of
+these dreaming solitudes offends my ear and seems a false note. And this
+new sound is so close to me; it is right at my shoulder, right at my
+ear, first on one side and then on the other, and I am used only to
+sounds that are more or less distant from me.
+
+FRIDAY. The naming goes recklessly on, in spite of anything I can do.
+I had a very good name for the estate, and it was musical and
+pretty--_Garden Of Eden._ Privately, I continue to call it that, but not
+any longer publicly. The new creature says it is all woods and rocks and
+scenery, and therefore has no resemblance to a garden. Says it
+_looks _like a park, and does not look like anything _but _a park.
+Consequently, without consulting me, it has been new-named _Niagara
+Falls Park_. This is sufficiently high-handed, it seems to me. And
+already there is a sign up:
+
+KEEP OFF THE GRASS
+
+My life is not as happy as it was.
+
+SATURDAY.--The new creature eats too much fruit. We are going to run
+short, most likely. “We” again--that is _its_ word; mine, too, now, from
+hearing it so much. Good deal of fog this morning. I do not go out in
+the fog myself. This new creature does. It goes out in all weathers,
+and stumps right in with its muddy feet. And talks. It used to be so
+pleasant and quiet here.
+
+SUNDAY.--Pulled through. This day is getting to be more and more trying.
+It was selected and set apart last November as a day of rest. I had
+already six of them per week before. This morning found the new creature
+trying to clod apples out of that forbidden tree.
+
+MONDAY.--The new creature says its name is Eve. That is all right, I
+have no objections. Says it is to call it by, when I want it to come.
+I said it was superfluous, then. The word evidently raised me in its
+respect; and indeed it is a large, good word and will bear repetition.
+It says it is not an It, it is a She. This is probably doubtful; yet it
+is all one to me; what she is were nothing to me if she would but go by
+herself and not talk.
+
+TUESDAY.--She has littered the whole estate with execrable names and
+offensive signs:
+
+This way to the Whirlpool
+
+This way to Goat Island
+
+Cave of the Winds this way
+
+She says this park would make a tidy summer resort if there was any
+custom for it. Summer resort--another invention of hers--just words,
+without any meaning. What is a summer resort? But it is best not to ask
+her, she has such a rage for explaining.
+
+FRIDAY.--She has taken to beseeching me to stop going over the Falls.
+What harm does it do? Says it makes her shudder. I wonder why; I have
+always done it--always liked the plunge, and coolness. I supposed it was
+what the Falls were for. They have no other use that I can see, and
+they must have been made for something. She says they were only made for
+scenery--like the rhinoceros and the mastodon.
+
+I went over the Falls in a barrel--not satisfactory to her. Went over
+in a tub--still not satisfactory. Swam the Whirlpool and the Rapids in
+a fig-leaf suit. It got much damaged. Hence, tedious complaints about
+my extravagance. I am too much hampered here. What I need is a change of
+scene.
+
+SATURDAY.--I escaped last Tuesday night, and traveled two days, and
+built me another shelter in a secluded place, and obliterated my tracks
+as well as I could, but she hunted me out by means of a beast which she
+has tamed and calls a wolf, and came making that pitiful noise again,
+and shedding that water out of the places she looks with. I was obliged
+to return with her, but will presently emigrate again when occasion
+offers. She engages herself in many foolish things; among others; to
+study out why the animals called lions and tigers live on grass and
+flowers, when, as she says, the sort of teeth they wear would indicate
+that they were intended to eat each other. This is foolish, because to
+do that would be to kill each other, and that would introduce what, as
+I understand, is called “death”; and death, as I have been told, has not
+yet entered the Park. Which is a pity, on some accounts.
+
+SUNDAY.--Pulled through.
+
+MONDAY.--I believe I see what the week is for: it is to give time to
+rest up from the weariness of Sunday. It seems a good idea. ... She has
+been climbing that tree again. Clodded her out of it. She said nobody
+was looking. Seems to consider that a sufficient justification for
+chancing any dangerous thing. Told her that. The word justification
+moved her admiration--and envy, too, I thought. It is a good word.
+
+TUESDAY.--She told me she was made out of a rib taken from my body.
+This is at least doubtful, if not more than that. I have not missed any
+rib.... She is in much trouble about the buzzard; says grass does not
+agree with it; is afraid she can't raise it; thinks it was intended to
+live on decayed flesh. The buzzard must get along the best it can with
+what is provided. We cannot overturn the whole scheme to accommodate the
+buzzard.
+
+SATURDAY.--She fell in the pond yesterday when she was looking at
+herself in it, which she is always doing. She nearly strangled, and said
+it was most uncomfortable. This made her sorry for the creatures which
+live in there, which she calls fish, for she continues to fasten names
+on to things that don't need them and don't come when they are called
+by them, which is a matter of no consequence to her, she is such a
+numbskull, anyway; so she got a lot of them out and brought them in last
+night and put them in my bed to keep warm, but I have noticed them now
+and then all day and I don't see that they are any happier there then
+they were before, only quieter. When night comes I shall throw them
+outdoors. I will not sleep with them again, for I find them clammy and
+unpleasant to lie among when a person hasn't anything on.
+
+SUNDAY.--Pulled through.
+
+TUESDAY.--She has taken up with a snake now. The other animals are glad,
+for she was always experimenting with them and bothering them; and I am
+glad because the snake talks, and this enables me to get a rest.
+
+FRIDAY.--She says the snake advises her to try the fruit of the tree,
+and says the result will be a great and fine and noble education. I told
+her there would be another result, too--it would introduce death into
+the world. That was a mistake--it had been better to keep the remark to
+myself; it only gave her an idea--she could save the sick buzzard, and
+furnish fresh meat to the despondent lions and tigers. I advised her to
+keep away from the tree. She said she wouldn't. I foresee trouble. Will
+emigrate.
