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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Sketches New and Old, Complete, by
+Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens)
+
+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: Sketches New and Old, Complete
+
+Author: Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens)
+
+Release Date: April, 2002  [Etext #3198]
+Last Updated: February 23, 2018
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SKETCHES NEW AND OLD, COMPLETE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+SKETCHES NEW AND OLD
+
+By Mark Twain
+
+
+
+CONTENTS:
+
+  Preface
+  My Watch
+  Political Economy
+  The Jumping Frog
+  Journalism In Tennessee
+  The Story Of The Bad Little Boy
+  The Story Of The Good Little Boy
+  A Couple Of Poems By Twain And Moore
+  Niagara
+  Answers To Correspondents
+  To Raise Poultry
+  Experience Of The Mcwilliamses With Membranous Croup
+  My First Literary Venture
+  How The Author Was Sold In Newark
+  The Office Bore
+  Johnny Greer
+  The Facts In The Case Of The Great Beef Contract
+  The Case Of George Fisher
+  Disgraceful Persecution Of A Boy
+  The Judges “Spirited Woman”
+   Information Wanted
+  Some Learned Fables, For Good Old Boys And Girls
+  My Late Senatorial Secretaryship
+  A Fashion Item
+  Riley-Newspaper Correspondent
+  A Fine Old Man
+  Science Vs. Luck
+  The Late Benjamin Franklin
+  Mr. Bloke's Item
+  A Medieval Romance
+  Petition Concerning Copyright
+  After-Dinner Speech
+  Lionizing Murderers
+  A New Crime
+  A Curious Dream
+  A True Story
+  The Siamese Twins
+  Speech At The Scottish Banquet In London
+  A Ghost Story
+  The Capitoline Venus
+  Speech On Accident Insurance
+  John Chinaman In New York
+  How I Edited An Agricultural Paper
+  The Petrified Man
+  My Bloody Massacre
+  The Undertaker's Chat
+  Concerning Chambermaids
+  Aurelia's Unfortunate Young Man
+  “After” Jenkins
+  About Barbers
+  “Party Cries” In Ireland
+  The Facts Concerning The Recent Resignation
+  History Repeats Itself
+  Honored As A Curiosity
+  First Interview With Artemus Ward
+  Cannibalism In The Cars
+  The Killing Of Julius Caesar “Localized”
+   The Widow's Protest
+  The Scriptural Panoramist
+  Curing A Cold
+  A Curious Pleasure Excursion
+  Running For Governor
+  A Mysterious Visit
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE
+
+I have scattered through this volume a mass of matter which has never
+been in print before (such as “Learned Fables for Good Old Boys and
+Girls,” the “Jumping Frog restored to the English tongue after martyrdom
+in the French,” the “Membranous Croup” sketch, and many others which I
+need not specify): not doing this in order to make an advertisement of
+it, but because these things seemed instructive.
+
+HARTFORD, 1875.
+                                             MARK TWAIN.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+SKETCHES NEW AND OLD
+
+
+
+
+MY WATCH--[Written about 1870.]
+
+AN INSTRUCTIVE LITTLE TALE
+
+My beautiful new watch had run eighteen months without losing or gaining,
+and without breaking any part of its machinery or stopping.  I had come
+to believe it infallible in its judgments about the time of day, and to
+consider its constitution and its anatomy imperishable.  But at last, one
+night, I let it run down.  I grieved about it as if it were a recognized
+messenger and forerunner of calamity.  But by and by I cheered up, set
+the watch by guess, and commanded my bodings and superstitions to depart.
+Next day I stepped into the chief jeweler's to set it by the exact time,
+and the head of the establishment took it out of my hand and proceeded to
+set it for me.  Then he said, “She is four minutes slow-regulator wants
+pushing up.”  I tried to stop him--tried to make him understand that the
+watch kept perfect time.  But no; all this human cabbage could see was
+that the watch was four minutes slow, and the regulator must be pushed up
+a little; and so, while I danced around him in anguish, and implored him
+to let the watch alone, he calmly and cruelly did the shameful deed.  My
+watch began to gain.  It gained faster and faster day by day.  Within the
+week it sickened to a raging fever, and its pulse went up to a hundred
+and fifty in the shade.  At the end of two months it had left all the
+timepieces of the town far in the rear, and was a fraction over thirteen
+days ahead of the almanac.  It was away into November enjoying the snow,
+while the October leaves were still turning.  It hurried up house rent,
+bills payable, and such things, in such a ruinous way that I could not
+abide it.  I took it to the watchmaker to be regulated.  He asked me if I
+had ever had it repaired.  I said no, it had never needed any repairing.
+He looked a look of vicious happiness and eagerly pried the watch open,
+and then put a small dice-box into his eye and peered into its machinery.
+He said it wanted cleaning and oiling, besides regulating--come in a
+week.  After being cleaned and oiled, and regulated, my watch slowed down
+to that degree that it ticked like a tolling bell.  I began to be left by
+trains, I failed all appointments, I got to missing my dinner; my watch
+strung out three days' grace to four and let me go to protest;
+I gradually drifted back into yesterday, then day before, then into last
+week, and by and by the comprehension came upon me that all solitary and
+alone I was lingering along in week before last, and the world was out of
+sight.  I seemed to detect in myself a sort of sneaking fellow-feeling
+for the mummy in the museum, and a desire to swap news with him.  I went
+to a watchmaker again.  He took the watch all to pieces while I waited,
+and then said the barrel was “swelled.”  He said he could reduce it in
+three days.  After this the watch averaged well, but nothing more.  For
+half a day it would go like the very mischief, and keep up such a barking
+and wheezing and whooping and sneezing and snorting, that I could not
+hear myself think for the disturbance; and as long as it held out there
+was not a watch in the land that stood any chance against it.  But the
+rest of the day it would keep on slowing down and fooling along until all
+the clocks it had left behind caught up again.  So at last, at the end of
+twenty-four hours, it would trot up to the judges' stand all right and
+just in time.  It would show a fair and square average, and no man could
+say it had done more or less than its duty.  But a correct average is
+only a mild virtue in a watch, and I took this instrument to another
+watchmaker.  He said the king-bolt was broken.  I said I was glad it was
+nothing more serious.  To tell the plain truth, I had no idea what the
+king-bolt was, but I did not choose to appear ignorant to a stranger.
+He repaired the king-bolt, but what the watch gained in one way it lost
+in another.  It would run awhile and then stop awhile, and then run
+awhile again, and so on, using its own discretion about the intervals.
+And every time it went off it kicked back like a musket.  I padded my
+breast for a few days, but finally took the watch to another watchmaker.
+He picked it all to pieces, and turned the ruin over and over under his
+glass; and then he said there appeared to be something the matter with
+the hair-trigger.  He fixed it, and gave it a fresh start.  It did well
+now, except that always at ten minutes to ten the hands would shut
+together like a pair of scissors, and from that time forth they would
+travel together.  The oldest man in the world could not make head or tail
+of the time of day by such a watch, and so I went again to have the thing
+repaired.  This person said that the crystal had got bent, and that the
+mainspring was not straight.  He also remarked that part of the works
+needed half-soling.  He made these things all right, and then my
+timepiece performed unexceptionably, save that now and then, after
+working along quietly for nearly eight hours, everything inside would let
+go all of a sudden and begin to buzz like a bee, and the hands would
+straightway begin to spin round and round so fast that their
+individuality was lost completely, and they simply seemed a delicate
+spider's web over the face of the watch.  She would reel off the next
+twenty-four hours in six or seven minutes, and then stop with a bang.
+I went with a heavy heart to one more watchmaker, and looked on while he
+took her to pieces.  Then I prepared to cross-question him rigidly, for
+this thing was getting serious.  The watch had cost two hundred dollars
+originally, and I seemed to have paid out two or three thousand for
+repairs.  While I waited and looked on I presently recognized in this
+watchmaker an old acquaintance--a steamboat engineer of other days, and
+not a good engineer, either.  He examined all the parts carefully, just
+as the other watchmakers had done, and then delivered his verdict with
+the same confidence of manner.
+
+He said:
+
+“She makes too much steam-you want to hang the monkey-wrench on the
+safety-valve!”
+
+I brained him on the spot, and had him buried at my own expense.
+
+My uncle William (now deceased, alas!) used to say that a good horse was,
+a good horse until it had run away once, and that a good watch was a good
+watch until the repairers got a chance at it.  And he used to wonder what
+became of all the unsuccessful tinkers, and gunsmiths, and shoemakers,
+and engineers, and blacksmiths; but nobody could ever tell him.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+POLITICAL ECONOMY
+
+     Political Economy is the basis of all good government.  The wisest
+     men of all ages have brought to bear upon this subject the--
+
+[Here I was interrupted and informed that a stranger wished to see me
+down at the door.  I went and confronted him, and asked to know his
+business, struggling all the time to keep a tight rein on my seething
+political-economy ideas, and not let them break away from me or get
+tangled in their harness.  And privately I wished the stranger was in the
+bottom of the canal with a cargo of wheat on top of him.  I was all in a
+fever, but he was cool.  He said he was sorry to disturb me, but as he
+was passing he noticed that I needed some lightning-rods.  I said, “Yes,
+yes--go on--what about it?”  He said there was nothing about it, in
+particular--nothing except that he would like to put them up for me.
+I am new to housekeeping; have been used to hotels and boarding-houses
+all my life.  Like anybody else of similar experience, I try to appear
+(to strangers) to be an old housekeeper; consequently I said in an
+offhand way that I had been intending for some time to have six or eight
+lightning-rods put up, but--The stranger started, and looked inquiringly
+at me, but I was serene.  I thought that if I chanced to make any
+mistakes, he would not catch me by my countenance.  He said he would
+rather have my custom than any man's in town.  I said, “All right,” and
+started off to wrestle with my great subject again, when he called me
+back and said it would be necessary to know exactly how many “points” I
+wanted put up, what parts of the house I wanted them on, and what quality
+of rod I preferred.  It was close quarters for a man not used to the
+exigencies of housekeeping; but I went through creditably, and he
+probably never suspected that I was a novice.  I told him to put up eight
+“points,” and put them all on the roof, and use the best quality of rod.
+He said he could furnish the “plain” article at 20 cents a foot;
+“coppered,” 25 cents; “zinc-plated spiral-twist,” at 30 cents, that would
+stop a streak of lightning any time, no matter where it was bound, and
+“render its errand harmless and its further progress apocryphal.”  I said
+apocryphal was no slouch of a word, emanating from the source it did,
+but, philology aside, I liked the spiral-twist and would take that brand.
+Then he said he could make two hundred and fifty feet answer; but to do
+it right, and make the best job in town of it, and attract the admiration
+of the just and the unjust alike, and compel all parties to say they
+never saw a more symmetrical and hypothetical display of lightning-rods
+since they were born, he supposed he really couldn't get along without
+four hundred, though he was not vindictive, and trusted he was willing to
+try.  I said, go ahead and use four hundred, and make any kind of a job
+he pleased out of it, but let me get back to my work.  So I got rid of
+him at last; and now, after half an hour spent in getting my train of
+political-economy thoughts coupled together again, I am ready to go on
+once more.]
+
+     richest treasures of their genius, their experience of life, and
+     their learning.  The great lights of commercial jurisprudence,
+     international confraternity, and biological deviation, of all ages,
+     all civilizations, and all nationalities, from Zoroaster down to
+     Horace Greeley, have--
+
+[Here I was interrupted again, and required to go down and confer further
+with that lightning-rod man.  I hurried off, boiling and surging with
+prodigious thoughts wombed in words of such majesty that each one of them
+was in itself a straggling procession of syllables that might be fifteen
+minutes passing a given point, and once more I confronted him--he so calm
+and sweet, I so hot and frenzied.  He was standing in the contemplative
+attitude of the Colossus of Rhodes, with one foot on my infant tuberose,
+and the other among my pansies, his hands on his hips, his hat-brim
+tilted forward, one eye shut and the other gazing critically and
+admiringly in the direction of my principal chimney.  He said now there
+was a state of things to make a man glad to be alive; and added, “I leave
+it to you if you ever saw anything more deliriously picturesque than
+eight lightning-rods on one chimney?”  I said I had no present
+recollection of anything that transcended it.  He said that in his
+opinion nothing on earth but Niagara Falls was superior to it in the way
+of natural scenery.  All that was needed now, he verily believed, to make
+my house a perfect balm to the eye, was to kind of touch up the other
+chimneys a little, and thus “add to the generous 'coup d'oeil' a soothing
+uniformity of achievement which would allay the excitement naturally
+consequent upon the 'coup d'etat.'”  I asked him if he learned to talk
+out of a book, and if I could borrow it anywhere?  He smiled pleasantly,
+and said that his manner of speaking was not taught in books, and thatnothing
+but familiarity with lightning could enable a man to handle his
+conversational style with impunity.  He then figured up an estimate, and
+said that about eight more rods scattered about my roof would about fix
+me right, and he guessed five hundred feet of stuff would do it; and
+added that the first eight had got a little the start of him, so to
+speak, and used up a mere trifle of material more than he had calculated
+on--a hundred feet or along there.  I said I was in a dreadful hurry,
+and I wished we could get this business permanently mapped out, so that I
+could go on with my work.  He said, “I could have put up those eight
+rods, and marched off about my business--some men would have done it.
+But no; I said to myself, this man is a stranger to me, and I will die
+before I'll wrong him; there ain't lightning-rods enough on that house,
+and for one I'll never stir out of my tracks till I've done as I would be
+done by, and told him so.  Stranger, my duty is accomplished; if the
+recalcitrant and dephlogistic messenger of heaven strikes your--”
+ “There, now, there,” I said, “put on the other eight--add five hundred
+feet of spiral-twist--do anything and everything you want to do; but calm
+your sufferings, and try to keep your feelings where you can reach them
+with the dictionary.  Meanwhile, if we understand each other now, I will
+go to work again.”
+
+I think I have been sitting here a full hour this time, trying to get
+back to where I was when my train of thought was broken up by the
+lastinterruption; but I believe I have accomplished it at last, and may
+venture to proceed again.]
+
+     wrestled with this great subject, and the greatest among them have
+     found it a worthy adversary, and one that always comes up fresh and
+     smiling after every throw.  The great Confucius said that he would
+     rather be a profound political economist than chief of police.
+     Cicero frequently said that political economy was the grandest
+     consummation that the human mind was capable of consuming; and even
+     our own Greeley had said vaguely but forcibly that “Political--
+
+[Here the lightning-rod man sent up another call for me.  I went down in
+a state of mind bordering on impatience.  He said he would rather have
+died than interrupt me, but when he was employed to do a job, and that
+job was expected to be done in a clean, workmanlike manner, and when it
+was finished and fatigue urged him to seek the rest and recreation he
+stood so much in need of, and he was about to do it, but looked up and
+saw at a glance that all the calculations had been a little out, and if a
+thunder-storm were to come up, and that house, which he felt a personal
+interest in, stood there with nothing on earth to protect it but sixteen
+lightning-rods--“Let us have peace!” I shrieked.  “Put up a hundred and
+fifty!  Put some on the kitchen!  Put a dozen on the barn!  Put a couple
+on the cow!  Put one on the cook!--scatter them all over the persecuted
+place till it looks like a zinc-plated, spiral-twisted, silver-mounted
+canebrake!  Move!  Use up all the material you can get your hands on, and
+when you run out of lightning-rods put up ramrods, cam-rods, stair-rods,
+piston-rods--anything that will pander to your dismal appetite for
+artificial scenery, and bring respite to my raging brain and healing to
+my lacerated soul!”  Wholly unmoved--further than to smile sweetly--this
+iron being simply turned back his wrist-bands daintily, and said he would
+now proceed to hump himself.  Well, all that was nearly three hours ago.
+It is questionable whether I am calm enough yet to write on the noble
+theme of political economy, but I cannot resist the desire to try, for it
+is the one subject that is nearest to my heart and dearest to my brain of
+all this world's philosophy.]
+
+     economy is heaven's best boon to man.”  When the loose but gifted
+     Byron lay in his Venetian exile he observed that, if it could be
+     granted him to go back and live his misspent life over again, he
+     would give his lucid and unintoxicated intervals to the composition,
+     not of frivolous rhymes, but of essays upon political economy.
+     Washington loved this exquisite science; such names as Baker,
+     Beckwith, Judson, Smith, are imperishably linked with it; and even
+     imperial Homer, in the ninth book of the Iliad, has said:
+
+                    Fiat justitia, ruat coelum,
+                    Post mortem unum, ante bellum,
+                    Hic jacet hoc, ex-parte res,
+                    Politicum e-conomico est.
+
+     The grandeur of these conceptions of the old poet, together with the
+     felicity of the wording which clothes them, and the sublimity of the
+     imagery whereby they are illustrated, have singled out that stanza,
+     and made it more celebrated than any that ever--
+
+[“Now, not a word out of you--not a single word.  Just state your bill
+and relapse into impenetrable silence for ever and ever on these
+premises.  Nine hundred, dollars?  Is that all?  This check for the
+amount will be honored at any respectable bank in America.  What is that
+multitude of people gathered in the street for?  How?--'looking at the
+lightning-rods!'  Bless my life, did they never see any lightning-rods
+before?  Never saw 'such a stack of them on one establishment,' did I
+understand you to say?  I will step down and critically observe this
+popular ebullition of ignorance.”]
+
+THREE DAYS LATER.--We are all about worn out.  For four-and-twenty hours
+our bristling premises were the talk and wonder of the town.  The
+theaters languished, for their happiest scenic inventions were tame and
+commonplace compared with my lightning-rods.  Our street was blocked
+night and day with spectators, and among them were many who came from
+the country to see.  It was a blessed relief on the second day when a
+thunderstorm came up and the lightning began to “go for” my house, as the
+historian Josephus quaintly phrases it.  It cleared the galleries, so to
+speak.  In five minutes there was not a spectator within half a mile of
+my place; but all the high houses about that distance away were full,
+windows, roof, and all.  And well they might be, for all the falling
+stars and Fourth-of-July fireworks of a generation, put together and
+rained down simultaneously out of heaven in one brilliant shower upon one
+helpless roof, would not have any advantage of the pyrotechnic display
+that was making my house so magnificently conspicuous in the general
+gloom of the storm.
+
+By actual count, the lightning struck at my establishment seven
+hundred and sixty-four times in forty minutes, but tripped on one of
+those faithful rods every time, and slid down the spiral-twist and shot
+into the earth before it probably had time to be surprised at the way the
+thing was done. And through all that bombardment only one patch of slates
+was ripped up, and that was because, for a single instant, the rods in
+the vicinity were transporting all the lightning they could possibly
+accommodate.  Well, nothing was ever seen like it since the world began.
+For one whole day and night not a member of my family stuck his head out
+of the window but he got the hair snatched off it as smooth as a
+billiard-ball; and; if the reader will believe me, not one of us ever
+dreamt of stirring abroad.  But at last the awful siege came to an
+end-because there was absolutely no more electricity left in the clouds
+above us within grappling distance of my insatiable rods.  Then I sallied
+forth, and gathered daring workmen together, and not a bite or a nap did
+we take till the premises were utterly stripped of all their terrific
+armament except just three rods on the house, one on the kitchen, and one
+on the barn--and, behold, these remain there even unto this day.  And
+then, and not till then, the people ventured to use our street again.
+I will remark here, in passing, that during that fearful time I did not
+continue my essay upon political economy.  I am not even yet settled
+enough in nerve and brain to resume it.
+
+TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN.--Parties having need of three thousand two
+hundred and eleven feet of best quality zinc-plated spiral-twist
+lightning-rod stuff, and sixteen hundred and thirty-one silver-tipped
+points, all in tolerable repair (and, although much worn by use, still
+equal to any ordinary emergency), can hear of a bargain by addressing
+the publisher.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THE JUMPING FROG [written about 1865]
+
+IN ENGLISH.  THEN IN FRENCH.  THEN CLAWED BACK INTO A CIVILIZED LANGUAGE
+ONCE MORE BY PATIENT, UNREMUNERATED TOIL.
+
+Even a criminal is entitled to fair play; and certainly when a man who
+has done no harm has been unjustly treated, he is privileged to do his
+best to right himself.  My attention has just been called to an article
+some three years old in a French Magazine entitled, 'Revue des Deux
+Mondes' (Review of Some Two Worlds), wherein the writer treats of “Les
+Humoristes Americaines” (These Humorists Americans).  I am one of these
+humorists American dissected by him, and hence the complaint I am making.
+
+This gentleman's article is an able one (as articles go, in the French,
+where they always tangle up everything to that degree that when you start
+into a sentence you never know whether you are going to come out alive or
+not).  It is a very good article and the writer says all manner of kind
+and complimentary things about me--for which I am sure I thank him with all
+my heart; but then why should he go and spoil all his praise by one
+unlucky experiment?  What I refer to is this: he says my Jumping Frog is
+a funny story, but still he can't see why it should ever really convulse
+any one with laughter--and straightway proceeds to translate it into
+French in order to prove to his nation that there is nothing so very
+extravagantly funny about it.  Just there is where my complaint
+originates.  He has not translated it at all; he has simply mixed it all
+up; it is no more like the Jumping Frog when he gets through with it than
+I am like a meridian of longitude.  But my mere assertion is not proof;
+wherefore I print the French version, that all may see that I do not
+speak falsely; furthermore, in order that even the unlettered may know my
+injury and give me their compassion, I have been at infinite pains and
+trouble to retranslate this French version back into English; and to tell
+the truth I have well-nigh worn myself out at it, having scarcely rested
+from my work during five days and nights.  I cannot speak the French
+language, but I can translate very well, though not fast, I being
+self-educated.  I ask the reader to run his eye over the original English
+version of the Jumping Frog, and then read the French or my
+retranslation, and kindly take notice how the Frenchman has riddled the
+grammar.  I think it is the worst I ever saw; and yet the French are
+called a polished nation.  If I had a boy that put sentences together as
+they do, I would polish him to some purpose.  Without further
+introduction, the Jumping Frog, as I originally wrote it, was as follows
+[after it will be found the French version, and after the latter my
+retranslation from the French]
+
+
+
+
+THE NOTORIOUS JUMPING FROG OF CALAVERAS COUNTY [Pronounced Cal-e-va-ras]
+
+In compliance with the request of a friend of mine, who wrote me from the
+East, I called on good-natured, garrulous old Simon Wheeler, and inquired
+after my friend's friend, Leonidas W. Smiley, as requested to do, and I
+hereunto append the result.  I have a lurking suspicion that Leonidas W.
+Smiley is a myth that my friend never knew such a personage; and that he
+only conjectured that if I asked old Wheeler about him, it would remind him
+of his infamous Jim Smiley, and he would go to work and bore me to death
+with some exasperating reminiscence of him as long and as tedious as it
+should be useless to me.  If that was the design, it succeeded.
+
+I found Simon Wheeler dozing comfortably by the bar-room stove of the
+dilapidated tavern in the decayed mining camp of Angel's, and I noticed
+that he was fat and bald-headed, and had an expression of winning gentleness
+and simplicity upon his tranquil countenance.  He roused up, and gave me
+good day.  I told him that a friend of mine had commissioned me to make
+some inquiries about a cherished companion of his boyhood named Leonidas
+W. Smiley--Rev. Leonidas W. Smiley, a young minister of the Gospel, who
+he had heard was at one time resident of Angel's Camp.  I added that if
+Mr. Wheeler could tell me anything about this Rev. Leonidas W. Smiley,
+I would feel under many obligations to him.
+
+Simon Wheeler backed me into a corner and blockaded me there with his
+chair, and then sat down and reeled off the monotonous narrative which
+follows this paragraph.  He never smiled, he never frowned, he never
+changed his voice from the gentle flowing key to which he tuned his
+initial sentence, he never betrayed the slightest suspicion of
+enthusiasm; but all through the interminable narrative there ran a vein
+of impressive earnestness and sincerity, which showed me plainly that,
+so far from his imagining that there was anything ridiculous or funny
+about his story, he regarded it as a really important matter, and admired
+its two heroes as men of transcendent genius in 'finesse.'  I let him go
+on in his own way, and never interrupted him once.
+
+“Rev. Leonidas W.  H'm, Reverend Le--well, there was a feller here, once
+by the name of Jim Smiley, in the winter of '49--or maybe it was the
+spring of '50--I don't recollect exactly, somehow, though what makes me
+think it was one or the other is because I remember the big flume warn't
+finished when he first come to the camp; but anyway, he was the
+curiousest man about always betting on anything that turned up you ever
+see, if he could get anybody to bet on the other side; and if he couldn't
+he'd change sides.  Any way that suited the other man would suit HIM--any
+way just so's he got a bet, he was satisfied.  But still he was lucky,
+uncommon lucky; he most always come out winner.  He was always ready and
+laying for a chance; there couldn't be no solit'ry thing mentioned but
+that feller'd offer to bet on it, and take ary side you please, as I was
+just telling you.  If there was a horse-race, you'd find him flush or
+you'd find him busted at the end of it; if there was a dog-fight, he'd
+bet on it; if there was a cat-fight, he'd bet on it; if there was a
+chicken-fight, he'd bet on it; why, if there was two birds setting on a
+fence, he would bet you which one would fly first; or if there was a
+camp-meeting, he would be there reg'lar to bet on Parson Walker, which he
+judged to be the best exhorter about here, and so he was too, and a good
+man.  If he even see a straddle-bug start to go anywheres, he would bet
+you how long it would take him to get to--to wherever he was going to,
+and if you took him up, he would foller that straddle-bug to Mexico but
+what he would find out where he was bound for and how long he was on the
+road.  Lots of the boys here has seen that Smiley, and can tell you about
+him.  Why, it never made no difference to him--he'd bet on any thing--the
+dangdest feller.  Parson Walker's wife laid very sick once, for a good
+while, and it seemed as if they warn't going to save her; but one morning
+he come in, and Smiley up and asked him how she was, and he said she was
+considerable better--thank the Lord for his inf'nite mercy--and coming on
+so smart that with the blessing of Prov'dence she'd get well yet; and
+Smiley, before he thought, says, 'Well, I'll resk two-and-a-half she
+don't anyway.'
+
+“Thish-yer Smiley had a mare--the boys called her the fifteen-minute nag,
+but that was only in fun, you know, because of course she was faster than
+that--and he used to win money on that horse, for all she was so slow and
+always had the asthma, or the distemper, or the consumption, or something
+of that kind.  They used to give her two or three hundred yards' start,
+and then pass her under way; but always at the fag end of the race she
+get excited and desperate like, and come cavorting and straddling up,
+and scattering her legs around limber, sometimes in the air, and
+sometimes out to one side among the fences, and kicking up m-o-r-e dust
+and raising m-o-r-e racket with her coughing and sneezing and blowing her
+nose--and always fetch up at the stand just about a neck ahead, as near
+as you could cipher it down.
+
+“And he had a little small bull-pup, that to look at him you'd think he
+warn't worth a cent but to set around and look ornery and lay for a
+chance to steal something.  But as soon as money was up on him he was a
+different dog; his under-jaw'd begin to stick out like the fo'castle of
+a steamboat, and his teeth would uncover and shine like the furnaces.
+And a dog might tackle him and bully-rag him, and bite him, and throw him
+over his shoulder two or three times, and Andrew Jackson--which was the
+name of the pup--Andrew Jackson would never let on but what he was
+satisfied, and hadn't expected nothing else--and the bets being doubled
+and doubled on the other side all the time, till the money was all up;
+and then all of a sudden he would grab that other dog jest by the j'int
+of his hind leg and freeze to it--not chaw, you understand, but only just
+grip and hang on till they throwed up the sponge, if it was a year.
+Smiley always come out winner on that pup, till he harnessed a dog once
+that didn't have no hind legs, because they'd been sawed off in a
+circular saw, and when the thing had gone along far enough, and the money
+was all up, and he come to make a snatch for his pet holt, he see in a
+minute how he'd been imposed on, and how the other dog had him in the
+door, so to speak, and he 'peared surprised, and then he looked sorter
+discouraged-like and didn't try no more to win the fight, and so he got
+shucked out bad.  He give Smiley a look, as much as to say his heart was
+broke, and it was his fault, for putting up a dog that hadn't no hind
+legs for him to take holt of, which was his main dependence in a fight,
+and then he limped off a piece and laid down and died.  It was a good
+pup, was that Andrew Jackson, and would have made a name for hisself if
+he'd lived, for the stuff was in him and he had genius--I know it,
+because he hadn't no opportunities to speak of, and it don't stand to
+reason that a dog could make such a fight as he could under them
+circumstances if he hadn't no talent. It always makes me feel sorry when
+I think of that last fight of his'n, and the way it turned out.
+
+“Well, thish-yer Smiley had rat-tarriers, and chicken cocks, and tomcats
+and all them kind of things, till you couldn't rest, and you couldn't
+fetch nothing for him to bet on but he'd match you.  He ketched a frog
+one day, and took him home, and said he cal'lated to educate him; and so
+he never done nothing for three months but set in his back yard and learn
+that frog to jump. And you bet you he did learn him, too. He'd give him a
+little punch behind, and the next minute you'd see that frog whirling in
+the air like a doughnut--see him turn one summerset, or maybe a couple,
+if he got a good start, and come down flat-footed and all right, like a
+cat. He got him up so in the matter of ketching flies, and kep' him in
+practice so constant, that he'd nail a fly every time as fur as he could
+see him. Smiley said all a frog wanted was education, and he could do
+'most anything--and I believe him.  Why, I've seen him set Dan'l Webster
+down here on this floor--Dan'l Webster was the name of the frog--and sing
+out, 'Flies, Dan'l, flies!' and quicker'n you could wink he'd spring
+straight up and snake a fly off'n the counter there, and flop down on the
+floor ag'in as solid as a gob of mud, and fall to scratching the side of
+his head with his hind foot as indifferent as if he hadn't no idea he'd
+been doin' any more'n any frog might do. You never see a frog so modest
+and straightfor'ard as he was, for all he was so gifted.  And when it
+come to fair and square jumping on a dead level, he could get over more
+ground at one straddle than any animal of his breed you ever see.
+Jumping on a dead level was his strong suit, you understand; and when it
+come to that, Smiley would ante up money on him as long as he had a red.
+Smiley was monstrous proud of his frog, and well he might be, for fellers
+that had traveled and been everywheres all said he laid over any frog
+that ever they see.
+
+“Well, Smiley kep' the beast in a little lattice box, and he used to
+fetch him down-town sometimes and lay for a bet.  One day a feller
+--a stranger in the camp, he was--come acrost him with his box, and says:
+
+“'What might it be that you've got in the box?'
+
+“And Smiley says, sorter indifferent-like, 'It might be a parrot, or it
+might be a canary, maybe, but it ain't--it's only just a frog.'
+
+“And the feller took it, and looked at it careful, and turned it round
+this way and that, and says, 'H'm--so 'tis.  Well, what's HE good for.
+
+“'Well,' Smiley says, easy and careless, 'he's good enough for one thing,
+I should judge--he can outjump any frog in Calaveras County.
+
+“The feller took the box again, and took another long, particular look,
+and give it back to Smiley, and says, very deliberate,  'Well,' he says,
+'I don't see no p'ints about that frog that's any better'n any other
+frog.'
+
+“'Maybe you don't,' Smiley says.  'Maybe you understand frogs and maybe
+you don't understand 'em; maybe you've had experience, and maybe you
+ain't only a amature, as it were.  Anyways, I've got my opinion, and I'll
+resk forty dollars the he can outjump any frog in Calaveras County.'
+
+“And the feller studied a minute, and then says, kinder sad-like, 'Well,
+I'm only a stranger here, and I ain't got no frog; but if I had a frog,
+I'd bet you.
+
+“And then Smiley says, 'That's all right--that's all right if you'll hold
+my box a minute, I'll go and get you a frog.'  And so the feller took the
+box, and put up his forty dollars along with Smiley's, and set down to
+wait.
+
+“So he set there a good while thinking and thinking to himself and then
+he got the frog out and prized his mouth open and took a teaspoon and
+filled him full of quail-shot--filled him pretty near up to his chin--and
+set him on the floor.  Smiley he went to the swamp and slopped around in
+the mud for a long time, and finally he ketched a frog, and fetched him
+in, and give him to this feller and says:
+
+“'Now, if you're ready, set him alongside of Dan'l, with his fore paws
+just even with Dan'l's, and I'll give the word.' Then he says,
+'One-two-three--git' and him and the feller touches up the frogs from
+behind, and the new frog hopped off lively but Dan'l give a heave, and
+hysted up his shoulders--so-like a Frenchman, but it warn't no use--he
+couldn't budge; he was planted as solid as a church, and he couldn't no
+more stir than if he was anchored out.  Smiley was a good deal surprised,
+and he was disgusted too, but he didn't have no idea what the matter was
+of course.
+
+
+“The feller took the money and started away; and when he was going out at
+the door, he sorter jerked his thumb over his shoulder--so--at Dan'l, and
+says again, very deliberate, 'Well,' he says, 'I don't see no p'ints about
+that frog that's any better'n any other frog.'
+
+“Smiley he stood scratching his head and looking down at Dan'l a long
+time, and at last he says, 'I do wonder what in the nation that frog
+throw'd off for--I wonder if there ain't something the matter with him
+--he 'pears to look mighty baggy, somehow.'  And he ketched Dan'l by the
+nap of the neck, and hefted him, and says, 'Why blame my cats if he don't
+weigh five pound!' and turned him upside down and he belched out a double
+handful of shot.  And then he see how it was, and he was the maddest man
+--he set the frog down and took out after that feller, but he never
+ketched him.  And--”
+
+[Here Simon Wheeler heard his name called from the front yard, and got up
+to see what was wanted.]  And turning to me as he moved away, he said:
+“Just set where you are, stranger, and rest easy--I ain't going to be
+gone a second.”
+
+But, by your leave, I did not think that a continuation of the history of
+the enterprising vagabond Jim Smiley would be likely to afford me much
+information concerning the Rev. Leonidas W. Smiley, and so I started
+away.
+
+At the door I met the sociable Wheeler returning, and he buttonholed me
+and recommenced:
+
+“Well, thish-yer Smiley had a yaller one-eyed cow that didn't have no
+tail, only just a short stump like a bannanner, and--”
+
+However, lacking both time and inclination, I did not wait to hear about
+the afflicted cow, but took my leave.
+
+
+Now let the learned look upon this picture and say if iconoclasm can
+further go:
+
+[From the Revue des Deux Mondes, of July 15th, 1872.]
+
+          .......................
+
+
+LA GRENOUILLE SAUTEUSE DU COMTE DE CALAVERAS
+
+“--Il y avait, une fois ici un individu connu sous le nom de Jim Smiley:
+c'était dans l'hiver de 49, peut-être bien au printemps de 50, je ne me
+reappelle pas exactement.  Ce qui me fait croire que c'était l'un ou
+l'autre, c'est que je me souviens que le grand bief n'était pas achevé
+lorsqu'il arriva au camp pour la premiére fois, mais de toutes facons il
+était l'homme le plus friand de paris qui se pût voir, pariant sur tout
+ce qui se présentait, quand il pouvait trouver un adversaire, et, quand
+n'en trouvait pas il passait du côté opposé.  Tout ce qui convenait à
+l'autre lui convenait; pourvu qu'il eût un pari, Smiley était satisfait.
+Et il avait une chance! une chance inouie:  presque toujours il gagnait.
+It faut dire qu'il était toujours prêt à s'exposer, qu'on ne pouvait
+mentionner la moindre chose sans que ce gaillard offrît de parier
+là-dessus n'importe quoi et de prendre le côte que l'on voudrait, comme
+je vous le disais tout à l'heure.  S'il y avait des courses, vous le
+trouviez riche ou ruiné à la fin; s'il y avait un combat de chiens, il
+apportait son enjeu; il l'apportait pour un combat de chats, pour un
+combat de coqs;--parbleu! si vous aviez vu deux oiseaux sur une haie il
+vous aurait offert de parier lequel s'envolerait le premier, et s'il y
+aviat 'meeting' au camp, il venait parier régulièrement pour le curé
+Walker, qu'il jugeait être le meilleur prédicateur des environs, et qui
+l'était en effet, et un brave homme.  Il aurait rencontré une punaise de
+bois en chemin, qu'il aurait parié sur le temps qu'il lui faudrait pour
+aller où elle voudrait aller, et si vous l'aviez pris au mot, it aurait
+suivi la punaise jusqu'au Mexique, sans se soucier d'aller si loin, ni du
+temps qu'il y perdrait.  Une fois la femme du curé Walker fut très malade
+pendant longtemps, il semblait qu'on ne la sauverait pas; mais un matin le
+curé arrive, et Smiley lui demande comment ella va et il dit qu'elle est
+bien mieux, grâce a l'infinie miséricorde tellement mieux qu'avec la
+bénédiction de la Providence elle s'en tirerait, et voilá que, sans y
+penser, Smiley répond:--Eh bien! je gage deux et demi qu'elle mourra tout
+de même.
+
+“Ce Smiley avait une jument que les gars appelaient le bidet du quart
+d'heure, mais seulement pour plaisanter, vous comprenez, parce que, bien
+entendu, elle était plus vite que ca!  Et il avait coutume de gagner de
+l'argent avec cette bête, quoi-qu'elle fût poussive, cornarde, toujours
+prise d'asthme, de coliques ou de consomption, ou de quelque chose
+d'approchant. On lui donnait 2 ou 300 'yards' au départ, puis on la
+dépassait sans peine; mais jamais à la fin elle ne manquait de
+s'échauffer, de s'exaspérer et elle arrivait, s'écartant, se défendant,
+ses jambes grêles en l'air devant les obstacles, quelquefois les évitant
+et faisant avec cela plus de poussière qu'aucun cheval, plus de bruit
+surtout avec ses éternumens et reniflemens.---crac! elle arrivait donc
+toujours première d'une tête, aussi juste qu'on peut le mesurer.  Et il
+avait un petit bouledogue qui, à le voir, ne valait pas un sou; on aurait
+cru que parier contre lui c'était voler, tant il était ordinaire; mais
+aussitôt les enjeux faits, il devenait un autre chien.  Sa mâchoire
+inférieure commencait à ressortir comme un gaillard d'avant, ses dents se
+découvcraient brillantes commes des fournaises, et un chien pouvait le
+taquiner, l'exciter, le mordre, le jeter deux ou trois fois par-dessus
+son épaule, André Jackson, c'était le nom du chien, André Jackson prenait
+cela tranquillement, comme s'il ne se fût jamais attendu à autre chose,
+et quand les paris étaient doublés et redoublés contre lui, il vous
+saisissait l'autre chien juste à l'articulation de la jambe de derrière,
+et il ne la lâchait plus, non pas qu'il la mâchât, vous concevez, mais il
+s'y serait tenu pendu jusqu'à ce qu'on jetât l'éponge en l'air, fallût-il
+attendre un an.  Smiley gagnait toujours avec cette bête-là;
+malheureusement ils ont fini par dresser un chien qui n'avait pas de
+pattes de derrière, parce qu'on les avait sciées, et quand les choses
+furent au point qu'il voulait, et qu'il en vint à se jeter sur son
+morceau favori, le pauvre chien comprit en un instant qu'on s'était moqué
+de lui, et que l'autre le tenait.  Vous n'avez jamais vu personne avoir
+l'air plus penaud et plus découragé; il ne fit aucun effort pour gagner
+le combat et fut rudement secoué, de sorte que, regardant Smiley comme
+pour lui dire:--Mon coeur est brisé, c'est ta faute; pourquoi m'avoir
+livré à un chien qui n'a pas de pattes de derrière, puisque c'est par là
+que je les bats?--il s'en alla en clopinant, et se coucha pour mourir.
+Ah! c'était un bon chien, cet André Jackson, et il se serait fait un nom,
+s'il avait vécu, car il y avait de l'etoffe en lui, il avait du génie,
+je la sais, bien que de grandes occasions lui aient manqué; mais il est
+impossible de supposer qu'un chien capable de se battre comme lui,
+certaines circonstances étant données, ait manqué de talent.  Je me sens
+triste toutes les fois que je pense à son dernier combat et au dénoûment
+qu'il a eu.  Eh bien! ce Smiley nourrissait des terriers à rats, et des
+coqs combat, et des chats, et toute sorte de choses, au point qu'il était
+toujours en mesure de vous tenir tête, et qu'avec sa rage de paris on
+n'avait plus de repos. Il attrapa un jour une grenouille et l'emporta
+chez lui, disant qu'il prétendait faire son éducation; vous me croirez si
+vous voulez, mais pendant trois mois il n'a rien fait que lui apprendre à
+sauter dans une cour retirée de sa maison. Et je vous réponds qu'il avait
+reussi.  Il lui donnait un petit coup par derrière, et l'instant d'après
+vous voyiez la grenouille tourner en l'air comme un beignet au-dessus de
+la poêle, faire une culbute, quelquefois deux, lorsqu'elle était bien
+partie, et retomber sur ses pattes comme un chat.  Il l'avait dressée
+dans l'art de gober des mouches, er l'y exercait continuellement, si bien
+qu'une mouche, du plus loin qu'elle apparaissait, était une mouche
+perdue. Smiley avait coutume de dire que tout ce qui manquait à une
+grenouille, c'était l'éducation, qu'avec l'éducation elle pouvait faire
+presque tout, et je le crois.  Tenez, je l'ai vu poser Daniel Webster là
+sur se plancher,--Daniel Webster était le nom de la grenouille,--et lui
+chanter: Des mouches! Daniel, des mouches!--En un clin d'oeil, Daniel
+avait bondi et saisi une mouche ici sur le comptoir, puis sauté de
+nouveau par terre, où il restait vraiment à se gratter la tête avec sa
+patte de derrière, comme s'il n'avait pas eu la moindre idée de sa
+superiorité.  Jamais vous n'avez grenouille vu de aussi modeste, aussi
+naturelle, douee comme elle l'était!  Et quand il s'agissait de sauter
+purement et simplement sur terrain plat, elle faisait plus de chemin en
+un saut qu'aucune bete de son espèce que vous puissiez connaître. Sauter
+à plat, c'était son fort! Quand il s'agissait de cela, Smiley entassait
+les enjeux sur elle tant qu'il lui, restait un rouge liard. Il faut le
+reconnaitre, Smiley était monstrueusement fier de sa grenouille, et il en
+avait le droit, car des gens qui avaient voyagé, qui avaient tout vu,
+disaient qu'on lui ferait injure de la comparer à une autre; de facon que
+Smiley gardait Daniel dans une petite boîte a claire-voie qu'il emportait
+parfois à la Ville pour quelque pari.
+
+“Un jour, un individu étranger au camp l'arrête aver sa boîte et lui
+dit:--Qu'est-ce que vous avez donc serré là dedans?
+
+“Smiley dit d'un air indifférent:--Cela pourrait être un perroquet ou un
+serin, mais ce n'est rien de pareil, ce n'est qu'une grenouille.
+
+“L'individu la prend, la regarde avec soin, la tourne d'un côté et de
+l'autre puis il dit.--Tiens! en effet!  A quoi estelle bonne?
+
+“--Mon Dieu! répond Smiley, toujours d'un air dégagé, elle est bonne pour
+une chose à mon avis, elle peut battre en sautant toute grenouille du
+comté de Calaveras.
+
+“L'individu reprend la boîte, l'examine de nouveau longuement, et la rend
+à Smiley en disant d'un air délibéré:--Eh bien! je ne vois pas que cette
+grenouille ait rien de mieux qu'aucune grenouille.
+
+“--Possible que vous ne le voyiez pas, dit Smiley, possible que vous vous
+entendiez en grenouilles, possible que vous ne vous y entendez point,
+possible que vous avez de l'expérience, et possible que vous ne soyez
+qu'un amateur.  De toute manière, je parie quarante dollars qu'elle
+battra en sautant n'importe quelle grenouille du comté de Calaveras.
+
+“L'individu réfléchit une seconde et dit comme attristé:--Je ne suis
+qu'un étranger ici, je n'ai pas de grenouille; mais, si j'en
+avais une, je tiendrais le pari.
+
+“--Fort bien! répond Smiley.  Rien de plus facile. Si vous voulez tenir
+ma boîte une minute, j'irai vous chercher une grenouille.--Voilà donc
+l'individu qui garde la boîte, qui met ses quarante dollars sur ceux de
+Smiley et qui attend.  Il attend assez longtemps, réflechissant tout
+seul, et figurez-vous qu'il prend Daniel, lui ouvre la bouche de force at
+avec une cuiller à thé l'emplit de menu plomb de chasse, mais l'emplit
+jusqu'au menton, puis il le pose par terre.  Smiley pendant ce temps
+était à barboter dans une mare.  Finalement il attrape une grenouille,
+l'apporte à cet individu et dit:--Maintenant, si vous êtes prêt, mettez-la
+tout contra Daniel, avec leurs pattes de devant sur la même ligne, et je
+donnerai le signal; puis il ajoute:--Un, deux, trois, sautez!
+
+“Lui et l'individu touchent leurs grenouilles par derrière, et la
+grenouille neuve se met à sautiller, mais Daniel se soulève lourdement,
+hausse les épaules ainsi, comme un Francais; à quoi bon? il ne pouvait
+bouger, il était planté solide comma une enclume, il n'avancait pas plus
+que si on l'eût mis à l'ancre. Smiley fut surpris et dégoûté, mais il ne
+se doutait pas du tour, bien entendu.  L'individu empoche l'argent, s'en
+va, et en s'en allant est-ce qu'il ne donna pas un coup de pouce
+par-dessus l'épaule, comma ca, au pauvre Daniel, en disant de son air
+délibéré:--Eh bien! je ne vois pas qua cette grenouille ait rien de muiex
+qu'une autre.
+
+“Smiley se gratta longtemps la tête, les yeux fixés sur Daniel; jusqu'à
+ce qu'enfin il dit:--Je me demande comment diable il se fait que cette
+bête ait refusé . . . Est-ce qu'elle aurait quelque chose? . . . On
+croirait qu'elle est enfleé.
+
+“Il empoigne Daniel par la peau du cou, le souléve et dit:--Le loup me
+croque, s'il ne pèse pas cinq livres.
+
+“Il le retourne, et le malheureux crache deux poignées de plomb.  Quand
+Smiley reconnut ce qui en était, il fut comme fou.  Vous le voyez d'ici
+poser sa grenouille par terra et courir aprés cet individu, mais il ne le
+rattrapa jamais, et ....”
+
+
+[Translation of the above back from the French:]
+
+THE FROG JUMPING OF THE COUNTY OF CALAVERAS
+
+It there was one time here an individual known under the name of Jim
+Smiley; it was in the winter of '89, possibly well at the spring of '50,
+I no me recollect not exactly.  This which me makes to believe that it
+was the one or the other, it is that I shall remember that the grand
+flume is not achieved when he arrives at the camp for the first time, but
+of all sides he was the man the most fond of to bet which one have seen,
+betting upon all that which is presented, when he could find an
+adversary; and when he not of it could not, he passed to the side
+opposed.  All that which convenienced to the other to him convenienced
+also; seeing that he had a bet Smiley was satisfied.  And he had a
+chance! a chance even worthless; nearly always he gained.  It must to say
+that he was always near to himself expose, but one no could mention the
+least thing without that this gaillard offered to bet the bottom, no
+matter what, and to take the side that one him would, as I you it said
+all at the hour (tout à l'heure).  If it there was of races, you him find
+rich or ruined at the end; if it, there is a combat of dogs, he bring his
+bet; he himself laid always for a combat of cats, for a combat of cocks
+--by-blue!  If you have see two birds upon a fence, he you should have
+offered of to bet which of those birds shall fly the first; and if there
+is meeting at the camp (meeting au camp) he comes to bet regularly for
+the curé Walker, which he judged to be the best predicator of the
+neighborhood (prédicateur des environs) and which he was in effect, and a
+brave man.  He would encounter a bug of wood in the road, whom he will
+bet upon the time which he shall take to go where she would go--and if
+you him have take at the word, he will follow the bug as far as Mexique,
+without himself caring to go so far; neither of the time which he there
+lost.  One time the woman of the cure Walker is very sick during long
+time, it seemed that one not her saved not; but one morning the cure
+arrives, and Smiley him demanded how she goes, and he said that she is
+well better, grace to the infinite misery (lui demande comment elle va,
+et il dit qu'elle est bien mieux, grâce a l'infinie miséricorde) so much
+better that with the benediction of the Providence she herself of it
+would pull out (elle s'en tirerait); and behold that without there
+thinking Smiley responds: “Well, I gage two-and-half that she will die
+all of same.”
+
+This Smiley had an animal which the boys called the nag of the quarter of
+hour, but solely for pleasantry, you comprehend, because, well
+understand, she was more fast as that! [Now why that exclamation?--M. T.]
+And it was custom of to gain of the silver with this beast,
+notwithstanding she was poussive, cornarde, always taken of asthma, of
+colics or of consumption, or something of approaching.  One him would
+give two or three hundred yards at the departure, then one him passed
+without pain; but never at the last she not fail of herself échauffer,
+of herself exasperate, and she arrives herself écartant, se defendant,
+her legs greles in the air before the obstacles, sometimes them elevating
+and making with this more of dust than any horse, more of noise above
+with his eternumens and reniflemens--crac! she arrives then always first
+by one head, as just as one can it measure.  And he had a small bulldog
+(bouledogue!) who, to him see, no value, not a cent; one would believe
+that to bet against him it was to steal, so much he was ordinary; but as
+soon as the game made, she becomes another dog.  Her jaw inferior
+commence to project like a deck of before, his teeth themselves discover
+brilliant like some furnaces, and a dog could him tackle (le taquiner),
+him excite, him murder (le mordre), him throw two or three times over his
+shoulder, André Jackson--this was the name of the dog--André Jackson
+takes that tranquilly, as if he not himself was never expecting other
+thing, and when the bets were doubled and redoubled against him, he you
+seize the other dog just at the articulation of the leg of behind, and he
+not it leave more, not that he it masticate, you conceive, but he himself
+there shall be holding during until that one throws the sponge in the
+air, must he wait a year.  Smiley gained always with this beast-là;
+unhappily they have finished by elevating a dog who no had not of feet of
+behind, because one them had sawed; and when things were at the point
+that he would, and that he came to himself throw upon his morsel
+favorite, the poor dog comprehended in an instant that he himself was
+deceived in him, and that the other dog him had.  You no have never seen
+person having the air more penaud and more discouraged; he not made no
+effort to gain the combat, and was rudely shucked.
+
+Eh bien! this Smiley nourished some terriers à rats, and some cocks of
+combat, and some cats, and all sorts of things; and with his rage of
+betting one no had more of repose.  He trapped one day a frog and him
+imported with him (et l'emporta chez lui) saying that he pretended to
+make his education.  You me believe if you will, but during three months
+he not has nothing done but to him apprehend to jump (apprendre à sauter)
+in a court retired of her mansion (de sa maison).  And I you respond that
+he have succeeded.  He him gives a small blow by behind, and the instant
+after you shall see the frog turn in the air like a grease-biscuit, make
+one summersault, sometimes two, when she was well started, and refall
+upon his feet like a cat.  He him had accomplished in the art of to
+gobble the flies (gober des mouches), and him there exercised continually
+--so well that a fly at the most far that she appeared was a fly lost.
+Smiley had custom to say that all which lacked to a frog it was the
+education, but with the education she could do nearly all--and I him
+believe.  Tenez, I him have seen pose Daniel Webster there upon this
+plank--Daniel Webster was the name of the frog--and to him sing, “Some
+flies, Daniel, some flies!”--in a flash of the eye Daniel had bounded
+and seized a fly here upon the counter, then jumped anew at
+the earth, where he rested truly to himself scratch the head with his
+behind foot, as if he no had not the least idea of his superiority.
+Never you not have seen frog as modest, as natural, sweet as she was.
+And when he himself agitated to jump purely and simply upon plain earth,
+she does more ground in one jump than any beast of his species than you
+can know.  To jump plain-this was his strong.  When he himself agitated
+for that, Smiley multiplied the bets upon her as long as there to him
+remained a red.  It must to know, Smiley was monstrously proud of his
+frog, and he of it was right, for some men who were traveled, who had all
+seen, said that they to him would be injurious to him compare, to another
+frog.  Smiley guarded Daniel in a little box latticed which he carried
+bytimes to the village for some bet.
+
+One day an individual stranger at the camp him arrested with his box and
+him said:
+
+“What is this that you have them shut up there within?”