+
+WEDNESDAY.--I have had a variegated time. I escaped last night, and rode
+a horse all night as fast as he could go, hoping to get clear of the
+Park and hide in some other country before the trouble should begin; but
+it was not to be. About an hour after sun-up, as I was riding through
+a flowery plain where thousands of animals were grazing, slumbering, or
+playing with each other, according to their wont, all of a sudden they
+broke into a tempest of frightful noises, and in one moment the plain
+was a frantic commotion and every beast was destroying its neighbor. I
+knew what it meant--Eve had eaten that fruit, and death was come into
+the world. ... The tigers ate my house, paying no attention when
+I ordered them to desist, and they would have eaten me if I had
+stayed--which I didn't, but went away in much haste.... I found this
+place, outside the Park, and was fairly comfortable for a few days,
+but she has found me out. Found me out, and has named the place
+Tonawanda--says it _looks _like that. In fact I was not sorry she came,
+for there are but meager pickings here, and she brought some of those
+apples. I was obliged to eat them, I was so hungry. It was against my
+principles, but I find that principles have no real force except when
+one is well fed.... She came curtained in boughs and bunches of leaves,
+and when I asked her what she meant by such nonsense, and snatched them
+away and threw them down, she tittered and blushed. I had never seen
+a person titter and blush before, and to me it seemed unbecoming and
+idiotic. She said I would soon know how it was myself. This was correct.
+Hungry as I was, I laid down the apple half-eaten--certainly the best
+one I ever saw, considering the lateness of the season--and arrayed
+myself in the discarded boughs and branches, and then spoke to her with
+some severity and ordered her to go and get some more and not make a
+spectacle of herself. She did it, and after this we crept down to where
+the wild-beast battle had been, and collected some skins, and I made her
+patch together a couple of suits proper for public occasions. They are
+uncomfortable, it is true, but stylish, and that is the main point about
+clothes.... I find she is a good deal of a companion. I see I should be
+lonesome and depressed without her, now that I have lost my property.
+Another thing, she says it is ordered that we work for our living
+hereafter. She will be useful. I will superintend.
+
+TEN DAYS LATER.--She accuses _me _of being the cause of our disaster!
+She says, with apparent sincerity and truth, that the Serpent assured
+her that the forbidden fruit was not apples, it was chestnuts. I said
+I was innocent, then, for I had not eaten any chestnuts. She said the
+Serpent informed her that “chestnut” was a figurative term meaning an
+aged and moldy joke. I turned pale at that, for I have made many jokes
+to pass the weary time, and some of them could have been of that sort,
+though I had honestly supposed that they were new when I made them. She
+asked me if I had made one just at the time of the catastrophe. I was
+obliged to admit that I had made one to myself, though not aloud. It
+was this. I was thinking about the Falls, and I said to myself, “How
+wonderful it is to see that vast body of water tumble down there!” Then
+in an instant a bright thought flashed into my head, and I let it
+fly, saying, “It would be a deal more wonderful to see it tumble_ up_
+there!”--and I was just about to kill myself with laughing at it when
+all nature broke loose in war and death and I had to flee for my life.
+“There,” she said, with triumph, “that is just it; the Serpent mentioned
+that very jest, and called it the First Chestnut, and said it was coeval
+with the creation.” Alas, I am indeed to blame. Would that I were not
+witty; oh, that I had never had that radiant thought!
+
+NEXT YEAR.--We have named it Cain. She caught it while I was up country
+trapping on the North Shore of the Erie; caught it in the timber a
+couple of miles from our dug-out--or it might have been four, she isn't
+certain which. It resembles us in some ways, and may be a relation. That
+is what she thinks, but this is an error, in my judgment. The difference
+in size warrants the conclusion that it is a different and new kind of
+animal--a fish, perhaps, though when I put it in the water to see,
+it sank, and she plunged in and snatched it out before there was
+opportunity for the experiment to determine the matter. I still think it
+is a fish, but she is indifferent about what it is, and will not let
+me have it to try. I do not understand this. The coming of the creature
+seems to have changed her whole nature and made her unreasonable about
+experiments. She thinks more of it than she does of any of the
+other animals, but is not able to explain why. Her mind is
+disordered--everything shows it. Sometimes she carries the fish in her
+arms half the night when it complains and wants to get to the water. At
+such times the water comes out of the places in her face that she looks
+out of, and she pats the fish on the back and makes soft sounds with her
+mouth to soothe it, and betrays sorrow and solicitude in a hundred ways.
+I have never seen her do like this with any other fish, and it troubles
+me greatly. She used to carry the young tigers around so, and play with
+them, before we lost our property, but it was only play; she never took
+on about them like this when their dinner disagreed with them.
+
+SUNDAY.--She doesn't work, Sundays, but lies around all tired out, and
+likes to have the fish wallow over her; and she makes fool noises to
+amuse it, and pretends to chew its paws, and that makes it laugh. I have
+not seen a fish before that could laugh. This makes me doubt.... I have
+come to like Sunday myself. Superintending all the week tires a body so.
+There ought to be more Sundays. In the old days they were tough, but now
+they come handy.
+
+WEDNESDAY.--It isn't a fish. I cannot quite make out what it is. It
+makes curious devilish noises when not satisfied, and says “goo-goo”
+ when it is. It is not one of us, for it doesn't walk; it is not a bird,
+for it doesn't fly; it is not a frog, for it doesn't hop; it is not
+a snake, for it doesn't crawl; I feel sure it is not a fish, though I
+cannot get a chance to find out whether it can swim or not. It merely
+lies around, and mostly on its back, with its feet up. I have not seen
+any other animal do that before. I said I believed it was an enigma; but
+she only admired the word without understanding it. In my judgment it is
+either an enigma or some kind of a bug. If it dies, I will take it apart
+and see what its arrangements are. I never had a thing perplex me so.
+
+THREE MONTHS LATER.--The perplexity augments instead of diminishing. I
+sleep but little. It has ceased from lying around, and goes about on
+its four legs now. Yet it differs from the other four legged animals,
+in that its front legs are unusually short, consequently this causes the
+main part of its person to stick up uncomfortably high in the air, and
+this is not attractive. It is built much as we are, but its method of
+traveling shows that it is not of our breed. The short front legs and
+long hind ones indicate that it is a of the kangaroo family, but it is a
+marked variation of that species, since the true kangaroo hops, whereas
+this one never does. Still it is a curious and interesting variety,
+and has not been catalogued before. As I discovered it, I have felt
+justified in securing the credit of the discovery by attaching my name
+to it, and hence have called it _Kangaroorum Adamiensis_.... It must
+have been a young one when it came, for it has grown exceedingly since.
+It must be five times as big, now, as it was then, and when discontented
+it is able to make from twenty-two to thirty-eight times the noise
+it made at first. Coercion does not modify this, but has the contrary
+effect. For this reason I discontinued the system. She reconciles it by
+persuasion, and by giving it things which she had previously told me she
+wouldn't give it. As already observed, I was not at home when it first
+came, and she told me she found it in the woods. It seems odd that it
+should be the only one, yet it must be so, for I have worn myself out
+these many weeks trying to find another one to add to my collection, and
+for this to play with; for surely then it would be quieter and we
+could tame it more easily. But I find none, nor any vestige of any; and
+strangest of all, no tracks. It has to live on the ground, it cannot
+help itself; therefore, how does it get about without leaving a track?
+I have set a dozen traps, but they do no good. I catch all small animals
+except that one; animals that merely go into the trap out of curiosity,
+I think, to see what the milk is there for. They never drink it.
+
+THREE MONTHS LATER.--The Kangaroo still continues to grow, which is
+very strange and perplexing. I never knew one to be so long getting its
+growth. It has fur on its head now; not like kangaroo fur, but exactly
+like our hair except that it is much finer and softer, and instead of
+being black is red. I am like to lose my mind over the capricious and
+harassing developments of this unclassifiable zoological freak. If I
+could catch another one--but that is hopeless; it is a new variety, and
+the only sample; this is plain. But I caught a true kangaroo and brought
+it in, thinking that this one, being lonesome, would rather have that
+for company than have no kin at all, or any animal it could feel a
+nearness to or get sympathy from in its forlorn condition here among
+strangers who do not know its ways or habits, or what to do to make it
+feel that it is among friends; but it was a mistake--it went into such
+fits at the sight of the kangaroo that I was convinced it had never seen
+one before. I pity the poor noisy little animal, but there is nothing
+I can do to make it happy. If I could tame it--but that is out of the
+question; the more I try the worse I seem to make it. It grieves me to
+the heart to see it in its little storms of sorrow and passion. I wanted
+to let it go, but she wouldn't hear of it. That seemed cruel and not
+like her; and yet she may be right. It might be lonelier than ever; for
+since I cannot find another one, how could_ it_?
+
+FIVE MONTHS LATER.--It is not a kangaroo. No, for it supports itself by
+holding to her finger, and thus goes a few steps on its hind legs, and
+then falls down. It is probably some kind of a bear; and yet it has
+no tail--as yet--and no fur, except upon its head. It still keeps on
+growing--that is a curious circumstance, for bears get their growth
+earlier than this. Bears are dangerous--since our catastrophe--and I
+shall not be satisfied to have this one prowling about the place much
+longer without a muzzle on. I have offered to get her a kangaroo if she
+would let this one go, but it did no good--she is determined to run us
+into all sorts of foolish risks, I think. She was not like this before
+she lost her mind.
+
+A FORTNIGHT LATER.--I examined its mouth. There is no danger yet: it has
+only one tooth. It has no tail yet. It makes more noise now than it ever
+did before--and mainly at night. I have moved out. But I shall go over,
+mornings, to breakfast, and see if it has more teeth. If it gets a
+mouthful of teeth it will be time for it to go, tail or no tail, for a
+bear does not need a tail in order to be dangerous.
+
+FOUR MONTHS LATER.--I have been off hunting and fishing a month, up
+in the region that she calls Buffalo; I don't know why, unless it is
+because there are not any buffaloes there. Meantime the bear has learned
+to paddle around all by itself on its hind legs, and says “poppa” and
+“momma.” It is certainly a new species. This resemblance to words may
+be purely accidental, of course, and may have no purpose or meaning;
+but even in that case it is still extraordinary, and is a thing which no
+other bear can do. This imitation of speech, taken together with general
+absence of fur and entire absence of tail, sufficiently indicates that
+this is a new kind of bear. The further study of it will be exceedingly
+interesting. Meantime I will go off on a far expedition among the
+forests of the north and make an exhaustive search. There must certainly
+be another one somewhere, and this one will be less dangerous when it
+has company of its own species. I will go straightway; but I will muzzle
+this one first.
+
+THREE MONTHS LATER.--It has been a weary, weary hunt, yet I have had no
+success. In the mean time, without stirring from the home estate, she
+has caught another one! I never saw such luck. I might have hunted these
+woods a hundred years, I never would have run across that thing.
+
+NEXT DAY.--I have been comparing the new one with the old one, and it
+is perfectly plain that they are of the same breed. I was going to stuff
+one of them for my collection, but she is prejudiced against it for some
+reason or other; so I have relinquished the idea, though I think it is
+a mistake. It would be an irreparable loss to science if they should
+get away. The old one is tamer than it was and can laugh and talk like
+a parrot, having learned this, no doubt, from being with the parrot so
+much, and having the imitative faculty in a high developed degree. I
+shall be astonished if it turns out to be a new kind of parrot; and yet
+I ought not to be astonished, for it has already been everything else it
+could think of since those first days when it was a fish. The new one is
+as ugly as the old one was at first; has the same sulphur-and-raw-meat
+complexion and the same singular head without any fur on it. She calls
+it Abel.
+
+TEN YEARS LATER.--They are _boys_; we found it out long ago. It was
+their coming in that small immature shape that puzzled us; we were not
+used to it. There are some girls now. Abel is a good boy, but if Cain
+had stayed a bear it would have improved him. After all these years, I
+see that I was mistaken about Eve in the beginning; it is better to
+live outside the Garden with her than inside it without her. At first
+I thought she talked too much; but now I should be sorry to have that
+voice fall silent and pass out of my life. Blessed be the chestnut that
+brought us near together and taught me to know the goodness of her heart
+and the sweetness of her spirit!