+
+Smiley said, with an air indifferent:
+
+“That could be a paroquet, or a syringe (ou un serin), but this no is
+nothing of such, it not is but a frog.”
+
+The individual it took, it regarded with care, it turned from one side
+and from the other, then he said:
+
+“Tiens! in effect!--At what is she good?”
+
+“My God!” respond Smiley, always with an air disengaged, “she is good for
+one thing, to my notice (à mon avis), she can batter in jumping (elle peut
+battre en sautant) all frogs of the county of Calaveras.”
+
+The individual retook the box, it examined of new longly, and it rendered
+to Smiley in saying with an air deliberate:
+
+“Eh bien! I no saw not that that frog had nothing of better than each
+frog.”  (Je ne vois pas que cette grenouille ait rien de mieux qu'aucune
+grenouille.) [If that isn't grammar gone to seed, then I count myself no
+judge.--M.  T.]
+
+“Possible that you not it saw not,” said Smiley, “possible that you--you
+comprehend frogs; possible that you not you there comprehend nothing;
+possible that you had of the experience, and possible that you not be but
+an amateur.  Of all manner (De toute manière) I bet forty dollars that
+she batter in jumping no matter which frog of the county of Calaveras.”
+
+The individual reflected a second, and said like sad:
+
+“I not am but a stranger here, I no have not a frog; but if I of it had
+one, I would embrace the bet.”
+
+“Strong well!” respond Smiley; “nothing of more facility.  If you will
+hold my box a minute, I go you to search a frog (j'irai vous chercher).”
+
+Behold, then, the individual, who guards the box, who puts his forty
+dollars upon those of Smiley, and who attends (et qui attend).  He
+attended enough long times, reflecting all solely.  And figure you that
+he takes Daniel, him opens the mouth by force and with a teaspoon him
+fills with shot of the hunt, even him fills just to the chin, then he him
+puts by the earth.  Smiley during these times was at slopping in a swamp.
+Finally he trapped (attrape) a frog, him carried to that individual, and
+said:
+
+“Now if you be ready, put him all against Daniel with their before feet
+upon the same line, and I give the signal”--then he added: “One, two,
+three--advance!”
+
+Him and the individual touched their frogs by behind, and the frog new
+put to jump smartly, but Daniel himself lifted ponderously, exalted the
+shoulders thus, like a Frenchman--to what good? he not could budge, he
+is planted solid like a church, he not advance no more than if one him had
+put at the anchor.
+
+Smiley was surprised and disgusted, but he no himself doubted not of the
+turn being intended (mais il ne se doutait pas du tour, bien entendu).
+The individual empocketed the silver, himself with it went, and of it
+himself in going is it that he no gives not a jerk of thumb over the
+shoulder--like that--at the poor Daniel, in saying with his air
+deliberate--(L'individu empoche l'argent, s'en va et en s'en allant
+est-ce qu'il ne donne pas un coup de pouce par-dessus l'épaule, comme ça,
+au pauvre Daniel, en disant de son air délibéré):
+
+“Eh bien! I no see not that that frog has nothing of better than another.”
+
+Smiley himself scratched longtimes the head, the eyes fixed upon Daniel,
+until that which at last he said:
+
+“I me demand how the devil it makes itself that this beast has refused.
+Is it that she had something?  One would believe that she is stuffed.”
+
+He grasped Daniel by the skin of the neck, him lifted and said:
+
+“The wolf me bite if he no weigh not five pounds:”
+
+He him reversed and the unhappy belched two handfuls of shot (et le
+malheureux, etc.).  When Smiley recognized how it was, he was like mad.
+He deposited his frog by the earth and ran after that individual, but he
+not him caught never.
+
+
+Such is the Jumping Frog, to the distorted French eye.  I claim that I
+never put together such an odious mixture of bad grammar and delirium
+tremens in my life.  And what has a poor foreigner like me done, to be
+abused and misrepresented like this?  When I say, “Well, I don't see no
+p'ints about that frog that's any better'n any other frog,” is it kind,
+is it just, for this Frenchman to try to make it appear that I said, “Eh
+bien! I no saw not that that frog had nothing of better than each frog”?
+I have no heart to write more.  I never felt so about anything before.
+
+HARTFORD, March, 1875.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+JOURNALISM IN TENNESSEE--[Written about 1871.]
+
+     The editor of the Memphis Avalanche swoops thus mildly down upon a
+     correspondent who posted him as a Radical:--“While he was writing
+     the first word, the middle, dotting his i's, crossing his t's, and
+     punching his period, he knew he was concocting a sentence that was
+     saturated with infamy and reeking with falsehood.”--Exchange.
+
+I was told by the physician that a Southern climate would improve my
+health, and so I went down to Tennessee, and got a berth on the Morning
+Glory and Johnson County War-Whoop as associate editor.  When I went on
+duty I found the chief editor sitting tilted back in a three-legged chair
+with his feet on a pine table.  There was another pine table in the room
+and another afflicted chair, and both were half buried under newspapers
+and scraps and sheets of manuscript.  There was a wooden box of sand,
+sprinkled with cigar stubs and “old soldiers,” and a stove with a door
+hanging by its upper hinge.  The chief editor had a long-tailed black
+cloth frock-coat on, and white linen pants.  His boots were small and
+neatly blacked.  He wore a ruffled shirt, a large seal-ring, a standing
+collar of obsolete pattern, and a checkered neckerchief with the ends
+hanging down.  Date of costume about 1848.  He was smoking a cigar, and
+trying to think of a word, and in pawing his hair he had rumpled his
+locks a good deal.  He was scowling fearfully, and I judged that he was
+concocting a particularly knotty editorial.  He told me to take the
+exchanges and skim through them and write up the “Spirit of the Tennessee
+Press,” condensing into the article all of their contents that seemed of
+interest.
+
+I wrote as follows:
+
+                    SPIRIT OF THE TENNESSEE PRESS
+
+     The editors of the Semi-Weekly Earthquake evidently labor under a
+     misapprehension with regard to the Ballyhack railroad.  It is not
+     the object of the company to leave Buzzardville off to one side.
+     On the contrary, they consider it one of the most important points
+     along the line, and consequently can have no desire to slight it.
+     The gentlemen of the Earthquake will, of course, take pleasure in
+     making the correction.
+
+     John W. Blossom, Esq., the able editor of the Higginsville
+     Thunderbolt and Battle Cry of Freedom, arrived in the city
+     yesterday.  He is stopping at the Van Buren House.
+
+     We observe that our contemporary of the Mud Springs Morning Howl has
+     fallen into the error of supposing that the election of Van Werter
+     is not an established fact, but he will have discovered his mistake
+     before this reminder reaches him, no doubt.  He was doubtless misled
+     by incomplete election returns.
+
+     It is pleasant to note that the city of Blathersville is endeavoring
+     to contract with some New York gentlemen to pave its well-nigh
+     impassable streets with the Nicholson pavement.  The Daily Hurrah
+     urges the measure with ability, and seems confident of ultimate
+     success.
+
+I passed my manuscript over to the chief editor for acceptance,
+alteration, or destruction.  He glanced at it and his face clouded.  He
+ran his eye down the pages, and his countenance grew portentous.  It was
+easy to see that something was wrong.  Presently he sprang up and said:
+
+“Thunder and lightning! Do you suppose I am going to speak of those
+cattle that way?  Do you suppose my subscribers are going to stand such
+gruel as that?  Give me the pen!”
+
+I never saw a pen scrape and scratch its way so viciously, or plow
+through another man's verbs and adjectives so relentlessly.  While he was
+in the midst of his work, somebody shot at him through the open window,
+and marred the symmetry of my ear.
+
+“Ah,” said he, “that is that scoundrel Smith, of the Moral Volcano--he
+was due yesterday.”  And he snatched a navy revolver from his belt and
+fired--Smith dropped, shot in the thigh.  The shot spoiled Smith's aim,
+who was just taking a second chance and he crippled a stranger.  It was
+me.  Merely a finger shot off.
+
+Then the chief editor went on with his erasure; and interlineations.
+Just as he finished them a hand grenade came down the stove-pipe, and the
+explosion shivered the stove into a thousand fragments.  However, it did
+no further damage, except that a vagrant piece knocked a couple of my
+teeth out.
+
+“That stove is utterly ruined,” said the chief editor.
+
+I said I believed it was.
+
+“Well, no matter--don't want it this kind of weather.  I know the man
+that did it.  I'll get him.  Now, here is the way this stuff ought to be
+written.”
+
+I took the manuscript.  It was scarred with erasures and interlineations
+till its mother wouldn't have known it if it had had one.  It now read as
+follows:
+
+                    SPIRIT OF THE TENNESSEE PRESS
+
+     The inveterate liars of the Semi-Weekly Earthquake are evidently
+     endeavoring to palm off upon a noble and chivalrous people another
+     of their vile and brutal falsehoods with regard to that most
+     glorious conception of the nineteenth century, the Ballyhack
+     railroad.  The idea that Buzzardville was to be left off at one side
+     originated in their own fulsome brains--or rather in the settlings
+     which they regard as brains.  They had better swallow this lie if
+     they want to save their abandoned reptile carcasses the cowhiding
+     they so richly deserve.
+
+     That ass, Blossom, of the Higginsville Thunderbolt and Battle Cry of
+     Freedom, is down here again sponging at the Van Buren.
+
+     We observe that the besotted blackguard of the Mud Springs Morning
+     Howl is giving out, with his usual propensity for lying, that Van
+     Werter is not elected.  The heaven-born mission of journalism is to
+     disseminate truth; to eradicate error; to educate, refine, and
+     elevate the tone of public morals and manners, and make all men more
+     gentle, more virtuous, more charitable, and in all ways better, and
+     holier, and happier; and yet this blackhearted scoundrel degrades
+     his great office persistently to the dissemination of falsehood,
+     calumny, vituperation, and vulgarity.
+
+     Blathersville wants a Nicholson pavement--it wants a jail and a
+     poorhouse more.  The idea of a pavement in a one-horse town composed
+     of two gin-mills, a blacksmith shop, and that mustard-plaster of a
+     newspaper, the Daily Hurrah!  The crawling insect, Buckner, who
+     edits the Hurrah, is braying about his business with his customary
+     imbecility, and imagining that he is talking sense.
+
+
+“Now that is the way to write--peppery and to the point.  Mush-and-milk
+journalism gives me the fan-tods.”
+
+About this time a brick came through the window with a splintering crash,
+and gave me a considerable of a jolt in the back.  I moved out of range
+--I began to feel in the way.
+
+The chief said, “That was the Colonel, likely.  I've been expecting him
+for two days.  He will be up now right away.”
+
+He was correct.  The Colonel appeared in the door a moment afterward with
+a dragoon revolver in his hand.
+
+He said, “Sir, have I the honor of addressing the poltroon who edits this
+mangy sheet?”
+
+“You have.  Be seated, sir.  Be careful of the chair, one of its legs is
+gone.  I believe I have the honor of addressing the putrid liar, Colonel
+Blatherskite Tecumseh?”
+
+“Right, Sir.  I have a little account to settle with you.  If you are at
+leisure we will begin.”
+
+“I have an article on the 'Encouraging Progress of Moral and Intellectual
+Development in America' to finish, but there is no hurry.  Begin.”
+
+Both pistols rang out their fierce clamor at the same instant.  The chief
+lost a lock of his hair, and the Colonel's bullet ended its career in the
+fleshy part of my thigh.  The Colonel's left shoulder was clipped a
+little.  They fired again.  Both missed their men this time, but I got my
+share, a shot in the arm.  At the third fire both gentlemen were wounded
+slightly, and I had a knuckle chipped.  I then said, I believed I would
+go out and take a walk, as this was a private matter, and I had a
+delicacy about participating in it further.  But both gentlemen begged me
+to keep my seat, and assured me that I was not in the way.
+
+They then talked about the elections and the crops while they reloaded,
+and I fell to tying up my wounds.  But presently they opened fire again
+with animation, and every shot took effect--but it is proper to remark
+that five out of the six fell to my share.  The sixth one mortally
+wounded the Colonel, who remarked, with fine humor, that he would have to
+say good morning now, as he had business uptown.  He then inquired the
+way to the undertaker's and left.
+
+The chief turned to me and said, “I am expecting company to dinner, and
+shall have to get ready.  It will be a favor to me if you will read proof
+and attend to the customers.”
+
+I winced a little at the idea of attending to the customers, but I was
+too bewildered by the fusillade that was still ringing in my ears to
+think of anything to say.
+
+He continued, “Jones will be here at three--cowhide him.  Gillespie will
+call earlier, perhaps--throw him out of the window.  Ferguson will be
+along about four--kill him.  That is all for today, I believe.  If you
+have any odd time, you may write a blistering article on the police--give
+the chief inspector rats.  The cowhides are under the table; weapons in
+the drawer--ammunition there in the corner--lint and bandages up there in
+the pigeonholes.  In case of accident, go to Lancet, the surgeon,
+downstairs.  He advertises--we take it out in trade.”
+
+He was gone.  I shuddered.  At the end of the next three hours I had been
+through perils so awful that all peace of mind and all cheerfulness were
+gone from me.  Gillespie had called and thrown me out of the window.
+Jones arrived promptly, and when I got ready to do the cowhiding he took
+the job off my hands.  In an encounter with a stranger, not in the bill
+of fare, I had lost my scalp.  Another stranger, by the name of Thompson,
+left me a mere wreck and ruin of chaotic rags.  And at last, at bay in
+the corner, and beset by an infuriated mob of editors, blacklegs,
+politicians, and desperadoes, who raved and swore and flourished their
+weapons about my head till the air shimmered with glancing flashes of
+steel, I was in the act of resigning my berth on the paper when the chief
+arrived, and with him a rabble of charmed and enthusiastic friends.  Then
+ensued a scene of riot and carnage such as no human pen, or steel one
+either, could describe.  People were shot, probed, dismembered, blown up,
+thrown out of the window.  There was a brief tornado of murky blasphemy,
+with a confused and frantic war-dance glimmering through it, and then all
+was over.  In five minutes there was silence, and the gory chief and I
+sat alone and surveyed the sanguinary ruin that strewed the floor around
+us.
+
+He said, “You'll like this place when you get used to it.”
+
+I said, “I'll have to get you to excuse me; I think maybe I might write
+to suit you after a while; as soon as I had had some practice and learned
+the language I am confident I could.  But, to speak the plain truth, that
+sort of energy of expression has its inconveniences, and a man is liable
+to interruption.
+
+“You see that yourself.  Vigorous writing is calculated to elevate the
+public, no doubt, but then I do not like to attract so much attention as
+it calls forth.  I can't write with comfort when I am interrupted so much
+as I have been to-day.  I like this berth well enough, but I don't like
+to be left here to wait on the customers.  The experiences are novel,
+I grant you, and entertaining, too, after a fashion, but they are not
+judiciously distributed.  A gentleman shoots at you through the window
+and cripples me; a bombshell comes down the stove-pipe for your
+gratification and sends the stove door down my throat; a friend drops in
+to swap compliments with you, and freckles me with bullet-holes till my
+skin won't hold my principles; you go to dinner, and Jones comes with his
+cowhide, Gillespie throws me out of the window, Thompson tears all my
+clothes off, and an entire stranger takes my scalp with the easy freedom
+of an old acquaintance; and in less than five minutes all the blackguards
+in the country arrive in their war-paint, and proceed to scare the rest
+of me to death with their tomahawks.  Take it altogether, I never had
+such a spirited time in all my life as I have had to-day.  No; I like
+you, and I like your calm unruffled way of explaining things to the
+customers, but you see I am not used to it.  The Southern heart is too
+impulsive; Southern hospitality is too lavish with the stranger.  The
+paragraphs which I have written to-day, and into whose cold sentences
+your masterly hand has infused the fervent spirit of Tennesseean
+journalism, will wake up another nest of hornets.  All that mob of
+editors will come--and they will come hungry, too, and want somebody for
+breakfast.  I shall have to bid you adieu.  I decline to be present at
+these festivities.  I came South for my health, I will go back on the
+same errand, and suddenly.  Tennesseean journalism is too stirring for
+me.”
+
+After which we parted with mutual regret, and I took apartments at the
+hospital.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THE STORY OF THE BAD LITTLE BOY--[Written about 1865]
+
+Once there was a bad little boy whose name was Jim--though, if you will
+notice, you will find that bad little boys are nearly always called James
+in your Sunday-school books.  It was strange, but still it was true, that this
+one was called Jim.
+
+He didn't have any sick mother, either--a sick mother who was pious and
+had the consumption, and would be glad to lie down in the grave and be at
+rest but for the strong love she bore her boy, and the anxiety she felt
+that the world might be harsh and cold toward him when she was gone.
+Most bad boys in the Sunday books are named James, and have sick mothers,
+who teach them to say, “Now, I lay me down,” etc., and sing them to sleep
+with sweet, plaintive voices, and then kiss them good night, and kneel
+down by the bedside and weep.  But it was different with this fellow.
+He was named Jim, and there wasn't anything the matter with his mother
+--no consumption, nor anything of that kind.  She was rather stout than
+otherwise, and she was not pious; moreover, she was not anxious on Jim's
+account.  She said if he were to break his neck it wouldn't be much loss.
+She always spanked Jim to sleep, and she never kissed him good night; on
+the contrary, she boxed his ears when she was ready to leave him.
+
+Once this little bad boy stole the key of the pantry, and slipped in
+there and helped himself to some jam, and filled up the vessel with tar,
+so that his mother would never know the difference; but all at once a
+terrible feeling didn't come over him, and something didn't seem to
+whisper to him, “Is it right to disobey my mother?  Isn't it sinful to do
+this?  Where do bad little boys go who gobble up their good kind mother's
+jam?” and then he didn't kneel down all alone and promise never to be
+wicked any more, and rise up with a light, happy heart, and go and tell
+his mother all about it, and beg her forgiveness, and be blessed by her
+with tears of pride and thankfulness in her eyes.  No; that is the way
+with all other bad boys in the books; but it happened otherwise with this
+Jim, strangely enough.  He ate that jam, and said it was bully, in his
+sinful, vulgar way; and he put in the tar, and said that was bully also,
+and laughed, and observed “that the old woman would get up and snort”
+ when she found it out; and when she did find it out, he denied knowing
+anything about it, and she whipped him severely, and he did the crying
+himself.  Everything about this boy was curious--everything turned out
+differently with him from the way it does to the bad Jameses in the
+books.
+
+Once he climbed up in Farmer Acorn's apple tree to steal apples, and the
+limb didn't break, and he didn't fall and break his arm, and get torn by
+the farmer's great dog, and then languish on a sickbed for weeks, and
+repent and become good.  Oh, no; he stole as many apples as he wanted and
+came down all right; and he was all ready for the dog, too, and knocked
+him endways with a brick when he came to tear him.  It was very strange
+--nothing like it ever happened in those mild little books with marbled
+backs, and with pictures in them of men with swallow-tailed coats and
+bell-crowned hats, and pantaloons that are short in the legs, and women
+with the waists of their dresses under their arms, and no hoops on.
+Nothing like it in any of the Sunday-school books.
+
+Once he stole the teacher's penknife, and, when he was afraid it would be
+found out and he would get whipped, he slipped it into George Wilson's
+cap--poor Widow Wilson's son, the moral boy, the good little boy of the
+village, who always obeyed his mother, and never told an untruth, and was
+fond of his lessons, and infatuated with Sunday-school.  And when the
+knife dropped from the cap, and poor George hung his head and blushed,
+as if in conscious guilt, and the grieved teacher charged the theft upon
+him, and was just in the very act of bringing the switch down upon his
+trembling shoulders, a white-haired, improbable justice of the peace did
+not suddenly appear in their midst, and strike an attitude and say,
+“Spare this noble boy--there stands the cowering culprit!  I was passing
+the school door at recess, and, unseen myself, I saw the theft
+committed!”  And then Jim didn't get whaled, and the venerable justice
+didn't read the tearful school a homily, and take George by the hand and
+say such a boy deserved to be exalted, and then tell him to come and make his
+home with him, and sweep out the office, and make fires, and run errands,
+and chop wood, and study law, and help his wife do household labors, and
+have all the balance of the time to play, and get forty cents a month, and
+be happy.  No; it would have happened that way in the books, but didn't
+happen that way to Jim.  No meddling old clam of a justice dropped in to
+make trouble, and so the model boy George got thrashed, and Jim was glad
+of it because, you know, Jim hated moral boys.  Jim said he was “down on
+them milksops.”  Such was the coarse language of this bad, neglected boy.
+
+But the strangest thing that ever happened to Jim was the time he went
+boating on Sunday, and didn't get drowned, and that other time that he
+got caught out in the storm when he was fishing on Sunday, and didn't get
+struck by lightning.  Why, you might look, and look, all through the
+Sunday-school books from now till next Christmas, and you would never
+come across anything like this.  Oh, no; you would find that all the bad
+boys who go boating on Sunday invariably get drowned; and all the bad
+boys who get caught out in storms when they are fishing on Sunday
+infallibly get struck by lightning.  Boats with bad boys in them always
+upset on Sunday, and it always storms when bad boys go fishing on the
+Sabbath.  How this Jim ever escaped is a mystery to me.
+
+This Jim bore a charmed life--that must have been the way of it.  Nothing
+could hurt him.  He even gave the elephant in the menagerie a plug of
+tobacco, and the elephant didn't knock the top of his head off with his
+trunk.  He browsed around the cupboard after essence-of peppermint, and
+didn't make a mistake and drink aqua fortis.  He stole his father's gun
+and went hunting on the Sabbath, and didn't shoot three or four of his
+fingers off.  He struck his little sister on the temple with his fist
+when he was angry, and she didn't linger in pain through long summer
+days, and die with sweet words of forgiveness upon her lips that
+redoubled the anguish of his breaking heart.  No; she got over it.  He
+ran off and went to sea at last, and didn't come back and find himself
+sad and alone in the world, his loved ones sleeping in the quiet
+churchyard, and the vine-embowered home of his boyhood tumbled down and
+gone to decay.  Ah, no; he came home as drunk as a piper, and got into
+the station-house the first thing.
+
+And he grew up and married, and raised a large family, and brained them
+all with an ax one night, and got wealthy by all manner of cheating and
+rascality; and now he is the infernalest wickedest scoundrel in his
+native village, and is universally respected, and belongs to the
+legislature.
+
+So you see there never was a bad James in the Sunday-school books that
+had such a streak of luck as this sinful Jim with the charmed life.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THE STORY OF THE GOOD LITTLE BOY--[Written about 1865]
+
+Once there was a good little boy by the name of Jacob Blivens.  He always
+obeyed his parents, no matter how absurd and unreasonable their demands
+were; and he always learned his book, and never was late at
+Sabbath-school.  He would not play hookey, even when his sober judgment
+told him it was the most profitable thing he could do.  None of the other
+boys could ever make that boy out, he acted so strangely.  He wouldn't
+lie, no matter how convenient it was.  He just said it was wrong to lie,
+and that was sufficient for him.  And he was so honest that he was simply
+ridiculous.  The curious ways that that Jacob had, surpassed everything.
+He wouldn't play marbles on Sunday, he wouldn't rob birds' nests, he
+wouldn't give hot pennies to organ-grinders' monkeys; he didn't seem to
+take any interest in any kind of rational amusement.  So the other boys
+used to try to reason it out and come to an understanding of him, but
+they couldn't arrive at any satisfactory conclusion.  As I said before,
+they could only figure out a sort of vague idea that he was “afflicted,”
+ and so they took him under their protection, and never allowed any harm
+to come to him.
+
+This good little boy read all the Sunday-school books; they were his
+greatest delight.  This was the whole secret of it.  He believed in the
+good little boys they put in the Sunday-school book; he had every
+confidence in them.  He longed to come across one of them alive once;
+but he never did.  They all died before his time, maybe.  Whenever he
+read about a particularly good one he turned over quickly to the end to
+see what became of him, because he wanted to travel thousands of miles
+and gaze on him; but it wasn't any use; that good little boy always died
+in the last chapter, and there was a picture of the funeral, with all his
+relations and the Sunday-school children standing around the grave in
+pantaloons that were too short, and bonnets that were too large, and
+everybody crying into handkerchiefs that had as much as a yard and a half
+of stuff in them.  He was always headed off in this way.  He never could
+see one of those good little boys on account of his always dying in the
+last chapter.
+
+Jacob had a noble ambition to be put in a Sunday school book.  He wanted
+to be put in, with pictures representing him gloriously declining to lie
+to his mother, and her weeping for joy about it; and pictures
+representing him standing on the doorstep giving a penny to a poor
+beggar-woman with six children, and telling her to spend it freely, but
+not to be extravagant, because extravagance is a sin; and pictures of him
+magnanimously refusing to tell on the bad boy who always lay in wait for
+him around the corner as he came from school, and welted him so over the
+head with a lath, and then chased him home, saying, “Hi! hi!” as he
+proceeded.  That was the ambition of young Jacob Blivens.  He wished to
+be put in a Sunday-school book.  It made him feel a little uncomfortable
+sometimes when he reflected that the good little boys always died.  He
+loved to live, you know, and this was the most unpleasant feature about
+being a Sunday-school-book boy.  He knew it was not healthy to be good.
+He knew it was more fatal than consumption to be so supernaturally good
+as the boys in the books were; he knew that none of them had ever been
+able to stand it long, and it pained him to think that if they put him in
+a book he wouldn't ever see it, or even if they did get the book out
+before he died it wouldn't be popular without any picture of his funeral
+in the back part of it.  It couldn't be much of a Sunday-school book that
+couldn't tell about the advice he gave to the community when he was
+dying.  So at last, of course, he had to make up his mind to do the best
+he could under the circumstances--to live right, and hang on as long as
+he could, and have his dying speech all ready when his time came.
+
+But somehow nothing ever went right with the good little boy; nothing
+ever turned out with him the way it turned out with the good little boys
+in the books.  They always had a good time, and the bad boys had the
+broken legs; but in his case there was a screw loose somewhere, and it
+all happened just the other way.  When he found Jim Blake stealing
+apples, and went under the tree to read to him about the bad little boy
+who fell out of a neighbor's apple tree and broke his arm, Jim fell out
+of the tree, too, but he fell on him and broke his arm, and Jim wasn't
+hurt at all.  Jacob couldn't understand that.  There wasn't anything in
+the books like it.
+
+And once, when some bad boys pushed a blind man over in the mud, and
+Jacob ran to help him up and receive his blessing, the blind man did not
+give him any blessing at all, but whacked him over the head with his
+stick and said he would like to catch him shoving him again, and then
+pretending to help him up.  This was not in accordance with any of the
+books.  Jacob looked them all over to see.
+
+One thing that Jacob wanted to do was to find a lame dog that hadn't any
+place to stay, and was hungry and persecuted, and bring him home and pet
+him and have that dog's imperishable gratitude.  And at last he found one
+and was happy; and he brought him home and fed him, but when he was going
+to pet him the dog flew at him and tore all the clothes off him except
+those that were in front, and made a spectacle of him that was
+
+astonishing.  He examined authorities, but he could not understand the
+matter.  It was of the same breed of dogs that was in the books, but it
+acted very differently.  Whatever this boy did he got into trouble.  The
+very things the boys in the books got rewarded for turned out to be about
+the most unprofitable things he could invest in.
+
+Once, when he was on his way to Sunday-school, he saw some bad boys
+starting off pleasuring in a sailboat.  He was filled with consternation,
+because he knew from his reading that boys who went sailing on Sunday
+invariably got drowned.  So he ran out on a raft to warn them, but a log
+turned with him and slid him into the river.  A man got him out pretty
+soon, and the doctor pumped the water out of him, and gave him a fresh
+start with his bellows, but he caught cold and lay sick abed nine weeks.
+But the most unaccountable thing about it was that the bad boys in the
+boat had a good time all day, and then reached home alive and well in the
+most surprising manner.  Jacob Blivens said there was nothing like these
+things in the books.  He was perfectly dumfounded.
+
+When he got well he was a little discouraged, but he resolved to keep on
+trying anyhow.  He knew that so far his experiences wouldn't do to go in
+a book, but he hadn't yet reached the allotted term of life for good
+little boys, and he hoped to be able to make a record yet if he could
+hold on till his time was fully up.  If everything else failed he had his
+dying speech to fall back on.
+
+He examined his authorities, and found that it was now time for him to go
+to sea as a cabin-boy.  He called on a ship-captain and made his
+application, and when the captain asked for his recommendations he
+proudly drew out a tract and pointed to the word, “To Jacob Blivens, from
+his affectionate teacher.”  But the captain was a coarse, vulgar man, and
+he said, “Oh, that be blowed! that wasn't any proof that he knew how to
+wash dishes or handle a slush-bucket, and he guessed he didn't want him.”
+ This was altogether the most extraordinary thing that ever happened to
+Jacob in all his life.  A compliment from a teacher, on a tract, had
+never failed to move the tenderest emotions of ship-captains, and open
+the way to all offices of honor and profit in their gift, it never had in
+any book that ever HE had read.  He could hardly believe his senses.
+
+This boy always had a hard time of it.  Nothing ever came out according
+to the authorities with him.  At last, one day, when he was around
+hunting up bad little boys to admonish, he found a lot of them in the old
+iron-foundry fixing up a little joke on fourteen or fifteen dogs, which
+they had tied together in long procession, and were going to ornament
+with empty nitroglycerin cans made fast to their tails.  Jacob's heart
+was touched.  He sat down on one of those cans (for he never minded
+grease when duty was before him), and he took hold of the foremost dog by
+the collar, and turned his reproving eye upon wicked Tom Jones.  But just
+at that moment Alderman McWelter, full of wrath, stepped in.  All the bad
+boys ran away, but Jacob Blivens rose in conscious innocence and began
+one of those stately little Sunday-school-book speeches which always
+commence with “Oh, sir!” in dead opposition to the fact that no boy, good
+or bad, ever starts a remark with “Oh, sir.”  But the alderman never
+waited to hear the rest.  He took Jacob Blivens by the ear and turned him
+around, and hit him a whack in the rear with the flat of his hand; and in
+an instant that good little boy shot out through the roof and soared away
+toward the sun, with the fragments of those fifteen dogs stringing after
+him like the tail of a kite.  And there wasn't a sign of that alderman or
+that old iron-foundry left on the face of the earth; and, as for young
+Jacob Blivens, he never got a chance to make his last dying speech after
+all his trouble fixing it up, unless he made it to the birds; because,
+although the bulk of him came down all right in a tree-top in an
+adjoining county, the rest of him was apportioned around among four
+townships, and so they had to hold five inquests on him to find out
+whether he was dead or not, and how it occurred.  You never saw a boy
+scattered so.--[This glycerin catastrophe is borrowed from a floating
+newspaper item, whose author's name I would give if I knew it.--M. T.]
+
+Thus perished the good little boy who did the best he could, but didn't
+come out according to the books.  Every boy who ever did as he did
+prospered except him.  His case is truly remarkable.  It will probably
+never be accounted for.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+A COUPLE OF POEMS BY TWAIN AND MOORE--[Written about 1865]
+
+
+                         THOSE EVENING BELLS
+
+                           BY THOMAS MOORE
+
+               Those evening bells! those evening bells!
+               How many a tale their music tells
+               Of youth, and home, and that sweet time
+               When last I heard their soothing chime.
+
+               Those joyous hours are passed away;
+               And many a heart that then was gay,
+               Within the tomb now darkly dwells,
+               And hears no more those evening bells.
+
+               And so 'twill be when I am gone
+               That tuneful peal will still ring on;
+               While other bards shall walk these dells,
+               And sing your praise, sweet evening bells.
+
+
+                         THOSE ANNUAL BILLS
+
+                           BY MARK TWAIN
+
+               These annual bills! these annual bills!
+               How many a song their discord trills
+               Of “truck” consumed, enjoyed, forgot,
+               Since I was skinned by last year's lot!
+
+               Those joyous beans are passed away;
+               Those onions blithe, O where are they?
+               Once loved, lost, mourned--now vexing ILLS
+               Your shades troop back in annual bills!
+
+               And so 'twill be when I'm aground
+               These yearly duns will still go round,
+               While other bards, with frantic quills,
+               Shall damn and damn these annual bills!
+
+
+
+
+
+
+NIAGARA [ Written about 1871.]
+
+Niagara Falls is a most enjoyable place of resort.  The hotels are
+excellent, and the prices not at all exorbitant.  The opportunities for
+fishing are not surpassed in the country; in fact, they are not even
+equaled elsewhere.  Because, in other localities, certain places in the
+streams are much better than others; but at Niagara one place is just as
+good as another, for the reason that the fish do not bite anywhere, and
+so there is no use in your walking five miles to fish, when you can
+depend on being just as unsuccessful nearer home.  The advantages of this
+state of things have never heretofore been properly placed before the
+public.
+
+The weather is cool in summer, and the walks and drives are all pleasant
+and none of them fatiguing.  When you start out to “do” the Falls you
+first drive down about a mile, and pay a small sum for the privilege of
+looking down from a precipice into the narrowest part of the Niagara
+River.  A railway “cut” through a hill would be as comely if it had the
+angry river tumbling and foaming through its bottom.  You can descend a
+staircase here a hundred and fifty feet down, and stand at the edge of
+the water.  After you have done it, you will wonder why you did it; but
+you will then be too late.
+
+The guide will explain to you, in his blood-curdling way, how he saw the
+little steamer, Maid of the Mist, descend the fearful rapids--how first
+one paddle-box was out of sight behind the raging billows and then the
+other, and at what point it was that her smokestack toppled overboard,
+and where her planking began to break and part asunder--and how she did
+finally live through the trip, after accomplishing the incredible feat of
+traveling seventeen miles in six minutes, or six miles in seventeen
+minutes, I have really forgotten which.  But it was very extraordinary,
+anyhow.  It is worth the price of admission to hear the guide tell the
+story nine times in succession to different parties, and never miss a
+word or alter a sentence or a gesture.
+
+Then you drive over to Suspension Bridge, and divide your misery between
+the chances of smashing down two hundred feet into the river below, and
+the chances of having the railway-train overhead smashing down onto you.
+Either possibility is discomforting taken by itself, but, mixed together,
+they amount in the aggregate to positive unhappiness.
+
+On the Canada side you drive along the chasm between long ranks of
+photographers standing guard behind their cameras, ready to make an
+ostentatious frontispiece of you and your decaying ambulance, and your
+solemn crate with a hide on it, which you are expected to regard in the
+light of a horse, and a diminished and unimportant background of sublime
+Niagara; and a great many people have the incredible effrontery or the
+native depravity to aid and abet this sort of crime.
+
+Any day, in the hands of these photographers, you may see stately
+
+pictures of papa and mamma, Johnny and Bub and Sis, or a couple of country
+cousins, all smiling vacantly, and all disposed in studied and
+uncomfortable attitudes in their carriage, and all looming up in their
+awe-inspiring imbecility before the snubbed and diminished presentment of
+that majestic presence whose ministering spirits are the rainbows, whose
+voice is the thunder, whose awful front is veiled in clouds, who was
+monarch here dead and forgotten ages before this sackful of small
+reptiles was deemed temporarily necessary to fill a crack in the world's
+unnoted myriads, and will still be monarch here ages and decades of ages
+after they shall have gathered themselves to their blood-relations, the
+other worms, and been mingled with the unremembering dust.
+
+There is no actual harm in making Niagara a background whereon to display
+one's marvelous insignificance in a good strong light, but it requires a
+sort of superhuman self-complacency to enable one to do it.
+When you have examined the stupendous Horseshoe Fall till you are
+satisfied you cannot improve on it, you return to America by the new
+Suspension Bridge, and follow up the bank to where they exhibit the Cave
+of the Winds.
+
+Here I followed instructions, and divested myself of all my clothing, and
+put on a waterproof jacket and overalls.  This costume is picturesque,
+but not beautiful.  A guide, similarly dressed, led the way down a flight
+of winding stairs, which wound and wound, and still kept on winding long
+after the thing ceased to be a novelty, and then terminated long before
+it had begun to be a pleasure.  We were then well down under the
+precipice, but still considerably above the level of the river.
+
+We now began to creep along flimsy bridges of a single plank, our persons
+shielded from destruction by a crazy wooden railing, to which I clung
+with both hands--not because I was afraid, but because I wanted to.
+Presently the descent became steeper and the bridge flimsier, and sprays
+from the American Fall began to rain down on us in fast increasing sheets
+that soon became blinding, and after that our progress was mostly in the
+nature of groping.  Now a furious wind began to rush out from behind the
+waterfall, which seemed determined to sweep us from the bridge, and
+scatter us on the rocks and among the torrents below.  I remarked that I
+wanted to go home; but it was too late.  We were almost under the
+monstrous wall of water thundering down from above, and speech was in
+vain in the midst of such a pitiless crash of sound.
+
+In another moment the guide disappeared behind the deluge, and, bewildered
+by the thunder, driven helplessly by the wind, and smitten by the arrowy
+tempest of rain, I followed.  All was darkness.  Such a mad storming,
+roaring, and bellowing of warring wind and water never crazed my ears
+before.  I bent my head, and seemed to receive the Atlantic on my back.
+The world seemed going to destruction.  I could not see anything, the
+flood poured down savagely.  I raised my head, with open mouth, and the
+most of the American cataract went down my throat.  If I had sprung a
+leak now I had been lost.  And at this moment I discovered that the
+bridge had ceased, and we must trust for a foothold to the slippery and
+precipitous rocks.  I never was so scared before and survived it.  But we
+got through at last, and emerged into the open day, where we could stand
+in front of the laced and frothy and seething world of descending water,
+and look at it.  When I saw how much of it there was, and how fearfully
+in earnest it was, I was sorry I had gone behind it.
+
+The noble Red Man has always been a friend and darling of mine.  I love
+to read about him in tales and legends and romances.  I love to read of
+his inspired sagacity, and his love of the wild free life of mountain and
+forest, and his general nobility of character, and his stately
+metaphorical manner of speech, and his chivalrous love for the dusky
+maiden, and the picturesque pomp of his dress and accoutrements.
+Especially the picturesque pomp of his dress and accoutrements.  When I
+found the shops at Niagara Falls full of dainty Indian beadwork, and
+stunning moccasins, and equally stunning toy figures representing human
+beings who carried their weapons in holes bored through their arms and
+bodies, and had feet shaped like a pie, I was filled with emotion.
+I knew that now, at last, I was going to come face to face with the noble
+Red Man.
+
+A lady clerk in a shop told me, indeed, that all her grand array of
+curiosities were made by the Indians, and that they were plenty about the
+Falls, and that they were friendly, and it would not be dangerous to
+speak to them.  And sure enough, as I approached the bridge leading over
+to Luna Island, I came upon a noble Son of the Forest sitting under a
+tree, diligently at work on a bead reticule.  He wore a slouch hat and
+brogans, and had a short black pipe in his mouth.  Thus does the baneful
+contact with our effeminate civilization dilute the picturesque pomp
+which is so natural to the Indian when far removed from us in his native
+haunts.  I addressed the relic as follows:
+
+“Is the Wawhoo-Wang-Wang of the Whack-a-Whack happy?  Does the great
+Speckled Thunder sigh for the war-path, or is his heart contented with
+dreaming of the dusky maiden, the Pride of the Forest?  Does the mighty
+Sachem yearn to drink the blood of his enemies, or is he satisfied to
+make bead reticules for the pappooses of the paleface?  Speak, sublime
+relic of bygone grandeur--venerable ruin, speak!”
+
+The relic said:
+
+
+“An' is it mesilf, Dennis Hooligan, that ye'd be takin' for a dirty
+Injin, ye drawlin', lantern-jawed, spider-legged divil!  By the piper
+that played before Moses, I'll ate ye!”
+
+I went away from there.
+
+By and by, in the neighborhood of the Terrapin Tower, I came upon a
+gentle daughter of the aborigines in fringed and beaded buckskin
+moccasins and leggins, seated on a bench with her pretty wares about her.
+She had just carved out a wooden chief that had a strong family
+resemblance to a clothes-pin, and was now boring a hole through his
+abdomen to put his bow through.  I hesitated a moment, and then addressed
+her:
+
+“Is the heart of the forest maiden heavy?  Is the Laughing Tadpole
+lonely?  Does she mourn over the extinguished council-fires of her race,
+and the vanished glory of her ancestors?  Or does her sad spirit wander
+afar toward the hunting-grounds whither her brave Gobbler-of-the-
+Lightnings is gone?  Why is my daughter silent?  Has she ought against
+the paleface stranger?”
+
+The maiden said:
+
+“Faix, an' is it Biddy Malone ye dare to be callin' names?  Lave this, or
+I'll shy your lean carcass over the cataract, ye sniveling blaggard!”
+
+I adjourned from there also.
+
+“Confound these Indians!” I said.  “They told me they were tame; but, if
+appearances go for anything, I should say they were all on the warpath.”
+
+I made one more attempt to fraternize with them, and only one.  I came
+upon a camp of them gathered in the shade of a great tree, making wampum
+and moccasins, and addressed them in the language of friendship:
+
+“Noble Red Men, Braves, Grand Sachems, War Chiefs, Squaws, and High
+Muck-a-Mucks, the paleface from the land of the setting sun greets you!
+You, Beneficent Polecat--you, Devourer of Mountains--you, Roaring
+Thundergust--you, Bully Boy with a Glass eye--the paleface from beyond
+the great waters greets you all! War and pestilence have thinned your
+ranks and destroyed your once proud nation.  Poker and seven-up, and a
+vain modern expense for soap, unknown to your glorious ancestors, have
+depleted your purses.  Appropriating, in your simplicity, the property of
+others has gotten you into trouble.  Misrepresenting facts, in your
+simple innocence, has damaged your reputation with the soulless usurper.
+Trading for forty-rod whisky, to enable you to get drunk and happy and
+tomahawk your families, has played the everlasting mischief with the
+picturesque pomp of your dress, and here you are, in the broad light of
+the nineteenth century, gotten up like the ragtag and bobtail of the
+purlieus of New York.  For shame!  Remember your ancestors!  Recall their
+mighty deeds!  Remember Uncas!--and Red jacket! and Hole in the Day!--and
+Whoopdedoodledo!  Emulate their achievements!  Unfurl yourselves under my
+banner, noble savages, illustrious guttersnipes--”
+
+“Down wid him!”  “Scoop the blaggard!”  “Burn him!”  “Hang him!”
+ “Dhround him!”
+
+It was the quickest operation that ever was.  I simply saw a sudden flash
+in the air of clubs, brickbats, fists, bead-baskets, and moccasins--a
+single flash, and they all appeared to hit me at once, and no two of them
+in the same place.  In the next instant the entire tribe was upon me.
+They tore half the clothes off me; they broke my arms and legs; they gave
+me a thump that dented the top of my head till it would hold coffee like
+a saucer; and, to crown their disgraceful proceedings and add insult to
+injury, they threw me over the Niagara Falls, and I got wet.
+
+About ninety or a hundred feet from the top, the remains of my vest
+caught on a projecting rock, and I was almost drowned before I could get
+loose.  I finally fell, and brought up in a world of white foam at the
+foot of the Fall, whose celled and bubbly masses towered up several inches
+above my head.  Of course I got into the eddy.  I sailed round and
+round in it forty-four times--chasing a chip and gaining on it--each
+round trip a half-mile--reaching for the same bush on the bank forty-four
+times, and just exactly missing it by a hair's-breadth every time.
+
+
+At last a man walked down and sat down close to that bush, and put a pipe
+in his mouth, and lit a match, and followed me with one eye and kept the
+other on the match, while he sheltered it in his hands from the wind.
+Presently a puff of wind blew it out.  The next time I swept around he
+said:
+
+“Got a match?”
+
+“Yes; in my other vest.  Help me out, please.”
+
+“Not for Joe.”
+
+When I came round again, I said:
+
+“Excuse the seemingly impertinent curiosity of a drowning man, but will
+you explain this singular conduct of yours?”
+
+“With pleasure.  I am the coroner.  Don't hurry on my account.  I can
+wait for you.  But I wish I had a match.”
+
+I said: “Take my place, and I'll go and get you one.”
+
+He declined.  This lack of confidence on his part created a coldness
+between us, and from that time forward I avoided him.  It was my idea,
+in case anything happened to me, to so time the occurrence as to throw my
+custom into the hands of the opposition coroner on the American side.
+
+At last a policeman came along, and arrested me for disturbing the peace
+by yelling at people on shore for help.  The judge fined me, but I had the
+advantage of him.  My money was with my pantaloons, and my pantaloons
+were with the Indians.
+
+Thus I escaped.  I am now lying in a very critical condition.  At least I
+am lying anyway---critical or not critical.  I am hurt all over, but I
+cannot tell the full extent yet, because the doctor is not done taking
+inventory.  He will make out my manifest this evening.  However, thus far
+he thinks only sixteen of my wounds are fatal.  I don't mind the others.
+
+Upon regaining my right mind, I said:
+
+“It is an awful savage tribe of Indians that do the beadwork and
+moccasins for Niagara Falls, doctor.  Where are they from?”
+
+
+“Limerick, my son.”
+
+
+
+
+
+
+ANSWERS TO CORRESPONDENTS--[Written about 1865.]
+
+“MORAL STATISTICIAN.”--I don't want any of your statistics; I took your
+whole batch and lit my pipe with it.  I hate your kind of people.  You
+are always ciphering out how much a man's health is injured, and how much
+his intellect is impaired, and how many pitiful dollars and cents he
+wastes in the course of ninety-two years' indulgence in the fatal
+practice of smoking; and in the equally fatal practice of drinking
+coffee; and in playing billiards occasionally; and in taking a glass of
+wine at dinner, etc., etc., etc.  And you are always figuring out how
+many women have been burned to death because of the dangerous fashion of
+wearing expansive hoops, etc., etc., etc.  You never see more than one
+side of the question.  You are blind to the fact that most old men in
+America smoke and drink coffee, although, according to your theory, they
+ought to have died young; and that hearty old Englishmen drink wine and
+survive it, and portly old Dutchmen both drink and smoke freely, and yet
+grow older and fatter all the time.  And you never try to find out how
+much solid comfort, relaxation, and enjoyment a man derives from smoking
+in the course of a lifetime (which is worth ten times the money he would
+save by letting it alone), nor the appalling aggregate of happiness lost
+in a lifetime by your kind of people from not smoking.  Of course you can
+save money by denying yourself all the little vicious enjoyments for
+fifty years; but then what can you do with it?  What use can you put it
+to?  Money can't save your infinitesimal soul.  All the use that money
+can be put to is to purchase comfort and enjoyment in this life;
+therefore, as you are an enemy to comfort and enjoyment, where is the use
+of accumulating cash?  It won't do for you to say that you can use it to
+better purpose in furnishing a good table, and in charities, and in
+supporting tract societies, because you know yourself that you people who
+have no petty vices are never known to give away a cent, and that you
+stint yourselves so in the matter of food that you are always feeble and
+hungry.  And you never dare to laugh in the daytime for fear some poor
+wretch, seeing you in a good humor, will try to borrow a dollar of you;
+and in church you are always down on your knees, with your eyes buried in
+the cushion, when the contribution-box comes around; and you never give
+the revenue officers a full statement of your income.  Now you know these
+things yourself, don't you?  Very well, then what is the use of your
+stringing out your miserable lives to a lean and withered old age?  What
+is the use of your saving money that is so utterly worthless to you?  In
+a word, why don't you go off somewhere and die, and not be always trying
+to seduce people into becoming as “ornery” and unlovable as you are
+yourselves, by your villainous “moral statistics”?  Now I don't approve
+of dissipation, and I don't indulge in it, either; but I haven't a
+particle of confidence in a man who has no redeeming petty vices, and so
+I don't want to hear from you any more.  I think you are the very same
+man who read me a long lecture last week about the degrading vice of
+smoking cigars, and then came back, in my absence, with your
+reprehensible fireproof gloves on, and carried off my beautiful parlor
+stove.
+
+
+“YOUNG AUTHOR.”--Yes, Agassiz does recommend authors to eat fish, because
+the phosphorus in it makes brain.  So far you are correct.  But I cannot
+help you to a decision about the amount you need to eat--at least, not
+with certainty.  If the specimen composition you send is about your fair
+usual average, I should judge that perhaps a couple of whales would be
+all you would want for the present.  Not the largest kind, but simply
+good, middling-sized whales.
+
+
+“SIMON WHEELER,” Sonora.--The following simple and touching remarks and
+accompanying poem have just come to hand from the rich gold-mining region
+of Sonora:
+
+     To Mr. Mark Twain: The within parson, which I have set to poetry
+     under the name and style of “He Done His Level Best,” was one among
+     the whitest men I ever see, and it ain't every man that knowed him
+     that can find it in his heart to say he's glad the poor cuss is
+     busted and gone home to the States.  He was here in an early day,
+     and he was the handyest man about takin' holt of anything that come
+     along you most ever see, I judge.  He was a cheerful, stirrin'
+     cretur, always doin' somethin', and no man can say he ever see him
+     do anything by halvers.  Preachin was his nateral gait, but he
+     warn't a man to lay back and twidle his thumbs because there didn't
+     happen to be nothin' doin' in his own especial line--no, sir, he was a
+     man who would meander forth and stir up something for hisself.  His
+     last acts was to go his pile on “Kings-and” (calklatin' to fill, but
+     which he didn't fill), when there was a “flush” out agin him, and
+     naterally, you see, he went under.  And so he was cleaned out as you
+     may say, and he struck the home-trail, cheerful but flat broke.  I
+     knowed this talonted man in Arkansaw, and if you would print this
+     humbly tribute to his gorgis abilities, you would greatly obleege
+     his onhappy friend.
+
+                    HE DONE HIS LEVEL BEST
+
+                    Was he a mining on the flat--
+                    He done it with a zest;
+                    Was he a leading of the choir--
+                    He done his level best.
+
+                    If he'd a reg'lar task to do,
+                    He never took no rest;
+                    Or if 'twas off-and-on--the same--
+                    He done his level best.
+
+                    If he was preachin' on his beat,
+                    He'd tramp from east to west,
+                    And north to south-in cold and heat
+                    He done his level best.
+
+                    He'd yank a sinner outen (Hades),**
+                    And land him with the blest;
+                    Then snatch a prayer'n waltz in again,
+                    And do his level best.
+
+     **Here I have taken a slight liberty with the original MS.  “Hades”
+      does not make such good meter as the other word of one syllable, but
+     it sounds better.
+
+                    He'd cuss and sing and howl and pray,
+                    And dance and drink and jest,
+                    And lie and steal--all one to him--
+                    He done his level best.
+
+                    Whate'er this man was sot to do,
+                    He done it with a zest;
+                    No matter WHAT his contract was,
+                    HE'D DO HIS LEVEL BEST.
+
+Verily, this man WAS gifted with “gorgis abilities,” and it is a
+happiness to me to embalm the memory of their luster in these columns.
+If it were not that the poet crop is unusually large and rank in
+California this year, I would encourage you to continue writing, Simon
+Wheeler; but, as it is, perhaps it might be too risky in you to enter
+against so much opposition.
+
+
+“PROFESSIONAL BEGGAR.”--NO; you are not obliged to take greenbacks at
+par.
+
+
+“MELTON MOWBRAY,” Dutch Flat.--This correspondent sends a lot of
+doggerel, and says it has been regarded as very good in Dutch Flat.  I
+give a specimen verse:
+
+          The Assyrian came down like a wolf on the fold,
+          And his cohorts were gleaming with purple and gold;
+          And the sheen of his spears was like stars on the sea,
+          When the blue wave rolls nightly on deep Galilee.**
+
+     **This piece of pleasantry, published in a San Francisco paper, was
+     mistaken by the country journals for seriousness, and many and loud
+     were the denunciations of the ignorance of author and editor, in not
+     knowing that the lines in question were “written by Byron.”
+
+There, that will do.  That may be very good Dutch Flat poetry, but it
+won't do in the metropolis.  It is too smooth and blubbery; it reads like
+buttermilk gurgling from a jug.  What the people ought to have is
+something spirited--something like “Johnny Comes Marching Home.”  However,
+keep on practising, and you may succeed yet.  There is genius in you, but
+too much blubber.
+
+
+     “ST. CLAIR HIGGINS.” Los Angeles.--“My life is a failure; I have
+     adored, wildly, madly, and she whom I love has turned coldly from me
+     and shed her affections upon another.  What would you advise me to
+     do?”
+
+You should set your affections on another also--or on several, if there
+are enough to go round.  Also, do everything you can to make your former
+flame unhappy.  There is an absurd idea disseminated in novels, that the
+happier a girl is with another man, the happier it makes the old lover
+she has blighted.  Don't allow yourself to believe any such nonsense as
+that.  The more cause that girl finds to regret that she did not marry
+you, the more comfortable you will feel over it.  It isn't poetical, but
+it is mighty sound doctrine.
+
+
+     “ARITHMETICUS.” Virginia, Nevada.--“If it would take a cannon-ball
+     3 and 1/3 seconds to travel four miles, and 3 and 3/8 seconds to
+     travel the next four, and 3 and 5/8 to travel the next four, and if
+     its rate of progress continued to diminish in the same ratio, how
+     long would it take it to go fifteen hundred million miles?”
+
+I don't know.
+
+
+“AMBITIOUS LEARNER,” Oakland.--Yes; you are right America was not
+discovered by Alexander Selkirk.
+
+
+     “DISCARDED LOVER.”--“I loved, and still love, the beautiful Edwitha
+     Howard, and intended to marry her.  Yet, during my temporary absence
+     at Benicia, last week, alas! she married Jones.  Is my happiness to
+     be thus blasted for life? Have I no redress?”
+
+Of course you have.  All the law, written and unwritten, is on your side.
+The intention and not the act constitutes crime--in other words,
+constitutes the deed.  If you call your bosom friend a fool, and intend
+it for an insult, it is an insult; but if you do it playfully, and
+meaning no insult, it is not an insult.  If you discharge a pistol
+accidentally, and kill a man, you can go free, for you have done no
+murder; but if you try to kill a man, and manifestly intend to kill him,
+but fail utterly to do it, the law still holds that the intention
+constituted the crime, and you are guilty of murder.  Ergo, if you had
+married Edwitha accidentally, and without really intending to do it, you
+would not actually be married to her at all, because the act of marriage
+could not be complete without the intention.  And ergo, in the strict
+spirit of the law, since you deliberately intended to marry Edwitha, and
+didn't do it, you are married to her all the same--because, as I said
+before, the intention constitutes the crime.  It is as clear as day that
+Edwitha is your wife, and your redress lies in taking a club and
+mutilating Jones with it as much as you can.  Any man has a right to
+protect his own wife from the advances of other men.  But you have
+another alternative--you were married to Edwitha first, because of your
+deliberate intention, and now you can prosecute her for bigamy, in
+subsequently marrying Jones.  But there is another phase in this
+complicated case:  You intended to marry Edwitha, and consequently,
+according to law, she is your wife--there is no getting around that; but
+she didn't marry you, and if she never intended to marry you, you are not
+her husband, of course.  Ergo, in marrying Jones, she was guilty of
+bigamy, because she was the wife of another man at the time; which is all
+very well as far as it goes--but then, don't you see, she had no other
+husband when she married Jones, and consequently she was not guilty of
+bigamy.  Now, according to this view of the case, Jones married a
+spinster, who was a widow at the same time and another man's wife at the
+same time, and yet who had no husband and never had one, and never had
+any intention of getting married, and therefore, of course, never had
+been married; and by the same reasoning you are a bachelor, because you
+have never been any one's husband; and a married man, because you have a
+wife living; and to all intents and purposes a widower, because you have
+been deprived of that wife; and a consummate ass for going off to Benicia
+in the first place, while things were so mixed.  And by this time I have
+got myself so tangled up in the intricacies of this extraordinary case
+that I shall have to give up any further attempt to advise you--I might
+get confused and fail to make myself understood.  I think I could take up
+the argument where I left off, and by following it closely awhile,
+perhaps I could prove to your satisfaction, either that you never existed
+at all, or that you are dead now, and consequently don't need the
+faithless Edwitha--I think I could do that, if it would afford you any
+comfort.
+
+
+“ARTHUR AUGUSTUS.”--No; you are wrong; that is the proper way to throw a
+brickbat or a tomahawk; but it doesn't answer so well for a bouquet; you
+will hurt somebody if you keep it up.  Turn your nosegay upside down,
+take it by the stems, and toss it with an upward sweep.  Did you ever
+pitch quoits? that is the idea.  The practice of recklessly heaving
+immense solid bouquets, of the general size and weight of prize cabbages,
+from the dizzy altitude of the galleries, is dangerous and very
+reprehensible.  Now, night before last, at the Academy of Music, just
+after Signorina ____ had finished that exquisite melody, “The Last Rose of
+Summer,” one of these floral pile-drivers came cleaving down through the
+atmosphere of applause, and if she hadn't deployed suddenly to the right,
+it would have driven her into the floor like a shinglenail.  Of course
+that bouquet was well meant; but how would you like to have been the
+target?  A sincere compliment is always grateful to a lady, so long as
+you don't try to knock her down with it.
+
+
+“YOUNG MOTHER.”--And so you think a baby is a thing of beauty and a joy
+forever?  Well, the idea is pleasing, but not original; every cow thinks
+the same of its own calf. Perhaps the cow may not think it so elegantly,
+but still she thinks it nevertheless.  I honor the cow for it.  We all
+honor this touching maternal instinct wherever we find it, be it in the
+home of luxury or in the humble cow-shed.  But really, madam, when I
+come to examine the matter in all its bearings, I find that the
+correctness of your assertion does not assert itself in all cases.
+A soiled baby, with a neglected nose, cannot be conscientiously regarded
+as a thing of beauty; and inasmuch as babyhood spans but three short
+years, no baby is competent to be a joy “forever.”  It pains me thus to
+demolish two-thirds of your pretty sentiment in a single sentence; but
+the position I hold in this chair requires that I shall not permit you to
+deceive and mislead the public with your plausible figures of speech.
+I know a female baby, aged eighteen months, in this city, which cannot
+hold out as a “joy” twenty-four hours on a stretch, let alone “forever.”
+ And it possesses some of the most remarkable eccentricities of character
+and appetite that have ever fallen under my notice.  I will set down here
+a statement of this infant's operations (conceived, planned, and carried
+out by itself, and without suggestion or assistance from its mother or
+any one else), during a single day; and what I shall say can be
+substantiated by the sworn testimony of witnesses.
+
+It commenced by eating one dozen large blue-mass pills, box and all; then
+it fell down a flight of stairs, and arose with a blue and purple knot on
+its forehead, after which it proceeded in quest of further refreshment
+and amusement. It found a glass trinket ornamented with brass-work
+--smashed up and ate the glass, and then swallowed the brass.
+Then it drank about twenty drops of laudanum, and more than a dozen
+tablespoonfuls of strong spirits of camphor.  The reason why it took no
+more laudanum was because there was no more to take.  After this it lay
+down on its back, and shoved five or six inches of a silver-headed
+whalebone cane down its throat; got it fast there, and it was all its
+mother could do to pull the cane out again, without pulling out some of
+the child with it.  Then, being hungry for glass again, it broke up
+several wine glasses, and fell to eating and swallowing the fragments,
+not minding a cut or two.  Then it ate a quantity of butter, pepper,
+salt, and California matches, actually taking a spoonful of butter, a
+spoonful of salt, a spoonful of pepper, and three or four lucifer matches
+at each mouthful. (I will remark here that this thing of beauty likes
+painted German lucifers, and eats all she can get of them; but she
+prefers California matches, which I regard as a compliment to our home
+manufactures of more than ordinary value, coming, as it does, from one
+who is too young to flatter.)  Then she washed her head with soap and
+water, and afterward ate what soap was left, and drank as much of the
+suds as she had room for; after which she sallied forth and took the cow
+familiarly by the tail, and got kicked heels over head.  At odd times
+during the day, when this joy forever happened to have nothing particular
+on hand, she put in the time by climbing up on places, and falling down
+off them, uniformly damaging her self in the operation.  As young as she
+is, she speaks many words tolerably distinctly; and being plainspoken in
+other respects, blunt and to the point, she opens conversation with all
+strangers, male or female, with the same formula, “How do, Jim?” Not being
+familiar with the ways of children, it is possible that I have
+been magnifying into matter of surprise things which may not strike any
+one who is familiar with infancy as being at all astonishing.  However, I
+cannot believe that such is the case, and so I repeat that my report of
+this baby's performances is strictly true; and if any one doubts it,
+I can produce the child.  I will further engage that she will devour
+anything that is given her (reserving to myself only the right to exclude
+anvils), and fall down from any place to which she may be elevated
+(merely stipulating that her preference for alighting on her head shall
+be respected, and, therefore, that the elevation chosen shall be high
+enough to enable her to accomplish this to her satisfaction).  But I find
+I have wandered from my subject; so, without further argument, I will
+reiterate my conviction that not all babies are things of beauty and joys
+forever.
+
+
+     “ARITHMETICUS.” Virginia, Nevada.--“I am an enthusiastic student of
+     mathematics, and it is so vexatious to me to find my progress
+     constantly impeded by these mysterious arithmetical technicalities.
+     Now do tell me what the difference is between geometry and
+     conchology?”
+
+Here you come again with your arithmetical conundrums, when I am
+suffering death with a cold in the head.  If you could have seen the
+expression of scorn that darkened my countenance a moment ago, and was
+instantly split from the center in every direction like a fractured
+looking-glass by my last sneeze, you never would have written that
+disgraceful question.  Conchology is a science which has nothing to do
+with mathematics; it relates only to shells.  At the same time, however,
+a man who opens oysters for a hotel, or shells a fortified town, or sucks
+eggs, is not, strictly speaking, a conchologist--a fine stroke of sarcasm
+that, but it will be lost on such an unintellectual clam as you.  Now
+compare conchology and geometry together, and you will see what the
+difference is, and your question will be answered.  But don't torture me
+with any more arithmetical horrors until you know I am rid of my cold.  I
+feel the bitterest animosity toward you at this moment--bothering me in
+this way, when I can do nothing but sneeze and rage and snort
+pocket-handkerchiefs to atoms.  If I had you in range of my nose now
+I would blow your brains out.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+TO RAISE POULTRY
+
+--[Being a letter written to a Poultry Society that had conferred a
+complimentary membership upon the author.  Written about 1870.]
+
+Seriously, from early youth I have taken an especial interest in the
+subject of poultry-raising, and so this membership touches a ready
+sympathy in my breast.  Even as a schoolboy, poultry-raising was a study
+with me, and I may say without egotism that as early as the age of
+seventeen I was acquainted with all the best and speediest methods of
+raising chickens, from raising them off a roost by burning lucifer
+matches under their noses, down to lifting them off a fence on a frosty
+night by insinuating the end of a warm board under their heels.  By the
+time I was twenty years old, I really suppose I had raised more poultry
+than any one individual in all the section round about there.  The very
+chickens came to know my talent by and by.  The youth of both sexes
+ceased to paw the earth for worms, and old roosters that came to crow,
+“remained to pray,” when I passed by.
+
+I have had so much experience in the raising of fowls that I cannot but
+think that a few hints from me might be useful to the society.  The two
+methods I have already touched upon are very simple, and are only used in
+the raising of the commonest class of fowls; one is for summer, the other
+for winter.  In the one case you start out with a friend along about
+eleven o'clock on a summer's night (not later, because in some states
+--especially in California and Oregon--chickens always rouse up just at
+midnight and crow from ten to thirty minutes, according to the ease or
+difficulty they experience in getting the public waked up), and your
+friend carries with him a sack.  Arrived at the henroost (your
+neighbor's, not your own), you light a match and hold it under first one
+and then another pullet's nose until they are willing to go into that bag
+without making any trouble about it.  You then return home, either taking
+the bag with you or leaving it behind, according as circumstances shall
+dictate.  N. B.--I have seen the time when it was eligible and
+appropriate to leave the sack behind and walk off with considerable
+velocity, without ever leaving any word where to send it.
+
+In the case of the other method mentioned for raising poultry, your
+friend takes along a covered vessel with a charcoal fire in it, and you
+carry a long slender plank.  This is a frosty night, understand.  Arrived
+at the tree, or fence, or other henroost (your own if you are an idiot),
+you warm the end of your plank in your friend's fire vessel, and then
+raise it aloft and ease it up gently against a slumbering chicken's foot.
+If the subject of your attentions is a true bird, he will infallibly
+return thanks with a sleepy cluck or two, and step out and take up
+quarters on the plank, thus becoming so conspicuously accessory before
+the fact to his own murder as to make it a grave question in our minds as
+it once was in the mind of Blackstone, whether he is not really and
+deliberately committing suicide in the second degree.  [But you enter
+into a contemplation of these legal refinements subsequently-- not then.]
+
+When you wish to raise a fine, large, donkey-voiced Shanghai rooster, you
+do it with a lasso, just as you would a bull. It is because he must be choked,
+and choked effectually, too.  It is the only good, certain way,
+for whenever he mentions a matter which he is cordially interested in,
+the chances are ninety-nine in a hundred that he secures somebody else's
+immediate attention to it too, whether it be day or night.
+
+The Black Spanish is an exceedingly fine bird and a costly one.
+Thirty-five dollars is the usual figure, and fifty a not uncommon price
+for a specimen.  Even its eggs are worth from a dollar to a dollar and a
+half apiece, and yet are so unwholesome that the city physician seldom or
+never orders them for the workhouse.  Still I have once or twice procured
+as high as a dozen at a time for nothing, in the dark of the moon.  The
+best way to raise the Black Spanish fowl is to go late in the evening and
+raise coop and all.  The reason I recommend this method is that, the
+birds being so valuable, the owners do not permit them to roost around
+promiscuously, but put them in a coop as strong as a fireproof safe and
+keep it in the kitchen at night.  The method I speak of is not always a
+bright and satisfying success, and yet there are so many little articles
+of VERTU about a kitchen, that if you fail on the coop you can generally
+bring away something else.  I brought away a nice steel trap one night,
+worth ninety cents.
+
+But what is the use in my pouring out my whole intellect on this subject?
+I have shown the Western New York Poultry Society that they have taken to
+their bosom a party who is not a spring chicken by any means, but a man
+who knows all about poultry, and is just as high up in the most efficient
+methods of raising it as the president of the institution himself.
+I thank these gentlemen for the honorary membership they have conferred
+upon me, and shall stand at all times ready and willing to testify my
+good feeling and my official zeal by deeds as well as by this hastily
+penned advice and information.  Whenever they are ready to go to raising
+poultry, let them call for me any evening after eleven o'clock, and I shall be
+on hand promptly.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+EXPERIENCE OF THE McWILLIAMSES WITH MEMBRANOUS CROUP [Written about 1878.]
+
+[As related to the author of this book by Mr. McWilliams, a pleasant New
+York gentleman whom the said author met by chance on a journey.]
+
+Well, to go back to where I was before I digressed to explain to you how
+that frightful and incurable disease, membranous croup,[Diphtheria D.W.]
+was ravaging the town and driving all mothers mad with terror, I called
+Mrs. McWilliams's attention to little Penelope, and said:
+
+“Darling, I wouldn't let that child be chewing that pine stick if I were
+you.”
+
+“Precious, where is the harm in it?”  said she, but at the same time
+preparing to take away the stick--for women cannot receive even the most
+palpably judicious suggestion without arguing it; that is, married women.
+
+I replied:
+
+“Love, it is notorious that pine is the least nutritious wood that a
+child can eat.”
+
+My wife's hand paused, in the act of taking the stick, and returned
+itself to her lap.  She bridled perceptibly, and said:
+
+“Hubby, you know better than that.  You know you do.  Doctors all say
+that the turpentine in pine wood is good for weak back and the kidneys.”
+
+“Ah--I was under a misapprehension.  I did not know that the child's
+kidneys and spine were affected, and that the family physician had
+recommended--”
+
+“Who said the child's spine and kidneys were affected?”
+
+“My love, you intimated it.”
+
+“The idea!  I never intimated anything of the kind.”
+
+“Why, my dear, it hasn't been two minutes since you said--”
+
+“Bother what I said!  I don't care what I did say.  There isn't any harm
+in the child's chewing a bit of pine stick if she wants to, and you know
+it perfectly well.  And she shall chew it, too.  So there, now!”
+
+“Say no more, my dear.  I now see the force of your reasoning, and I will
+go and order two or three cords of the best pine wood to-day.  No child
+of mine shall want while I--”
+
+“Oh, please go along to your office and let me have some peace.  A body
+can never make the simplest remark but you must take it up and go to
+arguing and arguing and arguing till you don't know what you are talking
+about, and you never do.”
+
+“Very well, it shall be as you say.  But there is a want of logic in your
+last remark which--”
+
+However, she was gone with a flourish before I could finish, and had
+taken the child with her.  That night at dinner she confronted me with a
+face as white as a sheet:
+
+“Oh, Mortimer, there's another!  Little Georgi Gordon is taken.”
+
+“Membranous croup?”
+
+“Membranous croup.”
+
+“Is there any hope for him?”
+
+“None in the wide world.  Oh, what is to become of us!”
+
+By and by a nurse brought in our Penelope to say good night and offer the
+customary prayer at the mother's knee.  In the midst of “Now I lay me
+down to sleep,” she gave a slight cough!  My wife fell back like one
+stricken with death.  But the next moment she was up and brimming with
+the activities which terror inspires.
+
+She commanded that the child's crib be removed from the nursery to our
+bedroom; and she went along to see the order executed.  She took me with
+her, of course.  We got matters arranged with speed.  A cot-bed was put
+up in my wife's dressing room for the nurse.  But now Mrs. McWilliams
+said we were too far away from the other baby, and what if he were to
+have the symptoms in the night--and she blanched again, poor thing.
+
+We then restored the crib and the nurse to the nursery and put up a bed
+for ourselves in a room adjoining.
+
+Presently, however, Mrs. McWilliams said suppose the baby should catch it
+from Penelope?  This thought struck a new panic to her heart, and the
+tribe of us could not get the crib out of the nursery again fast enough
+to satisfy my wife, though she assisted in her own person and well-nigh
+pulled the crib to pieces in her frantic hurry.
+
+We moved down-stairs; but there was no place there to stow the nurse, and
+Mrs. McWilliams said the nurse's experience would be an inestimable help.
+So we returned, bag and baggage, to our own bedroom once more, and felt a
+great gladness, like storm-buffeted birds that have found their nest
+again.
+
+Mrs. McWilliams sped to the nursery to see how things were going on
+there.  She was back in a moment with a new dread.  She said:
+
+“What CAN make Baby sleep so?”
+
+I said:
+
+“Why, my darling, Baby always sleeps like a graven image.”
+
+“I know.  I know; but there's something peculiar about his sleep now.
+He seems to--to--he seems to breathe so regularly.  Oh, this is
+dreadful.”
+
+
+“But, my dear, he always breathes regularly.”
+
+“Oh, I know it, but there's something frightful about it now.  His nurse
+is too young and inexperienced.  Maria shall stay there with her, and be
+on hand if anything happens.”
+
+“That is a good idea, but who will help YOU?”
+
+“You can help me all I want.  I wouldn't allow anybody to do anything but
+myself, anyhow, at such a time as this.”
+
+I said I would feel mean to lie abed and sleep, and leave her to watch
+and toil over our little patient all the weary night.  But she reconciled
+me to it.  So old Maria departed and took up her ancient quarters in the
+nursery.
+
+Penelope coughed twice in her sleep.
+
+“Oh, why don't that doctor come!  Mortimer, this room is too warm.  This
+room is certainly too warm.  Turn off the register-quick!”
+
+I shut it off, glancing at the thermometer at the same time, and
+wondering to myself if 70 was too warm for a sick child.
+
+The coachman arrived from down-town now with the news that our physician
+was ill and confined to his bed.  Mrs. McWilliams turned a dead eye upon
+me, and said in a dead voice:
+
+“There is a Providence in it.  It is foreordained.  He never was sick
+before.  Never.  We have not been living as we ought to live, Mortimer.
+Time and time again I have told you so.  Now you see the result.  Our
+child will never get well.  Be thankful if you can forgive yourself; I
+never can forgive myself.”
+
+I said, without intent to hurt, but with heedless choice of words, that I
+could not see that we had been living such an abandoned life.
+
+“Mortimer!  Do you want to bring the judgment upon Baby, too!”
+
+Then she began to cry, but suddenly exclaimed:
+
+“The doctor must have sent medicines!”
+
+I said:
+
+“Certainly.  They are here.  I was only waiting for you to give me a
+chance.”
+
+“Well do give them to me!  Don't you know that every moment is precious
+now?  But what was the use in sending medicines, when he knows that the
+disease is incurable?”
+
+I said that while there was life there was hope.
+
+“Hope!  Mortimer, you know no more what you are talking about than the
+child unborn.  If you would--As I live, the directions say give one
+teaspoonful once an hour!  Once an hour!--as if we had a whole year
+before us to save the child in!  Mortimer, please hurry.  Give the poor
+perishing thing a tablespoonful, and try to be quick!”
+
+“Why, my dear, a tablespoonful might--”
+
+“Don't drive me frantic!  .  .  .  There, there, there, my precious, my
+own; it's nasty bitter stuff, but it's good for Nelly--good for mother's
+precious darling; and it will make her well.  There, there, there, put
+the little head on mamma's breast and go to sleep, and pretty soon--oh,
+I know she can't live till morning!  Mortimer, a tablespoonful every
+half-hour will--Oh, the child needs belladonna, too; I know she does--and
+aconite.  Get them, Mortimer.  Now do let me have my way.  You know
+nothing about these things.”
+
+We now went to bed, placing the crib close to my wife's pillow.  All this
+turmoil had worn upon me, and within two minutes I was something more
+than half asleep.  Mrs. McWilliams roused me:
+
+“Darling, is that register turned on?”
+
+“No.”
+
+“I thought as much.  Please turn it on at once.  This room is cold.”
+
+I turned it on, and presently fell asleep again.  I was aroused once
+more:
+
+“Dearie, would you mind moving the crib to your side of the bed?  It is
+nearer the register.”
+
+I moved it, but had a collision with the rug and woke up the child.  I
+dozed off once more, while my wife quieted the sufferer.  But in a little
+while these words came murmuring remotely through the fog of my
+drowsiness:
+
+“Mortimer, if we only had some goose grease--will you ring?”
+
+I climbed dreamily out, and stepped on a cat, which responded with a
+protest and would have got a convincing kick for it if a chair had not
+got it instead.
+
+“Now, Mortimer, why do you want to turn up the gas and wake up the child
+again?”
+
+“Because I want to see how much I am hurt, Caroline.”
+
+“Well, look at the chair, too--I have no doubt it is ruined.  Poor cat,
+suppose you had--”
+
+“Now I am not going to suppose anything about the cat.  It never would
+have occurred if Maria had been allowed to remain here and attend to
+these duties, which are in her line and are not in mine.”
+
+“Now, Mortimer, I should think you would be ashamed to make a remark like
+that.  It is a pity if you cannot do the few little things I ask of you
+at such an awful time as this when our child--”
+
+“There, there, I will do anything you want.  But I can't raise anybody
+with this bell.  They're all gone to bed.  Where is the goose grease?”
+
+“On the mantelpiece in the nursery.  If you'll step there and speak to
+Maria--”
+
+I fetched the goose grease and went to sleep again.  Once more I was
+called:
+
+“Mortimer, I so hate to disturb you, but the room is still too cold for
+me to try to apply this stuff.  Would you mind lighting the fire?  It is
+all ready to touch a match to.”
+
+I dragged myself out and lit the fire, and then sat down disconsolate.
+
+“Mortimer, don't sit there and catch your death of cold.  Come to bed.”
+
+As I was stepping in she said:
+
+“But wait a moment.  Please give the child some more of the medicine.”
+
+Which I did.  It was a medicine which made a child more or less lively;
+so my wife made use of its waking interval to strip it and grease it all
+over with the goose oil.  I was soon asleep once more, but once more I
+had to get up.
+
+“Mortimer, I feel a draft.  I feel it distinctly.  There is nothing so
+bad for this disease as a draft.  Please move the crib in front of the
+fire.”
+
+I did it; and collided with the rug again, which I threw in the fire.
+Mrs. McWilliams sprang out of bed and rescued it and we had some words.
+I had another trifling interval of sleep, and then got up, by request,
+and constructed a flax-seed poultice.  This was placed upon the child's
+breast and left there to do its healing work.
+
+A wood-fire is not a permanent thing.  I got up every twenty minutes and
+renewed ours, and this gave Mrs. McWilliams the opportunity to shorten
+the times of giving the medicines by ten minutes, which was a great
+satisfaction to her.  Now and then, between times, I reorganized the
+flax-seed poultices, and applied sinapisms and other sorts of blisters
+where unoccupied places could be found upon the child.  Well, toward
+morning the wood gave out and my wife wanted me to go down cellar and get
+some more.  I said:
+
+“My dear, it is a laborious job, and the child must be nearly warm
+enough, with her extra clothing.  Now mightn't we put on another layer of
+poultices and--”
+
+I did not finish, because I was interrupted.  I lugged wood up from below
+for some little time, and then turned in and fell to snoring as only a
+man can whose strength is all gone and whose soul is worn out.  Just at
+broad daylight I felt a grip on my shoulder that brought me to my senses
+suddenly.  My wife was glaring down upon me and gasping.  As soon as she
+could command her tongue she said:
+
+“It is all over!  All over!  The child's perspiring!  What shall we do?”
+
+“Mercy, how you terrify me!  I don't know what we ought to do.  Maybe if
+we scraped her and put her in the draft again--”
+
+“Oh, idiot!  There is not a moment to lose!  Go for the doctor.
+Go yourself.  Tell him he must come, dead or alive.”
+
+I dragged that poor sick man from his bed and brought him.  He looked at
+the child and said she was not dying.  This was joy unspeakable to me,
+but it made my wife as mad as if he had offered her a personal affront.
+Then he said the child's cough was only caused by some trifling
+irritation or other in the throat.  At this I thought my wife had a mind
+to show him the door.  Now the doctor said he would make the child cough
+harder and dislodge the trouble.  So he gave her something that sent her
+into a spasm of coughing, and presently up came a little wood splinter or
+so.
+
+“This child has no membranous croup,” said he.  “She has been chewing a
+bit of pine shingle or something of the kind, and got some little slivers
+in her throat.  They won't do her any hurt.”
+
+“No,” said I, “I can well believe that.  Indeed, the turpentine that is
+in them is very good for certain sorts of diseases that are peculiar to
+children.  My wife will tell you so.”
+
+But she did not.  She turned away in disdain and left the room; and since
+that time there is one episode in our life which we never refer to.
+Hence the tide of our days flows by in deep and untroubled serenity.
+
+[Very few married men have such an experience as McWilliams's, and so the
+author of this book thought that maybe the novelty of it would give it a
+passing interest to the reader.]
+
+
+
+
+
+
+MY FIRST LITERARY VENTURE
+
+I was a very smart child at the age of thirteen--an unusually smart
+child, I thought at the time.  It was then that I did my first newspaper
+scribbling, and most unexpectedly to me it stirred up a fine sensation in
+the community.  It did, indeed, and I was very proud of it, too.  I was a
+printer's “devil,” and a progressive and aspiring one.  My uncle had me
+on his paper (the Weekly Hannibal Journal, two dollars a year in advance
+--five hundred subscribers, and they paid in cordwood, cabbages, and
+unmarketable turnips), and on a lucky summer's day he left town to be
+gone a week, and asked me if I thought I could edit one issue of the
+paper judiciously.  Ah! didn't I want to try!  Higgins was the editor on
+the rival paper.  He had lately been jilted, and one night a friend found
+an open note on the poor fellow's bed, in which he stated that he could
+not longer endure life and had drowned himself in Bear Creek.  The friend
+ran down there and discovered Higgins wading back to shore.  He had
+concluded he wouldn't.  The village was full of it for several days,
+but Higgins did not suspect it.  I thought this was a fine opportunity.
+I wrote an elaborately wretched account of the whole matter, and then
+illustrated it with villainous cuts engraved on the bottoms of wooden
+type with a jackknife--one of them a picture of Higgins wading out into
+the creek in his shirt, with a lantern, sounding the depth of the water
+with a walking-stick.  I thought it was desperately funny, and was
+densely unconscious that there was any moral obliquity about such a
+publication.  Being satisfied with this effort I looked around for other
+worlds to conquer, and it struck me that it would make good, interesting
+matter to charge the editor of a neighboring country paper with a piece
+of gratuitous rascality and “see him squirm.”
+
+I did it, putting the article into the form of a parody on the “Burial of
+Sir John Moore”--and a pretty crude parody it was, too.
+
+Then I lampooned two prominent citizens outrageously--not because they
+had done anything to deserve, but merely because I thought it was my duty
+to make the paper lively.
+
+Next I gently touched up the newest stranger--the lion of the day, the
+gorgeous journeyman tailor from Quincy.  He was a simpering coxcomb of
+the first water, and the “loudest” dressed man in the state.  He was an
+inveterate woman-killer.  Every week he wrote lushy “poetry” for the
+journal, about his newest conquest.  His rhymes for my week were headed,
+“To MARY IN H--l,” meaning to Mary in Hannibal, of course.  But while
+setting up the piece I was suddenly riven from head to heel by what I
+regarded as a perfect thunderbolt of humor, and I compressed it into a
+snappy footnote at the bottom--thus: “We will let this thing pass, just
+this once; but we wish Mr. J. Gordon Runnels to understand distinctly
+that we have a character to sustain, and from this time forth when he
+wants to commune with his friends in h--l, he must select some other
+medium than the columns of this journal!”
+
+The paper came out, and I never knew any little thing attract so much
+attention as those playful trifles of mine.
+
+For once the Hannibal Journal was in demand--a novelty it had not
+experienced before.  The whole town was stirred.  Higgins dropped in with
+a double-barreled shotgun early in the forenoon.  When he found that it
+was an infant (as he called me) that had done him the damage, he simply
+pulled my ears and went away; but he threw up his situation that night
+and left town for good.  The tailor came with his goose and a pair of
+shears; but he despised me, too, and departed for the South that night.
+The two lampooned citizens came with threats of libel, and went away
+incensed at my insignificance.  The country editor pranced in with a
+war-whoop next day, suffering for blood to drink; but he ended by
+forgiving me cordially and inviting me down to the drug store to wash
+away all animosity in a friendly bumper of “Fahnestock's Vermifuge.”
+ It was his little joke.  My uncle was very angry when he got back
+--unreasonably so, I thought, considering what an impetus I had given the
+paper, and considering also that gratitude for his preservation ought to
+have been uppermost in his mind, inasmuch as by his delay he had so
+wonderfully escaped dissection, tomahawking, libel, and getting his head
+shot off.
+
+But he softened when he looked at the accounts and saw that I had
+actually booked the unparalleled number of thirty-three new subscribers,
+and had the vegetables to show for it, cordwood, cabbage, beans, and
+unsalable turnips enough to run the family for two years!
+
+
+
+
+
+
+HOW THE AUTHOR WAS SOLD IN NEWARK--[Written about 1869.]
+
+It is seldom pleasant to tell on oneself, but some times it is a sort of
+relief to a man to make a confession.  I wish to unburden my mind now,
+and yet I almost believe that I am moved to do it more because I long to
+bring censure upon another man than because I desire to pour balm upon my
+wounded heart. (I don't know what balm is, but I believe it is the
+correct expression to use in this connection--never having seen any
+balm.) You may remember that I lectured in Newark lately for the young
+gentlemen of the-----Society?  I did at any rate.  During the afternoon
+of that day I was talking with one of the young gentlemen just referred
+to, and he said he had an uncle who, from some cause or other, seemed to
+have grown permanently bereft of all emotion.  And with tears in his
+eyes, this young man said, “Oh, if I could only see him laugh once more!
+Oh, if I could only see him weep!”  I was touched.  I could never
+withstand distress.
+
+I said: “Bring him to my lecture.  I'll start him for you.”
+
+“Oh, if you could but do it!  If you could but do it, all our family
+would bless you for evermore--for he is so very dear to us.  Oh, my
+benefactor, can you make him laugh? can you bring soothing tears to those
+parched orbs?”
+
+I was profoundly moved.  I said: “My son, bring the old party round.
+I have got some jokes in that lecture that will make him laugh if there
+is any laugh in him; and if they miss fire, I have got some others that
+will make him cry or kill him, one or the other.”  Then the young man
+blessed me, and wept on my neck, and went after his uncle.  He placed him
+in full view, in the second row of benches, that night, and I began on
+him.  I tried him with mild jokes, then with severe ones; I dosed him
+with bad jokes and riddled him with good ones; I fired old stale jokes
+into him, and peppered him fore and aft with red-hot new ones; I warmed
+up to my work, and assaulted him on the right and left, in front and
+behind; I fumed and sweated and charged and ranted till I was hoarse and
+sick and frantic and furious; but I never moved him once--I never started
+a smile or a tear!  Never a ghost of a smile, and never a suspicion of
+moisture!  I was astounded.  I closed the lecture at last with one
+despairing shriek--with one wild burst of humor, and hurled a joke of
+supernatural atrocity full at him!
+
+Then I sat down bewildered and exhausted.
+
+The president of the society came up and bathed my head with cold water,
+and said: “What made you carry on so toward the last?”
+
+I said: “I was trying to make that confounded old fool laugh, in the
+second row.”
+
+And he said: “Well, you were wasting your time, because he is deaf and
+dumb, and as blind as a badger!”
+
+Now, was that any way for that old man's nephew to impose on a stranger
+and orphan like me?  I ask you as a man and brother, if that was any way
+for him to do?
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THE OFFICE BORE--[Written about 1869]
+
+He arrives just as regularly as the clock strikes nine in the morning.
+And so he even beats the editor sometimes, and the porter must leave his
+work and climb two or three pairs of stairs to unlock the “Sanctum” door
+and let him in.  He lights one of the office pipes--not reflecting, perhaps,
+that the editor may be one of those “stuck-up” people who would
+as soon have a stranger defile his tooth-brush as his pipe-stem.  Then he
+begins to loll--for a person who can consent to loaf his useless life
+away in ignominious indolence has not the energy to sit up straight.
+
+He stretches full length on the sofa awhile; then draws up to half
+length; then gets into a chair, hangs his head back and his arms abroad,
+and stretches his legs till the rims of his boot-heels rest upon the
+floor; by and by sits up and leans forward, with one leg or both over the
+arm of the chair.  But it is still observable that with all his changes
+of position, he never assumes the upright or a fraudful affectation of
+dignity.  From time to time he yawns, and stretches, and scratches
+himself with a tranquil, mangy enjoyment, and now and then he grunts a
+kind of stuffy, overfed grunt, which is full of animal contentment.  At
+rare and long intervals, however, he sighs a sigh that is the eloquent
+expression of a secret confession, to wit “I am useless and a nuisance,
+a cumberer of the earth.”  The bore and his comrades--for there are
+usually from two to four on hand, day and night--mix into the
+conversation when men come in to see the editors for a moment on
+business; they hold noisy talks among themselves about politics in
+particular, and all other subjects in general--even warming up, after a
+fashion, sometimes, and seeming to take almost a real interest in what
+they are discussing.  They ruthlessly call an editor from his work with
+such a remark as: “Did you see this, Smith, in the Gazette?” and proceed
+to read the paragraph while the sufferer reins in his impatient pen and
+listens; they often loll and sprawl round the office hour after hour,
+swapping anecdotes and relating personal experiences to each other
+--hairbreadth escapes, social encounters with distinguished men, election
+reminiscences, sketches of odd characters, etc.  And through all those
+hours they never seem to comprehend that they are robbing the editors of
+their time, and the public of journalistic excellence in next day's
+paper.  At other times they drowse, or dreamily pore over exchanges, or
+droop limp and pensive over the chair-arms for an hour.  Even this solemn
+silence is small respite to the editor, for the next uncomfortable thing
+to having people look over his shoulders, perhaps, is to have them sit by
+in silence and listen to the scratching of his pen.  If a body desires to
+talk private business with one of the editors, he must call him outside,
+for no hint milder than blasting-powder or nitroglycerin would be likely
+to move the bores out of listening-distance.  To have to sit and endure
+the presence of a bore day after day; to feel your cheerful spirits begin
+to sink as his footstep sounds on the stair, and utterly vanish away as
+his tiresome form enters the door; to suffer through his anecdotes and
+die slowly to his reminiscences; to feel always the fetters of his
+clogging presence; to long hopelessly for one single day's privacy; to
+note with a shudder, by and by, that to contemplate his funeral in fancy
+has ceased to soothe, to imagine him undergoing in strict and fearful
+detail the tortures of the ancient Inquisition has lost its power to
+satisfy the heart, and that even to wish him millions and millions and
+millions of miles in Tophet is able to bring only a fitful gleam of joy;
+to have to endure all this, day after day, and week after week, and month
+after month, is an affliction that transcends any other that men suffer.
+Physical pain is pastime to it, and hanging a pleasure excursion.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+JOHNNY GREER
+
+“The church was densely crowded that lovely summer Sabbath,” said the
+Sunday-school superintendent, “and all, as their eyes rested upon the small
+coffin, seemed impressed by the poor black boy's fate.  Above the
+stillness the pastor's voice rose, and chained the interest of every ear
+as he told, with many an envied compliment, how that the brave, noble,
+daring little Johnny Greer, when he saw the drowned body sweeping down
+toward the deep part of the river whence the agonized parents never could
+have recovered it in this world, gallantly sprang into the stream, and,
+at the risk of his life, towed the corpse to shore, and held it fast till
+help came and secured it.  Johnny Greer was sitting just in front of me.
+A ragged street-boy, with eager eye, turned upon him instantly, and said
+in a hoarse whisper,
+
+“'No; but did you, though?'
+
+“'Yes.'
+
+“'Towed the carkiss ashore and saved it yo'self?'
+
+“'Yes.'
+
+“'Cracky!  What did they give you?'
+
+“'Nothing.'
+
+“'W-h-a-t [with intense disgust]!  D'you know what I'd 'a' done?  I'd 'a'
+anchored him out in the stream, and said, Five dollars, gents, or you
+carn't have yo' nigger.'”
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THE FACTS IN THE CASE OF THE GREAT BEEF CONTRACT--[Written about 1867.]
+
+In as few words as possible I wish to lay before the nation what share,
+howsoever small, I have had in this matter--this matter which has so
+exercised the public mind, engendered so much ill-feeling, and so filled
+the newspapers of both continents with distorted statements and
+extravagant comments.
+
+The origin of this distressful thing was this--and I assert here that
+every fact in the following résumé can be amply proved by the official
+records of the General Government.
+
+John Wilson Mackenzie, of Rotterdam, Chemung County, New Jersey,
+deceased, contracted with the General Government, on or about the 10th
+day of October, 1861, to furnish to General Sherman the sum total of
+thirty barrels of beef.
+
+Very well.
+
+He started after Sherman with the beef, but when he got to Washington
+Sherman had gone to Manassas; so he took the beef and followed him there,
+but arrived too late; he followed him to Nashville, and from Nashville to
+Chattanooga, and from Chattanooga to Atlanta--but he never could overtake
+him.  At Atlanta he took a fresh start and followed him clear through his
+march to the sea.  He arrived too late again by a few days; but hearing
+that Sherman was going out in the Quaker City excursion to the Holy Land,
+he took shipping for Beirut, calculating to head off the other vessel.
+When he arrived in Jerusalem with his beef, he learned that Sherman had
+not sailed in the Quaker City, but had gone to the Plains to fight the
+Indians.  He returned to America and started for the Rocky Mountains.
+After sixty-eight days of arduous travel on the Plains, and when he had
+got within four miles of Sherman's headquarters, he was tomahawked and
+scalped, and the Indians got the beef.  They got all of it but one
+barrel.  Sherman's army captured that, and so, even in death, the bold
+navigator partly fulfilled his contract.  In his will, which he had kept
+like a journal, he bequeathed the contract to his son Bartholomew W.
+Bartholomew W.  made out the following bill, and then died:
+
+     THE UNITED STATES
+
+               In account with JOHN WILSON MACKENZIE, of New Jersey,
+               deceased, .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .          Dr.
+
+     To thirty barrels of beef for General Sherman, at $100, $3,000
+     To traveling expenses and transportation .  .  .  .  .  14,000
+
+               Total . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  $17,000
+               Rec'd Pay't.
+
+
+He died then; but he left the contract to Wm. J. Martin, who tried to
+collect it, but died before he got through.  He left it to Barker J.
+Allen, and he tried to collect it also.  He did not survive.  Barker J.
+Allen left it to Anson G. Rogers, who attempted to collect it, and got
+along as far as the Ninth Auditor's Office, when Death, the great
+Leveler, came all unsummoned, and foreclosed on him also.  He left the
+bill to a relative of his in Connecticut, Vengeance Hopkins by name, who
+lasted four weeks and two days, and made the best time on record, coming
+within one of reaching the Twelfth Auditor.  In his will he gave the
+contract bill to his uncle, by the name of O-be-joyful Johnson.  It was
+too undermining for Joyful.  His last words were: “Weep not for me--I am
+willing to go.”  And so he was, poor soul.  Seven people inherited the
+contract after that; but they all died.  So it came into my hands at
+last.  It fell to me through a relative by the name of, Hubbard
+--Bethlehem Hubbard, of Indiana.  He had had a grudge against me for a
+long time; but in his last moments he sent for me, and forgave me
+everything, and, weeping, gave me the beef contract.
+
+This ends the history of it up to the time that I succeeded to the
+property.  I will now endeavor to set myself straight before the nation
+in everything that concerns my share in the matter.  I took this beef
+contract, and the bill for mileage and transportation, to the President
+of the United States.
+
+He said, “Well, sir, what can I do for you?”
+
+I said, “Sire, on or about the 10th day of October, 1861, John Wilson
+Mackenzie, of Rotterdam, Chemung County, New Jersey, deceased, contracted
+with the General Government to furnish to General Sherman the sum total
+of thirty barrels of beef--”
+
+He stopped me there, and dismissed me from his presence--kindly, but
+firmly.  The next day I called on the Secretary of State.
+
+He said, “Well, sir?”
+
+I said, “Your Royal Highness: on or about the 10th day of October, 1861,
+John Wilson Mackenzie of Rotterdam, Chemung County, New Jersey, deceased,
+contracted with the General Government to furnish to General Sherman the
+sum total of thirty barrels of beef--”
+
+“That will do, sir--that will do; this office has nothing to do with
+contracts for beef.”
+
+I was bowed out.  I thought the matter all over and finally, the
+following day, I visited the Secretary of the Navy, who said, “Speak
+quickly, sir; do not keep me waiting.”
+
+I said, “Your Royal Highness, on or about the 10th day of October, 1861,
+John Wilson Mackenzie of Rotterdam, Chemung County, New Jersey, deceased,
+contracted with the General Government to General Sherman the sum total
+of thirty barrels of beef--”
+
+Well, it was as far as I could get.  He had nothing to do with beef
+contracts for General Sherman, either.  I began to think it was a curious
+kind of government.  It looked somewhat as if they wanted to get out of
+paying for that beef.  The following day I went to the Secretary of the
+Interior.
+
+I said, “Your Imperial Highness, on or about the 10th day of October--”
+
+“That is sufficient, sir.  I have heard of you before.  Go, take your
+infamous beef contract out of this establishment.  The Interior
+Department has nothing whatever to do with subsistence for the army.”
+
+I went away.  But I was exasperated now.  I said I would haunt them;
+I would infest every department of this iniquitous government till that
+contract business was settled.  I would collect that bill, or fall, as
+fell my predecessors, trying.  I assailed the Postmaster-General;
+I besieged the Agricultural Department; I waylaid the Speaker of the
+House of Representatives.  They had nothing to do with army contracts for
+beef.  I moved upon the Commissioner of the Patent Office.
+
+I said, “Your August Excellency, on or about--”
+
+“Perdition! have you got HERE with your incendiary beef contract, at
+last?  We have nothing to do with beef contracts for the army, my dear
+sir.”
+
+“Oh, that is all very well--but somebody has got to pay for that beef.
+It has got to be paid now, too, or I'll confiscate this old Patent Office
+and everything in it.”
+
+“But, my dear sir--”
+
+“It don't make any difference, sir.  The Patent Office is liable for that
+beef, I reckon; and, liable or not liable, the Patent Office has got to
+pay for it.”
+
+Never mind the details.  It ended in a fight.  The Patent Office won.
+But I found out something to my advantage.  I was told that the Treasury
+Department was the proper place for me to go to.  I went there.  I waited
+two hours and a half, and then I was admitted to the First Lord of the
+Treasury.
+
+I said, “Most noble, grave, and reverend Signor, on or about the 10th day
+of October, 1861, John Wilson Macken--”
+
+“That is sufficient, sir.  I have heard of you.  Go to the First Auditor
+of the Treasury.”
+
+I did so.  He sent me to the Second Auditor.  The Second Auditor sent me
+to the Third, and the Third sent me to the First Comptroller of the
+Corn-Beef Division.  This began to look like business.  He examined his
+books and all his loose papers, but found no minute of the beef contract.
+I went to the Second Comptroller of the Corn-Beef Division.  He examined
+his books and his loose papers, but with no success.  I was encouraged.
+During that week I got as far as the Sixth Comptroller in that division;
+the next week I got through the Claims Department; the third week I began
+and completed the Mislaid Contracts Department, and got a foothold in the
+Dead Reckoning Department.  I finished that in three days.  There was
+only one place left for it now.  I laid siege to the Commissioner of Odds
+and Ends.  To his clerk, rather--he was not there himself.  There were
+sixteen beautiful young ladies in the room, writing in books, and there
+were seven well-favored young clerks showing them how.  The young women
+smiled up over their shoulders, and the clerks smiled back at them, and
+all went merry as a marriage bell.  Two or three clerks that were reading
+the newspapers looked at me rather hard, but went on reading, and nobody
+said anything.  However, I had been used to this kind of alacrity from
+Fourth Assistant Junior Clerks all through my eventful career, from the
+very day I entered the first office of the Corn-Beef Bureau clear till I
+passed out of the last one in the Dead Reckoning Division.  I had got so
+accomplished by this time that I could stand on one foot from the moment
+I entered an office till a clerk spoke to me, without changing more than
+two, or maybe three, times.
+
+So I stood there till I had changed four different times.  Then I said to
+one of the clerks who was reading:
+
+“Illustrious Vagrant, where is the Grand Turk?”
+
+“What do you mean, sir? whom do you mean?  If you mean the Chief of the
+Bureau, he is out.”
+
+“Will he visit the harem to-day?”
+
+The young man glared upon me awhile, and then went on reading his paper.
+But I knew the ways of those clerks.  I knew I was safe if he got through
+before another New York mail arrived.  He only had two more papers left.
+After a while he finished them, and then he yawned and asked me what I
+wanted.
+
+“Renowned and honored Imbecile: on or about--”
+
+“You are the beef-contract man.  Give me your papers.”
+
+He took them, and for a long time he ransacked his odds and ends.
+Finally he found the Northwest Passage, as I regarded it--he found the
+long lost record of that beef contract--he found the rock upon which so
+many of my ancestors had split before they ever got to it.  I was deeply
+moved.  And yet I rejoiced--for I had survived.  I said with emotion,
+“Give it me.  The government will settle now.”  He waved me back, and
+said there was something yet to be done first.
+
+“Where is this John Wilson Mackenzie?”  said he.
+
+“Dead.”
+
+“When did he die?”
+
+“He didn't die at all--he was killed.”
+
+“How?”
+
+“Tomahawked.”
+
+“Who tomahawked him?”
+
+“Why, an Indian, of course.  You didn't suppose it was the superintendent
+of a Sunday-school, did you?”
+
+“No.  An Indian, was it?”
+
+“The same.”
+
+“Name of the Indian?”
+
+“His name?  I don't know his name.”
+
+“Must have his name.  Who saw the tomahawking done?”
+
+“I don't know.”
+
+“You were not present yourself, then?”
+
+“Which you can see by my hair.  I was absent.
+
+“Then how do you know that Mackenzie is dead?”
+
+“Because he certainly died at that time, and I have every reason to believe
+that he has been dead ever since.  I know he has, in fact.”
+
+“We must have proofs.  Have you got the Indian?”
+
+“Of course not.”
+
+“Well, you must get him.  Have you got the tomahawk?”
+
+“I never thought of such a thing.”
+
+“You must get the tomahawk.  You must produce the Indian and the
+tomahawk.  If Mackenzie's death can be proven by these, you can then go
+before the commission appointed to audit claims with some show of getting
+your bill under such headway that your children may possibly live to
+receive the money and enjoy it.  But that man's death must be proven.
+However, I may as well tell you that the government will never pay that
+transportation and those traveling expenses of the lamented Mackenzie.
+It may possibly pay for the barrel of beef that Sherman's soldiers
+captured, if you can get a relief bill through Congress making an
+appropriation for that purpose; but it will not pay for the twenty-nine
+barrels the Indians ate.”
+
+“Then there is only a hundred dollars due me, and that isn't certain!
+After all Mackenzie's travels in Europe, Asia, and America with that
+beef; after all his trials and tribulations and transportation; after the
+slaughter of all those innocents that tried to collect that bill!  Young
+man, why didn't the First Comptroller of the Corn-Beef Division tell me
+this?”
+
+“He didn't know anything about the genuineness of your claim.”
+
+“Why didn't the Second tell me? why didn't the Third? why didn't all
+those divisions and departments tell me?”
+
+“None of them knew.  We do things by routine here.  You have followed the
+routine and found out what you wanted to know.  It is the best way.
+It is the only way.  It is very regular, and very slow, but it is very
+certain.”
+
+“Yes, certain death.  It has been, to the most of our tribe.  I begin to
+feel that I, too, am called. Young man, you love the bright creature yonder with
+the gentle blue eyes and the steel pens behind her ears--I see it in your soft
+glances; you wish to marry her--but you are poor.  Here, hold out your hand--
+here is the beef contract; go, take her and be happy! Heaven bless you, my
+children!”
+
+This is all I know about the great beef contract that has created so much
+talk in the community.  The clerk to whom I bequeathed it died.  I know
+nothing further about the contract, or any one connected with it.  I only
+know that if a man lives long enough he can trace a thing through the
+Circumlocution Office of Washington and find out, after much labor and
+trouble and delay, that which he could have found out on the first day if
+the business of the Circumlocution Office were as ingeniously
+systematized as it would be if it were a great private mercantile
+institution.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THE CASE OF GEORGE FISHER
+
+--[Some years ago, about 1867, when this was first published, few people
+believed it, but considered it a mere extravaganza.  In these latter days
+it seems hard to realize that there was ever a time when the robbing of
+our government was a novelty.  The very man who showed me where to find
+the documents for this case was at that very time spending hundreds of
+thousands of dollars in Washington for a mail steamship concern, in the
+effort to procure a subsidy for the company--a fact which was a long time
+in coming to the surface, but leaked out at last and underwent
+Congressional investigation.]
+
+This is history.  It is not a wild extravaganza, like “John Wilson
+Mackenzie's Great Beef Contract,” but is a plain statement of facts and
+circumstances with which the Congress of the United States has interested
+itself from time to time during the long period of half a century.
+
+I will not call this matter of George Fisher's a great deathless and
+unrelenting swindle upon the government and people of the United States
+--for it has never been so decided, and I hold that it is a grave and
+solemn wrong for a writer to cast slurs or call names when such is the
+case--but will simply present the evidence and let the reader deduce his
+own verdict.  Then we shall do nobody injustice, and our consciences
+shall be clear.
+
+On or about the 1st day of September, 1813, the Creek war being then in
+progress in Florida, the crops, herds, and houses of Mr. George Fisher,
+a citizen, were destroyed, either by the Indians or by the United States
+troops in pursuit of them.  By the terms of the law, if the Indians
+destroyed the property, there was no relief for Fisher; but if the troops
+destroyed it, the Government of the United States was debtor to Fisher
+for the amount involved.
+
+George Fisher must have considered that the Indians destroyed the
+property, because, although he lived several years afterward, he does not
+appear to have ever made any claim upon the government.
+
+In the course of time Fisher died, and his widow married again.
+And by and by, nearly twenty years after that dimly remembered raid upon
+Fisher's corn-fields, the widow Fisher's new husband petitioned Congress
+for pay for the property, and backed up the petition with many
+depositions and affidavits which purported to prove that the troops,
+and not the Indians, destroyed the property; that the troops, for some
+inscrutable reason, deliberately burned down “houses” (or cabins) valued
+at $600, the same belonging to a peaceable private citizen, and alsodestroyed
+various other property belonging to the same citizen.  But
+Congress declined to believe that the troops were such idiots (after
+overtaking and scattering a band of Indians proved to have been found
+destroying Fisher's property) as to calmly continue the work of
+destruction themselves; and make a complete job of what the Indians had
+only commenced.  So Congress denied the petition of the heirs of George
+Fisher in 1832, and did not pay them a cent.