+
+
+
+EVE'S DIARY
+
+Translated from the Original
+
+SATURDAY.--I am almost a whole day old, now. I arrived yesterday.
+That is as it seems to me. And it must be so, for if there was a
+day-before-yesterday I was not there when it happened, or I should
+remember it. It could be, of course, that it did happen, and that I
+was not noticing. Very well; I will be very watchful now, and if any
+day-before-yesterdays happen I will make a note of it. It will be best
+to start right and not let the record get confused, for some instinct
+tells me that these details are going to be important to the historian
+some day. For I feel like an experiment, I feel exactly like an
+experiment; it would be impossible for a person to feel more like an
+experiment than I do, and so I am coming to feel convinced that that is
+what I _am_--an experiment; just an experiment, and nothing more.
+
+Then if I am an experiment, am I the whole of it? No, I think not; I
+think the rest of it is part of it. I am the main part of it, but
+I think the rest of it has its share in the matter. Is my position
+assured, or do I have to watch it and take care of it? The latter,
+perhaps. Some instinct tells me that eternal vigilance is the price of
+supremacy. (That is a good phrase, I think, for one so young.)
+
+Everything looks better today than it did yesterday. In the rush of
+finishing up yesterday, the mountains were left in a ragged condition,
+and some of the plains were so cluttered with rubbish and remnants that
+the aspects were quite distressing. Noble and beautiful works of art
+should not be subjected to haste; and this majestic new world is indeed
+a most noble and beautiful work. And certainly marvelously near to being
+perfect, notwithstanding the shortness of the time. There are too many
+stars in some places and not enough in others, but that can be remedied
+presently, no doubt. The moon got loose last night, and slid down and
+fell out of the scheme--a very great loss; it breaks my heart to think
+of it. There isn't another thing among the ornaments and decorations
+that is comparable to it for beauty and finish. It should have been
+fastened better. If we can only get it back again--
+
+But of course there is no telling where it went to. And besides, whoever
+gets it will hide it; I know it because I would do it myself. I believe
+I can be honest in all other matters, but I already begin to realize
+that the core and center of my nature is love of the beautiful, a
+passion for the beautiful, and that it would not be safe to trust me
+with a moon that belonged to another person and that person didn't know
+I had it. I could give up a moon that I found in the daytime, because I
+should be afraid some one was looking; but if I found it in the dark,
+I am sure I should find some kind of an excuse for not saying anything
+about it. For I do love moons, they are so pretty and so romantic. I
+wish we had five or six; I would never go to bed; I should never get
+tired lying on the moss-bank and looking up at them.
+
+Stars are good, too. I wish I could get some to put in my hair. But I
+suppose I never can. You would be surprised to find how far off they
+are, for they do not look it. When they first showed, last night,
+I tried to knock some down with a pole, but it didn't reach, which
+astonished me; then I tried clods till I was all tired out, but I never
+got one. It was because I am left-handed and cannot throw good. Even
+when I aimed at the one I wasn't after I couldn't hit the other one,
+though I did make some close shots, for I saw the black blot of the clod
+sail right into the midst of the golden clusters forty or fifty times,
+just barely missing them, and if I could have held out a little longer
+maybe I could have got one.
+
+So I cried a little, which was natural, I suppose, for one of my age,
+and after I was rested I got a basket and started for a place on the
+extreme rim of the circle, where the stars were close to the ground and
+I could get them with my hands, which would be better, anyway, because I
+could gather them tenderly then, and not break them. But it was farther
+than I thought, and at last I had to give it up; I was so tired I
+couldn't drag my feet another step; and besides, they were sore and hurt
+me very much.
+
+I couldn't get back home; it was too far and turning cold; but I found
+some tigers and nestled in among them and was most adorably comfortable,
+and their breath was sweet and pleasant, because they live on
+strawberries. I had never seen a tiger before, but I knew them in a
+minute by the stripes. If I could have one of those skins, it would make
+a lovely gown.
+
+Today I am getting better ideas about distances. I was so eager to get
+hold of every pretty thing that I giddily grabbed for it, sometimes when
+it was too far off, and sometimes when it was but six inches away but
+seemed a foot--alas, with thorns between! I learned a lesson; also I
+made an axiom, all out of my own head--my very first one; _The scratched
+experiment shuns the thorn_. I think it is a very good one for one so
+young.
+
+I followed the other Experiment around, yesterday afternoon, at a
+distance, to see what it might be for, if I could. But I was not able
+to make out. I think it is a man. I had never seen a man, but it looked
+like one, and I feel sure that that is what it is. I realize that I feel
+more curiosity about it than about any of the other reptiles. If it is a
+reptile, and I suppose it is; for it has frowzy hair and blue eyes, and
+looks like a reptile. It has no hips; it tapers like a carrot; when
+it stands, it spreads itself apart like a derrick; so I think it is a
+reptile, though it may be architecture.
+
+I was afraid of it at first, and started to run every time it turned
+around, for I thought it was going to chase me; but by and by I found it
+was only trying to get away, so after that I was not timid any more, but
+tracked it along, several hours, about twenty yards behind, which made
+it nervous and unhappy. At last it was a good deal worried, and climbed
+a tree. I waited a good while, then gave it up and went home.
+
+Today the same thing over. I've got it up the tree again.
+
+SUNDAY.--It is up there yet. Resting, apparently. But that is a
+subterfuge: Sunday isn't the day of rest; Saturday is appointed for
+that. It looks to me like a creature that is more interested in resting
+than in anything else. It would tire me to rest so much. It tires me
+just to sit around and watch the tree. I do wonder what it is for; I
+never see it do anything.
+
+They returned the moon last night, and I was_ so_ happy! I think it
+is very honest of them. It slid down and fell off again, but I was
+not distressed; there is no need to worry when one has that kind of
+neighbors; they will fetch it back. I wish I could do something to show
+my appreciation. I would like to send them some stars, for we have more
+than we can use. I mean I, not we, for I can see that the reptile cares
+nothing for such things.