+
+We hear no more from them officially until 1848, sixteen years after
+their first attempt on the Treasury, and a full generation after the
+death of the man whose fields were destroyed.  The new generation of
+Fisher heirs then came forward and put in a bill for damages.  The Second
+Auditor awarded them $8,873, being half the damage sustained by Fisher.
+The Auditor said the testimony showed that at least half the destruction
+was done by the Indians “before the troops started in pursuit,” and of
+course the government was not responsible for that half.
+
+2.  That was in April, 1848.  In December, 1848, the heirs of George
+Fisher, deceased, came forward and pleaded for a “revision” of their bill
+of damages.  The revision was made, but nothing new could be found in
+their favor except an error of $100 in the former calculation.  However,
+in order to keep up the spirits of the Fisher family, the Auditor
+concluded to go back and allow interest from the date of the first
+petition (1832) to the date when the bill of damages was awarded.  This
+sent the Fishers home happy with sixteen years' interest on $8,873--the
+same amounting to $8,997.94.  Total, $17,870.94.
+
+3.  For an entire year the suffering Fisher family remained quiet--even
+satisfied, after a fashion.  Then they swooped down upon the government
+with their wrongs once more.  That old patriot, Attorney-General Toucey,
+burrowed through the musty papers of the Fishers and discovered one more
+chance for the desolate orphans--interest on that original award of
+$8,873 from date of destruction of the property (1813) up to 1832!
+Result, $10,004.89 for the indigent Fishers.  So now we have: First,
+$8,873 damages; second, interest on it from 1832 to 1848, $8,997.94;
+third, interest on it dated back to 1813, $10,004.89.  Total, $27,875.83!
+What better investment for a great-grandchild than to get the Indians to
+burn a corn-field for him sixty or seventy years before his birth, and
+plausibly lay it on lunatic United States troops?
+
+4.  Strange as it may seem, the Fishers let Congress alone for five
+years--or, what is perhaps more likely, failed to make themselves heard
+by Congress for that length of time.  But at last, in 1854, they got a
+hearing.  They persuaded Congress to pass an act requiring the Auditor to
+re-examine their case.  But this time they stumbled upon the misfortune
+of an honest Secretary of the Treasury (Mr. James Guthrie), and he
+spoiled everything.  He said in very plain language that the Fishers were
+not only not entitled to another cent, but that those children of many
+sorrows and acquainted with grief had been paid too much already.
+
+5.  Therefore another interval of rest and silence ensued--an interval
+which lasted four years--viz till 1858.  The “right man in the right
+place” was then Secretary of War--John B. Floyd, of peculiar renown!
+Here was a master intellect; here was the very man to succor the
+suffering heirs of dead and forgotten Fisher.  They came up from Florida
+with a rush--a great tidal wave of Fishers freighted with the same old
+musty documents about the same immortal corn-fields of their ancestor.
+They straight-way got an act passed transferring the Fisher matter from
+the dull Auditor to the ingenious Floyd.  What did Floyd do?  He said,
+“IT WAS PROVED that the Indians destroyed everything they could before
+the troops entered in pursuit.”  He considered, therefore, that what they
+destroyed must have consisted of “the houses with all their contents, and
+the liquor” (the most trifling part of the destruction, and set down at
+only $3,200 all told), and that the government troops then drove them off
+and calmly proceeded to destroy--
+
+Two hundred and twenty acres of corn in the field, thirty-five acres of
+wheat, and nine hundred and eighty-six head of live stock!  [What a
+singularly intelligent army we had in those days, according to Mr. Floyd
+--though not according to the Congress of 1832.]
+
+So Mr. Floyd decided that the Government was not responsible for that
+$3,200 worth of rubbish which the Indians destroyed, but was responsible
+for the property destroyed by the troops--which property consisted of (I
+quote from the printed United States Senate document):
+
+                                             Dollars
+     Corn at Bassett's Creek, ............... 3,000
+     Cattle, ................................ 5,000
+     Stock hogs, ............................ 1,050
+     Drove hogs, ............................ 1,204
+     Wheat, .................................   350
+     Hides, ................................. 4,000
+     Corn on the Alabama River, ............. 3,500
+
+                         Total, .............18,104
+
+That sum, in his report, Mr. Floyd calls the “full value of the property
+destroyed by the troops.”
+
+He allows that sum to the starving Fishers, TOGETHER WITH INTEREST FROM
+1813.  From this new sum total the amounts already paid to the Fishers
+were deducted, and then the cheerful remainder (a fraction under forty
+thousand dollars) was handed to them, and again they retired to Florida in
+a condition of temporary tranquillity.  Their ancestor's farm had now
+yielded them altogether nearly sixty-seven thousand dollars in cash.
+
+6.  Does the reader suppose that that was the end of it?  Does he suppose
+those diffident Fishers were satisfied?  Let the evidence show.  The
+Fishers were quiet just two years.  Then they came swarming up out of the
+fertile swamps of Florida with their same old documents, and besieged
+Congress once more.  Congress capitulated on the 1st of June, 1860, and
+instructed Mr. Floyd to overhaul those papers again, and pay that bill.
+A Treasury clerk was ordered to go through those papers and report to Mr.
+Floyd what amount was still due the emaciated Fishers.  This clerk (I can
+produce him whenever he is wanted) discovered what was apparently a
+glaring and recent forgery in the papers; whereby a witness's testimony as
+to the price of corn in Florida in 1813 was made to name double the
+amount which that witness had originally specified as the price!  The
+clerk not only called his superior's attention to this thing, but in
+making up his brief of the case called particular attention to it in
+writing.  That part of the brief never got before Congress, nor has
+Congress ever yet had a hint of forgery existing among the Fisher papers.
+Nevertheless, on the basis of the double prices (and totally ignoring the
+clerk's assertion that the figures were manifestly and unquestionably a
+recent forgery), Mr. Floyd remarks in his new report that “the testimony,
+particularly in regard to the corn crops, DEMANDS A MUCH HIGHER ALLOWANCE
+than any heretofore made by the Auditor or myself.”  So he estimates the
+crop at sixty bushels to the acre (double what Florida acres produce),
+and then virtuously allows pay for only half the crop, but allows two
+dollars and a half a bushel for that half, when there are rusty old books
+and documents in the Congressional library to show just what the Fisher
+testimony showed before the forgery--viz., that in the fall of 1813 corn
+was only worth from $1.25 to $1.50 a bushel.  Having accomplished this,
+what does Mr. Floyd do next?  Mr. Floyd (“with an earnest desire to
+execute truly the legislative will,” as he piously remarks) goes to work
+and makes out an entirely new bill of Fisher damages, and in this new
+bill he placidly ignores the Indians altogether-- puts no particle of the
+destruction of the Fisher property upon them, but, even repenting him of
+charging them with burning the cabins and drinking the whisky and
+breaking the crockery, lays the entire damage at the door of the imbecile
+United States troops down to the very last item!  And not only that, but
+uses the forgery to double the loss of corn at “Bassett's Creek,” and
+uses it again to absolutely treble the loss of corn on the “Alabama
+River.”  This new and ably conceived and executed bill of Mr. Floyd's
+figures up as follows (I copy again from the printed United States Senate
+document):
+
+      The United States in account with the legal representatives
+                      of George Fisher, deceased.
+                                                             DOL.C
+1813.--To 550 head of cattle, at 10 dollars, ............. 5,500.00
+       To 86 head of drove hogs, ......................... 1,204.00
+       To 350 head of stock hogs, ........................ 1,750.00
+
+       To 100 ACRES OF CORN ON BASSETT'S CREEK, .......... 6,000.00
+       To 8 barrels of whisky, ...........................   350.00
+       To 2 barrels of brandy, ...........................   280.00
+       To 1 barrel of rum, ...............................    70.00
+       To dry-goods and merchandise in store, ............ 1,100.00
+       To 35 acres of wheat, .............................   350.00
+       To 2,000 hides, ................................... 4,000.00
+       To furs and hats in store, ........................   600.00
+       To crockery ware in store, ........................   100.00
+       To smith's and carpenter's tools, .................   250.00
+       To houses burned and destroyed, ...................   600.00
+       To 4 dozen bottles of wine, .......................    48.00
+1814.--To 120 acres of corn on Alabama River, ............ 9,500.00
+       To crops of peas, fodder, etc. .................... 3,250.00
+
+                         Total, ..........................34,952.00
+
+       To interest on $22,202, from July 1813
+          to November 1860, 47 years and 4 months, .......63,053.68
+       To interest on $12,750, from September
+          1814 to November 1860, 46 years and 2 months, ..35,317.50
+
+                         Total, ........................ 133,323.18
+
+He puts everything in this time.  He does not even allow that the Indians
+destroyed the crockery or drank the four dozen bottles of (currant) wine.
+When it came to supernatural comprehensiveness in “gobbling,” John B.
+Floyd was without his equal, in his own or any other generation.
+Subtracting from the above total the $67,000 already paid to
+George Fisher's implacable heirs, Mr. Floyd announced that the government
+was still indebted to them in the sum of sixty-six thousand five hundred
+and nineteen dollars and eighty-five cents, “which,” Mr. Floyd
+complacently remarks, “will be paid, accordingly, to the administrator of
+the estate of George Fisher, deceased, or to his attorney in fact.”
+
+But, sadly enough for the destitute orphans, a new President came in just
+at this time, Buchanan and Floyd went out, and they never got their
+money.  The first thing Congress did in 1861 was to rescind the
+resolution of June 1, 1860, under which Mr. Floyd had been ciphering.
+Then Floyd (and doubtless the heirs of George Fisher likewise) had to
+give up financial business for a while, and go into the Confederate army
+and serve their country.
+
+Were the heirs of George Fisher killed?  No.  They are back now at this
+very time (July, 1870), beseeching Congress through that blushing and
+diffident creature, Garrett Davis, to commence making payments again on
+their interminable and insatiable bill of damages for corn and whisky
+destroyed by a gang of irresponsible Indians, so long ago that even
+government red-tape has failed to keep consistent and intelligent track
+of it.
+
+Now the above are facts.  They are history.  Any one who doubts it can
+send to the Senate Document Department of the Capitol for H. R. Ex. Doc.
+No. 21, 36th Congress, 2d Session; and for S. Ex. Doc. No. 106, 41st
+Congress, 2d Session, and satisfy himself.  The whole case is set forth
+in the first volume of the Court of Claims Reports.
+
+It is my belief that as long as the continent of America holds together,
+the heirs of George Fisher, deceased, will still make pilgrimages to
+Washington from the swamps of Florida, to plead for just a little more
+cash on their bill of damages (even when they received the last of that
+sixty-seven thousand dollars, they said it was only one fourth what the
+government owed them on that fruitful corn-field), and as long as they
+choose to come they will find Garrett Davises to drag their vampire
+schemes before Congress.  This is not the only hereditary fraud (if fraud
+it is--which I have before repeatedly remarked is not proven) that is
+being quietly handed down from generation to generation of fathers and
+sons, through the persecuted Treasury of the United States.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+DISGRACEFUL PERSECUTION OF A BOY
+
+In San Francisco, the other day, “A well-dressed boy, on his way to
+Sunday-school, was arrested and thrown into the city prison for stoning
+Chinamen.”
+
+What a commentary is this upon human justice!  What sad prominence it
+gives to our human disposition to tyrannize over the weak!  San Francisco
+has little right to take credit to herself for her treatment of this poor
+boy.  What had the child's education been?  How should he suppose it was
+wrong to stone a Chinaman?  Before we side against him, along with
+outraged San Francisco, let us give him a chance--let us hear the
+testimony for the defense.
+
+He was a “well-dressed” boy, and a Sunday-school scholar, and therefore
+the chances are that his parents were intelligent, well-to-do people,
+with just enough natural villainy in their composition to make them yearn
+after the daily papers, and enjoy them; and so this boy had opportunities
+to learn all through the week how to do right, as well as on Sunday.
+
+It was in this way that he found out that the great commonwealth of
+California imposes an unlawful mining-tax upon John the foreigner, and
+allows Patrick the foreigner to dig gold for nothing--probably because
+the degraded Mongol is at no expense for whisky, and the refined Celt
+cannot exist without it.
+
+It was in this way that he found out that a respectable number of the
+tax-gatherers--it would be unkind to say all of them--collect the tax
+twice, instead of once; and that, inasmuch as they do it solely to
+discourage Chinese immigration into the mines, it is a thing that is much
+applauded, and likewise regarded as being singularly facetious.
+
+It was in this way that he found out that when a white man robs a
+sluice-box (by the term white man is meant Spaniards, Mexicans,
+Portuguese, Irish, Hondurans, Peruvians, Chileans, etc., etc.), they make
+him leave the camp; and when a Chinaman does that thing, they hang him.
+
+It was in this way that he found out that in many districts of the vast
+Pacific coast, so strong is the wild, free love of justice in the hearts
+of the people, that whenever any secret and mysterious crime is
+committed, they say, “Let justice be done, though the heavens fall,” and
+go straightway and swing a Chinaman.
+
+It was in this way that he found out that by studying one half of each
+day's “local items,” it would appear that the police of San Francisco
+were either asleep or dead, and by studying the other half it would seem
+that the reporters were gone mad with admiration of the energy, the
+virtue, the high effectiveness, and the dare-devil intrepidity of that
+very police-making exultant mention of how “the Argus-eyed officer
+So-and-so” captured a wretched knave of a Chinaman who was stealing
+chickens, and brought him gloriously to the city prison; and how “the
+gallant officer Such-and-such-a-one” quietly kept an eye on the movements
+of an “unsuspecting, almond-eyed son of Confucius” (your reporter is
+nothing if not facetious), following him around with that far-off look of
+vacancy and unconsciousness always so finely affected by that
+inscrutable being, the forty-dollar policeman, during a waking interval,
+and captured him at last in the very act of placing his hands in a
+suspicious manner upon a paper of tacks, left by the owner in an exposed
+situation; and how one officer performed this prodigious thing, and
+another officer that, and another the other--and pretty much every one of
+these performances having for a dazzling central incident a Chinaman
+guilty of a shilling's worth of crime, an unfortunate, whose misdemeanor
+must be hurrahed into something enormous in order to keep the public from
+noticing how many really important rascals went uncaptured in the mean
+time, and how overrated those glorified policemen actually are.
+
+It was in this way that the boy found out that the legislature, being
+aware that the Constitution has made America an asylum for the poor and
+the oppressed of all nations, and that, therefore, the poor and oppressed
+who fly to our shelter must not be charged a disabling admission fee,
+made a law that every Chinaman, upon landing, must be vaccinated upon the
+wharf, and pay to the state's appointed officer ten dollars for the
+service, when there are plenty of doctors in San Francisco who would be
+glad enough to do it for him for fifty cents.
+
+It was in this way that the boy found out that a Chinaman had no rights
+that any man was bound to respect; that he had no sorrows that any man
+was bound to pity; that neither his life nor his liberty was worth the
+purchase of a penny when a white man needed a scapegoat; that nobody
+loved Chinamen, nobody befriended them, nobody spared them suffering when
+it was convenient to inflict it; everybody, individuals, communities, the
+majesty of the state itself, joined in hating, abusing, and persecuting
+these humble strangers.
+
+And, therefore, what could have been more natural than for this
+sunny-hearted-boy, tripping along to Sunday-school, with his mind teeming
+with freshly learned incentives to high and virtuous action, to say to
+himself:
+
+“Ah, there goes a Chinaman!  God will not love me if I do not stone him.”
+
+And for this he was arrested and put in the city jail.
+
+Everything conspired to teach him that it was a high and holy thing to
+stone a Chinaman, and yet he no sooner attempts to do his duty than he is
+punished for it--he, poor chap, who has been aware all his life that one
+of the principal recreations of the police, out toward the Gold Refinery,
+is to look on with tranquil enjoyment while the butchers of Brannan
+Street set their dogs on unoffending Chinamen, and make them flee for
+their lives.
+
+--[I have many such memories in my mind, but am thinking just at present
+of one particular one, where the Brannan Street butchers set their dogs
+on a Chinaman who was quietly passing with a basket of clothes on his
+head; and while the dogs mutilated his flesh, a butcher increased the
+hilarity of the occasion by knocking some of the Chinaman's teeth down
+his throat with half a brick.  This incident sticks in my memory with a
+more malevolent tenacity, perhaps, on account of the fact that I was in
+the employ of a San Francisco journal at the time, and was not allowed to
+publish it because it might offend some of the peculiar element that
+subscribed for the paper.]
+
+Keeping in mind the tuition in the humanities which the entire “Pacific
+coast” gives its youth, there is a very sublimity of incongruity in the
+virtuous flourish with which the good city fathers of San Francisco
+proclaim (as they have lately done) that “The police are positively
+ordered to arrest all boys, of every description and wherever found, who
+engage in assaulting Chinamen.”
+
+Still, let us be truly glad they have made the order, notwithstanding its
+inconsistency; and let us rest perfectly confident the police are glad,
+too.  Because there is no personal peril in arresting boys, provided they
+be of the small kind, and the reporters will have to laud their
+performances just as loyally as ever, or go without items.
+
+The new form for local items in San Francisco will now be: “The
+ever-vigilant and efficient officer So-and-so succeeded, yesterday
+afternoon, in arresting Master Tommy Jones, after a determined
+resistance,” etc., etc., followed by the customary statistics and final
+hurrah, with its unconscious sarcasm: “We are happy in being able to
+state that this is the forty-seventh boy arrested by this gallant officer
+since the new ordinance went into effect.  The most extraordinary
+activity prevails in the police department.  Nothing like it has been
+seen since we can remember.”
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THE JUDGE'S “SPIRITED WOMAN”
+
+“I was sitting here,” said the judge, “in this old pulpit, holding court,
+and we were trying a big, wicked-looking Spanish desperado for killing
+the husband of a bright, pretty Mexican woman. It was a lazy summer day,
+and an awfully long one, and the witnesses were tedious.  None of us took
+any interest in the trial except that nervous, uneasy devil of a Mexican
+woman--because you know how they love and how they hate, and this one had
+loved her husband with all her might, and now she had boiled it all down
+into hate, and stood here spitting it at that Spaniard with her eyes;
+and I tell you she would stir me up, too, with a little of her summer
+lightning, occasionally.  Well, I had my coat off and my heels up,
+lolling and sweating, and smoking one of those cabbage cigars the San
+Francisco people used to think were good enough for us in those times;
+and the lawyers they all had their coats off, and were smoking and
+whittling, and the witnesses the same, and so was the prisoner.  Well,
+the fact is, there warn't any interest in a murder trial then, because
+the fellow was always brought in 'not guilty,' the jury expecting him to
+do as much for them some time; and, although the evidence was straight
+and square against this Spaniard, we knew we could not convict him
+without seeming to be rather high-handed and sort of reflecting on every
+gentleman in the community; for there warn't any carriages and liveries
+then, and so the only 'style' there was, was to keep your private
+graveyard.  But that woman seemed to have her heart set on hanging that
+Spaniard; and you'd ought to have seen how she would glare on him a
+minute, and then look up at me in her pleading way, and then turn and for
+the next five minutes search the jury's faces, and by and by drop her
+face in her hands for just a little while as if she was most ready to
+give up; but out she'd come again directly, and be as live and anxious as
+ever.  But when the jury announced the verdict--Not Guilty--and I told
+the prisoner he was acquitted and free to go, that woman rose up till she
+appeared to be as tall and grand as a seventy-four-gun ship, and says
+she:
+
+“'Judge, do I understand you to say that this man is not guilty that
+murdered my husband without any cause before my own eyes and my little
+children's, and that all has been done to him that ever justice and the
+law can do?'
+“'The same,' says I.
+
+“And then what do you reckon she did?  Why, she turned on that smirking
+Spanish fool like a wildcat, and out with a 'navy' and shot him dead in
+open court!”
+
+“That was spirited, I am willing to admit.”
+
+“Wasn't it, though?” said the judge admiringly.
+
+“I wouldn't have missed it for anything.  I adjourned court right on the
+spot, and we put on our coats and went out and took up a collection for
+her and her cubs, and sent them over the mountains to their friends.
+Ah, she was a spirited wench!”
+
+
+
+
+
+
+INFORMATION WANTED
+
+                              “WASHINGTON, December 10, 1867.
+
+“Could you give me any information respecting such islands, if any, as
+the government is going to purchase?”
+
+It is an uncle of mine that wants to know.  He is an industrious man and
+well disposed, and wants to make a living in an honest, humble way, but
+more especially he wants to be quiet.  He wishes to settle down, and be
+quiet and unostentatious.  He has been to the new island St. Thomas, but
+he says he thinks things are unsettled there.  He went there early with
+an attache of the State Department, who was sent down with money to pay
+for the island.  My uncle had his money in the same box, and so when they
+went ashore, getting a receipt, the sailors broke open the box and took
+all the money, not making any distinction between government money, which
+was legitimate money to be stolen, and my uncle's, which was his own
+private property, and should have been respected.  But he came home and
+got some more and went back.  And then he took the fever.  There are
+seven kinds of fever down there, you know; and, as his blood was out of
+order by reason of loss of sleep and general wear and tear of mind, he
+failed to cure the first fever, and then somehow he got the other six.
+He is not a kind of man that enjoys fevers, though he is well meaning and
+always does what he thinks is right, and so he was a good deal annoyed
+when it appeared he was going to die.
+
+But he worried through, and got well and started a farm.  He fenced it
+in, and the next day that great storm came on and washed the most of it
+over to Gibraltar, or around there somewhere.  He only said, in his
+patient way, that it was gone, and he wouldn't bother about trying to
+find out where it went to, though it was his opinion it went to
+Gibraltar.
+
+Then he invested in a mountain, and started a farm up there, so as to be
+out of the way when the sea came ashore again.  It was a good mountain,
+and a good farm, but it wasn't any use; an earthquake came the next night
+and shook it all down.  It was all fragments, you know, and so mixed up
+with another man's property that he could not tell which were his
+fragments without going to law; and he would not do that, because his
+main object in going to St. Thomas was to be quiet.  All that he wanted
+was to settle down and be quiet.
+
+He thought it all over, and finally he concluded to try the low ground
+again, especially as he wanted to start a brickyard this time.  He bought
+a flat, and put out a hundred thousand bricks to dry preparatory to
+baking them.  But luck appeared to be against him.  A volcano shoved
+itself through there that night, and elevated his brickyard about two
+thousand feet in the air.  It irritated him a good deal.  He has been up
+there, and he says the bricks are all baked right enough, but he can't
+get them down.  At first, he thought maybe the government would get the
+bricks down for him, because since government bought the island, it ought
+to protect the property where a man has invested in good faith; but all
+he wants is quiet, and so he is not going to apply for the subsidy he was
+thinking about.
+
+He went back there last week in a couple of ships of war, to prospect
+around the coast for a safe place for a farm where he could be quiet;
+but a great “tidal wave” came, and hoisted both of the ships out into one
+of the interior counties, and he came near losing his life.  So he has
+given up prospecting in a ship, and is discouraged.
+
+Well, now he don't know what to do.  He has tried Alaska; but the bears
+kept after him so much, and kept him so much on the jump, as it were,
+that he had to leave the country.  He could not be quiet there with those
+bears prancing after him all the time.  That is how he came to go to the
+new island we have bought--St. Thomas.  But he is getting to think St.
+Thomas is not quiet enough for a man of his turn of mind, and that is why
+he wishes me to find out if government is likely to buy some more islands
+shortly.  He has heard that government is thinking about buying Porto
+Rico.  If that is true, he wishes to try Porto Rico, if it is a quiet
+place.  How is Porto Rico for his style of man?  Do you think the
+government will buy it?
+
+
+
+
+
+
+SOME LEARNED FABLES, FOR GOOD OLD BOYS AND GIRLS
+
+IN THREE PARTS
+
+
+PART FIRST
+
+HOW THE ANIMALS OF THE WOOD SENT OUT A SCIENTIFIC EXPEDITION
+
+Once the creatures of the forest held a great convention and appointed a
+commission consisting of the most illustrious scientists among them to go
+forth, clear beyond the forest and out into the unknown and unexplored
+world, to verify the truth of the matters already taught in their schools
+and colleges and also to make discoveries.  It was the most imposing
+enterprise of the kind the nation had ever embarked in.  True, the
+government had once sent Dr. Bull Frog, with a picked crew, to hunt for a
+northwesterly passage through the swamp to the right-hand corner of the
+wood, and had since sent out many expeditions to hunt for Dr. Bull Frog;
+but they never could find him, and so government finally gave him up and
+ennobled his mother to show its gratitude for the services her son had
+rendered to science.  And once government sent Sir Grass Hopper to hunt
+for the sources of the rill that emptied into the swamp; and afterward
+sent out many expeditions to hunt for Sir Grass, and at last they were
+successful--they found his body, but if he had discovered the sources
+meantime, he did not let on.  So government acted handsomely by deceased,
+and many envied his funeral.
+
+But these expeditions were trifles compared with the present one; for
+this one comprised among its servants the very greatest among the
+learned; and besides it was to go to the utterly unvisited regions
+believed to lie beyond the mighty forest--as we have remarked before.
+How the members were banqueted, and glorified, and talked about!
+Everywhere that one of them showed himself, straightway there was a crowd
+to gape and stare at him.
+
+Finally they set off, and it was a sight to see the long procession of
+dry-land Tortoises heavily laden with savants, scientific instruments,
+Glow-Worms and Fire-Flies for signal service, provisions, Ants and
+Tumble-Bugs to fetch and carry and delve, Spiders to carry the surveying
+chain and do other engineering duty, and so forth and so on; and after
+the Tortoises came another long train of ironclads--stately and spacious
+Mud Turtles for marine transportation service; and from every Tortoise
+and every Turtle flaunted a flaming gladiolus or other splendid banner;
+at the head of the column a great band of Bumble-Bees, Mosquitoes,
+Katy-Dids, and Crickets discoursed martial music; and the entire train
+was under the escort and protection of twelve picked regiments of the
+Army Worm.
+
+At the end of three weeks the expedition emerged from the forest and
+looked upon the great Unknown World.  Their eyes were greeted with an
+impressive spectacle.  A vast level plain stretched before them, watered
+by a sinuous stream; and beyond there towered up against the sky a long
+and lofty barrier of some kind, they did not know what.  The Tumble-Bug
+said he believed it was simply land tilted up on its edge, because he
+knew he could see trees on it.  But Professor Snail and the others said:
+
+“You are hired to dig, sir--that is all.  We need your muscle, not your
+brains.  When we want your opinion on scientific matters, we will hasten
+to let you know.  Your coolness is intolerable, too--loafing about here
+meddling with august matters of learning, when the other laborers are
+pitching camp.  Go along and help handle the baggage.”
+
+The Tumble-Bug turned on his heel uncrushed, unabashed, observing to
+himself, “If it isn't land tilted up, let me die the death of the
+unrighteous.”
+
+Professor Bull Frog (nephew of the late explorer) said he believed the
+ridge was the wall that inclosed the earth.  He continued:
+
+“Our fathers have left us much learning, but they had not traveled far,
+and so we may count this a noble new discovery.  We are safe for renown
+now, even though our labors began and ended with this single achievement.
+I wonder what this wall is built of?  Can it be fungus?  Fungus is an
+honorable good thing to build a wall of.”
+
+Professor Snail adjusted his field-glass and examined the rampart
+critically.  Finally he said:
+
+“'The fact that it is not diaphanous convinces me that it is a dense
+vapor formed by the calorification of ascending moisture dephlogisticated
+by refraction.  A few endiometrical experiments would confirm this, but
+it is not necessary.  The thing is obvious.”
+
+So he shut up his glass and went into his shell to make a note of the
+discovery of the world's end, and the nature of it.
+
+“Profound mind!” said Professor Angle-Worm to Professor Field-Mouse;
+“profound mind! nothing can long remain a mystery to that august brain.”
+
+Night drew on apace, the sentinel crickets were posted, the Glow-Worm and
+Fire-Fly lamps were lighted, and the camp sank to silence and sleep.
+After breakfast in the morning, the expedition moved on.  About noon a
+great avenue was reached, which had in it two endless parallel bars of
+some kind of hard black substance, raised the height of the tallest Bull
+Frog above the general level.  The scientists climbed up on these and
+examined and tested them in various ways.  They walked along them for a
+great distance, but found no end and no break in them.  They could arrive
+at no decision.  There was nothing in the records of science that
+mentioned anything of this kind.  But at last the bald and venerable
+geographer, Professor Mud Turtle, a person who, born poor, and of a
+drudging low family, had, by his own native force raised himself to the
+headship of the geographers of his generation, said:
+
+“'My friends, we have indeed made a discovery here.  We have found in a
+palpable, compact, and imperishable state what the wisest of our fathers
+always regarded as a mere thing of the imagination.  Humble yourselves,
+my friends, for we stand in a majestic presence.  These are parallels of
+latitude!”
+
+Every heart and every head was bowed, so awful, so sublime was the
+magnitude of the discovery.  Many shed tears.
+
+The camp was pitched and the rest of the day given up to writing
+voluminous accounts of the marvel, and correcting astronomical tables to
+fit it.  Toward midnight a demoniacal shriek was heard, then a clattering
+and rumbling noise, and the next instant a vast terrific eye shot by,
+with a long tail attached, and disappeared in the gloom, still uttering
+triumphant shrieks.
+
+The poor camp laborers were stricken to the heart with fright, and
+stampeded for the high grass in a body.  But not the scientists.  They
+had no superstitions.  They calmly proceeded to exchange theories.
+The ancient geographer's opinion was asked.  He went into his shell and
+deliberated long and profoundly.  When he came out at last, they all knew
+by his worshiping countenance that he brought light.  Said he:
+
+“Give thanks for this stupendous thing which we have been permitted to
+witness.  It is the Vernal Equinox!”
+
+There were shoutings and great rejoicings.
+
+“But,” said the Angle-Worm, uncoiling after reflection, “this is dead
+summer-time.”
+
+“Very well,” said the Turtle, “we are far from our region; the season
+differs with the difference of time between the two points.”
+
+“Ah, true.  True enough.  But it is night.  How should the sun pass in
+the night?”
+
+“In these distant regions he doubtless passes always in the night at this
+hour.”
+
+“Yes, doubtless that is true.  But it being night, how is it that we
+could see him?”
+
+“It is a great mystery.  I grant that.  But I am persuaded that the
+humidity of the atmosphere in these remote regions is such that particles
+of daylight adhere to the disk and it was by aid of these that we were
+enabled to see the sun in the dark.”
+
+This was deemed satisfactory, and due entry was made of the decision.
+
+But about this moment those dreadful shriekings were heard again; again
+the rumbling and thundering came speeding up out of the night; and once
+more a flaming great eye flashed by and lost itself in gloom and
+distance.
+
+The camp laborers gave themselves up for lost.  The savants were sorely
+perplexed.  Here was a marvel hard to account for.  They thought and they
+talked, they talked and they thought.  Finally the learned and aged Lord
+Grand-Daddy-Longlegs, who had been sitting in deep study, with his
+slender limbs crossed and his stemmy arms folded, said:
+
+“Deliver your opinions, brethren, and then I will tell my thought--for I
+think I have solved this problem.”
+
+“So be it, good your lordship,” piped the weak treble of the wrinkled and
+withered Professor Woodlouse, “for we shall hear from your lordship's
+lips naught but wisdom.”  [Here the speaker threw in a mess of trite,
+threadbare, exasperating quotations from the ancient poets and
+philosophers, delivering them with unction in the sounding grandeurs of
+the original tongues, they being from the Mastodon, the Dodo, and other
+dead languages.]  “Perhaps I ought not to presume to meddle with matters
+pertaining to astronomy at all, in such a presence as this, I who have
+made it the business of my life to delve only among the riches of the
+extinct languages and unearth the opulence of their ancient lore; but
+still, as unacquainted as I am with the noble science of astronomy, I beg
+with deference and humility to suggest that inasmuch as the last of these
+wonderful apparitions proceeded in exactly the opposite direction from
+that pursued by the first, which you decide to be the Vernal Equinox,
+and greatly resembled it in all particulars, is it not possible, nay
+certain, that this last is the Autumnal Equi--”
+
+“O-o-o!”  “O-o-o! go to bed! go to bed!” with annoyed derision from
+everybody.  So the poor old Woodlouse retreated out of sight, consumed
+with shame.
+
+Further discussion followed, and then the united voice of the commission
+begged Lord Longlegs to speak.  He said:
+
+“Fellow-scientists, it is my belief that we have witnessed a thing which
+has occurred in perfection but once before in the knowledge of created
+beings.  It is a phenomenon of inconceivable importance and interest,
+view it as one may, but its interest to us is vastly heightened by an
+added knowledge of its nature which no scholar has heretofore possessed
+or even suspected.  This great marvel which we have just witnessed,
+fellow-savants (it almost takes my breath away), is nothing less than the
+transit of Venus!”
+
+Every scholar sprang to his feet pale with astonishment.  Then ensued
+tears, handshakings, frenzied embraces, and the most extravagant
+jubilations of every sort.  But by and by, as emotion began to retire
+within bounds, and reflection to return to the front, the accomplished
+Chief Inspector Lizard observed:
+
+“But how is this?  Venus should traverse the sun's surface, not the
+earth's.”
+
+The arrow went home.  It carried sorrow to the breast of every apostle of
+learning there, for none could deny that this was a formidable criticism.
+But tranquilly the venerable Duke crossed his limbs behind his ears and
+said:
+
+“My friend has touched the marrow of our mighty discovery.  Yes--all that
+have lived before us thought a transit of Venus consisted of a flight
+across the sun's face; they thought it, they maintained it, they honestly
+believed it, simple hearts, and were justified in it by the limitations
+of their knowledge; but to us has been granted the inestimable boon of
+proving that the transit occurs across the earth's face, for we have SEEN
+it!”
+
+The assembled wisdom sat in speechless adoration of this imperial
+intellect.  All doubts had instantly departed, like night before the
+lightning.
+
+The Tumble-Bug had just intruded, unnoticed.  He now came reeling forward
+among the scholars, familiarly slapping first one and then another on the
+shoulder, saying “Nice ['ic) nice old boy!” and smiling a smile of
+elaborate content.  Arrived at a good position for speaking, he put his
+left arm akimbo with his knuckles planted in his hip just under the edge
+of his cut-away coat, bent his right leg, placing his toe on the ground
+and resting his heel with easy grace against his left shin, puffed out
+his aldermanic stomach, opened his lips, leaned his right elbow on
+Inspector Lizard's shoulder, and--
+
+But the shoulder was indignantly withdrawn and the hard-handed son of
+toil went to earth.  He floundered a bit, but came up smiling, arranged
+his attitude with the same careful detail as before, only choosing
+Professor Dogtick's shoulder for a support, opened his lips and--
+
+Went to earth again.  He presently scrambled up once more, still smiling,
+made a loose effort to brush the dust off his coat and legs, but a smart
+pass of his hand missed entirely, and the force of the unchecked impulse
+slewed him suddenly around, twisted his legs together, and projected him,
+limber and sprawling, into the lap of the Lord Longlegs.  Two or three
+scholars sprang forward, flung the low creature head over heels into a
+corner, and reinstated the patrician, smoothing his ruffled dignity with
+many soothing and regretful speeches.  Professor Bull Frog roared out:
+
+“No more of this, sirrah Tumble-Bug!  Say your say and then get you about
+your business with speed!  Quick--what is your errand?  Come move off a
+trifle; you smell like a stable; what have you been at?”
+
+“Please ['ic!) please your worship I chanced to light upon a find.  But
+no m(e-uck!) matter 'bout that.  There's b['ic !) been another find
+which--beg pardon, your honors, what was that th['ic!) thing that ripped
+by here first?”
+
+“It was the Vernal Equinox.”
+
+“Inf['ic!)fernal equinox.  'At's all right.  D['ic !) Dunno him.  What's
+other one?”
+
+“The transit of Venus.
+
+“G['ic !) Got me again.  No matter.  Las' one dropped something.”
+
+“Ah, indeed!  Good luck!  Good news!  Quick what is it?”
+
+“M['ic!) Mosey out 'n' see.  It'll pay.”
+
+No more votes were taken for four-and-twenty hours.  Then the following
+entry was made:
+
+“The commission went in a body to view the find.  It was found to consist
+of a hard, smooth, huge object with a rounded summit surmounted by a
+short upright projection resembling a section of a cabbage stalk divided
+transversely.  This projection was not solid, but was a hollow cylinder
+plugged with a soft woody substance unknown to our region--that is, it
+had been so plugged, but unfortunately this obstruction had been
+heedlessly removed by Norway Rat, Chief of the Sappers and Miners, before
+our arrival.  The vast object before us, so mysteriously conveyed from
+the glittering domains of space, was found to be hollow and nearly filled
+with a pungent liquid of a brownish hue, like rainwater that has stood
+for some time.  And such a spectacle as met our view!  Norway Rat was
+perched upon the summit engaged in thrusting his tail into the
+cylindrical projection, drawing it out dripping, permitting the
+struggling multitude of laborers to suck the end of it, then straightway
+reinserting it and delivering the fluid to the mob as before.  Evidently
+this liquor had strangely potent qualities; for all that partook of it
+were immediately exalted with great and pleasurable emotions, and went
+staggering about singing ribald songs, embracing, fighting, dancing,
+discharging irruptions of profanity, and defying all authority.  Around
+us struggled a massed and uncontrolled mob--uncontrolled and likewise
+uncontrollable, for the whole army, down to the very sentinels, were mad
+like the rest, by reason of the drink.  We were seized upon by these
+reckless creatures, and within the hour we, even we, were
+undistinguishable from the rest--the demoralization was complete and
+universal.  In time the camp wore itself out with its orgies and sank
+into a stolid and pitiable stupor, in whose mysterious bonds rank was
+forgotten and strange bedfellows made, our eyes, at the resurrection,
+being blasted and our souls petrified with the incredible spectacle of
+that intolerable stinking scavenger, the Tumble-Bug, and the illustrious
+patrician my Lord Grand Daddy, Duke of Longlegs, lying soundly steeped in
+sleep, and clasped lovingly in each other's arms, the like whereof hath
+not been seen in all the ages that tradition compasseth, and doubtless
+none shall ever in this world find faith to master the belief of it save
+only we that have beheld the damnable and unholy vision.  Thus
+inscrutable be the ways of God, whose will be done!
+
+“This day, by order, did the engineer-in-chief, Herr Spider, rig the
+necessary tackle for the overturning of the vast reservoir, and so its
+calamitous contents were discharged in a torrent upon the thirsty earth,
+which drank it up, and now there is no more danger, we reserving but a
+few drops for experiment and scrutiny, and to exhibit to the king and
+subsequently preserve among the wonders of the museum.  What this liquid
+is has been determined.  It is without question that fierce and most
+destructive fluid called lightning.  It was wrested, in its container,
+from its storehouse in the clouds, by the resistless might of the flying
+planet, and hurled at our feet as she sped by.  An interesting discovery
+here results.  Which is, that lightning, kept to itself, is quiescent; it
+is the assaulting contact of the thunderbolt that releases it from
+captivity, ignites its awful fires, and so produces an instantaneous
+combustion and explosion which spread disaster and desolation far and
+wide in the earth.”
+
+After another day devoted to rest and recovery, the expedition proceeded
+upon its way.  Some days later it went into camp in a pleasant part of
+the plain, and the savants sallied forth to see what they might find.
+Their reward was at hand.  Professor Bull Frog discovered a strange tree,
+and called his comrades.  They inspected it with profound interest.  It
+was very tall and straight, and wholly devoid of bark, limbs, or foliage.
+By triangulation Lord Longlegs determined its altitude; Herr Spider
+measured its circumference at the base and computed the circumference at
+its top by a mathematical demonstration based upon the warrant furnished
+by the uniform degree of its taper upward.  It was considered a very
+extraordinary find; and since it was a tree of a hitherto unknown
+species, Professor Woodlouse gave it a name of a learned sound, being
+none other than that of Professor Bull Frog translated into the ancient
+Mastodon language, for it had always been the custom with discoverers to
+perpetuate their names and honor themselves by this sort of connection
+with their discoveries.
+
+Now Professor Field-Mouse having placed his sensitive ear to the tree,
+detected a rich, harmonious sound issuing from it.  This surprising thing
+was tested and enjoyed by each scholar in turn, and great was the
+gladness and astonishment of all.  Professor Woodlouse was requested to
+add to and extend the tree's name so as to make it suggest the musical
+quality it possessed--which he did, furnishing the addition Anthem
+Singer, done into the Mastodon tongue.
+
+By this time Professor Snail was making some telescopic inspections.
+He discovered a great number of these trees, extending in a single rank,
+with wide intervals between, as far as his instrument would carry, both
+southward and northward.  He also presently discovered that all these
+trees were bound together, near their tops, by fourteen great ropes, one
+above another, which ropes were continuous, from tree to tree, as far as
+his vision could reach.  This was surprising.  Chief Engineer Spider ran
+aloft and soon reported that these ropes were simply a web hung there by
+some colossal member of his own species, for he could see its prey
+dangling here and there from the strands, in the shape of mighty shreds
+and rags that had a woven look about their texture and were no doubt the
+discarded skins of prodigious insects which had been caught and eaten.
+And then he ran along one of the ropes to make a closer inspection, but
+felt a smart sudden burn on the soles of his feet, accompanied by a
+paralyzing shock, wherefore he let go and swung himself to the earth by a
+thread of his own spinning, and advised all to hurry at once to camp,
+lest the monster should appear and get as much interested in the savants
+as they were in him and his works.  So they departed with speed, making
+notes about the gigantic web as they went.  And that evening the
+naturalist of the expedition built a beautiful model of the colossal
+spider, having no need to see it in order to do this, because he had
+picked up a fragment of its vertebra by the tree, and so knew exactly
+what the creature looked like and what its habits and its preferences
+were by this simple evidence alone.  He built it with a tail, teeth,
+fourteen legs, and a snout, and said it ate grass, cattle, pebbles, and
+dirt with equal enthusiasm.  This animal was regarded as a very precious
+addition to science.  It was hoped a dead one might be found to stuff.
+Professor Woodlouse thought that he and his brother scholars, by lying
+hid and being quiet, might maybe catch a live one.  He was advised to try
+it.  Which was all the attention that was paid to his suggestion.  The
+conference ended with the naming the monster after the naturalist, since
+he, after God, had created it.
+
+“And improved it, mayhap,” muttered the Tumble-Bug, who was intruding
+again, according to his idle custom and his unappeasable curiosity.
+
+END OF PART FIRST
+
+
+
+
+SOME LEARNED FABLES FOR GOOD OLD BOYS AND GIRLS
+
+PART SECOND
+
+HOW THE ANIMALS OF THE WOOD COMPLETED THEIR SCIENTIFIC LABORS
+
+A week later the expedition camped in the midst of a collection of
+wonderful curiosities.  These were a sort of vast caverns of stone that
+rose singly and in bunches out of the plain by the side of the river
+which they had first seen when they emerged from the forest.  These
+caverns stood in long, straight rows on opposite sides of broad aisles
+that were bordered with single ranks of trees.  The summit of each cavern
+sloped sharply both ways.  Several horizontal rows of great square holes,
+obstructed by a thin, shiny, transparent substance, pierced the frontage
+of each cavern.  Inside were caverns within caverns; and one might ascend
+and visit these minor compartments by means of curious winding ways
+consisting of continuous regular terraces raised one above another.
+There were many huge, shapeless objects in each compartment which were
+considered to have been living creatures at one time, though now the thin
+brown skin was shrunken and loose, and rattled when disturbed.  Spiders
+were here in great number, and their cobwebs, stretched in all directions
+and wreathing the great skinny dead together, were a pleasant spectacle,
+since they inspired with life and wholesome cheer a scene which would
+otherwise have brought to the mind only a sense of forsakenness and
+desolation.  Information was sought of these spiders, but in vain.  They
+were of a different nationality from those with the expedition, and their
+language seemed but a musical, meaningless jargon.  They were a timid,
+gentle race, but ignorant, and heathenish worshipers of unknown gods.
+The expedition detailed a great detachment of missionaries to teach them
+the true religion, and in a week's time a precious work had been wrought
+among those darkened creatures, not three families being by that time at
+peace with each other or having a settled belief in any system of
+religion whatever.  This encouraged the expedition to establish a colony
+of missionaries there permanently, that the work of grace might go on.
+
+But let us not outrun our narrative.  After close examination of the
+fronts of the caverns, and much thinking and exchanging of theories, the
+scientists determined the nature of these singular formations.  They said
+that each belonged mainly to the Old Red Sandstone period; that the
+cavern fronts rose in innumerable and wonderfully regular strata high in
+the air, each stratum about five frog-spans thick, and that in the
+present discovery lay an overpowering refutation of all received geology;
+for between every two layers of Old Red Sandstone reposed a thin layer of
+decomposed limestone; so instead of there having been but one Old Red
+Sandstone period there had certainly been not less than a hundred and
+seventy-five!  And by the same token it was plain that there had also
+been a hundred and seventy-five floodings of the earth and depositings of
+limestone strata!  The unavoidable deduction from which pair of facts was
+the overwhelming truth that the world, instead of being only two hundred
+thousand years old, was older by millions upon millions of years!  And
+there was another curious thing: every stratum of Old Red Sandstone was
+pierced and divided at mathematically regular intervals by vertical
+strata of limestone.  Up-shootings of igneous rock through fractures in
+water formations were common; but here was the first instance where
+water-formed rock had been so projected.  It was a great and noble
+discovery, and its value to science was considered to be inestimable.
+
+A critical examination of some of the lower strata demonstrated the
+presence of fossil ants and tumble-bugs (the latter accompanied by their
+peculiar goods), and with high gratification the fact was enrolled upon
+the scientific record; for this was proof that these vulgar laborers
+belonged to the first and lowest orders of created beings, though at the
+same time there was something repulsive in the reflection that the
+perfect and exquisite creature of the modern uppermost order owed its
+origin to such ignominious beings through the mysterious law of
+Development of Species.
+
+The Tumble-Bug, overhearing this discussion, said he was willing that the
+parvenus of these new times should find what comfort they might in their
+wise-drawn theories, since as far as he was concerned he was content to
+be of the old first families and proud to point back to his place among
+the old original aristocracy of the land.
+
+“Enjoy your mushroom dignity, stinking of the varnish of yesterday's
+veneering, since you like it,” said he; “suffice it for the Tumble-Bugs
+that they come of a race that rolled their fragrant spheres down the
+solemn aisles of antiquity, and left their imperishable works embalmed in
+the Old Red Sandstone to proclaim it to the wasting centuries as they
+file along the highway of Time!”
+
+“Oh, take a walk!” said the chief of the expedition, with derision.
+
+The summer passed, and winter approached.  In and about many of the
+caverns were what seemed to be inscriptions.  Most of the scientists said
+they were inscriptions, a few said they were not.  The chief philologist,
+Professor Woodlouse, maintained that they were writings, done in a
+character utterly unknown to scholars, and in a language equally unknown.
+He had early ordered his artists and draftsmen to make facsimiles of all
+that were discovered; and had set himself about finding the key to the
+hidden tongue.  In this work he had followed the method which had always
+been used by decipherers previously.  That is to say, he placed a number
+of copies of inscriptions before him and studied them both collectively
+and in detail.  To begin with, he placed the following copies together:
+
+     THE AMERICAN HOTEL.      MEALS AT ALL HOURS.
+     THE SHADES.              NO SMOKING.
+     BOATS FOR HIRE CHEAP     UNION PRAYER MEETING, 4 P.M.
+     BILLIARDS.               THE WATERSIDE JOURNAL.
+     THE A1 BARBER SHOP.      TELEGRAPH OFFICE.
+     KEEP OFF THE GRASS.      TRY BRANDRETH'S PILLS.
+     COTTAGES FOR RENT DURING THE WATERING SEASON.
+     FOR SALE CHEAP.          FOR SALE CHEAP.
+     FOR SALE CHEAP.          FOR SALE CHEAP.
+
+At first it seemed to the professor that this was a sign-language, and
+that each word was represented by a distinct sign; further examination
+convinced him that it was a written language, and that every letter of
+its alphabet was represented by a character of its own; and finally he
+decided that it was a language which conveyed itself partly by letters,
+and partly by signs or hieroglyphics.  This conclusion was forced upon
+him by the discovery of several specimens of the following nature:
+
+He observed that certain inscriptions were met with in greater frequency
+than others.  Such as “FOR SALE CHEAP”; “BILLIARDS”; “S. T.--1860--X”;
+“KENO”; “ALE ON DRAUGHT.”  Naturally, then, these must be religious
+maxims.  But this idea was cast aside by and by, as the mystery of the
+strange alphabet began to clear itself.  In time, the professor was
+enabled to translate several of the inscriptions with considerable
+plausibility, though not to the perfect satisfaction of all the scholars.
+Still, he made constant and encouraging progress.
+
+Finally a cavern was discovered with these inscriptions upon it:
+
+                           WATERSIDE MUSEUM.
+                           Open at All Hours.
+                          Admission 50 cents.
+                        WONDERFUL COLLECTION OF
+                      WAX-WORKS, ANCIENT FOSSILS,
+                                  ETC.
+
+Professor Woodlouse affirmed that the word “Museum” was equivalent to the
+phrase “lumgath molo,” or “Burial Place.”  Upon entering, the scientists
+were well astonished.  But what they saw may be best conveyed in the
+language of their own official report:
+
+“Erect, in a row, were a sort of rigid great figures which struck us
+instantly as belonging to the long extinct species of reptile called MAN,
+described in our ancient records.  This was a peculiarly gratifying
+discovery, because of late times it has become fashionable to regard this
+creature as a myth and a superstition, a work of the inventive
+imaginations of our remote ancestors.  But here, indeed, was Man,
+perfectly preserved, in a fossil state.  And this was his burial place,
+as already ascertained by the inscription.  And now it began to be
+suspected that the caverns we had been inspecting had been his ancient
+haunts in that old time that he roamed the earth--for upon the breast of
+each of these tall fossils was an inscription in the character heretofore
+noticed.  One read, 'CAPTAIN KIDD THE PIRATE'; another, 'QUEEN VICTORIA';
+another, 'ABE LINCOLN'; another, 'GEORGE WASHINGTON,' etc.
+
+“With feverish interest we called for our ancient scientific records to
+discover if perchance the description of Man there set down would tally
+with the fossils before us.  Professor Woodlouse read it aloud in its
+quaint and musty phraseology, to wit:
+
+“'In ye time of our fathers Man still walked ye earth, as by tradition we
+know.  It was a creature of exceeding great size, being compassed about
+with a loose skin, sometimes of one color, sometimes of many, the which
+it was able to cast at will; which being done, the hind legs were
+discovered to be armed with short claws like to a mole's but broader, and
+ye forelegs with fingers of a curious slimness and a length much more
+prodigious than a frog's, armed also with broad talons for scratching in
+ye earth for its food.  It had a sort of feathers upon its head such as
+hath a rat, but longer, and a beak suitable for seeking its food by ye
+smell thereof.  When it was stirred with happiness, it leaked water from
+its eyes; and when it suffered or was sad, it manifested it with a
+horrible hellish cackling clamor that was exceeding dreadful to hear and
+made one long that it might rend itself and perish, and so end its
+troubles.  Two Mans being together, they uttered noises at each other
+like this: “Haw-haw-haw--dam good, dam good,” together with other sounds
+of more or less likeness to these, wherefore ye poets conceived that they
+talked, but poets be always ready to catch at any frantic folly, God he
+knows.  Sometimes this creature goeth about with a long stick ye which it
+putteth to its face and bloweth fire and smoke through ye same with a
+sudden and most damnable bruit and noise that doth fright its prey to
+death, and so seizeth it in its talons and walketh away to its habitat,
+consumed with a most fierce and devilish joy.'
+
+“Now was the description set forth by our ancestors wonderfully indorsed
+and confirmed by the fossils before us, as shall be seen.  The specimen
+marked 'Captain Kidd' was examined in detail.  Upon its head and part of
+its face was a sort of fur like that upon the tail of a horse.  With
+great labor its loose skin was removed, whereupon its body was discovered
+to be of a polished white texture, thoroughly petrified.  The straw it
+had eaten, so many ages gone by, was still in its body, undigested--and
+even in its legs.