+
+It has low tastes, and is not kind. When I went there yesterday evening
+in the gloaming it had crept down and was trying to catch the little
+speckled fishes that play in the pool, and I had to clod it to make it
+go up the tree again and let them alone. I wonder if _that _is what it
+is for? Hasn't it any heart? Hasn't it any compassion for those little
+creature? Can it be that it was designed and manufactured for such
+ungentle work? It has the look of it. One of the clods took it back of
+the ear, and it used language. It gave me a thrill, for it was the first
+time I had ever heard speech, except my own. I did not understand the
+words, but they seemed expressive.
+
+When I found it could talk I felt a new interest in it, for I love to
+talk; I talk, all day, and in my sleep, too, and I am very interesting,
+but if I had another to talk to I could be twice as interesting, and
+would never stop, if desired.
+
+If this reptile is a man, it isn't an_ it_, is it? That wouldn't be
+grammatical, would it? I think it would be _he_. I think so. In
+that case one would parse it thus: nominative, _he_; dative, _him_;
+possessive, _his'n._ Well, I will consider it a man and call it he until
+it turns out to be something else. This will be handier than having so
+many uncertainties.
+
+NEXT WEEK SUNDAY.--All the week I tagged around after him and tried
+to get acquainted. I had to do the talking, because he was shy, but
+I didn't mind it. He seemed pleased to have me around, and I used
+the sociable “we” a good deal, because it seemed to flatter him to be
+included.
+
+WEDNESDAY.--We are getting along very well indeed, now, and getting
+better and better acquainted. He does not try to avoid me any more,
+which is a good sign, and shows that he likes to have me with him. That
+pleases me, and I study to be useful to him in every way I can, so as
+to increase his regard. During the last day or two I have taken all the
+work of naming things off his hands, and this has been a great relief to
+him, for he has no gift in that line, and is evidently very grateful.
+He can't think of a rational name to save him, but I do not let him see
+that I am aware of his defect. Whenever a new creature comes along I
+name it before he has time to expose himself by an awkward silence. In
+this way I have saved him many embarrassments. I have no defect like
+this. The minute I set eyes on an animal I know what it is. I don't have
+to reflect a moment; the right name comes out instantly, just as if it
+were an inspiration, as no doubt it is, for I am sure it wasn't in me
+half a minute before. I seem to know just by the shape of the creature
+and the way it acts what animal it is.
+
+When the dodo came along he thought it was a wildcat--I saw it in his
+eye. But I saved him. And I was careful not to do it in a way that
+could hurt his pride. I just spoke up in a quite natural way of pleased
+surprise, and not as if I was dreaming of conveying information,
+and said, “Well, I do declare, if there isn't the dodo!” I
+explained--without seeming to be explaining--how I know it for a dodo,
+and although I thought maybe he was a little piqued that I knew the
+creature when he didn't, it was quite evident that he admired me.
+That was very agreeable, and I thought of it more than once with
+gratification before I slept. How little a thing can make us happy when
+we feel that we have earned it!
+
+THURSDAY.--my first sorrow. Yesterday he avoided me and seemed to wish
+I would not talk to him. I could not believe it, and thought there was
+some mistake, for I loved to be with him, and loved to hear him talk,
+and so how could it be that he could feel unkind toward me when I had
+not done anything? But at last it seemed true, so I went away and sat
+lonely in the place where I first saw him the morning that we were made
+and I did not know what he was and was indifferent about him; but now it
+was a mournful place, and every little thing spoke of him, and my
+heart was very sore. I did not know why very clearly, for it was a new
+feeling; I had not experienced it before, and it was all a mystery, and
+I could not make it out.
+
+But when night came I could not bear the lonesomeness, and went to the
+new shelter which he has built, to ask him what I had done that was
+wrong and how I could mend it and get back his kindness again; but he
+put me out in the rain, and it was my first sorrow.
+
+SUNDAY.--It is pleasant again, now, and I am happy; but those were heavy
+days; I do not think of them when I can help it.
+
+I tried to get him some of those apples, but I cannot learn to throw
+straight. I failed, but I think the good intention pleased him. They
+are forbidden, and he says I shall come to harm; but so I come to harm
+through pleasing him, why shall I care for that harm?
+
+MONDAY.--This morning I told him my name, hoping it would interest him.
+But he did not care for it. It is strange. If he should tell me his
+name, I would care. I think it would be pleasanter in my ears than any
+other sound.
+
+He talks very little. Perhaps it is because he is not bright, and is
+sensitive about it and wishes to conceal it. It is such a pity that he
+should feel so, for brightness is nothing; it is in the heart that the
+values lie. I wish I could make him understand that a loving good heart
+is riches, and riches enough, and that without it intellect is poverty.
+
+Although he talks so little, he has quite a considerable vocabulary.
+This morning he used a surprisingly good word. He evidently recognized,
+himself, that it was a good one, for he worked it in twice afterward,
+casually. It was not good casual art, still it showed that he possesses
+a certain quality of perception. Without a doubt that seed can be made
+to grow, if cultivated.
+
+Where did he get that word? I do not think I have ever used it.
+
+No, he took no interest in my name. I tried to hide my disappointment,
+but I suppose I did not succeed. I went away and sat on the moss-bank
+with my feet in the water. It is where I go when I hunger for
+companionship, some one to look at, some one to talk to. It is not
+enough--that lovely white body painted there in the pool--but it is
+something, and something is better than utter loneliness. It talks when
+I talk; it is sad when I am sad; it comforts me with its sympathy; it
+says, “Do not be downhearted, you poor friendless girl; I will be your
+friend.” It_ is_ a good friend to me, and my only one; it is my sister.
+
+That first time that she forsook me! ah, I shall never forget
+that--never, never. My heart was lead in my body! I said, “She was all
+I had, and now she is gone!” In my despair I said, “Break, my heart; I
+cannot bear my life any more!” and hid my face in my hands, and there
+was no solace for me. And when I took them away, after a little, there
+she was again, white and shining and beautiful, and I sprang into her
+arms!
+
+That was perfect happiness; I had known happiness before, but it was not
+like this, which was ecstasy. I never doubted her afterward. Sometimes
+she stayed away--maybe an hour, maybe almost the whole day, but I waited
+and did not doubt; I said, “She is busy, or she is gone on a journey,
+but she will come.” And it was so: she always did. At night she would
+not come if it was dark, for she was a timid little thing; but if there
+was a moon she would come. I am not afraid of the dark, but she is
+younger than I am; she was born after I was. Many and many are the
+visits I have paid her; she is my comfort and my refuge when my life is
+hard--and it is mainly that.
+
+TUESDAY.--All the morning I was at work improving the estate; and I
+purposely kept away from him in the hope that he would get lonely and
+come. But he did not.
+
+At noon I stopped for the day and took my recreation by flitting all
+about with the bees and the butterflies and reveling in the flowers,
+those beautiful creatures that catch the smile of God out of the sky and
+preserve it! I gathered them, and made them into wreaths and garlands
+and clothed myself in them while I ate my luncheon--apples, of course;
+then I sat in the shade and wished and waited. But he did not come.
+
+But no matter. Nothing would have come of it, for he does not care for
+flowers. He called them rubbish, and cannot tell one from another, and
+thinks it is superior to feel like that. He does not care for me, he
+does not care for flowers, he does not care for the painted sky at
+eventide--is there anything he does care for, except building shacks to
+coop himself up in from the good clean rain, and thumping the melons,
+and sampling the grapes, and fingering the fruit on the trees, to see
+how those properties are coming along?
+
+I laid a dry stick on the ground and tried to bore a hole in it with
+another one, in order to carry out a scheme that I had, and soon I got
+an awful fright. A thin, transparent bluish film rose out of the hole,
+and I dropped everything and ran! I thought it was a spirit, and I _was
+_so frightened! But I looked back, and it was not coming; so I leaned
+against a rock and rested and panted, and let my limbs go on trembling
+until they got steady again; then I crept warily back, alert, watching,
+and ready to fly if there was occasion; and when I was come near, I
+parted the branches of a rose-bush and peeped through--wishing the man
+was about, I was looking so cunning and pretty--but the sprite was gone.
+I went there, and there was a pinch of delicate pink dust in the hole. I
+put my finger in, to feel it, and said _ouch_! and took it out again. It
+was a cruel pain. I put my finger in my mouth; and by standing first on
+one foot and then the other, and grunting, I presently eased my misery;
+then I was full of interest, and began to examine.
+
+I was curious to know what the pink dust was. Suddenly the name of it
+occurred to me, though I had never heard of it before. It was _fire_! I
+was as certain of it as a person could be of anything in the world. So
+without hesitation I named it that--fire.
+
+I had created something that didn't exist before; I had added a new
+thing to the world's uncountable properties; I realized this, and was
+proud of my achievement, and was going to run and find him and tell him
+about it, thinking to raise myself in his esteem--but I reflected, and
+did not do it. No--he would not care for it. He would ask what it
+was good for, and what could I answer? for if it was not _good _for
+something, but only beautiful, merely beautiful-- So I sighed, and did
+not go. For it wasn't good for anything; it could not build a shack,
+it could not improve melons, it could not hurry a fruit crop; it was
+useless, it was a foolishness and a vanity; he would despise it and say
+cutting words. But to me it was not despicable; I said, “Oh, you fire, I
+love you, you dainty pink creature, for you are _beautiful_--and that is
+enough!” and was going to gather it to my breast. But refrained. Then
+I made another maxim out of my head, though it was so nearly like
+the first one that I was afraid it was only a plagiarism: “_The burnt
+experiment shuns the fire_.”
+
+I wrought again; and when I had made a good deal of fire-dust I emptied
+it into a handful of dry brown grass, intending to carry it home and
+keep it always and play with it; but the wind struck it and it sprayed
+up and spat out at me fiercely, and I dropped it and ran. When I looked
+back the blue spirit was towering up and stretching and rolling away
+like a cloud, and instantly I thought of the name of it--smoke!--though,
+upon my word, I had never heard of smoke before.
+
+Soon brilliant yellow and red flares shot up through the smoke, and I
+named them in an instant--flames--and I was right, too, though these
+were the very first flames that had ever been in the world. They climbed
+the trees, then flashed splendidly in and out of the vast and increasing
+volume of tumbling smoke, and I had to clap my hands and laugh and
+dance in my rapture, it was so new and strange and so wonderful and so
+beautiful!
+
+He came running, and stopped and gazed, and said not a word for many
+minutes. Then he asked what it was. Ah, it was too bad that he should
+ask such a direct question. I had to answer it, of course, and I did. I
+said it was fire. If it annoyed him that I should know and he must ask;
+that was not my fault; I had no desire to annoy him. After a pause he
+asked:
+
+“How did it come?”
+
+Another direct question, and it also had to have a direct answer.
+
+“I made it.”
+
+The fire was traveling farther and farther off. He went to the edge of
+the burned place and stood looking down, and said:
+
+“What are these?”
+
+“Fire-coals.”
+
+He picked up one to examine it, but changed his mind and put it down
+again. Then he went away. _Nothing _interests him.
+
+But I was interested. There were ashes, gray and soft and delicate
+and pretty--I knew what they were at once. And the embers; I knew the
+embers, too. I found my apples, and raked them out, and was glad; for
+I am very young and my appetite is active. But I was disappointed; they
+were all burst open and spoiled. Spoiled apparently; but it was not so;
+they were better than raw ones. Fire is beautiful; some day it will be
+useful, I think.
+
+FRIDAY.--I saw him again, for a moment, last Monday at nightfall, but
+only for a moment. I was hoping he would praise me for trying to improve
+the estate, for I had meant well and had worked hard. But he was not
+pleased, and turned away and left me. He was also displeased on another
+account: I tried once more to persuade him to stop going over the Falls.