+
+“Surrounding these fossils were objects that would mean nothing to the
+ignorant, but to the eye of science they were a revelation.  They laid
+bare the secrets of dead ages.  These musty Memorials told us when Man
+lived, and what were his habits.  For here, side by side with Man, were
+the evidences that he had lived in the earliest ages of creation, the
+companion of the other low orders of life that belonged to that forgotten
+time.  Here was the fossil nautilus that sailed the primeval seas; here
+was the skeleton of the mastodon, the ichthyosaurus, the cave-bear, the
+prodigious elk.  Here, also, were the charred bones of some of these
+extinct animals and of the young of Man's own species, split lengthwise,
+showing that to his taste the marrow was a toothsome luxury.  It was
+plain that Man had robbed those bones of their contents, since no
+toothmark of any beast was upon them--albeit the Tumble-Bug intruded the
+remark that 'no beast could mark a bone with its teeth, anyway.'  Here
+were proofs that Man had vague, groveling notions of art; for this fact
+was conveyed by certain things marked with the untranslatable words,
+'FLINT HATCHETS, KNIVES, ARROW-HEADS, AND BONE ORNAMENTS OF PRIMEVAL
+MAN.' Some of these seemed to be rude weapons chipped out of flint, and
+in a secret place was found some more in process of construction, with
+this untranslatable legend, on a thin, flimsy material, lying by:
+
+     “'Jones, if you don't want to be discharged from the Musseum, make
+     the next primeaveal weppons more careful--you couldn't even fool one
+     of these sleepy old syentific grannys from the Coledge with the last
+     ones.  And mind you the animles you carved on some of the Bone
+     Ornaments is a blame sight too good for any primeaveal man that was
+     ever fooled.--Varnum, Manager.'
+
+“Back of the burial place was a mass of ashes, showing that Man always
+had a feast at a funeral--else why the ashes in such a place; and
+showing, also, that he believed in God and the immortality of the soul
+--else why these solemn ceremonies?
+
+“To, sum up.  We believe that Man had a written language.  We know that
+he indeed existed at one time, and is not a myth; also, that he was the
+companion of the cave-bear, the mastodon, and other extinct species; that
+he cooked and ate them and likewise the young of his own kind; also, that
+he bore rude weapons, and knew something of art; that he imagined he had
+a soul, and pleased himself with the fancy that it was immortal.  But let
+us not laugh; there may be creatures in existence to whom we and our
+vanities and profundities may seem as ludicrous.”
+
+END OF PART SECOND
+
+
+
+
+SOME LEARNED FABLES FOR GOOD OLD BOYS AND GIRLS
+
+PART THIRD
+
+Near the margin of the great river the scientists presently found a huge,
+shapely stone, with this inscription:
+
+     “In 1847, in the spring, the river overflowed its banks and covered
+     the whole township.  The depth was from two to six feet.  More than
+     900 head of cattle were lost, and many homes destroyed.  The Mayor
+     ordered this memorial to be erected to perpetuate the event.  God
+     spare us the repetition of it!”
+
+With infinite trouble, Professor Woodlouse succeeded in making a
+translation of this inscription, which was sent home, and straightway an
+enormous excitement was created about it.  It confirmed, in a remarkable
+way, certain treasured traditions of the ancients.  The translation was
+slightly marred by one or two untranslatable words, but these did not
+impair the general clearness of the meaning.  It is here presented:
+
+     “One thousand eight hundred and forty-seven years ago, the (fires?)
+     descended and consumed the whole city.  Only some nine hundred souls
+     were saved, all others destroyed.  The (king?) commanded this stone
+     to be set up to .  .  .  (untranslatable) .  .  .  prevent the
+     repetition of it.”
+
+This was the first successful and satisfactory translation that had been
+made of the mysterious character left behind him by extinct man, and it
+gave Professor Woodlouse such reputation that at once every seat of
+learning in his native land conferred a degree of the most illustrious
+grade upon him, and it was believed that if he had been a soldier and had
+turned his splendid talents to the extermination of a remote tribe of
+reptiles, the king would have ennobled him and made him rich.  And this,
+too, was the origin of that school of scientists called Manologists,
+whose specialty is the deciphering of the ancient records of the extinct
+bird termed Man.  [For it is now decided that Man was a bird and not a
+reptile.]  But Professor Woodlouse began and remained chief of these, for
+it was granted that no translations were ever so free from error as his.
+Others made mistakes--he seemed incapable of it.  Many a memorial of the
+lost race was afterward found, but none ever attained to the renown and
+veneration achieved by the “Mayoritish Stone” it being so called from the
+word “Mayor” in it, which, being translated “King,” “Mayoritish Stone”
+ was but another way of saying “King Stone.”
+
+Another time the expedition made a great “find.”  It was a vast round
+flattish mass, ten frog-spans in diameter and five or six high.
+Professor Snail put on his spectacles and examined it all around, and
+then climbed up and inspected the top.  He said:
+
+“The result of my perlustration and perscontation of this isoperimetrical
+protuberance is a belief that it is one of those rare and wonderful
+creations left by the Mound Builders.  The fact that this one is
+lamellibranchiate in its formation, simply adds to its interest as being
+possibly of a different kind from any we read of in the records of
+science, but yet in no manner marring its authenticity.  Let the
+megalophonous grasshopper sound a blast and summon hither the perfunctory
+and circumforaneous Tumble-Bug, to the end that excavations may be made
+and learning gather new treasures.”
+
+Not a Tumble-Bug could be found on duty, so the Mound was excavated by a
+working party of Ants.  Nothing was discovered.  This would have been a
+great disappointment, had not the venerable Longlegs explained the
+matter.  He said:
+
+“It is now plain to me that the mysterious and forgotten race of Mound
+Builders did not always erect these edifices as mausoleums, else in this
+case, as in all previous cases, their skeletons would be found here,
+along with the rude implements which the creatures used in life.  Is not
+this manifest?”
+
+“True! true!” from everybody.
+
+“Then we have made a discovery of peculiar value here; a discovery which
+greatly extends our knowledge of this creature in place of diminishing
+it; a discovery which will add luster to the achievements of this
+expedition and win for us the commendations of scholars everywhere.
+For the absence of the customary relics here means nothing less than
+this: The Mound Builder, instead of being the ignorant, savage reptile we
+have been taught to consider him, was a creature of cultivation and high
+intelligence, capable of not only appreciating worthy achievements of the
+great and noble of his species, but of commemorating them!
+Fellow-scholars, this stately Mound is not a sepulcher, it is a monument!”
+
+A profound impression was produced by this.
+
+But it was interrupted by rude and derisive laughter--and the Tumble-Bug
+appeared.
+
+“A monument!” quoth he.  “A monument setup by a Mound Builder!  Aye, so
+it is!  So it is, indeed, to the shrewd keen eye of science; but to an
+ignorant poor devil who has never seen a college, it is not a Monument,
+strictly speaking, but is yet a most rich and noble property; and with
+your worship's good permission I will proceed to manufacture it into
+spheres of exceeding grace and--”
+
+The Tumble-Bug was driven away with stripes, and the draftsmen of the
+expedition were set to making views of the Monument from different
+standpoints, while Professor Woodlouse, in a frenzy of scientific zeal,
+traveled all over it and all around it hoping to find an inscription.
+But if there had ever been one, it had decayed or been removed by some
+vandal as a relic.
+
+The views having been completed, it was now considered safe to load the
+precious Monument itself upon the backs of four of the largest Tortoises
+and send it home to the king's museum, which was done; and when it
+arrived it was received with enormous érclat and escorted to its future
+abiding-place by thousands of enthusiastic citizens, King Bullfrog XVI.
+himself attending and condescending to sit enthroned upon it throughout
+the progress.
+
+The growing rigor of the weather was now admonishing the scientists to
+close their labors for the present, so they made preparations to journey
+homeward.  But even their last day among the Caverns bore fruit; for one
+of the scholars found in an out-of-the-way corner of the Museum or
+“Burial Place” a most strange and extraordinary thing.  It was nothing
+less than a double Man-Bird lashed together breast to breast by a natural
+ligament, and labeled with the untranslatable words, “Siamese Twins.”
+ The official report concerning this thing closed thus:
+
+“Wherefore it appears that there were in old times two distinct species
+of this majestic fowl, the one being single and the other double.  Nature
+has a reason for all things.  It is plain to the eye of science that the
+Double-Man originally inhabited a region where dangers abounded; hence he
+was paired together to the end that while one part slept the other might
+watch; and likewise that, danger being discovered, there might always be
+a double instead of a single power to oppose it.  All honor to the
+mystery-dispelling eye of godlike Science!”
+
+And near the Double Man-Bird was found what was plainly an ancient record
+of his, marked upon numberless sheets of a thin white substance and bound
+together.  Almost the first glance that Professor Woodlouse threw into it
+revealed this following sentence, which he instantly translated and laid
+before the scientists, in a tremble, and it uplifted every soul there
+with exultation and astonishment:
+
+“In truth it is believed by many that the lower animals reason and talk
+together.”
+
+When the great official report of the expedition appeared, the above
+sentence bore this comment:
+
+“Then there are lower animals than Man!  This remarkable passage can mean
+nothing else.  Man himself is extinct, but they may still exist.  What
+can they be?  Where do they inhabit?  One's enthusiasm bursts all bounds
+in the contemplation of the brilliant field of discovery and
+investigation here thrown open to science.  We close our labors with the
+humble prayer that your Majesty will immediately appoint a commission and
+command it to rest not nor spare expense until the search for this
+hitherto unsuspected race of the creatures of God shall be crowned with
+success.”
+
+The expedition then journeyed homeward after its long absence and its
+faithful endeavors, and was received with a mighty ovation by the whole
+grateful country.  There were vulgar, ignorant carpers, of course, as
+there always are and always will be; and naturally one of these was the
+obscene Tumble-Bug.  He said that all he had learned by his travels was
+that science only needed a spoonful of supposition to build a mountain of
+demonstrated fact out of; and that for the future he meant to be content
+with the knowledge that nature had made free to all creatures and not go
+prying into the august secrets of the Deity.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+MY LATE SENATORIAL SECRETARYSHIP--[Written about 1867.]
+
+I am not a private secretary to a senator any more now.  I held the
+berth two months in security and in great cheerfulness of spirit, but my
+bread began to return from over the waters then--that is to say, my works
+came back and revealed themselves.  I judged it best to resign.  The way
+of it was this.  My employer sent for me one morning tolerably early,
+and, as soon as I had finished inserting some conundrums clandestinely
+into his last great speech upon finance, I entered the presence.  There
+was something portentous in his appearance.  His cravat was untied, his
+hair was in a state of disorder, and his countenance bore about it the
+signs of a suppressed storm.  He held a package of letters in his tense
+grasp, and I knew that the dreaded Pacific mail was in.  He said:
+
+“I thought you were worthy of confidence.”
+
+I said, “Yes, sir.”
+
+He said, “I gave you a letter from certain of my constituents in the
+State of Nevada, asking the establishment of a post-office at Baldwin's
+Ranch, and told you to answer it, as ingeniously as you could, with
+arguments which should persuade them that there was no real necessity for
+an office at that place.”
+
+I felt easier.  “Oh, if that is all, sir, I did do that.”
+
+“Yes, you did.  I will read your answer for your own humiliation:
+
+                                        'WASHINGTON, Nov. 24
+     'Messrs. Smith, Jones, and others.
+
+     'GENTLEMEN:  What the mischief do you suppose you want with a
+     post-office at Baldwin's Ranch?  It would not do you any good.
+     If any letters came there, you couldn't read them, you know; and,
+     besides, such letters as ought to pass through, with money in them,
+     for other localities, would not be likely to get through, you must
+     perceive at once; and that would make trouble for us all.  No, don't
+     bother about a post-office in your camp.  I have your best interests
+     at heart, and feel that it would only be an ornamental folly.  What
+     you want is a nice jail, you know--a nice, substantial jail and a
+     free school.  These will be a lasting benefit to you.  These will
+     make you really contented and happy.  I will move in the matter at
+     once.
+                    'Very truly, etc.,
+                              Mark Twain,
+                    'For James W. N------, U. S. Senator.'
+
+“That is the way you answered that letter.  Those people say they will
+hang me, if I ever enter that district again; and I am perfectly
+satisfied they will, too.”
+
+“Well, sir, I did not know I was doing any harm.  I only wanted to
+convince them.”
+
+“Ah.  Well, you did convince them, I make no manner of doubt.  Now, here
+is another specimen.  I gave you a petition from certain gentlemen of
+Nevada, praying that I would get a bill through Congress incorporating
+the Methodist Episcopal Church of the State of Nevada.  I told you to
+say, in reply, that the creation of such a law came more properly within
+the province of the state legislature; and to endeavor to show them that,
+in the present feebleness of the religious element in that new commonwealth, the
+expediency of incorporating the church was questionable.  What did you write?
+
+                                        “'WASHINGTON, Nov. 24.
+
+     “'Rev. John Halifax and others.
+
+     “'GENTLEMEN: You will have to go to the state legislature about that
+     speculation of yours--Congress don't know anything about religion.
+     But don't you hurry to go there, either; because this thing you
+     propose to do out in that new country isn't expedient--in fact, it
+     is ridiculous.  Your religious people there are too feeble, in
+     intellect, in morality, in piety in everything, pretty much.  You
+     had better drop this--you can't make it work.  You can't issue stock
+     on an incorporation like that--or if you could, it would only keep
+     you in trouble all the time.  The other denominations would abuse
+     it, and “bear” it, and “sell it short,” and break it down.  They
+     would do with it just as they would with one of your silver-mines
+     out there--they would try to make all the world believe it was
+     “wildcat.”  You ought not to do anything that is calculated to bring
+     a sacred thing into disrepute.  You ought to be ashamed of
+     yourselves--that is what I think about it.  You close your petition
+     with the words: “And we will ever pray.”  I think you had better--you
+     need to do it.
+                         “'Very truly, etc.,
+                                   “'MARK TWAIN,
+                         “'For James W. N-----, U. S. Senator.'
+
+
+“That luminous epistle finishes me with the religious element among my
+constituents.  But that my political murder might be made sure, some evil
+instinct prompted me to hand you this memorial from the grave company of
+elders composing the board of aldermen of the city of San Francisco, to
+try your hand upon--a memorial praying that the city's right to the
+water-lots upon the city front might be established by law of Congress.
+I told you this was a dangerous matter to move in.  I told you to write a
+non-committal letter to the aldermen--an ambiguous letter--a letter that
+should avoid, as far as possible, all real consideration and discussion
+of the water-lot question.  If there is any feeling left in you--any
+shame--surely this letter you wrote, in obedience to that order, ought to
+evoke it, when its words fall upon your ears:
+
+                                        'WASHINGTON, Nov. 27
+
+     'The Honorable Board of Aldermen, etc.
+
+     'GENTLEMEN: George Washington, the revered Father of his Country,
+     is dead.  His long and brilliant career is closed, alas! forever.
+     He was greatly respected in this section of the country, and his
+     untimely decease cast a gloom over the whole community.  He died on
+     the 14th day of December, 1799.  He passed peacefully away from the
+     scene of his honors and his great achievements, the most lamented
+     hero and the best beloved that ever earth hath yielded unto Death.
+     At such a time as this, you speak of water-lots! what a lot was his!
+
+     'What is fame!  Fame is an accident.  Sir Isaac Newton discovered
+     an apple falling to the ground--a trivial discovery, truly, and one
+     which a million men had made before him--but his parents were
+     influential, and so they tortured that small circumstance into
+     something wonderful, and, lo! the simple world took up the shout
+     and, in almost the twinkling of an eye, that man was famous.
+     Treasure these thoughts.
+
+     'Poesy, sweet poesy, who shall estimate what the world owes to
+     thee!
+
+     “Mary had a little lamb, its fleece was white as snow--
+     And everywhere that Mary went, the lamb was sure to go.”
+
+                    “Jack and Gill went up the hill
+                    To draw a pail of water;
+                    Jack fell down and broke his crown,
+                    And Gill came tumbling after.”
+
+     'For simplicity, elegance of diction, and freedom from immoral
+     tendencies, I regard those two poems in the light of gems.  They
+     are suited to all grades of intelligence, to every sphere of life
+     --to the field, to the nursery, to the guild.  Especially should
+     no Board of Aldermen be without them.
+
+     'Venerable fossils! write again.  Nothing improves one so much as
+     friendly correspondence.  Write again--and if there is anything in
+     this memorial of yours that refers to anything in particular, do
+     not be backward about explaining it.  We shall always be happy to
+     hear you chirp.
+                         'Very truly, etc.,
+                                   “'MARK TWAIN,
+                         'For James W. N-----, U. S. Senator.'
+
+
+“That is an atrocious, a ruinous epistle!  Distraction!”
+
+“Well, sir, I am really sorry if there is anything wrong about it--but
+--but it appears to me to dodge the water-lot question.”
+
+“Dodge the mischief!  Oh!--but never mind.  As long as destruction must
+come now, let it be complete.  Let it be complete--let this last of your
+performances, which I am about to read, make a finality of it.  I am a
+ruined man.  I had my misgivings when I gave you the letter from
+Humboldt, asking that the post route from Indian Gulch to Shakespeare Gap
+and intermediate points be changed partly to the old Mormon trail.  But I
+told you it was a delicate question, and warned you to deal with it
+deftly--to answer it dubiously, and leave them a little in the dark.
+And your fatal imbecility impelled you to make this disastrous reply.
+I should think you would stop your ears, if you are not dead to all
+shame:
+
+                                        “'WASHINGTON, Nov. 30.
+
+     “'Messrs. Perkins, Wagner, et al.
+
+     “'GENTLEMEN: It is a delicate question about this Indian trail, but,
+     handled with proper deftness and dubiousness, I doubt not we shall
+     succeed in some measure or otherwise, because the place where the
+     route leaves the Lassen Meadows, over beyond where those two Shawnee
+     chiefs, Dilapidated Vengeance and Biter-of-the-Clouds, were scalped
+     last winter, this being the favorite direction to some, but others
+     preferring something else in consequence of things, the Mormon trail
+     leaving Mosby's at three in the morning, and passing through Jaw-
+     bone Flat to Blucher, and then down by Jug-Handle, the road passing
+     to the right of it, and naturally leaving it on the right, too, and
+     Dawson's on the left of the trail where it passes to the left of
+     said Dawson's and onward thence to Tomahawk, thus making the route
+     cheaper, easier of access to all who can get at it, and compassing
+     all the desirable objects so considered by others, and, therefore,
+     conferring the most good upon the greatest number, and,
+     consequently, I am encouraged to hope we shall.  However, I shall be
+     ready, and happy, to afford you still further information upon the
+     subject, from time to time, as you may desire it and the Post-office
+     Department be enabled to furnish it to me.
+                              “'Very truly, etc.,
+                                        “'MARK TWAIN,
+                              “'For James W. N-----, U. S. Senator.'
+
+
+“There--now what do you think of that?”
+
+“Well, I don't know, sir.  It--well, it appears to me--to be dubious
+enough.”
+
+“Du--leave the house!  I am a ruined man. Those Humboldt savages never
+will forgive me for tangling their brains up with this inhuman letter.
+I have lost the respect of the Methodist Church, the board of aldermen--”
+
+“Well, I haven't anything to say about that, because I may have missed it
+a little in their cases, but I WAS too many for the Baldwin's Ranch
+people, General!”
+
+“Leave the house!  Leave it forever and forever, too.”
+
+I regarded that as a sort of covert intimation that my service could be
+dispensed with, and so I resigned.  I never will be a private secretary
+to a senator again.  You can't please that kind of people.  They don't
+know anything.  They can't appreciate a party's efforts.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+A FASHION ITEM--[Written about 1867.]
+
+At General G----'s reception the other night, the most fashionably
+dressed lady was Mrs. G. C.  She wore a pink satin dress, plain in front
+but with a good deal of rake to it--to the train, I mean; it was said to
+be two or three yards long.  One could see it creeping along the floor
+some little time after the woman was gone.  Mrs. C. wore also a white
+bodice, cut bias, with Pompadour sleeves, flounced with ruches; low neck,
+with the inside handkerchief not visible, with white kid gloves.  She had
+on a pearl necklace, which glinted lonely, high up the midst of that
+barren waste of neck and shoulders.  Her hair was frizzled into a tangled
+chaparral, forward of her ears, aft it was drawn together, and compactly
+bound and plaited into a stump like a pony's tail, and furthermore was
+canted upward at a sharp angle, and ingeniously supported by a red velvet
+crupper, whose forward extremity was made fast with a half-hitch around a
+hairpin on the top of her head.  Her whole top hamper was neat and
+becoming.  She had a beautiful complexion when she first came, but it
+faded out by degrees in an unaccountable way.  However, it is not lost
+for good.  I found the most of it on my shoulder afterward.  (I stood
+near the door when she squeezed out with the throng.)  There were other
+ladies present, but I only took notes of one as a specimen.  I would
+gladly enlarge upon the subject were I able to do it justice.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+RILEY-NEWSPAPER CORRESPONDENT
+
+One of the best men in Washington--or elsewhere--is RILEY, correspondent
+of one of the great San Francisco dailies.
+
+Riley is full of humor, and has an unfailing vein of irony, which makes
+his conversation to the last degree entertaining (as long as the remarks
+are about somebody else).  But notwithstanding the possession of these
+qualities, which should enable a man to write a happy and an appetizing
+letter, Riley's newspaper letters often display a more than earthly
+solemnity, and likewise an unimaginative devotion to petrified facts,
+which surprise and distress all men who know him in his unofficial
+character.  He explains this curious thing by saying that his employers
+sent him to Washington to write facts, not fancy, and that several times
+he has come near losing his situation by inserting humorous remarks
+which, not being looked for at headquarters, and consequently not
+understood, were thought to be dark and bloody speeches intended to
+convey signals and warnings to murderous secret societies, or something
+of that kind, and so were scratched out with a shiver and a prayer and
+cast into the stove.  Riley says that sometimes he is so afflicted with
+a yearning to write a sparkling and absorbingly readable letter that he
+simply cannot resist it, and so he goes to his den and revels in the
+delight of untrammeled scribbling; and then, with suffering such as only
+a mother can know, he destroys the pretty children of his fancy and
+reduces his letter to the required dismal accuracy.  Having seen Riley do
+this very thing more than once, I know whereof I speak.  Often I have
+laughed with him over a happy passage, and grieved to see him plow his
+pen through it.  He would say, “I had to write that or die; and I've got
+to scratch it out or starve.  They wouldn't stand it, you know.”
+
+I think Riley is about the most entertaining company I ever saw.  We
+lodged together in many places in Washington during the winter of '67-8,
+moving comfortably from place to place, and attracting attention by
+paying our board--a course which cannot fail to make a person conspicuous
+in Washington.  Riley would tell all about his trip to California in the
+early days, by way of the Isthmus and the San Juan River; and about his
+baking bread in San Francisco to gain a living, and setting up tenpins,
+and practising law, and opening oysters, and delivering lectures, and
+teaching French, and tending bar, and reporting for the newspapers, and
+keeping dancing-schools, and interpreting Chinese in the courts--which
+latter was lucrative, and Riley was doing handsomely and laying up a
+little money when people began to find fault because his translations
+were too “free,” a thing for which Riley considered he ought not to be
+held responsible, since he did not know a word of the Chinese tongue, and
+only adopted interpreting as a means of gaining an honest livelihood.
+Through the machinations of enemies he was removed from the position of
+official interpreter, and a man put in his place who was familiar with
+the Chinese language, but did not know any English.  And Riley used to
+tell about publishing a newspaper up in what is Alaska now, but was only
+an iceberg then, with a population composed of bears, walruses, Indians,
+and other animals; and how the iceberg got adrift at last, and left all
+his paying subscribers behind, and as soon as the commonwealth floated
+out of the jurisdiction of Russia the people rose and threw off their
+allegiance and ran up the English flag, calculating to hook on and become
+an English colony as they drifted along down the British Possessions; but
+a land breeze and a crooked current carried them by, and they ran up the
+Stars and Stripes and steered for California, missed the connection again
+and swore allegiance to Mexico, but it wasn't any use; the anchors came
+home every time, and away they went with the northeast trades drifting
+off sideways toward the Sandwich Islands, whereupon they ran up the
+Cannibal flag and had a grand human barbecue in honor of it, in which it
+was noticed that the better a man liked a friend the better he enjoyed
+him; and as soon as they got fairly within the tropics the weather got so
+fearfully hot that the iceberg began to melt, and it got so sloppy under
+foot that it was almost impossible for ladies to get about at all; and at
+last, just as they came in sight of the islands, the melancholy remnant
+of the once majestic iceberg canted first to one side and then to the
+other, and then plunged under forever, carrying the national archives
+along with it--and not only the archives and the populace, but some
+eligible town lots which had increased in value as fast as they
+diminished in size in the tropics, and which Riley could have sold at
+thirty cents a pound and made himself rich if he could have kept the
+province afloat ten hours longer and got her into port.
+
+Riley is very methodical, untiringly accommodating, never forgets
+anything that is to be attended to, is a good son, a stanch friend, and a
+permanent reliable enemy.  He will put himself to any amount of trouble
+to oblige a body, and therefore always has his hands full of things to be
+done for the helpless and the shiftless.  And he knows how to do nearly
+everything, too.  He is a man whose native benevolence is a well-spring
+that never goes dry.  He stands always ready to help whoever needs help,
+as far as he is able--and not simply with his money, for that is a cheap
+and common charity, but with hand and brain, and fatigue of limb and
+sacrifice of time.  This sort of men is rare.
+
+Riley has a ready wit, a quickness and aptness at selecting and applying
+quotations, and a countenance that is as solemn and as blank as the back
+side of a tombstone when he is delivering a particularly exasperating
+joke.  One night a negro woman was burned to death in a house next door
+to us, and Riley said that our landlady would be oppressively emotional
+at breakfast, because she generally made use of such opportunities as
+offered, being of a morbidly sentimental turn, and so we should find it
+best to let her talk along and say nothing back--it was the only way to
+keep her tears out of the gravy.  Riley said there never was a funeral in
+the neighborhood but that the gravy was watery for a week.
+
+And, sure enough, at breakfast the landlady was down in the very sloughs
+of woe--entirely brokenhearted.  Everything she looked at reminded her of
+that poor old negro woman, and so the buckwheat cakes made her sob, the
+coffee forced a groan, and when the beefsteak came on she fetched a wail
+that made our hair rise.  Then she got to talking about deceased, and
+kept up a steady drizzle till both of us were soaked through and through.
+Presently she took a fresh breath and said, with a world of sobs:
+
+“Ah, to think of it, only to think of it!--the poor old faithful
+creature.  For she was so faithful.  Would you believe it, she had been a
+servant in that selfsame house and that selfsame family for twenty seven
+years come Christmas, and never a cross word and never a lick!  And, oh,
+to think she should meet such a death at last!--a-sitting over the red
+hot stove at three o'clock in the morning and went to sleep and fell on
+it and was actually roasted!  Not just frizzled up a bit, but literally
+roasted to a crisp!  Poor faithful creature, how she was cooked!  I am
+but a poor woman, but even if I have to scrimp to do it, I will put up a
+tombstone over that lone sufferer's grave--and Mr. Riley if you would
+have the goodness to think up a little epitaph to put on it which would
+sort of describe the awful way in which she met her--”
+
+“Put it, 'Well done, good and faithful servant,'” said Riley, and never
+smiled.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+A FINE OLD MAN
+
+John Wagner, the oldest man in Buffalo--one hundred and four years old
+--recently walked a mile and a half in two weeks.
+
+He is as cheerful and bright as any of these other old men that charge
+around so persistently and tiresomely in the newspapers, and in every way
+as remarkable.
+
+Last November he walked five blocks in a rainstorm, without any shelter
+but an umbrella, and cast his vote for Grant, remarking that he had voted
+for forty-seven presidents--which was a lie.
+
+His “second crop” of rich brown hair arrived from New York yesterday, and
+he has a new set of teeth coming--from Philadelphia.
+
+He is to be married next week to a girl one hundred and two years old,
+who still takes in washing.
+
+They have been engaged eighty years, but their parents persistently
+refused their consent until three days ago.
+
+John Wagner is two years older than the Rhode Island veteran, and yet has
+never tasted a drop of liquor in his life--unless--unless you count
+whisky.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+SCIENCE V.S. LUCK--[Written about 1867.]
+
+At that time, in Kentucky (said the Hon. Mr. K-----); the law was very
+strict against what is termed “games of chance.”  About a dozen of the
+boys were detected playing “seven up” or “old sledge” for money, and the
+grand jury found a true bill against them.  Jim Sturgis was retained to
+defend them when the case came up, of course. The more he studied over
+the matter, and looked into the evidence, the plainer it was that he must
+lose a case at last--there was no getting around that painful fact.
+Those boys had certainly been betting money on a game of chance.  Even
+public sympathy was roused in behalf of Sturgis.  People said it was a
+pity to see him mar his successful career with a big prominent case like
+this, which must go against him.
+
+But after several restless nights an inspired idea flashed upon Sturgis,
+and he sprang out of bed delighted.  He thought he saw his way through.
+The next day he whispered around a little among his clients and a few
+friends, and then when the case came up in court he acknowledged the
+seven-up and the betting, and, as his sole defense, had the astounding
+effrontery to put in the plea that old sledge was not a game of chance!
+There was the broadest sort of a smile all over the faces of that
+sophisticated audience.  The judge smiled with the rest.  But Sturgis
+maintained a countenance whose earnestness was even severe.  The opposite
+counsel tried to ridicule him out of his position, and did not succeed.
+The judge jested in a ponderous judicial way about the thing, but did not
+move him.  The matter was becoming grave.  The judge lost a little of his
+patience, and said the joke had gone far enough.  Jim Sturgis said he
+knew of no joke in the matter--his clients could not be punished for
+indulging in what some people chose to consider a game of chance until it
+was proven that it was a game of chance.  Judge and counsel said that
+would be an easy matter, and forthwith called Deacons Job, Peters, Burke,
+and Johnson, and Dominies Wirt and Miggles, to testify; and they
+unanimously and with strong feeling put down the legal quibble of Sturgis
+by pronouncing that old sledge was a game of chance.
+
+
+“What do you call it now?” said the judge.
+
+“I call it a game of science!” retorted Sturgis; “and I'll prove it,
+too!”
+
+They saw his little game.
+
+He brought in a cloud of witnesses, and produced an overwhelming mass of
+testimony, to show that old sledge was not a game of chance but a game of
+science.
+
+Instead of being the simplest case in the world, it had somehow turned
+out to be an excessively knotty one.  The judge scratched his head over
+it awhile, and said there was no way of coming to a determination,
+because just as many men could be brought into court who would testify on
+one side as could be found to testify on the other.  But he said he was
+willing to do the fair thing by all parties, and would act upon any
+suggestion Mr. Sturgis would make for the solution of the difficulty.
+
+Mr. Sturgis was on his feet in a second.
+
+“Impanel a jury of six of each, Luck versus Science.  Give them candles
+and a couple of decks of cards.  Send them into the jury-room, and just
+abide by the result!”
+
+There was no disputing the fairness of the proposition.  The four deacons
+and the two dominies were sworn in as the “chance” jurymen, and six
+inveterate old seven-up professors were chosen to represent the “science”
+ side of the issue.  They retired to the jury-room.
+
+In about two hours Deacon Peters sent into court to borrow three dollars
+from a friend.  [Sensation.]  In about two hours more Dominie Miggles
+sent into court to borrow a “stake” from a friend.  [Sensation.]  During
+the next three or four hours the other dominie and the other deacons sent
+into court for small loans.  And still the packed audience waited, for it
+was a prodigious occasion in Bull's Corners, and one in which every
+father of a family was necessarily interested.
+
+The rest of the story can be told briefly.  About daylight the jury came
+in, and Deacon Job, the foreman, read the following:
+
+     VERDICT:
+
+     We, the jury in the case of the Commonwealth of Kentucky vs. John
+     Wheeler et al., have carefully considered the points of the case,
+     and tested the merits of the several theories advanced, and do
+     hereby unanimously decide that the game commonly known as old sledge
+     or seven-up is eminently a game of science and not of chance.  In
+     demonstration whereof it is hereby and herein stated, iterated,
+     reiterated, set forth, and made manifest that, during the entire
+     night, the “chance” men never won a game or turned a jack, although
+     both feats were common and frequent to the opposition; and
+     furthermore, in support of this our verdict, we call attention to
+     the significant fact that the “chance” men are all busted, and the
+     “science” men have got the money.  It is the deliberate opinion of
+     this jury, that the “chance” theory concerning seven-up is a
+     pernicious doctrine, and calculated to inflict untold suffering and
+     pecuniary loss upon any community that takes stock in it.
+
+“That is the way that seven-up came to be set apart and particularized in
+the statute-books of Kentucky as being a game not of chance but of
+science, and therefore not punishable under the law,” said Mr. K-----.
+“That verdict is of record, and holds good to this day.”
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THE LATE BENJAMIN FRANKLIN--[Written about 1870.]
+
+[“Never put off till to-morrow what you can do day after to-morrow just
+as well.”--B. F.]
+
+This party was one of those persons whom they call Philosophers.  He was
+twins, being born simultaneously in two different houses in the city of
+Boston.  These houses remain unto this day, and have signs upon them
+worded in accordance with the facts.  The signs are considered well
+enough to have, though not necessary, because the inhabitants point out
+the two birthplaces to the stranger anyhow, and sometimes as often as
+several times in the same day.  The subject of this memoir was of a
+vicious disposition, and early prostituted his talents to the invention
+of maxims and aphorisms calculated to inflict suffering upon the rising
+generation of all subsequent ages.  His simplest acts, also, were
+contrived with a view to their being held up for the emulation of boys
+forever--boys who might otherwise have been happy.  It was in this spirit
+that he became the son of a soap-boiler, and probably for no other reason
+than that the efforts of all future boys who tried to be anything might
+be looked upon with suspicion unless they were the sons of soap-boilers.
+With a malevolence which is without parallel in history, he would work
+all day, and then sit up nights, and let on to be studying algebra by the
+light of a smoldering fire, so that all other boys might have to do that
+also, or else have Benjamin Franklin thrown up to them.  Not satisfied
+with these proceedings, he had a fashion of living wholly on bread and
+water, and studying astronomy at meal-time--a thing which has brought
+affliction to millions of boys since, whose fathers had read Franklin's
+pernicious biography.
+
+His maxims were full of animosity toward boys.  Nowadays a boy cannot
+follow out a single natural instinct without tumbling over some of those
+everlasting aphorisms and hearing from Franklin, on the spot.  If he buys
+two cents' worth of peanuts, his father says, “Remember what Franklin has
+said, my son--'A grout a day's a penny a year”'; and the comfort is all
+gone out of those peanuts.  If he wants to spin his top when he has done
+work, his father quotes, “Procrastination is the thief of time.”  If he
+does a virtuous action, he never gets anything for it, because “Virtue is
+its own reward.”  And that boy is hounded to death and robbed of his
+natural rest, because Franklin, said once, in one of his inspired flights
+of malignity:
+
+               Early to bed and early to rise
+               Makes a man healthy and wealthy and wise.
+
+As if it were any object to a boy to be healthy and wealthy and wise on
+such terms.  The sorrow that that maxim has cost me, through my parents,
+experimenting on me with it, tongue cannot tell. The legitimate result is
+my present state of general debility, indigence, and mental aberration.
+My parents used to have me up before nine o'clock in the morning
+sometimes when I was a boy.  If they had let me take my natural rest
+where would I have been now?  Keeping store, no doubt, and respected by
+all.
+
+And what an adroit old adventurer the subject of this memoir was!
+In order to get a chance to fly his kite on Sunday he used to hang a key
+on the string and let on to be fishing for lightning.  And a guileless
+public would go home chirping about the “wisdom” and the “genius” of the
+hoary Sabbath-breaker.  If anybody caught him playing “mumblepeg” by
+himself, after the age of sixty, he would immediately appear to be
+ciphering out how the grass grew--as if it was any of his business.
+My grandfather knew him well, and he says Franklin was always
+fixed--always ready.  If a body, during his old age, happened on him
+unexpectedly when he was catching flies, or making mud-pies, or sliding
+on a cellar door, he would immediately look wise, and rip out a maxim,
+and walk off with his nose in the air and his cap turned wrong side
+before, trying to appear absent-minded and eccentric.  He was a hard lot.
+
+He invented a stove that would smoke your head off in four hours by the
+clock.  One can see the almost devilish satisfaction he took in it by his
+giving it his name.
+
+He was always proud of telling how he entered Philadelphia for the first
+time, with nothing in the world but two shillings in his pocket and four
+rolls of bread under his arm.  But really, when you come to examine it
+critically, it was nothing.  Anybody could have done it.
+
+To the subject of this memoir belongs the honor of recommending the army
+to go back to bows and arrows in place of bayonets and muskets.
+He observed, with his customary force, that the bayonet was very well
+under some circumstances, but that he doubted whether it could be used
+with accuracy at a long range.
+
+Benjamin Franklin did a great many notable things for his country,
+and made her young name to be honored in many lands as the mother of such
+a son.  It is not the idea of this memoir to ignore that or cover it up.
+No; the simple idea of it is to snub those pretentious maxims of his,
+which he worked up with a great show of originality out of truisms that
+had become wearisome platitudes as early as the dispersion from Babel;
+and also to snub his stove, and his military inspirations, his unseemly
+endeavor to make himself conspicuous when he entered Philadelphia, and
+his flying his kite and fooling away his time in all sorts of such ways
+when he ought to have been foraging for soap-fat, or constructing
+candles.  I merely desired to do away with somewhat of the prevalent
+calamitous idea among heads of families that Franklin acquired his great
+genius by working for nothing, studying by moonlight, and getting up in
+the night instead of waiting till morning like a Christian; and that this
+program, rigidly inflicted, will make a Franklin of every father's fool.
+It is time these gentlemen were finding out that these execrable
+eccentricities of instinct and conduct are only the evidences of genius,
+not the creators of it.  I wish I had been the father of my parents long
+enough to make them comprehend this truth, and thus prepare them to let
+their son have an easier time of it.  When I was a child I had to boil
+soap, notwithstanding my father was wealthy, and I had to get up early
+and study geometry at breakfast, and peddle my own poetry, and do
+everything just as Franklin did, in the solemn hope that I would be a
+Franklin some day.  And here I am.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+MR. BLOKE'S ITEM--[Written about 1865.]
+
+Our esteemed friend, Mr. John William Bloke, of Virginia City, walked
+into the office where we are sub-editor at a late hour last night, with
+an expression of profound and heartfelt suffering upon his countenance,
+and, sighing heavily, laid the following item reverently upon the desk,
+and walked slowly out again.  He paused a moment at the door, and seemed
+struggling to command his feelings sufficiently to enable him to speak,
+and then, nodding his head toward his manuscript, ejaculated in a broken
+voice, “Friend of mine--oh! how sad!” and burst into tears.  We were so
+moved at his distress that we did not think to call him back and endeavor
+to comfort him until he was gone, and it was too late.  The paper had
+already gone to press, but knowing that our friend would consider the
+publication of this item important, and cherishing the hope that to print
+it would afford a melancholy satisfaction to his sorrowing heart, we
+stopped the press at once and inserted it in our columns:
+
+     DISTRESSING ACCIDENT.--Last evening, about six o'clock, as Mr.
+     William Schuyler, an old and respectable citizen of South Park, was
+     leaving his residence to go down-town, as has been his usual custom
+     for many years with the exception only of a short interval in the
+     spring of 1850, during which he was confined to his bed by injuries
+received in attempting to stop a runaway horse by thoughtlessly
+     placing himself directly in its wake and throwing up his hands and
+     shouting, which if he had done so even a single moment sooner, must
+     inevitably have frightened the animal still more instead of checking
+     its speed, although disastrous enough to himself as it was, and
+     rendered more melancholy and distressing by reason of the presence
+     of his wife's mother, who was there and saw the sad occurrence
+     notwithstanding it is at least likely, though not necessarily so,
+     that she should be reconnoitering in another direction when
+     incidents occur, not being vivacious and on the lookout, as a
+     general thing, but even the reverse, as her own mother is said to
+     have stated, who is no more, but died in the full hope of a glorious
+     resurrection, upwards of three years ago; aged eighty-six, being a
+     Christian woman and without guile, as it were, or property, in
+     consequence of the fire of 1849, which destroyed every single thing
+     she had in the world.  But such is life.  Let us all take warning by
+     this solemn occurrence, and let us endeavor so to conduct ourselves
+     that when we come to die we can do it.  Let us place our hands upon
+     our heart, and say with earnestness and sincerity that from this day
+     forth we will beware of the intoxicating bowl.--'First Edition of
+     the Californian.'
+
+The head editor has been in here raising the mischief, and tearing his
+hair and kicking the furniture about, and abusing me like a pickpocket.
+He says that every time he leaves me in charge of the paper for half an
+hour I get imposed upon by the first infant or the first idiot that comes
+along.  And he says that that distressing item of Mr. Bloke's is nothing
+but a lot of distressing bosh, and has no point to it, and no sense in
+it, and no information in it, and that there was no sort of necessity for
+stopping the press to publish it.
+
+Now all this comes of being good-hearted.  If I had been as
+unaccommodating and unsympathetic as some people, I would have told
+Mr. Bloke that I wouldn't receive his communication at such a late hour;
+but no, his snuffling distress touched my heart, and I jumped at the
+chance of doing something to modify his misery.  I never read his item to
+see whether there was anything wrong about it, but hastily wrote the few
+lines which preceded it, and sent it to the printers.  And what has my
+kindness done for me?  It has done nothing but bring down upon me a storm
+of abuse and ornamental blasphemy.
+
+Now I will read that item myself, and see if there is any foundation for
+all this fuss.  And if there is, the author of it shall hear from me.
+
+I have read it, and I am bound to admit that it seems a little mixed at a
+first glance.  However, I will peruse it once more.
+
+I have read it again, and it does really seem a good deal more mixed than
+ever.
+
+I have read it over five times, but if I can get at the meaning of it I
+wish I may get my just deserts.  It won't bear analysis.  There are
+things about it which I cannot understand at all.  It don't say whatever
+became of William Schuyler.  It just says enough about him to get one
+interested in his career, and then drops him.  Who is William Schuyler,
+anyhow, and what part of South Park did he live in, and if he started
+down-town at six o'clock, did he ever get there, and if he did, did
+anything happen to him?  Is he the individual that met with the
+“distressing accident”?  Considering the elaborate circumstantiality of
+detail observable in the item, it seems to me that it ought to contain
+more information than it does.  On the contrary, it is obscur--and not
+only obscure, but utterly incomprehensible.  Was the breaking of Mr.
+Schuyler's leg, fifteen years ago, the “distressing accident” that
+plunged Mr. Bloke into unspeakable grief, and caused him to come up here
+at dead of night and stop our press to acquaint the world with the
+circumstance?  Or did the “distressing accident” consist in the
+destruction of Schuyler's mother-in-law's property in early times?
+Or did it consist in the death of that person herself three years ago
+(albeit it does not appear that she died by accident)?  In a word, what
+did that “distressing accident” consist in?  What did that driveling ass
+of a Schuyler stand in the wake of a runaway horse for, with his shouting
+and gesticulating, if he wanted to stop him?  And how the mischief could
+he get run over by a horse that had already passed beyond him?  And what
+are we to take “warning” by?  And how is this extraordinary chapter of
+incomprehensibilities going to be a “lesson” to us?  And, above all, what
+has the intoxicating “bowl” got to do with it, anyhow?  It is not stated
+that Schuyler drank, or that his wife drank, or that his mother-in-law
+drank, or that the horse drank--wherefore, then, the reference to the
+intoxicating bowl?  It does seem to me that if Mr. Bloke had let the
+intoxicating bowl alone himself, he never would have got into so much
+trouble about this exasperating imaginary accident.  I have read this
+absurd item over and over again, with all its insinuating plausibility,
+until my head swims; but I can make neither head nor tail of it.  There
+certainly seems to have been an accident of some kind or other, but it is
+impossible to determine what the nature of it was, or who was the
+sufferer by it.  I do not like to do it, but I feel compelled to request
+that the next time anything happens to one of Mr. Bloke's friends, he
+will append such explanatory notes to his account of it as will enable me
+to find out what sort of an accident it was and whom it happened to.  I
+had rather all his friends should die than that I should be driven to the
+verge of lunacy again in trying to cipher out the meaning of another such
+production as the above.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+A MEDIEVAL ROMANCE [written about 1868]
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+THE SECRET REVEALED.
+
+It was night.  Stillness reigned in the grand old feudal castle of
+Klugenstein.  The year 1222 was drawing to a close.  Far away up in the
+tallest of the castle's towers a single light glimmered.  A secret
+council was being held there.  The stern old lord of Klugenstein sat in
+a chair of state meditating.  Presently he said, with a tender
+accent:
+
+“My daughter!”
+
+A young man of noble presence, clad from head to heel in knightly mail,
+answered:
+
+“Speak, father!”
+
+“My daughter, the time is come for the revealing of the mystery that hath
+puzzled all your young life.  Know, then, that it had its birth in the
+matters which I shall now unfold.  My brother Ulrich is the great Duke of
+Brandenburgh.  Our father, on his deathbed, decreed that if no son were
+born to Ulrich, the succession should pass to my house, provided a son
+were born to me.  And further, in case no son were born to either, but
+only daughters, then the succession should pass to Ulrich's daughter,
+if she proved stainless; if she did not, my daughter should succeed,
+if she retained a blameless name.  And so I and my old wife here prayed
+fervently for the good boon of a son, but the prayer was vain.  You were
+born to us.  I was in despair.  I saw the mighty prize slipping from my
+grasp---the splendid dream vanishing away!  And I had been so hopeful!
+Five years had Ulrich lived in wedlock, and yet his wife had borne no
+heir of either sex.
+
+“'But hold,' I said, 'all is not lost.'  A saving scheme had shot athwart
+my brain.  You were born at midnight.  Only the leech, the nurse, and six
+waiting-women knew your sex.  I hanged them every one before an hour
+sped.  Next morning all the barony went mad with rejoicing over the
+proclamation that a son was born to Klugenstein---an heir to mighty
+Brandenburgh!  And well the secret has been kept.  Your mother's own
+sister nursed your infancy, and from that time forward we feared nothing.
+
+“When you were ten years old, a daughter was born to Ulrich.  We grieved,
+but hoped for good results from measles, or physicians, or other natural
+enemies of infancy, but were always disappointed.  She lived, she throve
+---Heaven's malison upon her!  But it is nothing.  We are safe.  For,
+ha!ha! have we not a son?  And is not our son the future duke?  Our
+well-beloved Conrad, is it not so?---for, woman of eight-and-twenty years
+as you are, my child, none other name than that hath ever fallen to you!
+
+“Now it hath come to pass that age hath laid its hand upon my brother,
+and he waxes feeble.  The cares of state do tax him sore, therefore he
+wills that you shall come to him and be already duke in act, though not
+yet in name.  Your servitors are ready--you journey forth to-night.
+
+“Now listen well.  Remember every word I say.  There is a law as old as
+Germany, that if any woman sit for a single instant in the great ducal
+chair before she hath been absolutely crowned in presence of the people,
+SHE SHALL DIE! So heed my words.  Pretend humility.  Pronounce your
+judgments from the Premier's chair, which stands at the foot of the
+throne.  Do this until you are crowned and safe.  It is not likely that
+your sex will ever be discovered, but still it is the part of wisdom to
+make all things as safe as may be in this treacherous earthly life.”
+
+“Oh, my father, is it for this my life hath been a lie?  Was it that I
+might cheat my unoffending cousin of her rights?  Spare me, father,
+spare your child!”
+
+“What, hussy!  Is this my reward for the august fortune my brain has
+wrought for thee?  By the bones of my father, this puling sentiment of
+thine but ill accords with my humor.
+
+“Betake thee to the duke, instantly, and beware how thou meddlest with my
+purpose!”
+
+Let this suffice, of the conversation.  It is enough for us to know that
+the prayers, the entreaties and the tears of the gentle-natured girl
+availed nothing. Neither they nor anything could move the stout old lord of
+Klugenstein.  And so, at last, with a heavy heart, the daughter saw the
+castle gates close behind her, and found herself riding away in the
+darkness surrounded by a knightly array of armed vassals and a brave
+following of servants.
+
+The old baron sat silent for many minutes after his daughter's departure,
+and then he turned to his sad wife and said:
+
+“Dame, our matters seem speeding fairly.  It is full three months since I
+sent the shrewd and handsome Count Detzin on his devilish mission to my
+brother's daughter Constance.  If he fail, we are not wholly safe, but if
+he do succeed, no power can bar our girl from being Duchess e'en though
+ill-fortune should decree she never should be Duke!”
+
+“My heart is full of bodings, yet all may still be well.”
+
+
+“Tush, woman! Leave the owls to croak.  To bed with ye, and dream of
+Brandenburgh and grandeur!”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+FESTIVITY AND TEARS
+
+Six days after the occurrences related in the above chapter, the
+brilliant capital of the Duchy of Brandenburgh was resplendent with
+military pageantry, and noisy with the rejoicings of loyal multitudes;
+for Conrad, the young heir to the crown, was come.  The old duke's heart
+was full of happiness, for Conrad's handsome person and graceful bearing
+had won his love at once.  The great halls of the palace were thronged
+with nobles, who welcomed Conrad bravely; and so bright and happy did all
+things seem that he felt his fears and sorrows passing away and giving
+place to a comforting contentment.
+
+But in a remote apartment of the palace a scene of a different nature
+was transpiring.  By a window stood the duke's only child, the Lady
+Constance.  Her eyes were red and swollen and full of tears.  She was
+alone.  Presently she fell to weeping anew, and said aloud:
+
+“The villain Detzin is gone--has fled the dukedom!  I could not believe
+it at first, but alas! it is too true.  And I loved him so.  I dared to
+love him though I knew the duke, my father, would never let me wed him.
+I loved him--but now I hate him!  With all my soul I hate him!  Oh, what
+is to become of me!  I am lost, lost, lost!  I shall go mad!”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+THE PLOT THICKENS.
+
+Few months drifted by.  All men published the praises of the young
+Conrad's government and extolled the wisdom of his judgments, the
+mercifulness of his sentences, and the modesty with which he bore himself
+in his great office.  The old duke soon gave everything into his hands,
+and sat apart and listened with proud satisfaction while his heir
+delivered the decrees of the crown from the seat of the premier.
+It seemed plain that one so loved and praised and honored of all men
+as Conrad was could not be otherwise than happy.  But strangely enough,
+he was not.  For he saw with dismay that the Princess Constance had begun
+to love him!  The love of the rest of the world was happy fortune for
+him, but this was freighted with danger!  And he saw, moreover, that the
+delighted duke had discovered his daughter's passion likewise, and was
+already dreaming of a marriage.  Every day somewhat of the deep sadness
+that had been in the princess's face faded away; every day hope and
+animation beamed brighter from her eye; and by and by even vagrant smiles
+visited the face that had been so troubled.
+
+Conrad was appalled.  He bitterly cursed himself for having yielded to
+the instinct that had made him seek the companionship of one of his own
+sex when he was new and a stranger in the palace--when he was sorrowful
+and yearned for a sympathy such as only women can give or feel.  He now
+began to avoid his cousin.  But this only made matters worse, for,
+naturally enough, the more he avoided her the more she cast herself in
+his way.  He marveled at this at first, and next it startled him.  The
+girl haunted him; she hunted him; she happened upon him at all times and
+in all places, in the night as well as in the day.  She seemed singularly
+anxious.  There was surely a mystery somewhere.
+
+This could not go on forever.  All the world was talking about it.  The
+duke was beginning to look perplexed.  Poor Conrad was becoming a very
+ghost through dread and dire distress.  One day as he was emerging from a
+private anteroom attached to the picture-gallery, Constance confronted
+him, and seizing both his hands, in hers, exclaimed:
+
+“Oh, why do you avoid me?  What have I done--what have I said, to lose
+your kind opinion of me--for surely I had it once?  Conrad, do not
+despise me, but pity a tortured heart?  I cannot, cannot hold the words
+unspoken longer, lest they kill me--I LOVE you, CONRAD!  There, despise
+me if you must, but they would be uttered!”
+
+Conrad was speechless.  Constance hesitated a moment, and then,
+misinterpreting his silence, a wild gladness flamed in her eyes, and she
+flung her arms about his neck and said:
+
+“You relent! you relent! You can love me--you will love me! Oh, say you
+will, my own, my worshipped Conrad!'”
+
+Conrad groaned aloud.  A sickly pallor overspread his countenance, and
+he trembled like an aspen.  Presently, in desperation, he thrust the poor
+girl from him, and cried:
+
+“You know not what you ask!  It is forever and ever impossible!”  And then
+he fled like a criminal, and left the princess stupefied with amazement.
+A minute afterward she was crying and sobbing there, and Conrad was
+crying and sobbing in his chamber.  Both were in despair.  Both saw ruin
+staring them in the face.
+
+By and by Constance rose slowly to her feet and moved away, saying:
+
+“To think that he was despising my love at the very moment that I thought
+it was melting his cruel heart!  I hate him!  He spurned me--did this
+man--he spurned me from him like a dog!”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+THE AWFUL REVELATION.
+
+Time passed on.  A settled sadness rested once more upon the countenance
+of the good duke's daughter.  She and Conrad were seen together no more
+now.  The duke grieved at this.  But as the weeks wore away Conrad's
+color came back to his cheeks and his old-time vivacity to his eye, and
+he administered the government with a clear and steadily ripening wisdom.
+
+Presently a strange whisper began to be heard about the palace.  It grew
+louder; it spread farther.  The gossips of the city got hold of it.  It
+swept the dukedom.  And this is what the whisper said:
+
+“The Lady Constance hath given birth to a child!”
+
+When the lord of Klugenstein heard it, he swung his plumed helmet thrice
+around his head and shouted:
+
+“Long live Duke Conrad!--for lo, his crown is sure from this day
+forward!  Detzin has done his errand well, and the good scoundrel shall
+be rewarded!”
+
+And he spread the tidings far and wide, and for eight-and-forty hours no
+soul in all the barony but did dance and sing, carouse and illuminate, to
+celebrate the great event, and all at proud and happy old Klugenstein's
+expense.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+THE FRIGHTFUL CATASTROPHE.
+
+The trial was at hand.  All the great lords and barons of Brandenburgh
+were assembled in the Hall of Justice in the ducal palace.  No space was
+left unoccupied where there was room for a spectator to stand or sit.
+Conrad, clad in purple and ermine, sat in the Premier's chair, and on
+either side sat the great judges of the realm.  The old duke had sternly
+commanded that the trial of his daughter should proceed without favor,
+and then had taken to his bed broken-hearted.  His days were numbered.
+Poor Conrad had begged, as for his very life, that he might be spared the
+misery of sitting in judgment upon his cousin's crime, but it did not
+avail.
+
+The saddest heart in all that great assemblage was in Conrad's breast.
+
+The gladdest was in his father's, for, unknown to his daughter “Conrad,”
+ the old Baron Klugenstein was come, and was among the crowd of nobles,
+triumphant in the swelling fortunes of his house.
+
+After the heralds had made due proclamation and the other preliminaries
+had followed, the venerable Lord Chief justice said:
+
+“Prisoner, stand forth!”
+
+The unhappy princess rose, and stood unveiled before the vast multitude.
+The Lord Chief Justice continued:
+
+“Most noble lady, before the great judges of this realm it hath been
+charged and proven that out of holy wedlock your Grace hath given birth
+unto a child, and by our ancient law the penalty is death excepting in
+one sole contingency, whereof his Grace the acting Duke, our good Lord
+Conrad, will advertise you in his solemn sentence now; wherefore, give
+heed.”
+
+Conrad stretched forth the reluctant sceptre, and in the selfsame moment
+the womanly heart beneath his robe yearned pityingly toward the doomed
+prisoner, and the tears came into his eyes.  He opened his lips to speak,
+but the Lord Chief Justice said quickly:
+
+“Not there, your Grace, not there!  It is not lawful to pronounce
+judgment upon any of the ducal line SAVE FROM THE DUCAL THRONE!”
+
+
+A shudder went to the heart of poor Conrad, and a tremor shook the iron
+frame of his old father likewise.  CONRAD HAD NOT BEEN CROWNED--dared he
+profane the throne? He hesitated and turned pale with fear.  But it must
+be done.  Wondering eyes were already upon him.  They would be suspicious
+eyes if he hesitated longer.  He ascended the throne.  Presently he
+stretched forth the sceptre again, and said:
+
+“Prisoner, in the name of our sovereign lord, Ulrich, Duke of
+Brandenburgh, I proceed to the solemn duty that hath devolved upon me.
+Give heed to my words.  By the ancient law of the land, except you
+produce the partner of your guilt and deliver him up to the executioner
+you must surely die.  Embrace this opportunity--save yourself while yet
+you may.  Name the father of your child!”
+
+A solemn hush fell upon the great court--a silence so profound that men
+could hear their own hearts beat.  Then the princess slowly turned, with
+eyes gleaming with hate, and pointing her finger straight at Conrad,
+said:
+
+“Thou art the man!”
+
+An appalling conviction of his helpless, hopeless peril struck a chill to
+Conrad's heart like the chill of death itself.  What power on earth could
+save him!  To disprove the charge he must reveal that he was a woman,
+and for an uncrowned woman to sit in the ducal chair was death!  At one
+and the same moment he and his grim old father swooned and fell to the
+ground.
+
+The remainder of this thrilling and eventful story will NOT be found in
+this or any other publication, either now or at any future time.]
+
+The truth is, I have got my hero (or heroine) into such a particularly
+close place that I do not see how I am ever going to get him (or her)
+out of it again, and therefore I will wash my hands of the whole
+business, and leave that person to get out the best way that offers---or
+else stay there.  I thought it was going to be easy enough to straighten
+out that little difficulty, but it looks different now.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+PETITION CONCERNING COPYRIGHT
+
+TO THE HONORABLE THE SENATE AND HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
+IN CONGRESS ASSEMBLED:
+
+Whereas, The Constitution guarantees equal rights to all, backed by the
+Declaration of Independence; and
+
+Whereas, Under our laws, the right of property in real estate is
+perpetual; and
+
+Whereas, Under our laws, the right of property in the literary result of
+a citizen's intellectual labor is restricted to forty-two years; and
+
+Whereas, Forty-two years seems an exceedingly just and righteous term,
+and a sufficiently long one for the retention of property;
+
+Therefore, Your petitioner, having the good of his country solely at
+heart, humbly prays that “equal rights” and fair and equal treatment may
+be meted out to all citizens, by the restriction of rights in all
+property, real estate included, to the beneficent term of forty-two
+years.  Then shall all men bless your honorable body and be happy.  And
+for this will your petitioner ever pray.
+                                             MARK TWAIN.
+
+
+A PARAGRAPH NOT ADDED TO THE PETITION
+
+The charming absurdity of restricting property-rights in books to
+forty-two years sticks prominently out in the fact that hardly any man's
+books ever live forty-two years, or even the half of it; and so, for the
+sake of getting a shabby advantage of the heirs of about one Scott or
+Burns or Milton in a hundred years, the lawmakers of the “Great” Republic
+are content to leave that poor little pilfering edict upon the
+statute-books.  It is like an emperor lying in wait to rob a phenix's
+nest, and waiting the necessary century to get the chance.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+AFTER-DINNER SPEECH
+
+[AT A FOURTH OF JULY GATHERING, IN LONDON, OF AMERICANS]
+
+MR. CHAIRMAN AND LADIES AND GENTLEMEN: I thank you for the compliment
+which has just been tendered me, and to show my appreciation of it I will
+not afflict you with many words.  It is pleasant to celebrate in this
+peaceful way, upon this old mother soil, the anniversary of an experiment
+which was born of war with this same land so long ago, and wrought out to
+a successful issue by the devotion of our ancestors.  It has taken nearly
+a hundred years to bring the English and Americans into kindly and
+mutually appreciative relations, but I believe it has been accomplished
+at last.  It was a great step when the two last misunderstandings were
+settled by arbitration instead of cannon.  It is another great step when
+England adopts our sewing-machines without claiming the invention--as
+usual.  It was another when they imported one of our sleeping-cars the
+other day.  And it warmed my heart more than I can tell, yesterday, when
+I witnessed the spectacle of an Englishman ordering an American sherry
+cobbler of his own free will and accord--and not only that but with a
+great brain and a level head reminding the barkeeper not to forget the
+strawberries.  With a common origin, a common language, a common
+literature, a common religion and--common drinks, what is longer needful
+to the cementing of the two nations together in a permanent bond of
+brotherhood?
+
+This is an age of progress, and ours is a progressive land.  A great and
+glorious land, too--a land which has developed a Washington, a Franklin,
+a William M. Tweed, a Longfellow, a Motley, a Jay Gould, a Samuel C.
+Pomeroy, a recent Congress which has never had its equal (in some
+respects), and a United States Army which conquered sixty Indians in
+eight months by tiring them out--which is much better than uncivilized
+slaughter, God knows.  We have a criminal jury system which is superior
+to any in the world; and its efficiency is only marred by the difficulty
+of finding twelve men every day who don't know anything and can't read.
+And I may observe that we have an insanity plea that would have saved
+Cain.  I think I can say, and say with pride, that we have some
+legislatures that bring higher prices than any in the world.
+
+I refer with effusion to our railway system, which consents to let us
+live, though it might do the opposite, being our owners.  It only
+destroyed three thousand and seventy lives last year by collisions, and
+twenty-seven thousand two hundred and sixty by running over heedless and
+unnecessary people at crossings.  The companies seriously regretted the
+killing of these thirty thousand people, and went so far as to pay for
+some of them--voluntarily, of course, for the meanest of us would not
+claim that we possess a court treacherous enough to enforce a law against
+a railway company.  But, thank Heaven, the railway companies are
+generally disposed to do the right and kindly thing without compulsion.
+I know of an instance which greatly touched me at the time.  After an
+accident the company sent home the remains of a dear distant old relative
+of mine in a basket, with the remark, “Please state what figure you hold
+him at--and return the basket.”  Now there couldn't be anything
+friendlier than that.
+
+But I must not stand here and brag all night.  However, you won't mind a
+body bragging a little about his country on the fourth of July.  It is a
+fair and legitimate time to fly the eagle.  I will say only one more word
+of brag--and a hopeful one.  It is this.  We have a form of government
+which gives each man a fair chance and no favor.  With us no individual
+is born with a right to look down upon his neighbor and hold him in
+contempt.  Let such of us as are not dukes find our consolation in that.
+And we may find hope for the future in the fact that as unhappy as is the
+condition of our political morality to-day, England has risen up out of
+a far fouler since the days when Charles I. ennobled courtesans and all
+political place was a matter of bargain and sale.  There is hope for us
+yet. 1
+
+     1 At least the above is the speech which I was going to make, but our
+     minister, General Schenck, presided, and after the blessing, got up
+     and made a great long inconceivably dull harangue, and wound up by
+     saying that inasmuch as speech-making did not seem to exhilarate the
+     guests much, all further oratory would be dispensed with during the
+     evening, and we could just sit and talk privately to our
+     elbow-neighbors and have a good sociable time.  It is known that in
+     consequence of that remark forty-four perfected speeches died in the
+     womb.  The depression, the gloom, the solemnity that reigned over
+     the banquet from that time forth will be a lasting memory with many
+     that were there.  By that one thoughtless remark General Schenck
+     lost forty-four of the best friends he had in England.  More than
+     one said that night, “And this is the sort of person that is sent to
+     represent us in a great sister empire!”
+
+
+
+
+
+
+LIONIZING MURDERERS
+
+I had heard so much about the celebrated fortune-teller Madame-----, that
+I went to see her yesterday.  She has a dark complexion naturally, and
+this effect is heightened by artificial aids which cost her nothing.
+She wears curls--very black ones, and I had an impression that she gave
+their native attractiveness a lift with rancid butter.  She wears a
+reddish check handkerchief, cast loosely around her neck, and it was
+plain that her other one is slow getting back from the wash.  I presume
+she takes snuff.  At any rate, something resembling it had lodged among
+the hairs sprouting from her upper lip.  I know she likes garlic--I knew
+that as soon as she sighed.  She looked at me searchingly for nearly a
+minute, with her black eyes, and then said:
+
+“It is enough.  Come!”
+
+She started down a very dark and dismal corridor--I stepping close after
+her.  Presently she stopped, and said that, as the way was so crooked and
+dark, perhaps she had better get a light.  But it seemed ungallant to
+allow a woman to put herself to so much trouble for me, and so I said:
+
+“It is not worth while, madam.  If you will heave another sigh, I think I
+can follow it.”
+
+So we got along all right.  Arrived at her official and mysterious den,
+she asked me to tell her the date of my birth, the exact hour of that
+occurrence, and the color of my grandmother's hair.  I answered as
+accurately as I could.  Then she said:
+
+“Young man, summon your fortitude--do not tremble.  I am about to reveal
+the past.”
+
+“Information concerning the future would be, in a general way, more--”
+
+“Silence!  You have had much trouble, some joy, some good fortune, some
+bad.  Your great grandfather was hanged.”
+
+“That is a l--”
+
+“Silence!  Hanged sir.  But it was not his fault.  He could not help it.”
+
+“I am glad you do him justice.”
+
+“Ah--grieve, rather, that the jury did.  He was hanged.  His star crosses
+yours in the fourth division, fifth sphere.  Consequently you will be
+hanged also.”
+
+“In view of this cheerful--”
+
+“I must have silence.  Yours was not, in the beginning, a criminal
+nature, but circumstances changed it.  At the age of nine you stole
+sugar.  At the age of fifteen you stole money.  At twenty you stole
+horses.  At twenty-five you committed arson.  At thirty, hardened in
+crime, you became an editor.  You are now a public lecturer.  Worse
+things are in store for you.  You will be sent to Congress.  Next, to the
+penitentiary.  Finally, happiness will come again--all will be well--you
+will be hanged.”
+
+I was now in tears.  It seemed hard enough to go to Congress; but to be
+hanged--this was too sad, too dreadful.  The woman seemed surprised at my
+grief.  I told her the thoughts that were in my mind.  Then she comforted
+me.
+
+“Why, man,” she said, “hold up your head--you have nothing to grieve
+about.  Listen.
+
+--[In this paragraph the fortune-teller details the exact history of the
+Pike-Brown assassination case in New Hampshire, from the succoring and
+saving of the stranger Pike by the Browns, to the subsequent hanging and
+coffining of that treacherous miscreant.  She adds nothing, invents
+nothing, exaggerates nothing (see any New England paper for November,
+1869).  This Pike-Brown case is selected merely as a type, to illustrate
+a custom that prevails, not in New Hampshire alone, but in every state in
+the Union--I mean the sentimental custom of visiting, petting,
+glorifying, and snuffling over murderers like this Pike, from the day
+they enter the jail under sentence of death until they swing from the
+gallows.  The following extract from the Temple Bar (1866) reveals the
+fact that this custom is not confined to the United States.--- “On December
+31, 1841, a man named John Johnes, a shoemaker, murdered his sweetheart,
+Mary Hallam, the daughter of a respectable laborer, at Mansfield, in the
+county of Nottingham.  He was executed on March 23, 1842.  He was a man
+of unsteady habits, and gave way to violent fits of passion.  The girl
+declined his addresses, and he said if he did not have her no one else
+should.  After he had inflicted the first wound, which was not
+immediately fatal, she begged for her life, but seeing him resolved,
+asked for time to pray.  He said that he would pray for both, and
+completed the crime.  The wounds were inflicted by a shoemaker's knife,
+and her throat was cut barbarously.  After this he dropped on his knees
+some time, and prayed God to have mercy on two unfortunate lovers.
+He made no attempt to escape, and confessed the crime.  After his
+imprisonment he behaved in a most decorous manner; he won upon the good
+opinion of the jail chaplain, and he was visited by the Bishop of
+Lincoln.  It does not appear that he expressed any contrition for the
+crime, but seemed to pass away with triumphant certainty that he was
+going to rejoin his victim in heaven.  He was visited by some pious and
+benevolent ladies of Nottingham, some of whom declared he was a child of
+God, if ever there was one.  One of the ladies sent him a white camellia
+to wear at his execution.”]
+
+“You will live in New Hampshire.  In your sharp need and distress the
+Brown family will succor you--such of them as Pike the assassin left
+alive.  They will be benefactors to you.  When you shall have grown fat
+upon their bounty, and are grateful and happy, you will desire to make
+some modest return for these things, and so you will go to the house some
+night and brain the whole family with an ax.  You will rob the dead
+bodies of your benefactors, and disburse your gains in riotous living
+among the rowdies and courtesans of Boston.  Then you will be arrested,
+tried, condemned to be hanged, thrown into prison.  Now is your happy
+day.  You will be converted--you will be converted just as soon as
+every effort to compass pardon, commutation, or reprieve has failed--and
+then!--Why, then, every morning and every afternoon, the best and purest
+young ladies of the village will assemble in your cell and sing hymns.
+This will show that assassination is respectable.  Then you will write a
+touching letter, in which you will forgive all those recent Browns.  This
+will excite the public admiration.  No public can withstand magnanimity.
+Next, they will take you to the scaffold, with great éclat, at the head
+of an imposing procession composed of clergymen, officials, citizens
+generally, and young ladies walking pensively two and two, and bearing
+bouquets and immortelles.  You will mount the scaffold, and while the
+great concourse stand uncovered in your presence, you will read your
+sappy little speech which the minister has written for you.  And then, in
+the midst of a grand and impressive silence, they will swing you into
+per--Paradise, my son.  There will not be a dry eye on the ground.  You
+will be a hero!  Not a rough there but will envy you.  Not a rough there
+but will resolve to emulate you.  And next, a great procession will
+follow you to the tomb--will weep over your remains--the young ladies
+will sing again the hymns made dear by sweet associations connected with
+the jail, and, as a last tribute of affection, respect, and appreciation
+of your many sterling qualities, they will walk two and two around your
+bier, and strew wreaths of flowers on it.  And lo! you are canonized.
+Think of it, son-ingrate, assassin, robber of the dead, drunken brawler
+among thieves and harlots in the slums of Boston one month, and the pet
+of the pure and innocent daughters of the land the next!  A bloody and
+hateful devil--a bewept, bewailed, and sainted martyr--all in a month!
+Fool!--so noble a fortune, and yet you sit here grieving!”
+
+“No, madam,” I said, “you do me wrong, you do, indeed.  I am perfectly
+satisfied.  I did not know before that my great-grandfather was hanged,
+but it is of no consequence.  He has probably ceased to bother about it
+by this time--and I have not commenced yet.  I confess, madam, that I do
+something in the way of editing and lecturing, but the other crimes you
+mention have escaped my memory.  Yet I must have committed them--you
+would not deceive a stranger.  But let the past be as it was, and let the
+future be as it may--these are nothing.  I have only cared for one thing.
+I have always felt that I should be hanged some day, and somehow the
+thought has annoyed me considerably; but if you can only assure me that I
+shall be hanged in New Hampshire--”
+
+“Not a shadow of a doubt!”
+
+“Bless you, my benefactress!--excuse this embrace--you have removed a
+great load from my breast.  To be hanged in New Hampshire is happiness
+--it leaves an honored name behind a man, and introduces him at once into
+the best New Hampshire society in the other world.”
+
+I then took leave of the fortune-teller.  But, seriously, is it well to
+glorify a murderous villain on the scaffold, as Pike was glorified in New
+Hampshire?  Is it well to turn the penalty for a bloody crime into a
+reward?  Is it just to do it?  Is it safe?
+
+
+
+
+
+
+A NEW CRIME
+
+LEGISLATION NEEDED
+
+This country, during the last thirty or forty years, has produced some of
+the most remarkable cases of insanity of which there is any mention in
+history.  For instance, there was the Baldwin case, in Ohio, twenty-two
+years ago.  Baldwin, from his boyhood up, had been of a vindictive,
+malignant, quarrelsome nature.  He put a boy's eye out once, and never
+was heard upon any occasion to utter a regret for it.  He did many such
+things.  But at last he did something that was serious.  He called at a
+house just after dark one evening, knocked, and when the occupant came to
+the door, shot him dead, and then tried to escape, but was captured.
+Two days before, he had wantonly insulted a helpless cripple, and the man
+he afterward took swift vengeance upon with an assassin bullet had
+knocked him down.  Such was the Baldwin case.  The trial was long and
+exciting; the community was fearfully wrought up.  Men said this
+spiteful, bad-hearted villain had caused grief enough in his time, and
+now he should satisfy the law.  But they were mistaken; Baldwin was
+insane when he did the deed--they had not thought of that.  By the
+argument of counsel it was shown that at half past ten in the morning on
+the day of the murder, Baldwin became insane, and remained so for eleven
+hours and a half exactly.  This just covered the case comfortably, and he
+was acquitted.  Thus, if an unthinking and excited community had been
+listened to instead of the arguments of counsel, a poor crazy creature
+would have been held to a fearful responsibility for a mere freak of
+madness.  Baldwin went clear, and although his relatives and friends were
+naturally incensed against the community for their injurious suspicions
+and remarks, they said let it go for this time, and did not prosecute.
+The Baldwins were very wealthy.  This same Baldwin had momentary fits of
+insanity twice afterward, and on both occasions killed people he had
+grudges against.  And on both these occasions the circumstances of the
+killing were so aggravated, and the murders so seemingly heartless and
+treacherous, that if Baldwin had not been insane he would have been
+hanged without the shadow of a doubt.  As it was, it required all his
+political and family influence to get him clear in one of the cases, and
+cost him not less than ten thousand dollars to get clear in the other.
+One of these men he had notoriously been threatening to kill for twelve
+years.  The poor creature happened, by the merest piece of ill fortune,
+to come along a dark alley at the very moment that Baldwin's insanity
+came upon him, and so he was shot in the back with a gun loaded with
+slugs.
+
+Take the case of Lynch Hackett, of Pennsylvania.  Twice, in public, he
+attacked a German butcher by the name of Bemis Feldner, with a cane, and
+both times Feldner whipped him with his fists.  Hackett was a vain,
+wealthy, violent gentleman, who held his blood and family in high esteem,
+and believed that a reverent respect was due to his great riches.  He
+brooded over the shame of his chastisement for two weeks, and then, in a
+momentary fit of insanity, armed himself to the teeth, rode into town,
+waited a couple of hours until he saw Feldner coming down the street with
+his wife on his arm, and then, as the couple passed the doorway in which
+he had partially concealed himself, he drove a knife into Feldner's neck,
+killing him instantly.  The widow caught the limp form and eased it to
+the earth.  Both were drenched with blood.  Hackett jocosely remarked to
+her that as a professional butcher's recent wife she could appreciate the
+artistic neatness of the job that left her in condition to marry again,
+in case she wanted to.  This remark, and another which he made to a
+friend, that his position in society made the killing of an obscure
+citizen simply an “eccentricity” instead of a crime, were shown to be
+evidences of insanity, and so Hackett escaped punishment.  The jury were
+hardly inclined to accept these as proofs at first, inasmuch as the
+prisoner had never been insane before the murder, and under the
+tranquilizing effect of the butchering had immediately regained his right
+mind; but when the defense came to show that a third cousin of Hackett's
+wife's stepfather was insane, and not only insane, but had a nose the
+very counterpart of Hackett's, it was plain that insanity was hereditary
+in the family, and Hackett had come by it by legitimate inheritance.
+
+Of course the jury then acquitted him.  But it was a merciful providence
+that Mrs. H.'s people had been afflicted as shown, else Hackett would
+certainly have been hanged.
+
+However, it is not possible to recount all the marvelous cases of
+insanity that have come under the public notice in the last thirty or
+forty years.  There was the Durgin case in New Jersey three years ago.
+The servant girl, Bridget Durgin, at dead of night, invaded her
+mistress's bedroom and carved the lady literally to pieces with a knife.
+Then she dragged the body to the middle of the floor, and beat and banged
+it with chairs and such things.  Next she opened the feather beds, and
+strewed the contents around, saturated everything with kerosene, and set
+fire to the general wreck.  She now took up the young child of the
+murdered woman in her blood smeared hands and walked off, through the
+snow, with no shoes on, to a neighbor's house a quarter of a mile off,
+and told a string of wild, incoherent stories about some men coming and
+setting fire to the house; and then she cried piteously, and without
+seeming to think there was anything suggestive about the blood upon her
+hands, her clothing, and the baby, volunteered the remark that she was
+afraid those men had murdered her mistress!  Afterward, by her own
+confession and other testimony, it was proved that the mistress had
+always been kind to the girl, consequently there was no revenge in the
+murder; and it was also shown that the girl took nothing away from the
+burning house, not even her own shoes, and consequently robbery was not
+the motive.
+
+Now, the reader says, “Here comes that same old plea of insanity again.”
+ But the reader has deceived himself this time.  No such plea was offered
+in her defense.  The judge sentenced her, nobody persecuted the governor
+with petitions for her pardon, and she was promptly hanged.
+
+There was that youth in Pennsylvania, whose curious confession was
+published some years ago.  It was simply a conglomeration of incoherent
+drivel from beginning to end, and so was his lengthy speech on the
+scaffold afterward.  For a whole year he was haunted with a desire to
+disfigure a certain young woman, so that no one would marry her.  He did
+not love her himself, and did not want to marry her, but he did not want
+anybody else to do it.  He would not go anywhere with her, and yet was
+opposed to anybody else's escorting her.  Upon one occasion he declined
+to go to a wedding with her, and when she got other company, lay in wait
+for the couple by the road, intending to make them go back or kill the
+escort.  After spending sleepless nights over his ruling desire for a
+full year, he at last attempted its execution--that is, attempted to
+disfigure the young woman.  It was a success.  It was permanent.  In
+trying to shoot her cheek (as she sat at the supper-table with her
+parents and brothers and sisters) in such a manner as to mar its
+comeliness, one of his bullets wandered a little out of the course, and
+she dropped dead.  To the very last moment of his life he bewailed the
+ill luck that made her move her face just at the critical moment.  And so
+he died, apparently about half persuaded that somehow it was chiefly her
+own fault that she got killed.  This idiot was hanged.  The plea of
+insanity was not offered.
+
+Insanity certainly is on the increase in the world, and crime is dying
+out.  There are no longer any murders--none worth mentioning, at any
+rate.  Formerly, if you killed a man, it was possible that you were
+insane--but now, if you, having friends and money, kill a man, it is
+evidence that you are a lunatic.  In these days, too, if a person of good
+family and high social standing steals anything, they call it
+kleptomania, and send him to the lunatic asylum.  If a person of high
+standing squanders his fortune in dissipation, and closes his career with
+strychnine or a bullet, “Temporary Aberration” is what was the trouble
+with him.
+
+Is not this insanity plea becoming rather common?  Is it not so common
+that the reader confidently expects to see it offered in every criminal
+case that comes before the courts?  And is it not so cheap, and so
+common, and often so trivial, that the reader smiles in derision when the
+newspaper mentions it? And is it not curious to note how very often it wins
+acquittal for the prisoner?  Of late years it does not seem possible for a man
+to so conduct himself, before killing another man, as not to be manifestly
+insane.  If he talks about the stars, he is insane.  If he appears
+nervous and uneasy an hour before the killing, he is insane.  If he weeps
+over a great grief, his friends shake their heads, and fear that he is
+“not right.”  If, an hour after the murder, he seems ill at ease,
+preoccupied, and excited, he is, unquestionably insane.
+
+Really, what we want now, is not laws against crime, but a law against
+insanity.  There is where the true evil lies.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+A CURIOUS DREAM [Written about 1870.]
+
+CONTAINING A MORAL
+
+Night before last I had a singular dream.  I seemed to be sitting on a
+doorstep (in no particular city perhaps) ruminating, and the time of
+night appeared to be about twelve or one o'clock.  The weather was balmy
+and delicious.  There was no human sound in the air, not even a footstep.
+There was no sound of any kind to emphasize the dead stillness, except
+the occasional hollow barking of a dog in the distance and the fainter
+answer of a further dog.  Presently up the street I heard a bony
+clack-clacking, and guessed it was the castanets of a serenading party.
+In a minute more a tall skeleton, hooded, and half clad in a tattered and
+moldy shroud, whose shreds were flapping about the ribby latticework of
+its person, swung by me with a stately stride and disappeared in the gray
+gloom of the starlight.  It had a broken and worm-eaten coffin on its
+shoulder and a bundle of something in its hand.  I knew what the
+clack-clacking was then; it was this party's joints working together,
+and his elbows knocking against his sides as he walked.  I may say I was
+surprised.  Before I could collect my thoughts and enter upon any
+speculations as to what this apparition might portend, I heard another
+one coming for I recognized his clack-clack.  He had two-thirds of a
+coffin on his shoulder, and some foot and head boards under his arm.
+I mightily wanted to peer under his hood and speak to him, but when he
+turned and smiled upon me with his cavernous sockets and his projecting
+grin as he went by, I thought I would not detain him.  He was hardly gone
+when I heard the clacking again, and another one issued from the shadowy
+half-light.  This one was bending under a heavy gravestone, and dragging
+a shabby coffin after him by a string.  When he got to me he gave me a
+steady look for a moment or two, and then rounded to and backed up to me,
+saying:
+
+“Ease this down for a fellow, will you?”
+
+I eased the gravestone down till it rested on the ground, and in doing so
+noticed that it bore the name of “John Baxter Copmanhurst,” with “May,
+1839,” as the date of his death.  Deceased sat wearily down by me, and
+wiped his os frontis with his major maxillary--chiefly from former habit
+I judged, for I could not see that he brought away any perspiration.
+
+“It is too bad, too bad,” said he, drawing the remnant of the shroud
+about him and leaning his jaw pensively on his hand.  Then he put his
+left foot up on his knee and fell to scratching his anklebone absently
+with a rusty nail which he got out of his coffin.
+
+“What is too bad, friend?”
+
+“Oh, everything, everything.  I almost wish I never had died.”
+
+“You surprise me.  Why do you say this?  Has anything gone wrong?  What
+is the matter?”
+
+“Matter!  Look at this shroud-rags.  Look at this gravestone, all
+battered up.  Look at that disgraceful old coffin.  All a man's property
+going to ruin and destruction before his eyes, and ask him if anything is
+wrong?  Fire and brimstone!”
+
+“Calm yourself, calm yourself,” I said.  “It is too bad--it is certainly
+too bad, but then I had not supposed that you would much mind such
+matters, situated as you are.”
+
+“Well, my dear sir, I DO mind them.  My pride is hurt, and my comfort is
+impaired--destroyed, I might say.  I will state my case--I will put it to
+you in such a way that you can comprehend it, if you will let me,” said
+the poor skeleton, tilting the hood of his shroud back, as if he were
+clearing for action, and thus unconsciously giving himself a jaunty and
+festive air very much at variance with the grave character of his
+position in life--so to speak--and in prominent contrast with his
+distressful mood.
+
+“Proceed,” said I.
+
+“I reside in the shameful old graveyard a block or two above you here,
+in this street--there, now, I just expected that cartilage would let go!
+--third rib from the bottom, friend, hitch the end of it to my spine with
+a string, if you have got such a thing about you, though a bit of silver
+wire is a deal pleasanter, and more durable and becoming, if one keeps it
+polished--to think of shredding out and going to pieces in this way, just
+on account of the indifference and neglect of one's posterity!”--and the
+poor ghost grated his teeth in a way that gave me a wrench and a shiver
+--for the effect is mightily increased by the absence of muffling flesh
+and cuticle.  “I reside in that old graveyard, and have for these thirty
+years; and I tell you things are changed since I first laid this old
+tired frame there, and turned over, and stretched out for a long sleep,
+with a delicious sense upon me of being DONE with bother, and grief,
+and anxiety, and doubt, and fear, forever and ever, and listening with
+comfortable and increasing satisfaction to the sexton's work, from the
+startling clatter of his first spadeful on my coffin till it dulled away
+to the faint patting that shaped the roof of my new home--delicious!  My!
+I wish you could try it to-night!” and out of my reverie deceased fetched
+me a rattling slap with a bony hand.
+
+“Yes, sir, thirty years ago I laid me down there, and was happy.  For it
+was out in the country then--out in the breezy, flowery, grand old woods,
+and the lazy winds gossiped with the leaves, and the squirrels capered
+over us and around us, and the creeping things visited us, and the birds
+filled the tranquil solitude with music.  Ah, it was worth ten years of a
+man's life to be dead then!  Everything was pleasant.  I was in a good
+neighborhood, for all the dead people that lived near me belonged to the
+best families in the city.  Our posterity appeared to think the world of
+us.  They kept our graves in the very best condition; the fences were
+always in faultless repair, head-boards were kept painted or whitewashed,
+and were replaced with new ones as soon as they began to look rusty or
+decayed; monuments were kept upright, railings intact and bright, the
+rose-bushes and shrubbery trimmed, trained, and free from blemish, the
+walks clean and smooth and graveled.  But that day is gone by.  Our
+descendants have forgotten us.  My grandson lives in a stately house
+built with money made by these old hands of mine, and I sleep in a
+neglected grave with invading vermin that gnaw my shroud to build them
+nests withal!  I and friends that lie with me founded and secured the
+prosperity of this fine city, and the stately bantling of our loves
+leaves us to rot in a dilapidated cemetery which neighbors curse and
+strangers scoff at.  See the difference between the old time and this
+--for instance: Our graves are all caved in now; our head-boards have
+rotted away and tumbled down; our railings reel this way and that, with
+one foot in the air, after a fashion of unseemly levity; our monuments
+lean wearily, and our gravestones bow their heads discouraged; there be
+no adornments any more--no roses, nor shrubs, nor graveled walks, nor
+anything that is a comfort to the eye; and even the paintless old board
+fence that did make a show of holding us sacred from companionship with
+beasts and the defilement of heedless feet, has tottered till it
+overhangs the street, and only advertises the presence of our dismal
+resting-place and invites yet more derision to it.  And now we cannot
+hide our poverty and tatters in the friendly woods, for the city has
+stretched its withering arms abroad and taken us in, and all that remains
+of the cheer of our old home is the cluster of lugubrious forest trees
+that stand, bored and weary of a city life, with their feet in our
+coffins, looking into the hazy distance and wishing they were there.
+I tell you it is disgraceful!
+
+“You begin to comprehend--you begin to see how it is.  While our
+descendants are living sumptuously on our money, right around us in the
+city, we have to fight hard to keep skull and bones together.  Bless you,
+there isn't a grave in our cemetery that doesn't leak--not one.  Every
+time it rains in the night we have to climb out and roost in the trees---
+and sometimes we are wakened suddenly by the chilly water trickling down
+the back of our necks.  Then I tell you there is a general heaving up of
+old graves and kicking over of old monuments, and scampering of old
+skeletons for the trees!  Bless me, if you had gone along there some such
+nights after twelve you might have seen as many as fifteen of us roosting
+on one limb, with our joints rattling drearily and the wind wheezing
+through our ribs!  Many a time we have perched there for three or four
+dreary hours, and then come down, stiff and chilled through and drowsy,
+and borrowed each other's skulls to bail out our graves with--if you will
+glance up in my mouth now as I tilt my head back, you can see that my
+head-piece is half full of old dry sediment--how top-heavy and stupid it
+makes me sometimes!  Yes, sir, many a time if you had happened to come
+along just before the dawn you'd have caught us bailing out the graves
+and hanging our shrouds on the fence to dry.  Why, I had an elegant
+shroud stolen from there one morning--think a party by the name of Smith
+took it, that resides in a plebeian graveyard over yonder--I think so
+because the first time I ever saw him he hadn't anything on but a check
+shirt, and the last time I saw him, which was at a social gathering in
+the new cemetery, he was the best-dressed corpse in the company--and it
+is a significant fact that he left when he saw me; and presently an old
+woman from here missed her coffin--she generally took it with her when
+she went anywhere, because she was liable to take cold and bring on the
+spasmodic rheumatism that originally killed her if she exposed herself to
+the night air much.  She was named Hotchkiss--Anna Matilda Hotchkiss--you
+might know her?  She has two upper front teeth, is tall, but a good deal
+inclined to stoop, one rib on the left side gone, has one shred of rusty
+hair hanging from the left side of her head, and one little tuft just
+above and a little forward of her right ear, has her underjaw wired on
+one side where it had worked loose, small bone of left forearm gone--lost
+in a fight--has a kind of swagger in her gait and a 'gallus' way of going
+with her arms akimbo and her nostrils in the air--has been pretty free
+and easy, and is all damaged and battered up till she looks like a
+queensware crate in ruins--maybe you have met her?”
+
+“God forbid!” I involuntarily ejaculated, for somehow I was not looking
+for that form of question, and it caught me a little off my guard.  But I
+hastened to make amends for my rudeness, and say, “I simply meant I had
+not had the honor--for I would not deliberately speak discourteously of a
+friend of yours.  You were saying that you were robbed--and it was a
+shame, too--but it appears by what is left of the shroud you have on that
+it was a costly one in its day.  How did--”
+
+A most ghastly expression began to develop among the decayed features and
+shriveled integuments of my guest's face, and I was beginning to grow
+uneasy and distressed, when he told me he was only working up a deep,
+sly smile, with a wink in it, to suggest that about the time he acquired
+his present garment a ghost in a neighboring cemetery missed one.  This
+reassured me, but I begged him to confine himself to speech thenceforth,
+because his facial expression was uncertain.  Even with the most
+elaborate care it was liable to miss fire.  Smiling should especially be
+avoided.  What HE might honestly consider a shining success was likely to
+strike me in a very different light.  I said I liked to see a skeleton
+cheerful, even decorously playful, but I did not think smiling was a
+skeleton's best hold.
+
+“Yes, friend,” said the poor skeleton, “the facts are just as I have
+given them to you.  Two of these old graveyards---the one that I resided
+in and one further along--- have been deliberately neglected by our
+descendants of to-day until there is no occupying them any longer.  Aside
+from the osteological discomfort of it---and that is no light matter this
+rainy weather---the present state of things is ruinous to property.  We
+have got to move or be content to see our effects wasted away and utterly
+destroyed.
+
+“Now, you will hardly believe it, but it is true, nevertheless, that there
+isn't a single coffin in good repair among all my acquaintance---now that
+is an absolute fact.  I do not refer to low people who come in a pine box
+mounted on an express-wagon, but I am talking about your high-toned,
+silver-mounted burial-case, your monumental sort, that travel under black
+plumes at the head of a procession and have choice of cemetery lots
+---I mean folks like the Jarvises, and the Bledsoes and Burlings, and such.
+They are all about ruined.  The most substantial people in our set, they
+were.  And now look at them--utterly used up and poverty-stricken.  One
+of the Bledsoes actually traded his monument to a late barkeeper for some
+fresh shavings to put under his head.  I tell you it speaks volumes, for
+there is nothing a corpse takes so much pride in as his monument.  He
+loves to read the inscription.  He comes after a while to believe what it
+says himself, and then you may see him sitting on the fence night after
+night enjoying it.  Epitaphs are cheap, and they do a poor chap a world
+of good after he is dead, especially if he had hard luck while he was
+alive.  I wish they were used more.  Now I don't complain, but
+confidentially I DO think it was a little shabby in my descendants to
+give me nothing but this old slab of a gravestone---and all the more that
+there isn't a compliment on it.  It used to have
+
+                    'GONE TO HIS JUST REWARD'
+
+on it, and I was proud when I first saw it, but by and by I noticed that
+whenever an old friend of mine came along he would hook his chin on the
+railing and pull a long face and read along down till he came to that,
+and then he would chuckle to himself and walk off, looking satisfied and
+comfortable.  So I scratched it off to get rid of those fools.  But a
+dead man always takes a deal of pride in his monument.  Yonder goes half
+a dozen of the Jarvises now, with the family monument along.  And
+Smithers and some hired specters went by with his awhile ago.  Hello,
+Higgins, good-by, old friend!  That's Meredith Higgins--died in '44
+--belongs to our set in the cemetery--fine old family--great-grandmother
+was an Injun--I am on the most familiar terms with him--he didn't hear me
+was the reason he didn't answer me.  And I am sorry, too, because I would
+have liked to introduce you.  You would admire him.  He is the most
+disjointed, sway-backed, and generally distorted old skeleton you ever
+saw, but he is full of fun.  When he laughs it sounds like rasping two
+stones together, and he always starts it off with a cheery screech like
+raking a nail across a window-pane.  Hey, Jones!  That is old Columbus
+Jones--shroud cost four hundred dollars--entire trousseau, including
+monument, twenty-seven hundred.  This was in the spring of '26.  It was
+enormous style for those days.  Dead people came all the way from the
+Alleghanies to see his things--the party that occupied the grave next to
+mine remembers it well.  Now do you see that individual going along with
+a piece of a head-board under his arm, one leg-bone below his knee gone,
+and not a thing in the world on?  That is Barstow Dalhousie, and next to
+Columbus Jones he was the most sumptuously outfitted person that ever
+entered our cemetery.  We are all leaving.  We cannot tolerate the
+treatment we are receiving at the hands of our descendants.  They open
+new cemeteries, but they leave us to our ignominy.  They mend the
+streets, but they never mend anything that is about us or belongs to us.
+Look at that coffin of mine--yet I tell you in its day it was a piece of
+furniture that would have attracted attention in any drawing-room in this
+city.  You may have it if you want it--I can't afford to repair it.
+Put a new bottom in her, and part of a new top, and a bit of fresh lining
+along the left side, and you'll find her about as comfortable as any
+receptacle of her species you ever tried.  No thanks--no, don't mention it--
+you have been civil to me, and I would give you all the property I have
+got before I would seem ungrateful.  Now this winding-sheet is a kind of
+a sweet thing in its way, if you would like to--No?  Well, just as you
+say, but I wished to be fair and liberal--there's nothing mean about ME.
+Good-by, friend, I must be going.  I may have a good way to go to-night
+--don't know.  I only know one thing for certain, and that is that I am
+on the emigrant trail now, and I'll never sleep in that crazy old
+cemetery again.  I will travel till I find respectable quarters, if I
+have to hoof it to New Jersey.  All the boys are going.  It was decided
+in public conclave, last night, to emigrate, and by the time the sun
+rises there won't be a bone left in our old habitations.  Such cemeteries
+may suit my surviving friends, but they do not suit the remains that have
+the honor to make these remarks.  My opinion is the general opinion.
+If you doubt it, go and see how the departing ghosts upset things before
+they started.  They were almost riotous in their demonstrations of
+distaste.  Hello, here are some of the Bledsoes, and if you will give me
+a lift with this tombstone I guess I will join company and jog along with
+them--mighty respectable old family, the Bledsoes, and used to always
+come out in six-horse hearses and all that sort of thing fifty years ago
+when I walked these streets in daylight.  Good-by, friend.”
+
+And with his gravestone on his shoulder he joined the grisly procession,
+dragging his damaged coffin after him, for notwithstanding he pressed it
+upon me so earnestly, I utterly refused his hospitality.  I suppose that
+for as much as two hours these sad outcasts went clacking by, laden with
+their dismal effects, and all that time I sat pitying them.  One or two
+of the youngest and least dilapidated among them inquired about midnight
+trains on the railways, but the rest seemed unacquainted with that mode
+of travel, and merely asked about common public roads to various towns
+and cities, some of which are not on the map now, and vanished from it
+and from the earth as much as thirty years ago, and some few of them
+never HAD existed anywhere but on maps, and private ones in real-estate
+agencies at that.  And they asked about the condition of the cemeteries
+in these towns and cities, and about the reputation the citizens bore as
+to reverence for the dead.
+
+This whole matter interested me deeply, and likewise compelled my
+sympathy for these homeless ones.  And it all seeming real, and I not
+knowing it was a dream, I mentioned to one shrouded wanderer an idea that
+had entered my head to publish an account of this curious and very
+sorrowful exodus, but said also that I could not describe it truthfully,
+and just as it occurred, without seeming to trifle with a grave subject
+and exhibit an irreverence for the dead that would shock and distress
+their surviving friends.  But this bland and stately remnant of a former
+citizen leaned him far over my gate and whispered in my ear, and said:
+
+“Do not let that disturb you.  The community that can stand such
+graveyards as those we are emigrating from can stand anything a body can
+say about the neglected and forsaken dead that lie in them.”
+
+At that very moment a cock crowed, and the weird procession vanished and
+left not a shred or a bone behind.  I awoke, and found myself lying with
+my head out of the bed and “sagging” downward considerably--a position
+favorable to dreaming dreams with morals in them, maybe, but not poetry.
+
+NOTE.--The reader is assured that if the cemeteries in his town are kept
+in good order, this Dream is not leveled at his town at all, but is
+leveled particularly and venomously at the NEXT town.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+A TRUE STORY
+
+REPEATED WORD FOR WORD AS I HEARD IT--[Written about 1876]
+
+It was summer-time, and twilight.  We were sitting on the porch of the
+farmhouse, on the summit of the hill, and “Aunt Rachel” was sitting
+respectfully below our level, on the steps--for she was our Servant, and
+colored.  She was of mighty frame and stature; she was sixty years old,
+but her eye was undimmed and her strength unabated.  She was a cheerful,
+hearty soul, and it was no more trouble for her to laugh than it is for a
+bird to sing.  She was under fire now, as usual when the day was done.
+That is to say, she was being chaffed without mercy, and was enjoying it.
+She would let off peal after peal of laughter, and then sit with her face in
+her hands and shake with throes of enjoyment which she could no longer
+get breath enough to express.  At such a moment as this a thought
+occurred to me, and I said:
+
+“Aunt Rachel, how is it that you've lived sixty years and never had any
+trouble?”
+
+She stopped quaking.  She paused, and there was moment of silence.  She
+turned her face over her shoulder toward me, and said, without even a
+smile in her voice:
+
+“Misto C-----, is you in 'arnest?”
+
+It surprised me a good deal; and it sobered my manner and my speech, too.
+I said:
+
+“Why, I thought--that is, I meant--why, you can't have had any trouble.
+I've never heard you sigh, and never seen your eye when there wasn't a
+laugh in it.”
+
+She faced fairly around now, and was full earnestness.
+
+“Has I had any trouble? Misto C-----, I's gwyne to tell you, den I leave
+it to you.  I was bawn down 'mongst de slaves; I knows all 'bout slavery,
+'case I ben one of 'em my own se'f.  Well sah, my ole man--dat's my
+husban'--he was lovin' an' kind to me, jist as kind as you is to yo' own
+wife.  An' we had chil'en--seven chil'en--an' we loved dem chil'en jist de
+same as you loves yo' chil'en.  Dey was black, but de Lord can't make
+chil'en so black but what dey mother loves 'em an' wouldn't give 'em up,
+no, not for anything dat's in dis whole world.
+
+“Well, sah, I was raised in ole Fo'ginny, but my mother she was raised in
+Maryland; an' my SOULS! she was turrible when she'd git started!  My LAN!
+but she'd make de fur fly!  When she'd git into dem tantrums, she always
+had one word dat she said.  She'd straighten herse'f up an' put her fists
+in her hips an' say, 'I want you to understan' dat I wa'n't bawn in the
+mash to be fool' by trash!  I's one o' de ole Blue Hen's Chickens, I is!'
+'Ca'se you see, dat's what folks dat's bawn in Maryland calls deyselves,
+an' dey's proud of it.  Well, dat was her word.  I don't ever forgit it,
+beca'se she said it so much, an' beca'se she said it one day when my
+little Henry tore his wris' awful, and most busted 'is head, right up at
+de top of his forehead, an' de niggers didn't fly aroun' fas' enough to
+'tend to him.  An' when dey talk' back at her, she up an' she says,
+'Look-a-heah!' she says, 'I want you niggers to understan' dat I wa'n't
+bawn in de mash be fool' by trash! I's one o' de ole Blue Hen's chickens,
+I is!' an' den she clar' dat kitchen an' bandage' up de chile herse'f.
+So I says dat word, too, when I's riled.
+
+“Well, bymeby my ole mistis say she's broke, an' she got to sell all de
+niggers on de place.  An' when I heah dat dey gwyne to sell us all off at
+oction in Richmon', oh, de good gracious! I know what dat mean!”
+
+Aunt Rachel had gradually risen, while she warmed to her subject, and now
+she towered above us, black against the stars.
+
+“Dey put chains on us an' put us on a stan' as high as dis po'ch--twenty
+foot high--an' all de people stood aroun', crowds an' crowds.  An' dey'd
+come up dah an' look at us all roun', an' squeeze our arm, an' make us
+git up an' walk, an' den say, Dis one too ole,' or 'Dis one lame,' or
+'Dis one don't 'mount to much.' An' dey sole my ole man, an' took him
+away, an' dey begin to sell my chil'en an' take dem away, an' I begin to
+cry; an' de man say, 'Shet up yo' damn blubberin',' an' hit me on de mouf
+wid his han'.  An' when de las' one was gone but my little Henry, I grab'
+HIM clost up to my breas' so, an' I ris up an' says, 'You sha'nt take him
+away,' I says; 'I'll kill de man dat tetches him!' I says.  But my little
+Henry whisper an' say 'I gwyne to run away, an' den I work an' buy yo'
+freedom' Oh, bless de chile, he always so good!  But dey got him--dey got
+him, de men did; but I took and tear de clo'es mos' off of 'em an' beat
+'em over de head wid my chain; an' DEY give it to ME too, but I didn't
+mine dat.
+
+“Well, dah was my ole man gone, an' all my chil'en, all my seven chil'en
+--an' six of 'em I hain't set eyes on ag'in to dis day, an' dat's
+twenty-two year ago las' Easter.  De man dat bought me b'long' in
+Newbern, an' he took me dah.  Well, bymeby de years roll on an' de waw
+come.  My marster he was a Confedrit colonel, an' I was his family's
+cook.  So when de Unions took dat town, dey all run away an' lef' me all
+by myse'f wid de other niggers in dat mons'us big house.  So de big Union
+officers move in dah, an' dey ask me would I cook for DeM.  'Lord bless
+you,' says I, 'dat what I's FOR.'
+
+“Dey wa'n't no small-fry officers, mine you, dey was de biggest dey IS;
+an' de way dey made dem sojers mosey roun'!  De Gen'l he tole me to boss
+dat kitchen; an' he say, 'If anybody come meddlin' wid you, you jist make
+'em walk chalk; don't you be afeared,' he say; 'you's 'mong frens now.'
+
+“Well, I thinks to myse'f, if my little Henry ever got a chance to run
+away, he'd make to de Norf, o' course.  So one day I comes in dah whar de
+big officers was, in de parlor, an' I drops a kurtchy, so, an' I up an'
+tole 'em 'bout my Henry, dey a-listenin' to my troubles jist de same as
+if I was white folks; an' I says, 'What I come for is beca'se if he got
+away and got up Norf whar you gemmen comes from, you might 'a' seen him,
+maybe, an' could tell me so as I could fine him ag'in; he was very
+little, an' he had a sk-yar on his lef' wris' an' at de top of his
+forehead.' Den dey look mournful, an' de Gen'l says, 'How long sence you
+los' him?' an' I say, 'Thirteen year.'   Den de Gen'l say, 'He wouldn't be
+little no mo' now--he's a man!'
+
+“I never thought o' dat befo'!  He was only dat little feller to ME yit.
+I never thought 'bout him growin' up an' bein' big.  But I see it den.
+None o' de gemmen had run acrost him, so dey couldn't do nothin' for me.
+But all dat time, do' I didn't know it, my Henry WAS run off to de Norf,
+years an' years, an' he was a barber, too, an' worked for hisse'f.  An'
+bymeby, when de waw come he ups an' he says: 'I's done barberin',' he
+says, 'I's gwyne to fine my ole mammy, less'n she's dead.'  So he sole
+out an' went to whar dey was recruitin', an' hired hisse'f out to de
+colonel for his servant; an' den he went all froo de battles everywhah,
+huntin' for his ole mammy; yes, indeedy, he'd hire to fust one officer
+an' den another, tell he'd ransacked de whole Souf; but you see I didn't
+know NUFFIN 'bout dis.  How was I gwyne to know it?
+
+“Well, one night we had a big sojer ball; de sojers dah at Newbern was
+always havin' balls an' carryin' on.  Dey had 'em in my kitchen, heaps o'
+times, 'ca'se it was so big.  Mine you, I was DOWN on sich doin's;
+beca'se my place was wid de officers, an' it rasp me to have dem common
+sojers cavortin' roun' in my kitchen like dat.  But I alway' stood aroun'
+an kep' things straight, I did; an' sometimes dey'd git my dander up, an'
+den I'd make 'em clar dat kitchen, mine I TELL you!