+That was because the fire had revealed to me a new passion--quite new,
+and distinctly different from love, grief, and those others which I
+had already discovered--fear. And it is horrible!--I wish I had never
+discovered it; it gives me dark moments, it spoils my happiness, it
+makes me shiver and tremble and shudder. But I could not persuade him,
+for he has not discovered fear yet, and so he could not understand me.
+
+
+
+EXTRACT FROM ADAM'S DIARY
+
+Perhaps I ought to remember that she is very young, a mere girl and make
+allowances. She is all interest, eagerness, vivacity, the world is to
+her a charm, a wonder, a mystery, a joy; she can't speak for delight
+when she finds a new flower, she must pet it and caress it and smell
+it and talk to it, and pour out endearing names upon it. And she is
+color-mad: brown rocks, yellow sand, gray moss, green foliage, blue sky;
+the pearl of the dawn, the purple shadows on the mountains, the golden
+islands floating in crimson seas at sunset, the pallid moon sailing
+through the shredded cloud-rack, the star-jewels glittering in the
+wastes of space--none of them is of any practical value, so far as I can
+see, but because they have color and majesty, that is enough for her,
+and she loses her mind over them. If she could quiet down and keep still
+a couple minutes at a time, it would be a reposeful spectacle. In that
+case I think I could enjoy looking at her; indeed I am sure I could,
+for I am coming to realize that she is a quite remarkably comely
+creature--lithe, slender, trim, rounded, shapely, nimble, graceful; and
+once when she was standing marble-white and sun-drenched on a boulder,
+with her young head tilted back and her hand shading her eyes, watching
+the flight of a bird in the sky, I recognized that she was beautiful.
+
+MONDAY NOON.--If there is anything on the planet that she is not
+interested in it is not in my list. There are animals that I am
+indifferent to, but it is not so with her. She has no discrimination,
+she takes to all of them, she thinks they are all treasures, every new
+one is welcome.
+
+When the mighty brontosaurus came striding into camp, she regarded it as
+an acquisition, I considered it a calamity; that is a good sample of
+the lack of harmony that prevails in our views of things. She wanted to
+domesticate it, I wanted to make it a present of the homestead and move
+out. She believed it could be tamed by kind treatment and would be a
+good pet; I said a pet twenty-one feet high and eighty-four feet long
+would be no proper thing to have about the place, because, even with the
+best intentions and without meaning any harm, it could sit down on the
+house and mash it, for any one could see by the look of its eye that it
+was absent-minded.
+
+Still, her heart was set upon having that monster, and she couldn't give
+it up. She thought we could start a dairy with it, and wanted me to help
+milk it; but I wouldn't; it was too risky. The sex wasn't right, and we
+hadn't any ladder anyway. Then she wanted to ride it, and look at the
+scenery. Thirty or forty feet of its tail was lying on the ground, like
+a fallen tree, and she thought she could climb it, but she was mistaken;
+when she got to the steep place it was too slick and down she came, and
+would have hurt herself but for me.
+
+Was she satisfied now? No. Nothing ever satisfies her but demonstration;
+untested theories are not in her line, and she won't have them. It is
+the right spirit, I concede it; it attracts me; I feel the influence of
+it; if I were with her more I think I should take it up myself. Well,
+she had one theory remaining about this colossus: she thought that if we
+could tame it and make him friendly we could stand him in the river
+and use him for a bridge. It turned out that he was already plenty tame
+enough--at least as far as she was concerned--so she tried her theory,
+but it failed: every time she got him properly placed in the river and
+went ashore to cross over him, he came out and followed her around like
+a pet mountain. Like the other animals. They all do that.
+
+FRIDAY.--Tuesday--Wednesday--Thursday--and today: all without seeing
+him. It is a long time to be alone; still, it is better to be alone than
+unwelcome.
+
+
+
+I _had _to have company--I was made for it, I think--so I made friends
+with the animals. They are just charming, and they have the kindest
+disposition and the politest ways; they never look sour, they never let
+you feel that you are intruding, they smile at you and wag their tail,
+if they've got one, and they are always ready for a romp or an excursion
+or anything you want to propose. I think they are perfect gentlemen. All
+these days we have had such good times, and it hasn't been lonesome for
+me, ever. Lonesome! No, I should say not. Why, there's always a swarm
+of them around--sometimes as much as four or five acres--you can't count
+them; and when you stand on a rock in the midst and look out over the
+furry expanse it is so mottled and splashed and gay with color and
+frisking sheen and sun-flash, and so rippled with stripes, that you
+might think it was a lake, only you know it isn't; and there's storms
+of sociable birds, and hurricanes of whirring wings; and when the sun
+strikes all that feathery commotion, you have a blazing up of all the
+colors you can think of, enough to put your eyes out.
+
+We have made long excursions, and I have seen a great deal of the world;
+almost all of it, I think; and so I am the first traveler, and the only
+one. When we are on the march, it is an imposing sight--there's nothing
+like it anywhere. For comfort I ride a tiger or a leopard, because it is
+soft and has a round back that fits me, and because they are such pretty
+animals; but for long distance or for scenery I ride the elephant. He
+hoists me up with his trunk, but I can get off myself; when we are ready
+to camp, he sits and I slide down the back way.
+
+The birds and animals are all friendly to each other, and there are no
+disputes about anything. They all talk, and they all talk to me, but it
+must be a foreign language, for I cannot make out a word they say; yet
+they often understand me when I talk back, particularly the dog and the
+elephant. It makes me ashamed. It shows that they are brighter than I
+am, for I want to be the principal Experiment myself--and I intend to
+be, too.
+
+I have learned a number of things, and am educated, now, but I wasn't at
+first. I was ignorant at first. At first it used to vex me because, with
+all my watching, I was never smart enough to be around when the water
+was running uphill; but now I do not mind it. I have experimented and
+experimented until now I know it never does run uphill, except in the
+dark. I know it does in the dark, because the pool never goes dry, which
+it would, of course, if the water didn't come back in the night. It is
+best to prove things by actual experiment; then you _know_; whereas if
+you depend on guessing and supposing and conjecturing, you never get
+educated.