+
+“Well, one night--it was a Friday night--dey comes a whole platoon f'm a
+NIGGER ridgment da was on guard at de house--de house was head quarters,
+you know-an' den I was jist A-BILIN'! Mad?  I was jist A-BOOMIN'!  I
+swelled aroun', an swelled aroun'; I jist was a-itchin' for 'em to do
+somefin for to start me.  AN' dey was a-waltzin' an a dancin'! MY! but dey
+was havin' a time! an I jist a-swellin' an' a-swellin' up!  Pooty soon,'long
+comes sich a spruce young nigger a-sailin' down de room wid a
+yaller wench roun' de wais'; an' roun an' roun' an roun' dey went, enough
+to make a body drunk to look at 'em; an' when dey got abreas' o' me, dey
+went to kin' o' balancin' aroun' fust on one leg an' den on t'other, an'
+smilin' at my big red turban, an' makin' fun, an' I ups an' says 'GIT
+along wid you!--rubbage!'  De young man's face kin' o' changed, all of a
+sudden, for 'bout a second, but den he went to smilin' ag'in, same as he
+was befo'.  Well, 'bout dis time, in comes some niggers dat played music
+and b'long' to de ban', an' dey NEVER could git along widout puttin' on
+airs.  'An de very fust air dey put on dat night, I lit into em!  Dey
+laughed, an' dat made me wuss.  De res' o' de niggers got to laughin',
+an' den my soul alive but I was hot!  My eye was jist a-blazin'!  I jist
+straightened myself up so--jist as I is now, plum to de ceilin', mos'
+--an' I digs my fists into my hips, an' I says, 'Look-a-heah!' I says, 'I
+want you niggers to understan' dat I wa'n't bawn in de mash to be fool'
+by trash!  I's one o' de ole Blue hen's Chickens, I is!'--an' den I see
+dat young man stan' a-starin' an' stiff, lookin' kin' o' up at de ceilin'
+like he fo'got somefin, an' couldn't 'member it no mo'.  Well, I jist
+march' on dem niggers--so, lookin' like a gen'l--an' dey jist cave' away
+befo' me an' out at de do'.  An' as dis young man a-goin' out, I heah him
+say to another nigger, 'Jim,' he says, 'you go 'long an' tell de cap'n I
+be on han' 'bout eight o'clock in de mawnin'; dey's somefin on my mine,'
+he says; 'I don't sleep no mo' dis night.  You go 'long,' he says, 'an'
+leave me by my own se'f.'
+
+“Dis was 'bout one o'clock in de mawnin'.  Well, 'bout seven, I was up
+an' on han', gittin' de officers' breakfast.  I was a-stoopin' down by de
+stove---jist so, same as if yo' foot was de stove--an' I'd opened de stove
+do' wid my right han'--so, pushin' it back, jist as I pushes yo' foot
+--an' I'd jist got de pan o' hot biscuits in my han' an' was 'bout to
+raise up, when I see a black face come aroun' under mine, an' de eyes
+a-lookin' up into mine, jist as I's a-lookin' up clost under yo' face
+now; an' I jist stopped RIGHT dah, an' never budged! jist gazed an' gazed
+so; an' de pan begin to tremble, an' all of a sudden I knowed!  De pan
+drop' on de flo' an' I grab his lef' han' an' shove back his sleeve--jist
+so, as I's doin' to you--an' den I goes for his forehead an' push de hair
+back so, an' 'Boy!' I says, 'if you an't my Henry, what is you doin' wid
+dis welt on yo' wris' an' dat sk-yar on yo' forehead?  De Lord God ob
+heaven be praise', I got my own ag'in!'
+
+     “Oh no' Misto C-----, I hain't had no trouble.  An' no JOY!”
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THE SIAMESE TWINS--[Written about 1868.]
+
+I do not wish to write of the personal habits of these strange creatures
+solely, but also of certain curious details of various kinds concerning
+them, which, belonging only to their private life, have never crept into
+print.  Knowing the Twins intimately, I feel that I am peculiarly well
+qualified for the task I have taken upon myself.
+
+The Siamese Twins are naturally tender and affectionate in disposition,
+and have clung to each other with singular fidelity throughout a long and
+eventful life.  Even as children they were inseparable companions; and it
+was noticed that they always seemed to prefer each other's society to
+that of any other persons.  They nearly always played together; and, so
+accustomed was their mother to this peculiarity, that, whenever both of
+them chanced to be lost, she usually only hunted for one of them
+--satisfied that when she found that one she would find his brother
+somewhere in the immediate neighborhood.  And yet these creatures were
+ignorant and unlettered--barbarians themselves and the offspring of
+barbarians, who knew not the light of philosophy and science.  What a
+withering rebuke is this to our boasted civilization, with its
+quarrelings, its wranglings, and its separations of brothers!
+
+As men, the Twins have not always lived in perfect accord; but still
+there has always been a bond between them which made them unwilling to go
+away from each other and dwell apart.  They have even occupied the same
+house, as a general thing, and it is believed that they have never failed
+to even sleep together on any night since they were born.  How surely do
+the habits of a lifetime become second nature to us!  The Twins always go
+to bed at the same time; but Chang usually gets up about an hour before
+his brother.  By an understanding between themselves, Chang does all the
+indoor work and Eng runs all the errands.  This is because Eng likes to
+go out; Chang's habits are sedentary.  However, Chang always goes along.
+Eng is a Baptist, but Chang is a Roman Catholic; still, to please his
+brother, Chang consented to be baptized at the same time that Eng was, on
+condition that it should not “count.”  During the war they were strong
+partisans, and both fought gallantly all through the great struggle--Eng
+on the Union side and Chang on the Confederate.  They took each other
+prisoners at Seven Oaks, but the proofs of capture were so evenly
+balanced in favor of each, that a general army court had to be assembled
+to determine which one was properly the captor and which the captive.
+The jury was unable to agree for a long time; but the vexed question was
+finally decided by agreeing to consider them both prisoners, and then
+exchanging them.  At one time Chang was convicted of disobedience of
+orders, and sentenced to ten days in the guard-house, but Eng, in spite
+of all arguments, felt obliged to share his imprisonment, notwithstanding
+he himself was entirely innocent; and so, to save the blameless brother
+from suffering, they had to discharge both from custody--the just reward
+of faithfulness.
+
+Upon one occasion the brothers fell out about something, and Chang
+knocked Eng down, and then tripped and fell on him, whereupon both
+clinched and began to beat and gouge each other without mercy.  The
+bystanders interfered, and tried to separate them, but they could not do
+it, and so allowed them to fight it out.  In the end both were disabled,
+and were carried to the hospital on one and the same shutter.
+
+Their ancient habit of going always together had its drawbacks when they
+reached man's estate, and entered upon the luxury of courting.  Both fell
+in love with the same girl.  Each tried to steal clandestine interviews
+with her, but at the critical moment the other would always turn up.
+By and by Eng saw, with distraction, that Chang had won the girl's
+affections; and, from that day forth, he had to bear with the agony of
+being a witness to all their dainty billing and cooing.  But with a
+magnanimity that did him infinite credit, he succumbed to his fate, and
+gave countenance and encouragement to a state of things that bade fair to
+sunder his generous heart-strings.  He sat from seven every evening until
+two in the morning, listening to the fond foolishness of the two lovers,
+and to the concussion of hundreds of squandered kisses--for the privilege
+of sharing only one of which he would have given his right hand.  But he
+sat patiently, and waited, and gaped, and yawned, and stretched, and
+longed for two o'clock to come.  And he took long walks with the lovers
+on moonlight evenings--sometimes traversing ten miles, notwithstanding he
+was usually suffering from rheumatism.  He is an inveterate smoker; but
+he could not smoke on these occasions, because the young lady was
+painfully sensitive to the smell of tobacco.  Eng cordially wanted them
+married, and done with it; but although Chang often asked the momentous
+question, the young lady could not gather sufficient courage to answer it
+while Eng was by.  However, on one occasion, after having walked some
+sixteen miles, and sat up till nearly daylight, Eng dropped asleep, from
+sheer exhaustion, and then the question was asked and answered.  The
+lovers were married.  All acquainted with the circumstance applauded the
+noble brother-in-law.  His unwavering faithfulness was the theme of every
+tongue.  He had stayed by them all through their long and arduous
+courtship; and when at last they were married, he lifted his hands above
+their heads, and said with impressive unction, “Bless ye, my children, I
+will never desert ye!” and he kept his word.  Fidelity like this is all
+too rare in this cold world.
+
+By and by Eng fell in love with his sister-in-law's sister, and married
+her, and since that day they have all lived together, night and day, in
+an exceeding sociability which is touching and beautiful to behold, and
+is a scathing rebuke to our boasted civilization.
+
+The sympathy existing between these two brothers is so close and so
+refined that the feelings, the impulses, the emotions of the one are
+instantly experienced by the other.  When one is sick, the other is sick;
+when one feels pain, the other feels it; when one is angered, the other's
+temper takes fire.  We have already seen with what happy facility they
+both fell in love with the same girl.  Now Chang is bitterly opposed to
+all forms of intemperance, on principle; but Eng is the reverse--for,
+while these men's feelings and emotions are so closely wedded, their
+reasoning faculties are unfettered; their thoughts are free.  Chang
+belongs to the Good Templars, and is a hard-working, enthusiastic
+supporter of all temperance reforms.  But, to his bitter distress, every
+now and then Eng gets drunk, and, of course, that makes Chang drunk too.
+This unfortunate thing has been a great sorrow to Chang, for it almost
+destroys his usefulness in his favorite field of effort.  As sure as he
+is to head a great temperance procession Eng ranges up alongside of him,
+prompt to the minute, and drunk as a lord; but yet no more dismally and
+hopelessly drunk than his brother, who has not tasted a drop.  And so the
+two begin to hoot and yell, and throw mud and bricks at the Good
+Templars; and, of course, they break up the procession.  It would be
+manifestly wrong to punish Chang for what Eng does, and, therefore, the
+Good Templars accept the untoward situation, and suffer in silence and
+sorrow.  They have officially and deliberately examined into the matter,
+and find Chang blameless.  They have taken the two brothers and filled
+Chang full of warm water and sugar and Eng full of whisky, and in
+twenty-five minutes it was not possible to tell which was the drunkest.
+Both were as drunk as loons--and on hot whisky punches, by the smell of
+their breath.  Yet all the while Chang's moral principles were unsullied,
+his conscience clear; and so all just men were forced to confess that he
+was not morally, but only physically, drunk.  By every right and by every
+moral evidence the man was strictly sober; and, therefore, it caused his
+friends all the more anguish to see him shake hands with the pump and try
+to wind his watch with his night-key.
+
+There is a moral in these solemn warnings--or, at least, a warning in
+these solemn morals; one or the other.  No matter, it is somehow.  Let us
+heed it; let us profit by it.
+
+I could say more of an instructive nature about these interesting beings,
+but let what I have written suffice.
+
+Having forgotten to mention it sooner, I will remark in conclusion that
+the ages of the Siamese Twins are respectively fifty-one and fifty-three
+years.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+SPEECH AT THE SCOTTISH BANQUET IN LONDON--[Written about 1872.]
+
+At the anniversary festival of the Scottish Corporation of London on
+Monday evening, in response to the toast of “The Ladies,” MARK TWAIN
+replied.  The following is his speech as reported in the London Observer:
+
+I am proud, indeed, of the distinction of being chosen to respond to this
+especial toast, to 'The Ladies,' or to women if you please, for that is
+the preferable term, perhaps; it is certainly the older, and therefore
+the more entitled to reverence [Laughter.]  I have noticed that the
+Bible, with that plain, blunt honesty which is such a conspicuous
+characteristic of the Scriptures, is always particular to never refer to
+even the illustrious mother of all mankind herself as a 'lady,' but
+speaks of her as a woman. [Laughter.]  It is odd, but you will find it is
+so.  I am peculiarly proud of this honor, because I think that the toast
+to women is one which, by right and by every rule of gallantry, should
+take precedence of all others--of the army, of the navy, of even royalty
+itself--perhaps, though the latter is not necessary in this day and in
+this land, for the reason that, tacitly, you do drink a broad general
+health to all good women when you drink the health of the Queen of
+England and the Princess of Wales.  [Loud cheers.]  I have in mind a poem
+just now which is familiar to you all, familiar to everybody.  And what
+an inspiration that was (and how instantly the present toast recalls the
+verses to all our minds) when the most noble, the most gracious, the
+purest, and sweetest of all poets says:
+
+                         “Woman!  O woman!--er--
+                         Wom--”
+
+[Laughter.]  However, you remember the lines; and you remember how
+feelingly, how daintily, how almost imperceptibly the verses raise up
+before you, feature by feature, the ideal of a true and perfect woman;
+and how, as you contemplate the finished marvel, your homage grows into
+worship of the intellect that could create so fair a thing out of mere
+breath, mere words.  And you call to mind now, as I speak, how the poet,
+with stern fidelity to the history of all humanity, delivers this
+beautiful child of his heart and his brain over to the trials and sorrows
+that must come to all, sooner or later, that abide in the earth, and how
+the pathetic story culminates in that apostrophe--so wild, so regretful,
+so full of mournful retrospection.  The lines run thus:
+
+                    “Alas!--alas!--a--alas!
+                    ----Alas!--------alas!”
+
+--and so on.  [Laughter.] I do not remember the rest; but, taken
+together, it seems to me that poem is the noblest tribute to woman that
+human genius has ever brought forth--[laughter]--and I feel that if I
+were to talk hours I could not do my great theme completer or more
+graceful justice than I have now done in simply quoting that poet's
+matchless words.  [Renewed laughter.] The phases of the womanly nature
+are infinite in their variety.  Take any type of woman, and you shall
+find in it something to respect, something to admire, something to love.
+And you shall find the whole joining you heart and hand.  Who was more
+patriotic than Joan of Arc?  Who was braver?  Who has given us a grander
+instance of self-sacrificing devotion?  Ah! you remember, you remember
+well, what a throb of pain, what a great tidal wave of grief swept over
+us all when Joan of Arc fell at Waterloo.  [Much laughter.]  Who does not
+sorrow for the loss of Sappho, the sweet singer of Israel?  [Laughter.]
+Who among us does not miss the gentle ministrations, the softening
+influences, the humble piety of Lucretia Borgia?  [Laughter.]  Who can
+join in the heartless libel that says woman is extravagant in dress when
+he can look back and call to mind our simple and lowly mother Eve arrayed
+in her modification of the Highland costume.  [Roars of laughter.]
+Sir, women have been soldiers, women have been painters, women have been
+poets.  As long as language lives the name of Cleopatra will live.
+
+And, not because she conquered George III--[laughter]--but because she
+wrote those divine lines:--
+
+                    “Let dogs delight to bark and bite,
+                    For God hath made them so.”
+
+[More laughter.]  The story of the world is adorned with the names of
+illustrious ones of our own sex--some of them sons of St.  Andrew, too
+--Scott, Bruce, Burns, the warrior Wallace, Ben Nevis--[laughter]--the
+gifted Ben Lomond, and the great new Scotchman, Ben Disraeli.  [Great
+laughter.][1.]  Out of the great plains of history tower whole mountain
+ranges of sublime women--the Queen of Sheba, Josephine, Semiramis, Sairey
+Gamp; the list is endless--[laughter]--but I will not call the mighty
+roll, the names rise up in your own memories at the mere suggestion,
+luminous with the glory of deeds that cannot die, hallowed by the loving
+worship of the good and the true of all epochs and all climes.  [Cheers.]
+Suffice it for our pride and our honor that we in our day have added to
+it such names as those of Grace Darling and Florence Nightingale.
+[Cheers.]  Woman is all that she should be--gentle, patient, long
+suffering, trustful, unselfish, full of generous impulses.  It is her
+blessed mission to comfort the sorrowing, plead for the erring, encourage
+the faint of purpose, succor the distressed, uplift the fallen, befriend
+the friendless--in a word, afford the healing of her sympathies and a home
+in her heart for all the bruised and persecuted children of misfortune
+that knock at its hospitable door. [Cheers.]  And when I say, God bless
+her, there is none among us who has known the ennobling affection of a
+wife, or the steadfast devotion of a mother, but in his heart will say,
+Amen!  [Loud and prolonged cheering.]
+
+1.[Mr.  Benjamin Disraeli, at that time Prime Minister of England, had
+just been elected Lord Rector of Glasgow University, and had made a
+speech which gave rise to a world of discussion.]
+
+
+
+
+
+
+A GHOST STORY
+
+I took a large room, far up Broadway, in a huge old building whose upper
+stories had been wholly unoccupied for years until I came.  The place had
+long been given up to dust and cobwebs, to solitude and silence.
+I seemed groping among the tombs and invading the privacy of the dead,
+that first night I climbed up to my quarters.  For the first time in my
+life a superstitious dread came over me; and as I turned a dark angle of
+the stairway and an invisible cobweb swung its slazy woof in my face and
+clung there, I shuddered as one who had encountered a phantom.
+
+I was glad enough when I reached my room and locked out the mold and the
+darkness.  A cheery fire was burning in the grate, and I sat down before
+it with a comforting sense of relief.  For two hours I sat there,
+thinking of bygone times; recalling old scenes, and summoning
+half-forgotten faces out of the mists of the past; listening, in fancy,
+to voices that long ago grew silent for all time, and to once familiar
+songs that nobody sings now.  And as my reverie softened down to a sadder
+and sadder pathos, the shrieking of the winds outside softened to a wail,
+the angry beating of the rain against the panes diminished to a tranquil
+patter, and one by one the noises in the street subsided, until the
+hurrying footsteps of the last belated straggler died away in the
+distance and left no sound behind.
+
+The fire had burned low.  A sense of loneliness crept over me.  I arose
+and undressed, moving on tiptoe about the room, doing stealthily what I
+had to do, as if I were environed by sleeping enemies whose slumbers it
+would be fatal to break.  I covered up in bed, and lay listening to the
+rain and wind and the faint creaking of distant shutters, till they
+lulled me to sleep.
+
+I slept profoundly, but how long I do not know.  All at once I found
+myself awake, and filled with a shuddering expectancy.  All was still.
+All but my own heart--I could hear it beat.  Presently the bedclothes
+began to slip away slowly toward the foot of the bed, as if some one were
+pulling them!  I could not stir; I could not speak.  Still the blankets
+slipped deliberately away, till my breast was uncovered.  Then with a
+great effort I seized them and drew them over my head.  I waited,
+listened, waited.  Once more that steady pull began, and once more I lay
+torpid a century of dragging seconds till my breast was naked again.  At
+last I roused my energies and snatched the covers back to their place and
+held them with a strong grip.  I waited.  By and by I felt a faint tug,
+and took a fresh grip.  The tug strengthened to a steady strain--it grew
+stronger and stronger.  My hold parted, and for the third time the
+blankets slid away.  I groaned.  An answering groan came from the foot of
+the bed!  Beaded drops of sweat stood upon my forehead.  I was more dead
+than alive.  Presently I heard a heavy footstep in my room--the step of
+an elephant, it seemed to me--it was not like anything human.  But it was
+moving from me--there was relief in that.  I heard it approach the door
+--pass out without moving bolt or lock--and wander away among the dismal
+corridors, straining the floors and joists till they creaked again as it
+passed--and then silence reigned once more.
+
+When my excitement had calmed, I said to myself, “This is a dream--simply
+a hideous dream.”  And so I lay thinking it over until I convinced myself
+that it was a dream, and then a comforting laugh relaxed my lips and I
+was happy again.  I got up and struck a light; and when I found that the
+locks and bolts were just as I had left them, another soothing laugh
+welled in my heart and rippled from my lips.  I took my pipe and lit it,
+and was just sitting down before the fire, when--down went the pipe out of
+my nerveless fingers, the blood forsook my cheeks, and my placid
+breathing was cut short with a gasp!  In the ashes on the hearth, side by
+side with my own bare footprint, was another, so vast that in comparison
+mine was but an infant's!  Then I had had a visitor, and the elephant
+tread was explained.
+
+I put out the light and returned to bed, palsied with fear.  I lay a long
+time, peering into the darkness, and listening.  Then I heard a grating
+noise overhead, like the dragging of a heavy body across the floor; then
+the throwing down of the body, and the shaking of my windows in response
+to the concussion.  In distant parts of the building I heard the muffled
+slamming of doors.  I heard, at intervals, stealthy footsteps creeping in
+and out among the corridors, and up and down the stairs.  Sometimes these
+noises approached my door, hesitated, and went away again.  I heard the
+clanking of chains faintly, in remote passages, and listened while the
+clanking grew nearer--while it wearily climbed the stairways, marking
+each move by the loose surplus of chain that fell with an accented rattle
+upon each succeeding step as the goblin that bore it advanced.  I heard
+muttered sentences; half-uttered screams that seemed smothered violently;
+and the swish of invisible garments, the rush of invisible wings.  Then I
+became conscious that my chamber was invaded--that I was not alone.
+I heard sighs and breathings about my bed, and mysterious whisperings.
+Three little spheres of soft phosphorescent light appeared on the ceiling
+directly over my head, clung and glowed there a moment, and then dropped
+--two of them upon my face and one upon the pillow.  They spattered,
+liquidly, and felt warm.  Intuition told me they had turned to gouts of
+blood as they fell--I needed no light to satisfy myself of that.  Then I
+saw pallid faces, dimly luminous, and white uplifted hands, floating
+bodiless in the air--floating a moment and then disappearing.
+The whispering ceased, and the voices and the sounds, and a solemn
+stillness followed.  I waited and listened.  I felt that I must have
+light or die.  I was weak with fear.  I slowly raised myself toward a
+sitting posture, and my face came in contact with a clammy hand!
+All strength went from me apparently, and I fell back like a stricken
+invalid.  Then I heard the rustle of a garment--it seemed to pass to the
+door and go out.
+
+When everything was still once more, I crept out of bed, sick and feeble,
+and lit the gas with a hand that trembled as if it were aged with a
+hundred years.  The light brought some little cheer to my spirits.  I sat
+down and fell into a dreamy contemplation of that great footprint in the
+ashes.  By and by its outlines began to waver and grow dim.  I glanced up
+and the broad gas-flame was slowly wilting away.  In the same moment I
+heard that elephantine tread again.  I noted its approach, nearer and
+nearer, along the musty halls, and dimmer and dimmer the light waned.
+The tread reached my very door and paused--the light had dwindled to a
+sickly blue, and all things about me lay in a spectral twilight.  The
+door did not open, and yet I felt a faint gust of air fan my cheek, and
+presently was conscious of a huge, cloudy presence before me.  I watched
+it with fascinated eyes.  A pale glow stole over the Thing; gradually its
+cloudy folds took shape--an arm appeared, then legs, then a body, and
+last a great sad face looked out of the vapor.  Stripped of its filmy
+housings, naked, muscular and comely, the majestic Cardiff Giant loomed
+above me!
+
+All my misery vanished--for a child might know that no harm could come
+with that benignant countenance.  My cheerful spirits returned at once,
+and in sympathy with them the gas flamed up brightly again.  Never a
+lonely outcast was so glad to welcome company as I was to greet the
+friendly giant.  I said:
+
+“Why, is it nobody but you?  Do you know, I have been scared to death for
+the last two or three hours?  I am most honestly glad to see you.  I wish
+I had a chair--Here, here, don't try to sit down in that thing--”
+
+But it was too late.  He was in it before I could stop him and down he
+went--I never saw a chair shivered so in my life.
+
+“Stop, stop, you'll ruin ev--”
+
+Too late again.  There was another crash, and another chair was resolved
+into its original elements.
+
+“Confound it, haven't you got any judgment at all?  Do you want to ruin
+all the furniture on the place?  Here, here, you petrified fool--”
+
+But it was no use.  Before I could arrest him he had sat down on the bed,
+and it was a melancholy ruin.
+
+“Now what sort of a way is that to do?  First you come lumbering about
+the place bringing a legion of vagabond goblins along with you to worry
+me to death, and then when I overlook an indelicacy of costume which
+would not be tolerated anywhere by cultivated people except in a
+respectable theater, and not even there if the nudity were of your sex,
+you repay me by wrecking all the furniture you can find to sit down on.
+And why will you?  You damage yourself as much as you do me.  You have
+broken off the end of your spinal column, and littered up the floor with
+chips of your hams till the place looks like a marble yard.  You ought to
+be ashamed of yourself--you are big enough to know better.”
+
+“Well, I will not break any more furniture.  But what am I to do?  I have
+not had a chance to sit down for a century.”  And the tears came into his
+eyes.
+
+“Poor devil,” I said, “I should not have been so harsh with you.  And you
+are an orphan, too, no doubt.  But sit down on the floor here--nothing
+else can stand your weight--and besides, we cannot be sociable with you
+away up there above me; I want you down where I can perch on this high
+counting-house stool and gossip with you face to face.”  So he sat down
+on the floor, and lit a pipe which I gave him, threw one of my red
+blankets over his shoulders, inverted my sitz-bath on his head, helmet
+fashion, and made himself picturesque and comfortable.  Then he crossed
+his ankles, while I renewed the fire, and exposed the flat, honeycombed
+bottoms of his prodigious feet to the grateful warmth.
+
+“What is the matter with the bottom of your feet and the back of your
+legs, that they are gouged up so?”
+
+“Infernal chilblains--I caught them clear up to the back of my head,
+roosting out there under Newell's farm.  But I love the place; I love it
+as one loves his old home.  There is no peace for me like the peace I
+feel when I am there.”
+
+We talked along for half an hour, and then I noticed that he looked
+tired, and spoke of it.
+
+“Tired?” he said.  “Well, I should think so.  And now I will tell you all
+about it, since you have treated me so well.  I am the spirit of the
+Petrified Man that lies across the street there in the museum. I am the
+ghost of the Cardiff Giant.  I can have no rest, no peace, till they have
+given that poor body burial again.  Now what was the most natural thing
+for me to do, to make men satisfy this wish?  Terrify them into it!--
+haunt the place where the body lay!  So I haunted the museum night after
+night.  I even got other spirits to help me.  But it did no good, for
+nobody ever came to the museum at midnight.  Then it occurred to me to
+come over the way and haunt this place a little.  I felt that if I ever
+got a hearing I must succeed, for I had the most efficient company that
+perdition could furnish.  Night after night we have shivered around
+through these mildewed halls, dragging chains, groaning, whispering,
+tramping up and down stairs, till, to tell you the truth, I am almost
+worn out.  But when I saw a light in your room to-night I roused my
+energies again and went at it with a deal of the old freshness.  But I am
+tired out--entirely fagged out.  Give me, I beseech you, give me some
+hope!”
+
+I lit off my perch in a burst of excitement, and exclaimed:
+
+“This transcends everything! everything that ever did occur!  Why you
+poor blundering old fossil, you have had all your trouble for nothing
+--you have been haunting a plaster cast of yourself--the real Cardiff
+Giant is in Albany!--[A fact.  The original fraud was ingeniously and
+fraudfully duplicated, and exhibited in New York as the “only genuine”
+ Cardiff Giant (to the unspeakable disgust of the owners of the real
+colossus) at the very same time that the latter was drawing crowds at a
+museum in Albany,]--Confound it, don't you know your own remains?”
+
+I never saw such an eloquent look of shame, of pitiable humiliation,
+overspread a countenance before.
+
+The Petrified Man rose slowly to his feet, and said:
+
+“Honestly, is that true?”
+
+“As true as I am sitting here.”
+
+He took the pipe from his mouth and laid it on the mantel, then stood
+irresolute a moment (unconsciously, from old habit, thrusting his hands
+where his pantaloons pockets should have been, and meditatively dropping
+his chin on his breast), and finally said:
+
+“Well-I never felt so absurd before.  The Petrified Man has sold
+everybody else, and now the mean fraud has ended by selling its own
+ghost!  My son, if there is any charity left in your heart for a poor
+friendless phantom like me, don't let this get out.  Think how you would
+feel if you had made such an ass of yourself.”
+
+I heard his stately tramp die away, step by step down the stairs and out
+into the deserted street, and felt sorry that he was gone, poor fellow
+--and sorrier still that he had carried off my red blanket and my
+bath-tub.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THE CAPITOLINE VENUS
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+[Scene-An Artist's Studio in Rome.]
+
+“Oh, George, I do love you!”
+
+“Bless your dear heart, Mary, I know that--why is your father so
+obdurate?”
+
+“George, he means well, but art is folly to him--he only understands
+groceries.  He thinks you would starve me.”
+
+“Confound his wisdom--it savors of inspiration.  Why am I not a
+money-making bowelless grocer, instead of a divinely gifted sculptor
+with nothing to eat?”
+
+“Do not despond, Georgy, dear--all his prejudices will fade away as soon
+as you shall have acquired fifty thousand dol--”
+
+“Fifty thousand demons!  Child, I am in arrears for my board!”
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+[Scene-A Dwelling in Rome.]
+
+“My dear sir, it is useless to talk.  I haven't anything against you, but
+I can't let my daughter marry a hash of love, art, and starvation--I
+believe you have nothing else to offer.”
+
+“Sir, I am poor, I grant you.  But is fame nothing?  The Hon. Bellamy
+Foodle of Arkansas says that my new statue of America, is a clever piece
+of sculpture, and he is satisfied that my name will one day be famous.”
+
+“Bosh!  What does that Arkansas ass know about it?  Fame's nothing--the
+market price of your marble scarecrow is the thing to look at.  It took
+you six months to chisel it, and you can't sell it for a hundred dollars.
+No, sir!  Show me fifty thousand dollars and you can have my daughter
+--otherwise she marries young Simper.  You have just six months to raise
+the money in.  Good morning, sir.”
+
+“Alas!  Woe is me!”
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+[ Scene-The Studio.]
+
+“Oh, John, friend of my boyhood, I am the unhappiest of men.”
+
+“You're a simpleton!”
+
+“I have nothing left to love but my poor statue of America--and see, even
+she has no sympathy for me in her cold marble countenance--so beautiful
+and so heartless!”
+
+“You're a dummy!”
+
+“Oh, John!”
+
+“Oh, fudge!  Didn't you say you had six months to raise the money in?”
+
+“Don't deride my agony, John.  If I had six centuries what good would it
+do?  How could it help a poor wretch without name, capital, or friends?”
+
+“Idiot!  Coward!  Baby!  Six months to raise the money in--and five will
+do!”
+
+“Are you insane?”
+
+“Six months--an abundance.  Leave it to me.  I'll raise it.”
+
+“What do you mean, John?  How on earth can you raise such a monstrous sum
+for me?”
+
+“Will you let that be my business, and not meddle?  Will you leave the
+thing in my hands?  Will you swear to submit to whatever I do?  Will you
+pledge me to find no fault with my actions?”
+
+“I am dizzy--bewildered--but I swear.”
+
+John took up a hammer and deliberately smashed the nose of America!  He
+made another pass and two of her fingers fell to the floor--another, and
+part of an ear came away--another, and a row of toes was mangled and
+dismembered--another, and the left leg, from the knee down, lay a
+fragmentary ruin!
+
+John put on his hat and departed.
+
+George gazed speechless upon the battered and grotesque nightmare before
+him for the space of thirty seconds, and then wilted to the floor and
+went into convulsions.
+
+John returned presently with a carriage, got the broken-hearted artist
+and the broken-legged statue aboard, and drove off, whistling low and
+tranquilly.
+
+He left the artist at his lodgings, and drove off and disappeared down
+the Via Quirinalis with the statue.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+[Scene--The Studio.]
+
+“The six months will be up at two o'clock to-day!  Oh, agony!  My life is
+blighted.  I would that I were dead.  I had no supper yesterday.  I have
+had no breakfast to-day.  I dare not enter an eating-house.  And hungry?
+--don't mention it!  My bootmaker duns me to death--my tailor duns me
+--my landlord haunts me.  I am miserable.  I haven't seen John since that
+awful day.  She smiles on me tenderly when we meet in the great
+thoroughfares, but her old flint of a father makes her look in the other
+direction in short order.  Now who is knocking at that door?  Who is come
+to persecute me?  That malignant villain the bootmaker, I'll warrant.
+Come in!”
+
+“Ah, happiness attend your highness--Heaven be propitious to your grace!
+I have brought my lord's new boots--ah, say nothing about the pay, there
+is no hurry, none in the world.  Shall be proud if my noble lord will
+continue to honor me with his custom--ah, adieu!”
+
+“Brought the boots himself!  Don't want his pay!  Takes his leave with a
+bow and a scrape fit to honor majesty withal!  Desires a continuance of
+my custom!  Is the world coming to an end?  Of all the--come in!”
+
+“Pardon, signore, but I have brought your new suit of clothes for--”
+
+“Come in!!”
+
+“A thousand pardons for this intrusion, your worship.  But I have
+prepared the beautiful suite of rooms below for you--this wretched den is
+but ill suited to--”
+ “Come in!!!”
+
+“I have called to say that your credit at our bank, some time since
+unfortunately interrupted, is entirely and most satisfactorily restored,
+and we shall be most happy if you will draw upon us for any--”
+
+“COME IN!!!!”
+
+“My noble boy, she is yours!  She'll be here in a moment!  Take her
+--marry her--love her--be happy!--God bless you both!  Hip, hip, hur--”
+
+“COME IN!!!!!”
+
+“Oh, George, my own darling, we are saved!”
+
+“Oh, Mary, my own darling, we are saved--but I'll swear I don't know why
+nor how!”
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+
+[Scene-A Roman Cafe.]
+
+One of a group of American gentlemen reads and translates from the weekly
+edition of 'Il Slangwhanger di Roma' as follows:
+
+WONDERFUL DISCOVERY--Some six months ago Signor John Smitthe, an American
+gentleman now some years a resident of Rome, purchased for a trifle a
+small piece of ground in the Campagna, just beyond the tomb of the Scipio
+family, from the owner, a bankrupt relative of the Princess Borghese.
+Mr. Smitthe afterward went to the Minister of the Public Records and had
+the piece of ground transferred to a poor American artist named George
+Arnold, explaining that he did it as payment and satisfaction for
+pecuniary damage accidentally done by him long since upon property
+belonging to Signor Arnold, and further observed that he would make
+additional satisfaction by improving the ground for Signor A., at his own
+charge and cost.  Four weeks ago, while making some necessary excavations
+upon the property, Signor Smitthe unearthed the most remarkable ancient
+statue that has ever been added to the opulent art treasures of Rome.
+It was an exquisite figure of a woman, and though sadly stained by the
+soil and the mold of ages, no eye can look unmoved upon its ravishing
+beauty.  The nose, the left leg from the knee down, an ear, and also the
+toes of the right foot and two fingers of one of the hands were gone,
+but otherwise the noble figure was in a remarkable state of preservation.
+The government at once took military possession of the statue, and
+appointed a commission of art-critics, antiquaries, and cardinal princes
+of the church to assess its value and determine the remuneration that
+must go to the owner of the ground in which it was found.  The whole
+affair was kept a profound secret until last night.  In the mean time the
+commission sat with closed doors and deliberated.  Last night they
+decided unanimously that the statue is a Venus, and the work of some
+unknown but sublimely gifted artist of the third century before Christ.
+They consider it the most faultless work of art the world has any
+knowledge of.
+
+At midnight they held a final conference and decided that the Venus was
+worth the enormous sum of ten million francs!  In accordance with Roman
+law and Roman usage, the government being half-owner in all works of art
+found in the Campagna, the State has naught to do but pay five million
+francs to Mr.  Arnold and take permanent possession of the beautiful
+statue.  This morning the Venus will be removed to the Capitol, there to
+remain, and at noon the commission will wait upon Signor Arnold with His
+Holiness the Pope's order upon the Treasury for the princely sum of five
+million francs in gold!
+
+Chorus of Voices.--“Luck!  It's no name for it!”
+
+Another Voice.--“Gentlemen, I propose that we immediately form an
+American joint-stock company for the purchase of lands and excavations of
+statues here, with proper connections in Wall Street to bull and bear the
+stock.”
+
+All.--“Agreed.”
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+[Scene--The Roman Capitol Ten Years Later.]
+
+“Dearest Mary, this is the most celebrated statue in the world.  This is
+the renowned 'Capitoline Venus' you've heard so much about.  Here she is
+with her little blemishes 'restored' (that is, patched) by the most noted
+Roman artists--and the mere fact that they did the humble patching of so
+noble a creation will make their names illustrious while the world
+stands.  How strange it seems--this place!  The day before I last stood
+here, ten happy years ago, I wasn't a rich man bless your soul, I hadn't
+a cent.  And yet I had a good deal to do with making Rome mistress of
+this grandest work of ancient art the world contains.”
+
+“The worshiped, the illustrious Capitoline Venus--and what a sum she is
+valued at!  Ten millions of francs!”
+
+“Yes--now she is.”
+
+“And oh, Georgy, how divinely beautiful she is!”
+
+“Ah, yes but nothing to what she was before that blessed John Smith broke
+her leg and battered her nose.  Ingenious Smith!--gifted Smith!--noble
+Smith!  Author of all our bliss!  Hark!  Do you know what that wheeze
+means?  Mary, that cub has got the whooping-cough.  Will you never learn
+to take care of the children!”
+
+THE END
+
+
+The Capitoline Venus is still in the Capitol at Rome, and is still the
+most charming and most illustrious work of ancient art the world can
+boast of.  But if ever it shall be your fortune to stand before it and go
+into the customary ecstasies over it, don't permit this true and secret
+history of its origin to mar your bliss--and when you read about a
+gigantic Petrified man being dug up near Syracuse, in the State of New
+York, or near any other place, keep your own counsel--and if the Barnum
+that buried him there offers to sell to you at an enormous sum, don't you buy.
+Send him to the Pope!
+
+
+[NOTE.--The above sketch was written at the time the famous swindle of
+the “Petrified Giant” was the sensation of the day in the United States]
+
+
+
+
+
+
+SPEECH ON ACCIDENT INSURANCE
+
+DELIVERED IN HARTFORD, AT A DINNER TO CORNELIUS WALFORD, OF LONDON
+
+GENTLEMEN: I am glad, indeed, to assist in welcoming the distinguished
+guest of this occasion to a city whose fame as an insurance center has
+extended to all lands, and given us the name of being a quadruple band
+of brothers working sweetly hand in hand--the Colt's Arms Company making the
+destruction of our race easy and convenient, our life insurance citizens
+paying for the victims when they pass away, Mr. Batterson perpetuating
+their memory with his stately monuments, and our fire-insurance comrades
+taking care of their hereafter.  I am glad to assist in welcoming our
+guest--first, because he is an Englishman, and I owe a heavy debt of
+hospitality to certain of his fellow-countrymen; and secondly, because he
+is in sympathy with insurance and has been the means of making many other
+men cast their sympathies in the same direction.
+
+Certainly there is no nobler field for human effort than the insurance
+line of business--especially accident insurance.  Ever since I have been
+a director in an accident-insurance company I have felt that I am a
+better man.  Life has seemed more precious.  Accidents have assumed a
+kindlier aspect.  Distressing special providences have lost half their
+horror.  I look upon a cripple now with affectionate interest--as an
+advertisement.  I do not seem to care for poetry any more.  I do not care
+for politics--even agriculture does not excite me.  But to me now there
+is a charm about a railway collision that is unspeakable.
+
+There is nothing more beneficent than accident insurance.  I have seen an
+entire family lifted out of poverty and into affluence by the simple boon
+of a broken leg.  I have had people come to me on crutches, with tears in
+their eyes, to bless this beneficent institution.  In all my experience
+of life, I have seen nothing so seraphic as the look that comes into a
+freshly mutilated man's face when he feels in his vest pocket with his
+remaining hand and finds his accident ticket all right.  And I have seen
+nothing so sad as the look that came into another splintered customer's
+face when he found he couldn't collect on a wooden leg.
+
+I will remark here, by way of advertisement, that that noble charity
+which we have named the HARTFORD ACCIDENT INSURANCE COMPANY--[The
+speaker is a director of the company named.]--is an institution which is
+peculiarly to be depended upon.  A man is bound to prosper who gives it
+his custom.
+
+No man can take out a policy in it and not get crippled before the year
+is out.  Now there was one indigent man who had been disappointed so
+often with other companies that he had grown disheartened, his appetite
+left him, he ceased to smile--life was but a weariness.  Three weeks ago
+I got him to insure with us, and now he is the brightest, happiest spirit
+in this land--has a good steady income and a stylish suit of new bandages
+every day, and travels around on a shutter.
+
+I will say, in conclusion, that my share of the welcome to our guest is
+none the less hearty because I talk so much nonsense, and I know that I
+can say the same for the rest of the speakers.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+JOHN CHINAMAN IN NEW YORK
+
+As I passed along by one of those monster American tea stores in New
+York, I found a Chinaman sitting before it acting in the capacity of a
+sign.  Everybody that passed by gave him a steady stare as long as their
+heads would twist over their shoulders without dislocating their necks,
+and a group had stopped to stare deliberately.
+
+Is it not a shame that we, who prate so much about civilization and
+humanity, are content to degrade a fellow-being to such an office as
+this?  Is it not time for reflection when we find ourselves willing to
+see in such a being matter for frivolous curiosity instead of regret and
+grave reflection?  Here was a poor creature whom hard fortune had exiled
+from his natural home beyond the seas, and whose troubles ought to have
+touched these idle strangers that thronged about him; but did it?
+Apparently not.  Men calling themselves the superior race, the race of
+culture and of gentle blood, scanned his quaint Chinese hat, with peaked
+roof and ball on top, and his long queue dangling down his back; his
+short silken blouse, curiously frogged and figured (and, like the rest of
+his raiment, rusty, dilapidated, and awkwardly put on); his blue cotton,
+tight-legged pants, tied close around the ankles; and his clumsy
+blunt-toed shoes with thick cork soles; and having so scanned him from
+head to foot, cracked some unseemly joke about his outlandish attire or
+his melancholy face, and passed on.  In my heart I pitied the friendless
+Mongol.  I wondered what was passing behind his sad face, and what
+distant scene his vacant eye was dreaming of.  Were his thoughts with his
+heart, ten thousand miles away, beyond the billowy wastes of the Pacific?
+among the ricefields and the plumy palms of China? under the shadows of
+remembered mountain peaks, or in groves of bloomy shrubs and strange
+forest trees unknown to climes like ours?  And now and then, rippling
+among his visions and his dreams, did he hear familiar laughter and
+half-forgotten voices, and did he catch fitful glimpses of the friendly
+faces of a bygone time?  A cruel fate it is, I said, that is befallen
+this bronzed wanderer.  In order that the group of idlers might be
+touched at least by the words of the poor fellow, since the appeal of his
+pauper dress and his dreary exile was lost upon them, I touched him on
+the shoulder and said:
+
+“Cheer up--don't be downhearted.  It is not America that treats you in
+this way, it is merely one citizen, whose greed of gain has eaten the
+humanity out of his heart.  America has a broader hospitality for the
+exiled and oppressed.  America and Americans are always ready to help the
+unfortunate.  Money shall be raised--you shall go back to China--you shall
+see your friends again.  What wages do they pay you here?”
+
+“Divil a cint but four dollars a week and find meself; but it's aisy,
+barrin' the troublesome furrin clothes that's so expinsive.”
+
+The exile remains at his post.  The New York tea merchants who need
+picturesque signs are not likely to run out of Chinamen.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+HOW I EDITED AN AGRICULTURAL PAPER--[Written about 1870.]
+
+I did not take temporary editorship of an agricultural paper without
+misgivings.  Neither would a landsman take command of a ship without
+misgivings.  But I was in circumstances that made the salary an object.
+The regular editor of the paper was going off for a holiday, and I
+accepted the terms he offered, and took his place.
+
+The sensation of being at work again was luxurious, and I wrought all the
+week with unflagging pleasure.  We went to press, and I waited a day with
+some solicitude to see whether my effort was going to attract any notice.
+As I left the office, toward sundown, a group of men and boys at the foot
+of the stairs dispersed with one impulse, and gave me passageway, and I
+heard one or two of them say: “That's him!”  I was naturally pleased by
+this incident.  The next morning I found a similar group at the foot of
+the stairs, and scattering couples and individuals standing here and
+there in the street and over the way, watching me with interest.  The
+group separated and fell back as I approached, and I heard a man say,
+“Look at his eye!”  I pretended not to observe the notice I was
+attracting, but secretly I was pleased with it, and was purposing to
+write an account of it to my aunt.  I went up the short flight of stairs,
+and heard cheery voices and a ringing laugh as I drew near the door,
+which I opened, and caught a glimpse of two young rural-looking men,
+whose faces blanched and lengthened when they saw me, and then they both
+plunged through the window with a great crash.  I was surprised.
+
+In about half an hour an old gentleman, with a flowing beard and a fine
+but rather austere face, entered, and sat down at my invitation.  He
+seemed to have something on his mind.  He took off his hat and set it on
+the floor, and got out of it a red silk handkerchief and a copy of our
+paper.
+
+He put the paper on his lap, and while he polished his spectacles with
+his handkerchief he said, “Are you the new editor?”
+
+I said I was.
+
+“Have you ever edited an agricultural paper before?”
+
+“No,” I said; “this is my first attempt.”
+
+“Very likely.  Have you had any experience in agriculture practically?”
+
+“No; I believe I have not.”
+
+“Some instinct told me so,” said the old gentleman, putting on his
+spectacles, and looking over them at me with asperity, while he folded
+his paper into a convenient shape.  “I wish to read you what must have
+made me have that instinct.  It was this editorial.  Listen, and see if
+it was you that wrote it:
+
+     “'Turnips should never be pulled, it injures them.  It is much
+     better to send a boy up and let him shake the tree.'
+
+“Now, what do you think of that?--for I really suppose you wrote it?”
+
+“Think of it?  Why, I think it is good.  I think it is sense.  I have no
+doubt that every year millions and millions of bushels of turnips are
+spoiled in this township alone by being pulled in a half-ripe condition,
+when, if they had sent a boy up to shake the tree--”
+
+“Shake your grandmother!  Turnips don't grow on trees!”
+
+“Oh, they don't, don't they?  Well, who said they did?  The language was
+intended to be figurative, wholly figurative.  Anybody that knows
+anything will know that I meant that the boy should shake the vine.”
+
+Then this old person got up and tore his paper all into small shreds, and
+stamped on them, and broke several things with his cane, and said I did
+not know as much as a cow; and then went out and banged the door after
+him, and, in short, acted in such a way that I fancied he was displeased
+about something.  But not knowing what the trouble was, I could not be
+any help to him.
+
+Pretty soon after this a long, cadaverous creature, with lanky locks
+hanging down to his shoulders, and a week's stubble bristling from the
+hills and valleys of his face, darted within the door, and halted,
+motionless, with finger on lip, and head and body bent in listening
+attitude.  No sound was heard.
+
+Still he listened.  No sound.  Then he turned the key in the door, and
+came elaborately tiptoeing toward me till he was within long reaching
+distance of me, when he stopped and, after scanning my face with intense
+interest for a while, drew a folded copy of our paper from his bosom, and
+said:
+
+“There, you wrote that.  Read it to me--quick!  Relieve me.  I suffer.”
+
+I read as follows; and as the sentences fell from my lips I could see the
+relief come, I could see the drawn muscles relax, and the anxiety go out
+of the face, and rest and peace steal over the features like the merciful
+moonlight over a desolate landscape:
+
+     The guano is a fine bird, but great care is necessary in rearing it.
+     It should not be imported earlier than June or later than September.
+     In the winter it should be kept in a warm place, where it can hatch
+     out its young.
+
+     It is evident that we are to have a backward season for grain.
+     Therefore it will be well for the farmer to begin setting out his
+     corn-stalks and planting his buckwheat cakes in July instead of
+     August.
+
+     Concerning the pumpkin.  This berry is a favorite with the natives
+     of the interior of New England, who prefer it to the gooseberry for
+     the making of fruit-cake, and who likewise give it the preference
+     over the raspberry for feeding cows, as being more filling and fully
+     as satisfying.  The pumpkin is the only esculent of the orange
+     family that will thrive in the North, except the gourd and one or
+     two varieties of the squash.  But the custom of planting it in the
+     front yard with the shrubbery is fast going out of vogue, for it is
+     now generally conceded that, the pumpkin as a shade tree is a
+     failure.
+
+     Now, as the warm weather approaches, and the ganders begin to
+     spawn--
+
+
+The excited listener sprang toward me to shake hands, and said:
+
+“There, there--that will do.  I know I am all right now, because you have
+read it just as I did, word, for word.  But, stranger, when I first read
+it this morning, I said to myself, I never, never believed it before,
+notwithstanding my friends kept me under watch so strict, but now I
+believe I am crazy; and with that I fetched a howl that you might have
+heard two miles, and started out to kill somebody--because, you know,
+I knew it would come to that sooner or later, and so I might as well
+begin.  I read one of them paragraphs over again, so as to be certain,
+and then I burned my house down and started.  I have crippled several
+people, and have got one fellow up a tree, where I can get him if I want
+him.  But I thought I would call in here as I passed along and make the
+thing perfectly certain; and now it is certain, and I tell you it is
+lucky for the chap that is in the tree.  I should have killed him sure,
+as I went back.  Good-by, sir, good-by; you have taken a great load off
+my mind.  My reason has stood the strain of one of your agricultural
+articles, and I know that nothing can ever unseat it now.  Good-by, sir.”
+
+I felt a little uncomfortable about the cripplings and arsons this person
+had been entertaining himself with, for I could not help feeling remotely
+accessory to them.  But these thoughts were quickly banished, for the
+regular editor walked in!  [I thought to myself, Now if you had gone to
+Egypt as I recommended you to, I might have had a chance to get my hand
+in; but you wouldn't do it, and here you are.  I sort of expected you.]
+
+The editor was looking sad and perplexed and dejected.
+
+He surveyed the wreck which that old rioter and those two young farmers
+had made, and then said “This is a sad business--a very sad business.
+There is the mucilage-bottle broken, and six panes of glass, and a
+spittoon, and two candlesticks.  But that is not the worst.  The
+reputation of the paper is injured--and permanently, I fear.  True, there
+never was such a call for the paper before, and it never sold such a
+large edition or soared to such celebrity--but does one want to be famous
+for lunacy, and prosper upon the infirmities of his mind?  My friend, as
+I am an honest man, the street out here is full of people, and others are
+roosting on the fences, waiting to get a glimpse of you, because they
+think you are crazy.  And well they might after reading your editorials.
+They are a disgrace to journalism.  Why, what put it into your head that
+you could edit a paper of this nature?  You do not seem to know the first
+rudiments of agriculture.  You speak of a furrow and a harrow as being
+the same thing; you talk of the moulting season for cows; and you
+recommend the domestication of the pole-cat on account of its playfulness
+and its excellence as a ratter!  Your remark that clams will lie quiet if
+music be played to them was superfluous--entirely superfluous.  Nothing
+disturbs clams.  Clams always lie quiet.  Clams care nothing whatever
+about music.  Ah, heavens and earth, friend! if you had made the
+acquiring of ignorance the study of your life, you could not have
+graduated with higher honor than you could to-day.  I never saw anything
+like it.  Your observation that the horse-chestnut as an article of
+commerce is steadily gaining in favor is simply calculated to destroy
+this journal.  I want you to throw up your situation and go.  I want no
+more holiday--I could not enjoy it if I had it.  Certainly not with you
+in my chair.  I would always stand in dread of what you might be going to
+recommend next.  It makes me lose all patience every time I think of your
+discussing oyster-beds under the head of 'Landscape Gardening.'  I want
+you to go.  Nothing on earth could persuade me to take another holiday.
+Oh! why didn't you tell me you didn't know anything about agriculture?”
+
+“Tell you, you corn-stalk, you cabbage, you son of a cauliflower?  It's
+the first time I ever heard such an unfeeling remark.  I tell you I have
+been in the editorial business going on fourteen years, and it is the
+first time I ever heard of a man's having to know anything in order to
+edit a newspaper.  You turnip!  Who write the dramatic critiques for the
+second-rate papers?  Why, a parcel of promoted shoemakers and apprentice
+apothecaries, who know just as much about good acting as I do about good
+farming and no more.  Who review the books?  People who never wrote one.
+Who do up the heavy leaders on finance?  Parties who have had the largest
+opportunities for knowing nothing about it.  Who criticize the Indian
+campaigns?  Gentlemen who do not know a war-whoop from a wigwam, and who
+never have had to run a foot-race with a tomahawk, or pluck arrows out of
+the several members of their families to build the evening camp-fire
+with.  Who write the temperance appeals, and clamor about the flowing bowl?