+
+Some things you _can't_ find out; but you will never know you can't
+by guessing and supposing: no, you have to be patient and go on
+experimenting until you find out that you can't find out. And it is
+delightful to have it that way, it makes the world so interesting. If
+there wasn't anything to find out, it would be dull. Even trying to find
+out and not finding out is just as interesting as trying to find out and
+finding out, and I don't know but more so. The secret of the water was
+a treasure until I _got _it; then the excitement all went away, and I
+recognized a sense of loss.
+
+By experiment I know that wood swims, and dry leaves, and feathers, and
+plenty of other things; therefore by all that cumulative evidence you
+know that a rock will swim; but you have to put up with simply knowing
+it, for there isn't any way to prove it--up to now. But I shall find a
+way--then _that _excitement will go. Such things make me sad; because
+by and by when I have found out everything there won't be any more
+excitements, and I do love excitements so! The other night I couldn't
+sleep for thinking about it.
+
+At first I couldn't make out what I was made for, but now I think it was
+to search out the secrets of this wonderful world and be happy and thank
+the Giver of it all for devising it. I think there are many things to
+learn yet--I hope so; and by economizing and not hurrying too fast I
+think they will last weeks and weeks. I hope so. When you cast up a
+feather it sails away on the air and goes out of sight; then you throw
+up a clod and it doesn't. It comes down, every time. I have tried it
+and tried it, and it is always so. I wonder why it is? Of course it
+_doesn't_ come down, but why should it _seem _to? I suppose it is an
+optical illusion. I mean, one of them is. I don't know which one. It
+may be the feather, it may be the clod; I can't prove which it is, I can
+only demonstrate that one or the other is a fake, and let a person take
+his choice.
+
+By watching, I know that the stars are not going to last. I have seen
+some of the best ones melt and run down the sky. Since one can melt,
+they can all melt; since they can all melt, they can all melt the same
+night. That sorrow will come--I know it. I mean to sit up every night
+and look at them as long as I can keep awake; and I will impress those
+sparkling fields on my memory, so that by and by when they are taken
+away I can by my fancy restore those lovely myriads to the black sky and
+make them sparkle again, and double them by the blur of my tears.
+
+After the Fall
+
+When I look back, the Garden is a dream to me. It was beautiful,
+surpassingly beautiful, enchantingly beautiful; and now it is lost, and
+I shall not see it any more.
+
+The Garden is lost, but I have found _him_, and am content. He loves
+me as well as he can; I love him with all the strength of my passionate
+nature, and this, I think, is proper to my youth and sex. If I ask
+myself why I love him, I find I do not know, and do not really much
+care to know; so I suppose that this kind of love is not a product
+of reasoning and statistics, like one's love for other reptiles and
+animals. I think that this must be so. I love certain birds because of
+their song; but I do not love Adam on account of his singing--no, it is
+not that; the more he sings the more I do not get reconciled to it.
+Yet I ask him to sing, because I wish to learn to like everything he is
+interested in. I am sure I can learn, because at first I could not stand
+it, but now I can. It sours the milk, but it doesn't matter; I can get
+used to that kind of milk.
+
+It is not on account of his brightness that I love him--no, it is not
+that. He is not to blame for his brightness, such as it is, for he did
+not make it himself; he is as God made him, and that is sufficient.
+There was a wise purpose in it, _that _I know. In time it will develop,
+though I think it will not be sudden; and besides, there is no hurry; he
+is well enough just as he is.
+
+It is not on account of his gracious and considerate ways and his
+delicacy that I love him. No, he has lacks in this regard, but he is
+well enough just so, and is improving.
+
+It is not on account of his industry that I love him--no, it is not
+that. I think he has it in him, and I do not know why he conceals it
+from me. It is my only pain. Otherwise he is frank and open with me,
+now. I am sure he keeps nothing from me but this. It grieves me that he
+should have a secret from me, and sometimes it spoils my sleep, thinking
+of it, but I will put it out of my mind; it shall not trouble my
+happiness, which is otherwise full to overflowing.
+
+It is not on account of his education that I love him--no, it is not
+that. He is self-educated, and does really know a multitude of things,
+but they are not so.
+
+It is not on account of his chivalry that I love him--no, it is not
+that. He told on me, but I do not blame him; it is a peculiarity of sex,
+I think, and he did not make his sex. Of course I would not have told on
+him, I would have perished first; but that is a peculiarity of sex, too,
+and I do not take credit for it, for I did not make my sex.
+
+Then why is it that I love him? _Merely because he is masculine_, I
+think.
+
+At bottom he is good, and I love him for that, but I could love him
+without it. If he should beat me and abuse me, I should go on loving
+him. I know it. It is a matter of sex, I think.
+
+He is strong and handsome, and I love him for that, and I admire him
+and am proud of him, but I could love him without those qualities. If
+he were plain, I should love him; if he were a wreck, I should love
+him; and I would work for him, and slave over him, and pray for him, and
+watch by his bedside until I died.
+
+Yes, I think I love him merely because he is _mine _and is _masculine_.
+There is no other reason, I suppose. And so I think it is as I first
+said: that this kind of love is not a product of reasonings and
+statistics. It just _comes_--none knows whence--and cannot explain
+itself. And doesn't need to.
+
+It is what I think. But I am only a girl, the first that has examined
+this matter, and it may turn out that in my ignorance and inexperience I
+have not got it right.
+
+Forty Years Later
+
+It is my prayer, it is my longing, that we may pass from this life
+together--a longing which shall never perish from the earth, but shall
+have place in the heart of every wife that loves, until the end of time;
+and it shall be called by my name.
+
+But if one of us must go first, it is my prayer that it shall be I;
+for he is strong, I am weak, I am not so necessary to him as he is to
+me--life without him would not be life; how could I endure it? This
+prayer is also immortal, and will not cease from being offered up while
+my race continues. I am the first wife; and in the last wife I shall be
+repeated.
+
+AT EVE'S GRAVE
+
+ADAM: Wheresoever she was, _there_ was Eden.
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The $30,000 Bequest and Other
+Stories, by Mark Twain
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