+Folks who will never draw another sober breath till they do it in
+the grave.  Who edit the agricultural papers, you--yam?  Men, as a
+general thing, who fail in the poetry line, yellow-colored novel line,
+sensation, drama line, city-editor line, and finally fall back on
+agriculture as a temporary reprieve from the poorhouse.  You try to tell
+me anything about the newspaper business!  Sir, I have been through it
+from Alpha to Omaha, and I tell you that the less a man knows the bigger
+the noise he makes and the higher the salary he commands.  Heaven knows
+if I had but been ignorant instead of cultivated, and impudent instead of
+diffident, I could have made a name for myself in this cold, selfish
+world.  I take my leave, sir.  Since I have been treated as you have
+treated me, I am perfectly willing to go.  But I have done my duty.  I
+have fulfilled my contract as far as I was permitted to do it.  I said I
+could make your paper of interest to all classes--and I have.  I said I
+could run your circulation up to twenty thousand copies, and if I had had
+two more weeks I'd have done it.  And I'd have given you the best class
+of readers that ever an agricultural paper had--not a farmer in it, nor a
+solitary individual who could tell a watermelon-tree from a peach-vine to
+save his life.  You are the loser by this rupture, not me, Pie-plant.
+Adios.”
+
+I then left.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THE PETRIFIED MAN
+
+Now, to show how really hard it is to foist a moral or a truth upon an
+unsuspecting public through a burlesque without entirely and absurdly
+missing one's mark, I will here set down two experiences of my own in
+this thing.  In the fall of 1862, in Nevada and California, the people
+got to running wild about extraordinary petrifactions and other natural
+marvels.  One could scarcely pick up a paper without finding in it one or
+two glorified discoveries of this kind.  The mania was becoming a little
+ridiculous.  I was a brand-new local editor in Virginia City, and I felt
+called upon to destroy this growing evil; we all have our benignant,
+fatherly moods at one time or another, I suppose.  I chose to kill the
+petrifaction mania with a delicate, a very delicate satire.  But maybe it
+was altogether too delicate, for nobody ever perceived the satire part of
+it at all.  I put my scheme in the shape of the discovery of a remarkably
+petrified man.
+
+I had had a temporary falling out with Mr.----, the new coroner and
+justice of the peace of Humboldt, and thought I might as well touch him
+up a little at the same time and make him ridiculous, and thus combine
+pleasure with business.  So I told, in patient, belief-compelling detail,
+all about the finding of a petrified-man at Gravelly Ford (exactly a
+hundred and twenty miles, over a breakneck mountain trail from where
+---- lived); how all the savants of the immediate neighborhood had been to
+examine it (it was notorious that there was not a living creature within
+fifty miles of there, except a few starving Indians, some crippled
+grasshoppers, and four or five buzzards out of meat and too feeble to get
+away); how those savants all pronounced the petrified man to have been in
+a state of complete petrifaction for over ten generations; and then, with
+a seriousness that I ought to have been ashamed to assume, I stated that
+as soon as Mr.----heard the news he summoned a jury, mounted his mule,
+and posted off, with noble reverence for official duty, on that awful
+five days' journey, through alkali, sage brush, peril of body, and
+imminent starvation, to hold an inquest on this man that had been dead
+and turned to everlasting stone for more than three hundred years!
+And then, my hand being “in,” so to speak, I went on, with the same
+unflinching gravity, to state that the jury returned a verdict that
+deceased came to his death from protracted exposure.  This only moved me
+to higher flights of imagination, and I said that the jury, with that
+charity so characteristic of pioneers, then dug a grave, and were about
+to give the petrified man Christian burial, when they found that for ages
+a limestone sediment had been trickling down the face of the stone
+against which he was sitting, and this stuff had run under him and
+cemented him fast to the “bed-rock”; that the jury (they were all
+silver-miners) canvassed the difficulty a moment, and then got out their
+powder and fuse, and proceeded to drill a hole under him, in order to
+blast him from his position, when Mr.----, “with that delicacy so
+characteristic of him, forbade them, observing that it would be little
+less than sacrilege to do such a thing.”
+
+From beginning to end the “Petrified Man” squib was a string of roaring
+absurdities, albeit they were told with an unfair pretense of truth that
+even imposed upon me to some extent, and I was in some danger of
+believing in my own fraud.  But I really had no desire to deceive
+anybody, and no expectation of doing it.  I depended on the way the
+petrified man was sitting to explain to the public that he was a swindle.
+Yet I purposely mixed that up with other things, hoping to make it
+obscure--and I did.  I would describe the position of one foot, and then
+say his right thumb was against the side of his nose; then talk about his
+other foot, and presently come back and say the fingers of his right hand
+were spread apart; then talk about the back of his head a little, and
+return and say the left thumb was hooked into the right little finger;
+then ramble off about something else, and by and by drift back again and
+remark that the fingers of the left hand were spread like those of the
+right.  But I was too ingenious.  I mixed it up rather too much; and so
+all that description of the attitude, as a key to the humbuggery of the
+article, was entirely lost, for nobody but me ever discovered and
+comprehended the peculiar and suggestive position of the petrified man's
+hands.
+
+As a satire on the petrifaction mania, or anything else, my Petrified Man
+was a disheartening failure; for everybody received him in innocent good
+faith, and I was stunned to see the creature I had begotten to pull down
+the wonder-business with, and bring derision upon it, calmly exalted to
+the grand chief place in the list of the genuine marvels our Nevada had
+produced.  I was so disappointed at the curious miscarriage of my scheme,
+that at first I was angry, and did not like to think about it; but by and
+by, when the exchanges began to come in with the Petrified Man copied and
+guilelessly glorified, I began to feel a soothing secret satisfaction;
+and as my gentleman's field of travels broadened, and by the exchanges I
+saw that he steadily and implacably penetrated territory after territory,
+state after state, and land after land, till he swept the great globe and
+culminated in sublime and unimpeached legitimacy in the august London
+Lancet, my cup was full, and I said I was glad I had done it.  I think
+that for about eleven months, as nearly as I can remember, Mr.----'s
+daily mail-bag continued to be swollen by the addition of half a bushel
+of newspapers hailing from many climes with the Petrified Man in them,
+marked around with a prominent belt of ink.  I sent them to him.  I did
+it for spite, not for fun.
+
+He used to shovel them into his back yard and curse.  And every day
+during all those months the miners, his constituents (for miners never
+quit joking a person when they get started), would call on him and ask if
+he could tell them where they could get hold of a paper with the
+Petrified Man in it.  He could have accommodated a continent with them.
+I hated ---- in those days, and these things pacified me and pleased me.
+I could not have gotten more real comfort out of him without killing him.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+MY BLOODY MASSACRE
+
+The other burlesque I have referred to was my fine satire upon the
+financial expedients of “cooking dividends,” a thing which became
+shamefully frequent on the Pacific coast for a while.  Once more, in my
+self-complacent simplicity I felt that the time had arrived for me to
+rise up and be a reformer.  I put this reformatory satire in the shape
+of a fearful “Massacre at Empire City.”  The San Francisco papers were
+making a great outcry about the iniquity of the Daney Silver-Mining
+Company, whose directors had declared a “cooked” or false dividend, for
+the purpose of increasing the value of their stock, so that they could
+sell out at a comfortable figure, and then scramble from under the
+tumbling concern.  And while abusing the Daney, those papers did not
+forget to urge the public to get rid of all their silver stocks and
+invest in sound and safe San Francisco stocks, such as the Spring Valley
+Water Company, etc.  But right at this unfortunate juncture, behold the
+Spring Valley cooked a dividend too!  And so, under the insidious mask of
+an invented “bloody massacre,” I stole upon the public unawares with my
+scathing satire upon the dividend-cooking system.  In about half a column
+of imaginary human carnage I told how a citizen had murdered his wife
+and nine children, and then committed suicide.  And I said slyly, at the
+bottom, that the sudden madness of which this melancholy massacre was the
+result had been brought about by his having allowed himself to be
+persuaded by the California papers to sell his sound and lucrative Nevada
+silver stocks, and buy into Spring Valley just in time to get cooked
+along with that company's fancy dividend, and sink every cent he had in
+the world.
+
+Ah, it was a deep, deep satire, and most ingeniously contrived.  But I
+made the horrible details so carefully and conscientiously interesting
+that the public devoured them greedily, and wholly overlooked the
+following distinctly stated facts, to wit: The murderer was perfectly
+well known to every creature in the land as a bachelor, and consequently
+he could not murder his wife and nine children; he murdered them “in his
+splendid dressed-stone mansion just in the edge of the great pine forest
+between Empire City and Dutch Nick's,” when even the very pickled oysters
+that came on our tables knew that there was not a “dressed-stone mansion”
+ in all Nevada Territory; also that, so far from there being a “great pine
+forest between Empire City and Dutch Nick's,” there wasn't a solitary
+tree within fifteen miles of either place; and, finally, it was patent
+and notorious that Empire City and Dutch Nick's were one and the same
+place, and contained only six houses anyhow, and consequently there could
+be no forest between them; and on top of all these absurdities I stated
+that this diabolical murderer, after inflicting a wound upon himself that
+the reader ought to have seen would kill an elephant in the twinkling of
+an eye, jumped on his horse and rode four miles, waving his wife's
+reeking scalp in the air, and thus performing entered Carson City with
+tremendous éclat, and dropped dead in front of the chief saloon, the envy
+and admiration of all beholders.
+
+Well, in all my life I never saw anything like the sensation that little
+satire created.  It was the talk of the town, it was the talk of the
+territory.  Most of the citizens dropped gently into it at breakfast, and
+they never finished their meal.  There was something about those minutely
+faithful details that was a sufficing substitute for food.  Few people
+that were able to read took food that morning.  Dan and I (Dan was my
+reportorial associate) took our seats on either side of our customary
+table in the “Eagle Restaurant,” and, as I unfolded the shred they used
+to call a napkin in that establishment, I saw at the next table two
+stalwart innocents with that sort of vegetable dandruff sprinkled about
+their clothing which was the sign and evidence that they were in from the
+Truckee with a load of hay.  The one facing me had the morning paper
+folded to a long, narrow strip, and I knew, without any telling, that
+that strip represented the column that contained my pleasant financial
+satire.  From the way he was excitedly mumbling, I saw that the heedless
+son of a hay-mow was skipping with all his might, in order to get to the
+bloody details as quickly as possible; and so he was missing the
+guide-boards I had set up to warn him that the whole thing was a fraud.
+Presently his eyes spread wide open, just as his jaws swung asunder to
+take in a potato approaching it on a fork; the potato halted, the face
+lit up redly, and the whole man was on fire with excitement.  Then he
+broke into a disjointed checking off of the particulars--his potato
+cooling in mid-air meantime, and his mouth making a reach for it
+occasionally, but always bringing up suddenly against a new and still
+more direful performance of my hero.  At last he looked his stunned and
+rigid comrade impressively in the face, and said, with an expression of
+concentrated awe:
+
+“Jim, he b'iled his baby, and he took the old 'oman's skelp.  Cuss'd if I
+want any breakfast!”
+
+And he laid his lingering potato reverently down, and he and his friend
+departed from the restaurant empty but satisfied.
+
+He NEVER GOT DOWN to where the satire part of it began.  Nobody ever did.
+They found the thrilling particulars sufficient.  To drop in with a poor
+little moral at the fag-end of such a gorgeous massacre was like
+following the expiring sun with a candle and hope to attract the world's
+attention to it.
+
+The idea that anybody could ever take my massacre for a genuine
+occurrence never once suggested itself to me, hedged about as it was by
+all those telltale absurdities and impossibilities concerning the “great
+pine forest,” the “dressed-stone mansion,” etc.  But I found out then,
+and never have forgotten since, that we never read the dull explanatory
+surroundings of marvelously exciting things when we have no occasion to
+suppose that some irresponsible scribbler is trying to defraud us; we
+skip all that, and hasten to revel in the blood-curdling particulars and
+be happy.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THE UNDERTAKER'S CHAT
+
+“Now that corpse,” said the undertaker, patting the folded hands of
+deceased approvingly, “was a brick--every way you took him he was a brick.
+He was so real accommodating, and so modest-like and simple in his last
+moments.  Friends wanted metallic burial-case--nothing else would do.
+I couldn't get it.  There warn't going to be time--anybody could see
+that.
+
+“Corpse said never mind, shake him up some kind of a box he could stretch
+out in comfortable, he warn't particular 'bout the general style of it.
+Said he went more on room than style, anyway in a last final container.
+
+“Friends wanted a silver door-plate on the coffin, signifying who he was
+and wher' he was from.  Now you know a fellow couldn't roust out such a
+gaily thing as that in a little country-town like this.  What did corpse
+say?
+
+“Corpse said, whitewash his old canoe and dob his address and general
+destination onto it with a blacking-brush and a stencil-plate, 'long with
+a verse from some likely hymn or other, and p'int him for the tomb, and
+mark him C. O. D., and just let him flicker.  He warn't distressed any
+more than you be--on the contrary, just as ca(,)'m and collected as a
+hearse-horse; said he judged that wher' he was going to a body would find
+it considerable better to attract attention by a picturesque moral
+character than a natty burial-case with a swell door-plate on it.
+
+“Splendid man, he was.  I'd druther do for a corpse like that 'n any I've
+tackled in seven year.  There's some satisfaction in buryin' a man like
+that.  You feel that what you're doing is appreciated.  Lord bless you,
+so's he got planted before he sp'iled, he was perfectly satisfied; said
+his relations meant well, perfectly well, but all them preparations was
+bound to delay the thing more or less, and he didn't wish to be kept
+layin' around.  You never see such a clear head as what he had--and so
+ca'm and so cool.  Jist a hunk of brains--that is what he was.
+Perfectly awful.  It was a ripping distance from one end of that man's
+head to t'other.  Often and over again he's had brain-fever a-raging in
+one place, and the rest of the pile didn't know anything about it--didn't
+affect it any more than an Injun Insurrection in Arizona affects the
+Atlantic States.
+
+“Well, the relations they wanted a big funeral, but corpse said he was
+down on flummery--didn't want any procession--fill the hearse full of
+mourners, and get out a stern line and tow him behind. He was the most
+down on style of any remains I ever struck.  A beautiful, simpleminded
+creature--it was what he was, you can depend on that.  He was just set on
+having things the way he wanted them, and he took a solid comfort in
+laying his little plans.  He had me measure him and take a whole raft of
+directions; then he had the minister stand up behind a long box with a
+table--cloth over it, to represent the coffin, and read his funeral
+sermon, saying 'Angcore, angcore!' at the good places, and making him
+scratch out every bit of brag about him, and all the hifalutin; and then
+he made them trot out the choir, so's he could help them pick out the
+tunes for the occasion, and he got them to sing 'Pop Goes the Weasel,'
+because he'd always liked that tune when he was downhearted, and solemn
+music made him sad; and when they sung that with tears in their eyes
+(because they all loved him), and his relations grieving around, he just
+laid there as happy as a bug, and trying to beat time and showing all
+over how much he enjoyed it; and presently he got worked up and excited,
+and tried to join in, for, mind you, he was pretty proud of his abilities
+in the singing line; but the first time he opened his mouth and was just
+going to spread himself his breath took a walk.
+
+“I never see a man snuffed out so sudden.  Ah, it was a great loss--a
+powerful loss to this poor little one-horse town.  Well, well, well, I
+hain't got time to be palavering along here--got to nail on the lid and
+mosey along with him; and if you'll just give me a lift we'll skeet him
+into the hearse and meander along.  Relations bound to have it so--don't
+pay no attention to dying injunctions, minute a corpse's gone; but, if I
+had my way, if I didn't respect his last wishes and tow him behind the
+hearse I'll be cuss'd.  I consider that whatever a corpse wants done for
+his comfort is little enough matter, and a man hain't got no right to
+deceive him or take advantage of him; and whatever a corpse trusts me to
+do I'm a-going to do, you know, even if it's to stuff him and paint him
+yaller and keep him for a keepsake--you hear me!”
+
+He cracked his whip and went lumbering away with his ancient ruin of a
+hearse, and I continued my walk with a valuable lesson learned--that a
+healthy and wholesome    is not necessarily impossible to any
+occupation.  The lesson is likely to be lasting, for it will take many
+months to obliterate the memory of the remarks and circumstances that
+impressed it.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CONCERNING CHAMBERMAIDS
+
+Against all chambermaids, of whatsoever age or nationality, I launch the
+curse of bachelordom!  Because:
+
+They always put the pillows at the opposite end of the bed from the
+gas-burner, so that while you read and smoke before sleeping (as is the
+ancient and honored custom of bachelors), you have to hold your book
+aloft, in an uncomfortable position, to keep the light from dazzling your
+eyes.
+
+When they find the pillows removed to the other end of the bed in the
+morning, they receive not the suggestion in a friendly spirit; but,
+glorying in their absolute sovereignty, and unpitying your helplessness,
+they make the bed just as it was originally, and gloat in secret over the
+pang their tyranny will cause you.
+
+Always after that, when they find you have transposed the pillows, they
+undo your work, and thus defy and seek to embitter the life that God has
+given you.
+
+If they cannot get the light in an inconvenient position any other way,
+they move the bed.
+
+If you pull your trunk out six inches from the wall, so that the lid will
+stay up when you open it, they always shove that trunk back again.  They
+do it on purpose.
+
+If you want the spittoon in a certain spot, where it will be handy, they
+don't, and so they move it.
+
+They always put your other boots into inaccessible places.  They chiefly
+enjoy depositing them as far under the bed as the wall will permit.  It
+is because this compels you to get down in an undignified attitude and
+make wild sweeps for them in the dark with the bootjack, and swear.
+
+They always put the matchbox in some other place.  They hunt up a new
+place for it every day, and put up a bottle, or other perishable glass
+thing, where the box stood before.  This is to cause you to break that
+glass thing, groping in the dark, and get yourself into trouble.
+
+They are for ever and ever moving the furniture.  When you come in in the
+night you can calculate on finding the bureau where the wardrobe was in
+the morning.  And when you go out in the morning, if you leave the
+slop-bucket by the door and rocking-chair by the window, when you come in
+at midnight or thereabout, you will fall over that rocking-chair, and you
+will proceed toward the window and sit down in that slop-tub.  This will
+disgust you.  They like that.
+
+No matter where you put anything, they are not going to let it stay
+there.  They will take it and move it the first chance they get.  It is
+their nature.  And, besides, it gives them pleasure to be mean and
+contrary this way.  They would die if they couldn't be villains.
+
+They always save up all the old scraps of printed rubbish you throw on
+the floor, and stack them up carefully on the table, and start the fire
+with your valuable manuscripts.  If there is any one particular old scrap
+that you are more down on than any other, and which you are gradually
+wearing your life out trying to get rid of, you may take all the pains
+you possibly can in that direction, but it won't be of any use, because
+they will always fetch that old scrap back and put it in the same old
+place again every time.  It does them good.
+
+And they use up more hair-oil than any six men.  If charged with
+purloining the same, they lie about it.  What do they care about a
+hereafter?  Absolutely nothing.
+
+If you leave the key in the door for convenience' sake, they will carry
+it down to the office and give it to the clerk.  They do this under the
+vile pretense of trying to protect your property from thieves; but
+actually they do it because they want to make you tramp back down-stairs
+after it when you come home tired, or put you to the trouble of sending a
+waiter for it, which waiter will expect you to pay him something.  In
+which case I suppose the degraded creatures divide.
+
+They keep always trying to make your bed before you get up, thus
+destroying your rest and inflicting agony upon you; but after you get up,
+they don't come any more till next day.
+
+They do all the mean things they can think of, and they do them just out
+of pure cussedness, and nothing else.
+
+Chambermaids are dead to every human instinct.
+
+If I can get a bill through the legislature abolishing chambermaids, I
+mean to do it.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+AURELIA'S UNFORTUNATE YOUNG MAN--[Written about 1865.]
+
+The facts in the following case came to me by letter from a young lady
+who lives in the beautiful city of San José; she is perfectly unknown to
+me, and simply signs herself “Aurelia Maria,” which may possibly be a
+fictitious name.  But no matter, the poor girl is almost heartbroken by
+the misfortunes she has undergone, and so confused by the conflicting
+counsels of misguided friends and insidious enemies that she does not
+know what course to pursue in order to extricate herself from the web of
+difficulties in which she seems almost hopelessly involved.  In this
+dilemma she turns to me for help, and supplicates for my guidance and
+instruction with a moving eloquence that would touch the heart of a
+statue.  Hear her sad story:
+
+She says that when she was sixteen years old she met and loved, with all
+the devotion of a passionate nature, a young man from New Jersey, named
+Williamson Breckinridge Caruthers, who was some six years her senior.
+They were engaged, with the free consent of their friends and relatives,
+and for a time it seemed as if their career was destined to be
+characterized by an immunity from sorrow beyond the usual lot of
+humanity.  But at last the tide of fortune turned; young Caruthers became
+infected with smallpox of the most virulent type, and when he recovered
+from his illness his face was pitted like a waffle-mold, and his
+comeliness gone forever.  Aurelia thought to break off the engagement at
+first, but pity for her unfortunate lover caused her to postpone the
+marriage-day for a season, and give him another trial.
+
+The very day before the wedding was to have taken place, Breckinridge,
+while absorbed in watching the flight of a balloon, walked into a well
+and fractured one of his legs, and it had to be taken off above the knee.
+Again Aurelia was moved to break the engagement, but again love
+triumphed, and she set the day forward and gave him another chance to
+reform.
+
+And again misfortune overtook the unhappy youth.  He lost one arm by the
+premature discharge of a Fourth of July cannon, and within three months
+he got the other pulled out by a carding-machine.  Aurelia's heart was
+almost crushed by these latter calamities.  She could not but be deeply
+grieved to see her lover passing from her by piecemeal, feeling, as she
+did, that he could not last forever under this disastrous process of
+reduction, yet knowing of no way to stop its dreadful career, and in her
+tearful despair she almost regretted, like brokers who hold on and lose,
+that she had not taken him at first, before he had suffered such an
+alarming depreciation.  Still, her brave soul bore her up, and she
+resolved to bear with her friend's unnatural disposition yet a little
+longer.
+
+Again the wedding-day approached, and again disappointment overshadowed
+it; Caruthers fell ill with the erysipelas, and lost the use of one of
+his eyes entirely.  The friends and relatives of the bride, considering
+that she had already put up with more than could reasonably be expected
+of her, now came forward and insisted that the match should be broken
+off; but after wavering awhile, Aurelia, with a generous spirit which did
+her credit, said she had reflected calmly upon the matter, and could not
+discover that Breckinridge was to blame.
+
+So she extended the time once more, and he broke his other leg.
+
+It was a sad day for the poor girl when she saw the surgeons reverently
+bearing away the sack whose uses she had learned by previous experience,
+and her heart told her the bitter truth that some more of her lover was
+gone.  She felt that the field of her affections was growing more and
+more circumscribed every day, but once more she frowned down her
+relatives and renewed her betrothal.
+
+Shortly before the time set for the nuptials another disaster occurred.
+There was but one man scalped by the Owens River Indians last year.  That
+man was Williamson Breckinridge Caruthers of New Jersey.  He was hurrying
+home with happiness in his heart, when he lost his hair forever, and in
+that hour of bitterness he almost cursed the mistaken mercy that had
+spared his head.
+
+At last Aurelia is in serious perplexity as to what she ought to do.  She
+still loves her Breckinridge, she writes, with truly womanly feeling--she
+still loves what is left of him--but her parents are bitterly opposed to
+the match, because he has no property and is disabled from working, and
+she has not sufficient means to support both comfortably.  “Now, what
+should she do?” she asked with painful and anxious solicitude.
+
+It is a delicate question; it is one which involves the lifelong
+happiness of a woman, and that of nearly two-thirds of a man, and I feel
+that it would be assuming too great a responsibility to do more than make
+a mere suggestion in the case.  How would it do to build to him?  If
+Aurelia can afford the expense, let her furnish her mutilated lover with
+wooden arms and wooden legs, and a glass eye and a wig, and give him
+another show; give him ninety days, without grace, and if he does not
+break his neck in the mean time, marry him and take the chances.  It does
+not seem to me that there is much risk, anyway, Aurelia, because if he
+sticks to his singular propensity for damaging himself every time he sees
+a good opportunity, his next experiment is bound to finish him, and then
+you are safe, married or single.  If married, the wooden legs and such
+other valuables as he may possess revert to the widow, and you see you
+sustain no actual loss save the cherished fragment of a noble but most
+unfortunate husband, who honestly strove to do right, but whose
+extraordinary instincts were against him.  Try it, Maria. I have thought
+the matter over carefully and well, and it is the only chance I see for
+you.  It would have been a happy conceit on the part of Caruthers if he
+had started with his neck and broken that first; but since he has seen
+fit to choose a different policy and string himself out as long as
+possible, I do not think we ought to upbraid him for it if he has enjoyed
+it.  We must do the best we can under the circumstances, and try not to
+feel exasperated at him.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+“AFTER” JENKINS
+
+A grand affair of a ball--the Pioneers'--came off at the Occidental some
+time ago.  The following notes of the costumes worn by the belles of the
+occasion may not be uninteresting to the general reader, and Jenkins may
+get an idea therefrom:
+
+Mrs. W. M. was attired in an elegant pâté de foie gras, made expressly
+for her, and was greatly admired.  Miss S. had her hair done up.  She was
+the center of attraction for the gentlemen and the envy of all the ladies.
+Mrs. G. W. was tastefully dressed in a 'tout ensemble,' and was greeted with
+deafening applause wherever she went.  Mrs. C. N. was superbly arrayed in white
+kid gloves.  Her modest and engaging manner accorded well with the
+unpretending simplicity of her costume and caused her to be regarded with
+absorbing interest by every one.
+
+The charming Miss M. M. B. appeared in a thrilling waterfall, whose
+exceeding grace and volume compelled the homage of pioneers and emigrants
+alike.  How beautiful she was!
+
+The queenly Mrs. L. R.  was attractively attired in her new and beautiful
+false teeth, and the 'bon jour' effect they naturally produced was
+heightened by her enchanting and well-sustained smile.
+
+Miss R. P., with that repugnance to ostentation in dress which is so
+peculiar to her, was attired in a simple white lace collar, fastened with
+a neat pearl-button solitaire.  The fine contrast between the sparkling
+vivacity of her natural optic, and the steadfast attentiveness of her
+placid glass eye, was the subject of general and enthusiastic remark.
+
+Miss C. L. B.  had her fine nose elegantly enameled, and the easy grace
+with which she blew it from time to time marked her as a cultivated and
+accomplished woman of the world; its exquisitely modulated tone excited
+the admiration of all who had the happiness to hear it.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+ABOUT BARBERS
+
+All things change except barbers, the ways of barbers, and the
+surroundings of barbers.  These never change.  What one experiences in a
+barber's shop the first time he enters one is what he always experiences
+in barbers' shops afterward till the end of his days.  I got shaved this
+morning as usual.  A man approached the door from Jones Street as I
+approached it from Main--a thing that always happens.  I hurried up, but
+it was of no use; he entered the door one little step ahead of me, and I
+followed in on his heels and saw him take the only vacant chair, the one
+presided over by the best barber.  It always happens so.  I sat down,
+hoping that I might fall heir to the chair belonging to the better of the
+remaining two barbers, for he had already begun combing his man's hair,
+while his comrade was not yet quite done rubbing up and oiling his
+customer's locks.  I watched the probabilities with strong interest.
+When I saw that No. 2 was gaining on No. 1 my interest grew to
+solicitude.  When No. 1 stopped a moment to make change on a bath ticket
+for a new-comer, and lost ground in the race, my solicitude rose to
+anxiety.  When No. 1 caught up again, and both he and his comrade were
+pulling the towels away and brushing the powder from their customers'
+cheeks, and it was about an even thing which one would say “Next!” first,
+my very breath stood still with the suspense.  But when at the
+culminating moment No. 1 stopped to pass a comb a couple of times through
+his customer's eyebrows, I saw that he had lost the race by a single
+instant, and I rose indignant and quitted the shop, to keep from falling
+into the hands of No. 2; for I have none of that enviable firmness that
+enables a man to look calmly into the eyes of a waiting barber and tell
+him he will wait for his fellow-barber's chair.
+
+I stayed out fifteen minutes, and then went back, hoping for better luck.
+Of course all the chairs were occupied now, and four men sat waiting,
+silent, unsociable, distraught, and looking bored, as men always do who
+are waiting their turn in a barber's shop.  I sat down in one of the
+iron-armed compartments of an old sofa, and put in the time for a while
+reading the framed advertisements of all sorts of quack nostrums for
+dyeing and coloring the hair.  Then I read the greasy names on the
+private bayrum bottles; read the names and noted the numbers on the
+private shaving-cups in the pigeonholes; studied the stained and damaged
+cheap prints on the walls, of battles, early Presidents, and voluptuous
+recumbent sultanas, and the tiresome and everlasting young girl putting
+her grandfather's spectacles on; execrated in my heart the cheerful
+canary and the distracting parrot that few barbers' shops are without.
+Finally, I searched out the least dilapidated of last year's illustrated
+papers that littered the foul center-table, and conned their
+unjustifiable misrepresentations of old forgotten events.
+
+At last my turn came.  A voice said “Next!” and I surrendered to--No.  2,
+of course.  It always happens so.  I said meekly that I was in a hurry,
+and it affected him as strongly as if he had never heard it.  He shoved
+up my head, and put a napkin under it.  He plowed his fingers into my
+collar and fixed a towel there.  He explored my hair with his claws and
+suggested that it needed trimming.  I said I did not want it trimmed.  He
+explored again and said it was pretty long for the present style--better
+have a little taken off; it needed it behind especially.  I said I had
+had it cut only a week before.  He yearned over it reflectively a moment,
+and then asked with a disparaging manner, who cut it?  I came back at him
+promptly with a “You did!” I had him there.  Then he fell to stirring up
+his lather and regarding himself in the glass, stopping now and then to
+get close and examine his chin critically or inspect a pimple.  Then he
+lathered one side of my face thoroughly, and was about to lather the
+other, when a dog-fight attracted his attention, and he ran to the window
+and stayed and saw it out, losing two shillings on the result in bets
+with the other barbers, a thing which gave me great satisfaction.  He
+finished lathering, and then began to rub in the suds with his hand.
+
+He now began to sharpen his razor on an old suspender, and was delayed a
+good deal on account of a controversy about a cheap masquerade ball he
+had figured at the night before, in red cambric and bogus ermine, as some
+kind of a king.  He was so gratified with being chaffed about some damsel
+whom he had smitten with his charms that he used every means to continue
+the controversy by pretending to be annoyed at the chaffings of his
+fellows.  This matter begot more surveyings of himself in the glass, and
+he put down his razor and brushed his hair with elaborate care,
+plastering an inverted arch of it down on his forehead, accomplishing an
+accurate “part” behind, and brushing the two wings forward over his ears
+with nice exactness.  In the mean time the lather was drying on my face,
+and apparently eating into my vitals.
+
+Now he began to shave, digging his fingers into my countenance to stretch
+the skin and bundling and tumbling my head this way and that as
+convenience in shaving demanded.  As long as he was on the tough sides of
+my face I did not suffer; but when he began to rake, and rip, and tug at
+my chin, the tears came.  He now made a handle of my nose, to assist him
+shaving the corners of my upper lip, and it was by this bit of
+circumstantial evidence that I discovered that a part of his duties in
+the shop was to clean the kerosene-lamps.  I had often wondered in an
+indolent way whether the barbers did that, or whether it was the boss.
+
+About this time I was amusing myself trying to guess where he would be
+most likely to cut me this time, but he got ahead of me, and sliced me on
+the end of the chin before I had got my mind made up.  He immediately
+sharpened his razor--he might have done it before.  I do not like a close
+shave, and would not let him go over me a second time.  I tried to get
+him to put up his razor, dreading that he would make for the side of my
+chin, my pet tender spot, a place which a razor cannot touch twice
+without making trouble; but he said he only wanted to just smooth off one
+little roughness, and in the same moment he slipped his razor along the
+forbidden ground, and the dreaded pimple-signs of a close shave rose up
+smarting and answered to the call.  Now he soaked his towel in bay rum,
+and slapped it all over my face nastily; slapped it over as if a human
+being ever yet washed his face in that way.  Then he dried it by slapping
+with the dry part of the towel, as if a human being ever dried his face
+in such a fashion; but a barber seldom rubs you like a Christian.  Next
+he poked bay rum into the cut place with his towel, then choked the
+wound with powdered starch, then soaked it with bay rum again, and would
+have gone on soaking and powdering it forevermore, no doubt, if I had not
+rebelled and begged off.  He powdered my whole face now, straightened me
+up, and began to plow my hair thoughtfully with his hands.  Then he
+suggested a shampoo, and said my hair needed it badly, very badly.
+I observed that I shampooed it myself very thoroughly in the bath
+yesterday.  I “had him” again.  He next recommended some of “Smith's Hair
+Glorifier,” and offered to sell me a bottle.  I declined.  He praised the
+new perfume, “Jones's Delight of the Toilet,” and proposed to sell me
+some of that.  I declined again.  He tendered me a tooth-wash atrocity of
+his own invention, and when I declined offered to trade knives with me.
+
+He returned to business after the miscarriage of this last enterprise,
+sprinkled me all over, legs and all, greased my hair in defiance of my
+protest against it, rubbed and scrubbed a good deal of it out by the
+roots, and combed and brushed the rest, parting it behind, and plastering
+the eternal inverted arch of hair down on my forehead, and then, while
+combing my scant eyebrows and defiling them with pomade, strung out an
+account of the achievements of a six-ounce black-and-tan terrier of his
+till I heard the whistles blow for noon, and knew I was five minutes too
+late for the train.  Then he snatched away the towel, brushed it lightly
+about my face, passed his comb through my eyebrows once more, and gaily
+sang out “Next!”
+
+This barber fell down and died of apoplexy two hours later.  I am waiting
+over a day for my revenge--I am going to attend his funeral.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+“PARTY CRIES” IN IRELAND
+
+Belfast is a peculiarly religious community.  This may be said of the
+whole of the North of Ireland.  About one-half of the people are
+Protestants and the other half Catholics.  Each party does all it can to
+make its own doctrines popular and draw the affections of the irreligious
+toward them.  One hears constantly of the most touching instances of this
+zeal.  A week ago a vast concourse of Catholics assembled at Armagh to
+dedicate a new Cathedral; and when they started home again the roadways
+were lined with groups of meek and lowly Protestants who stoned them till
+all the region round about was marked with blood.  I thought that only
+Catholics argued in that way, but it seems to be a mistake.
+
+Every man in the community is a missionary and carries a brick to
+admonish the erring with.  The law has tried to break this up, but not
+with perfect success.  It has decreed that irritating “party cries” shall
+not be indulged in, and that persons uttering them shall be fined forty
+shillings and costs.  And so, in the police court reports every day, one
+sees these fines recorded.  Last week a girl of twelve years old was
+fined the usual forty shillings and costs for proclaiming in the public
+streets that she was “a Protestant.”  The usual cry is, “To hell with the
+Pope!” or “To hell with the Protestants!” according to the utterer's
+system of salvation.
+
+One of Belfast's local jokes was very good.  It referred to the uniform
+and inevitable fine of forty shillings and costs for uttering a party
+cry--and it is no economical fine for a poor man, either, by the way.
+They say that a policeman found a drunken man lying on the ground, up a
+dark alley, entertaining himself with shouting, “To hell with!”  “To hell
+with!”  The officer smelt a fine--informers get half.
+
+“What's that you say?”
+
+
+“To hell with!”
+
+“To hell with who?  To hell with what?”
+
+“Ah, bedad, ye can finish it yourself--it's too expinsive for me!”
+
+I think the seditious disposition, restrained by the economical instinct,
+is finely put in that.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THE FACTS CONCERNING THE RECENT RESIGNATION [Written about 1867]
+
+WASHINGTON, December, 1867.
+
+I have resigned.  The government appears to go on much the same, but
+there is a spoke out of its wheel, nevertheless.  I was clerk of the
+Senate Committee on Conchology, and I have thrown up the position.
+I could see the plainest disposition on the part of the other members of
+the government to debar me from having any voice in the counsels of the
+nation, and so I could no longer hold office and retain my self-respect.
+If I were to detail all the outrages that were heaped upon me during the
+six days that I was connected with the government in an official
+capacity, the narrative would fill a volume.  They appointed me clerk of
+that Committee on Conchology and then allowed me no amanuensis to play
+billiards with.  I would have borne that, lonesome as it was, if I had
+met with that courtesy from the other members of the Cabinet which was my
+due.  But I did not.  Whenever I observed that the head of a department
+was pursuing a wrong course, I laid down everything and went and tried to
+set him right, as it was my duty to do; and I never was thanked for it in
+a single instance.  I went, with the best intentions in the world, to the
+Secretary of the Navy, and said:
+
+“Sir, I cannot see that Admiral Farragut is doing anything but
+skirmishing around there in Europe, having a sort of picnic.  Now, that
+may be all very well, but it does not exhibit itself to me in that light.
+If there is no fighting for him to do, let him come home.  There is no
+use in a man having a whole fleet for a pleasure excursion.  It is too
+expensive.  Mind, I do not object to pleasure excursions for the naval
+officers--pleasure excursions that are in reason--pleasure excursions
+that are economical.  Now, they might go down the Mississippi
+on a raft--”
+
+You ought to have heard him storm!  One would have supposed I had
+committed a crime of some kind.  But I didn't mind.  I said it was cheap,
+and full of republican simplicity, and perfectly safe.  I said that, for
+a tranquil pleasure excursion, there was nothing equal to a raft.
+
+Then the Secretary of the Navy asked me who I was; and when I told him I
+was connected with the government, he wanted to know in what capacity.  I
+said that, without remarking upon the singularity of such a question,
+coming, as it did, from a member of that same government, I would inform
+him that I was clerk of the Senate Committee on Conchology.  Then there
+was a fine storm!  He finished by ordering me to leave the premises, and
+give my attention strictly to my own business in future.  My first
+impulse was to get him removed.  However, that would harm others besides
+himself, and do me no real good, and so I let him stay.
+
+I went next to the Secretary of War, who was not inclined to see me at
+all until he learned that I was connected with the government.  If I had
+not been on important business, I suppose I could not have got in.
+I asked him for alight (he was smoking at the time), and then I told him
+I had no fault to find with his defending the parole stipulations of
+General Lee and his comrades in arms, but that I could not approve of his
+method of fighting the Indians on the Plains.  I said he fought too
+scattering.  He ought to get the Indians more together--get them together
+in some convenient place, where he could have provisions enough for both
+parties, and then have a general massacre.  I said there was nothing so
+convincing to an Indian as a general massacre.  If he could not approve
+of the massacre, I said the next surest thing for an Indian was soap and
+education.  Soap and education are not as sudden as a massacre, but they
+are more deadly in the long run; because a half-massacred Indian may
+recover, but if you educate him and wash him, it is bound to finish him
+some time or other.  It undermines his constitution; it strikes at the
+foundation of his being.  “Sir,” I said, “the time has come when
+blood-curdling cruelty has become necessary.  Inflict soap and a
+spelling-book on every Indian that ravages the Plains, and let them die!”
+
+The Secretary of War asked me if I was a member of the Cabinet, and I
+said I was.  He inquired what position I held, and I said I was clerk of
+the Senate Committee on Conchology.  I was then ordered under arrest for
+contempt of court, and restrained of my liberty for the best part of the
+day.
+
+I almost resolved to be silent thenceforward, and let the Government get
+along the best way it could.  But duty called, and I obeyed.  I called on
+the Secretary of the Treasury.  He said:
+
+“What will you have?”
+
+The question threw me off my guard.  I said, “Rum punch.”
+
+He said: “If you have got any business here, sir, state it--and in as few
+words as possible.”
+
+I then said that I was sorry he had seen fit to change the subject so
+abruptly, because such conduct was very offensive to me; but under the
+circumstances I would overlook the matter and come to the point.  I now
+went into an earnest expostulation with him upon the extravagant length
+of his report.  I said it was expensive, unnecessary, and awkwardly
+constructed; there were no descriptive passages in it, no poetry, no
+sentiment--no heroes, no plot, no pictures--not even wood-cuts.  Nobody
+would read it, that was a clear case.  I urged him not to ruin his
+reputation by getting out a thing like that.  If he ever hoped to succeed
+in literature he must throw more variety into his writings.  He must
+beware of dry detail.  I said that the main popularity of the almanac was
+derived from its poetry and conundrums, and that a few conundrums
+distributed around through his Treasury report would help the sale of it
+more than all the internal revenue he could put into it.  I said these
+things in the kindest spirit, and yet the Secretary of the Treasury fell
+into a violent passion.  He even said I was an ass.  He abused me in the
+most vindictive manner, and said that if I came there again meddling with
+his business he would throw me out of the window.  I said I would take my
+hat and go, if I could not be treated with the respect due to my office,
+and I did go.  It was just like a new author.  They always think they
+know more than anybody else when they are getting out their first book.
+Nobody can tell them anything.
+
+During the whole time that I was connected with the government it seemed
+as if I could not do anything in an official capacity without getting
+myself into trouble.  And yet I did nothing, attempted nothing, but what
+I conceived to be for the good of my country.  The sting of my wrongs may
+have driven me to unjust and harmful conclusions, but it surely seemed to
+me that the Secretary of State, the Secretary of War, the Secretary of
+the Treasury, and others of my confreres had conspired from the very
+beginning to drive me from the Administration.  I never attended but one
+Cabinet meeting while I was connected with the government.  That was
+sufficient for me.  The servant at the White House door did not seem
+disposed to make way for me until I asked if the other members of the
+Cabinet had arrived.  He said they had, and I entered.  They were all
+there; but nobody offered me a seat.  They stared at me as if I had been
+an intruder.  The President said:
+
+“Well, sir, who are you?”
+
+I handed him my card, and he read: “The HON.  MARK TWAIN, Clerk of the
+Senate Committee on Conchology.”  Then he looked at me from head to foot,
+as if he had never heard of me before.  The Secretary of the Treasury
+said:
+
+“This is the meddlesome ass that came to recommend me to put poetry and
+conundrums in my report, as if it were an almanac.”
+
+The Secretary of War said: “It is the same visionary that came to me
+yesterday with a scheme to educate a portion of the Indians to death,
+and massacre the balance.”
+
+The Secretary of the Navy said: “I recognize this youth as the person who
+has been interfering with my business time and again during the week.  He
+is distressed about Admiral Farragut's using a whole fleet for a pleasure
+excursion, as he terms it.  His proposition about some insane pleasure
+excursion on a raft is too absurd to repeat.”
+
+I said: “Gentlemen, I perceive here a disposition to throw discredit
+upon every act of my official career; I perceive, also, a disposition to
+debar me from all voice in the counsels of the nation.  No notice
+whatever was sent to me to-day.  It was only by the merest chance that I
+learned that there was going to be a Cabinet meeting.  But let these
+things pass.  All I wish to know is, is this a Cabinet meeting or is it
+not?”
+
+The President said it was.
+
+“Then,” I said, “let us proceed to business at once, and not fritter away
+valuable time in unbecoming fault-findings with each other's official
+conduct.”
+
+The Secretary of State now spoke up, in his benignant way, and said,
+“Young man, you are laboring under a mistake.  The clerks of the
+Congressional committees are not members of the Cabinet.  Neither are the
+doorkeepers of the Capitol, strange as it may seem.  Therefore, much as
+we could desire your more than human wisdom in our deliberations, we
+cannot lawfully avail ourselves of it.  The counsels of the nation must
+proceed without you; if disaster follows, as follow full well it may, be
+it balm to your sorrowing spirit that by deed and voice you did what in
+you lay to avert it.  You have my blessing.  Farewell.”
+
+These gentle words soothed my troubled breast, and I went away.  But the
+servants of a nation can know no peace.  I had hardly reached my den in
+the Capitol, and disposed my feet on the table like a representative,
+when one of the Senators on the Conchological Committee came in in a
+passion and said:
+
+“Where have you been all day?”
+
+I observed that, if that was anybody's affair but my own, I had been to a
+Cabinet meeting.
+
+“To a Cabinet meeting?  I would like to know what business you had at a
+Cabinet meeting?”
+
+I said I went there to consult--allowing for the sake of argument that he
+was in any wise concerned in the matter.  He grew insolent then, and
+ended by saying he had wanted me for three days past to copy a report on
+bomb-shells, egg-shells, clamshells, and I don't know what all, connected
+with conchology, and nobody had been able to find me.
+
+This was too much.  This was the feather that broke the clerical camel's
+back.  I said, “Sir, do you suppose that I am going to work for six
+dollars a day?  If that is the idea, let me recommend the Senate
+Committee on Conchology to hire somebody else.  I am the slave of no
+faction!  Take back your degrading commission.  Give me liberty, or give
+me death!”
+
+
+From that hour I was no longer connected with the government.  Snubbed by
+the department, snubbed by the Cabinet, snubbed at last by the chairman
+of a committee I was endeavoring to adorn, I yielded to persecution, cast
+far from me the perils and seductions of my great office, and forsook my
+bleeding country in the hour of her peril.
+
+But I had done the state some service, and I sent in my bill:
+
+     The United States of America in account with
+     the Hon. Clerk of the Senate Committee on Conchology,   Dr.
+          To consultation with Secretary of War ............ $50
+          To consultation with Secretary of Navy ........... $50
+          To consultation with Secretary of the Treasury ... $50
+          Cabinet consultation ...................No charge.
+          To mileage to and from Jerusalem, via Egypt,
+               Algiers, Gibraltar, and Cadiz,
+               14,000 miles, at 20c. a mile ............. $2,800
+          To salary as Clerk of Senate Committee
+          on Conchology, six days, at $6 per day ........... $36
+
+                         Total .......................... $2,986
+
+--[Territorial delegates charge mileage both ways, although they never go
+back when they get here once.  Why my mileage is denied me is more than I
+can understand.]
+
+Not an item of this bill has been paid, except that trifle of thirty-six
+dollars for clerkship salary.  The Secretary of the Treasury, pursuing me
+to the last, drew his pen through all the other items, and simply marked
+in the margin “Not allowed.”  So, the dread alternative is embraced at
+last.  Repudiation has begun!  The nation is lost.
+
+I am done with official life for the present.  Let those clerks who are
+willing to be imposed on remain.  I know numbers of them in the
+departments who are never informed when there is to be a Cabinet meeting,
+whose advice is never asked about war, or finance, or commerce, by the
+heads of the nation, any more than if they were not connected with the
+government, and who actually stay in their offices day after day and
+work!  They know their importance to the nation, and they unconsciously
+show it in their bearing, and the way they order their sustenance at the
+restaurant--but they work.  I know one who has to paste all sorts of
+little scraps from the newspapers into a scrapbook--sometimes as many as
+eight or ten scraps a day.  He doesn't do it well, but he does it as well
+as he can.  It is very fatiguing.  It is exhausting to the intellect.
+Yet he only gets eighteen hundred dollars a year.  With a brain like his,
+that young man could amass thousands and thousands of dollars in some
+other pursuit, if he chose to do it.  But no--his heart is with his
+country, and he will serve her as long as she has got a scrapbook left.
+And I know clerks that don't know how to write very well, but such
+knowledge as they possess they nobly lay at the feet of their country,
+and toil on and suffer for twenty-five hundred dollars a year.  What they
+write has to be written over again by other clerks sometimes; but when a
+man has done his best for his country, should his country complain?  Then
+there are clerks that have no clerkships, and are waiting, and waiting,
+and waiting for a vacancy--waiting patiently for a chance to help their
+country out--and while they are waiting, they only get barely two
+thousand dollars a year for it.  It is sad--it is very, very sad.  When a
+member of Congress has a friend who is gifted, but has no employment
+wherein his great powers may be brought to bear, he confers him upon his
+country, and gives him a clerkship in a department.  And there that man
+has to slave his life out, fighting documents for the benefit of a nation
+that never thinks of him, never sympathizes with him--and all for two
+thousand or three thousand dollars a year.  When I shall have completed
+my list of all the clerks in the several departments, with my statement
+of what they have to do, and what they get for it, you will see that
+there are not half enough clerks, and that what there are do not get half
+enough pay.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+HISTORY REPEATS ITSELF
+
+The following I find in a Sandwich Island paper which some friend has
+sent me from that tranquil far-off retreat.  The coincidence between my
+own experience and that here set down by the late Mr. Benton is so
+remarkable that I cannot forbear publishing and commenting upon the
+paragraph.  The Sandwich Island paper says:
+
+How touching is this tribute of the late Hon. T. H. Benton to his
+mother's influence:--'My mother asked me never to use tobacco; I have
+never touched it from that time to the present day.  She asked me not to
+gamble, and I have never gambled.  I cannot tell who is losing in games
+that are being played.  She admonished me, too, against liquor-drinking,
+and whatever capacity for endurance I have at present, and whatever
+usefulness I may have attained through life, I attribute to having
+complied with her pious and correct wishes.  When I was seven years of
+age she asked me not to drink, and then I made a resolution of total
+abstinence; and that I have adhered to it through all time I owe to my
+mother.'
+
+I never saw anything so curious.  It is almost an exact epitome of my own
+moral career--after simply substituting a grandmother for a mother.  How
+well I remember my grandmother's asking me not to use tobacco, good old
+soul!  She said, “You're at it again, are you, you whelp?  Now don't ever
+let me catch you chewing tobacco before breakfast again, or I lay I'll
+blacksnake you within an inch of your life!”  I have never touched it at
+that hour of the morning from that time to the present day.
+
+She asked me not to gamble.  She whispered and said, “Put up those wicked
+cards this minute!--two pair and a jack, you numskull, and the other
+fellow's got a flush!”
+
+I never have gambled from that day to this--never once--without a “cold
+deck” in my pocket.  I cannot even tell who is going to lose in games
+that are being played unless I deal myself.
+
+When I was two years of age she asked me not to drink, and then I made a
+resolution of total abstinence.  That I have adhered to it and enjoyed
+the beneficent effects of it through all time, I owe to my grandmother.
+I have never drunk a drop from that day to this of any kind of water.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+HONORED AS A CURIOSITY
+
+If you get into conversation with a stranger in Honolulu, and experience
+that natural desire to know what sort of ground you are treading on by
+finding out what manner of man your stranger is, strike out boldly and
+address him as “Captain.”  Watch him narrowly, and if you see by his
+countenance that you are on the wrong track, ask him where he preaches.
+It is a safe bet that he is either a missionary or captain of a whaler.
+I became personally acquainted with seventy-two captains and ninety-six
+missionaries.  The captains and ministers form one-half of the
+population; the third fourth is composed of common Kanakas and mercantile
+foreigners and their families; and the final fourth is made up of high
+officers of the Hawaiian Government.  And there are just about cats
+enough for three apiece all around.
+
+A solemn stranger met me in the suburbs one day, and said:
+
+“Good morning, your reverence.  Preach in the stone church yonder, no
+doubt!”
+ “No, I don't.  I'm not a preacher.”
+
+“Really, I beg your pardon, captain.  I trust you had a good season.  How
+much oil--”
+
+“Oil!  Why, what do you take me for?  I'm not a whaler.”
+
+“Oh!  I beg a thousand pardons, your Excellency.  Major-General in the
+household troops, no doubt?  Minister of the Interior, likely?  Secretary
+of War?  First Gentleman of the Bedchamber?  Commissioner of the Royal--”
+
+“Stuff, man!  I'm not connected in any way with the government.”
+
+“Bless my life!  Then who the mischief are you? what the mischief are
+you? and how the mischief did you get here? and where in thunder did you
+come from?”
+
+“I'm only a private personage--an unassuming stranger--lately arrived
+from America.”
+
+“No!  Not a missionary! not a whaler! not a member of his Majesty's
+government! not even a Secretary of the Navy!  Ah!  Heaven! it is too
+blissful to be true, alas! I do but dream.  And yet that noble, honest
+countenance--those oblique, ingenuous eyes--that massive head, incapable
+of--of anything; your hand; give me your hand, bright waif.  Excuse these
+tears.  For sixteen weary years I have yearned for a moment like this,
+and--”
+
+Here his feelings were too much for him, and he swooned away.  I pitied
+this poor creature from the bottom of my heart.  I was deeply moved.
+I shed a few tears on him, and kissed him for his mother.  I then took
+what small change he had, and “shoved.”
+
+
+
+
+
+
+FIRST INTERVIEW WITH ARTEMUS WARD--[Written about 1870.]
+
+I had never seen him before.  He brought letters of introduction from
+mutual friends in San Francisco, and by invitation I breakfasted with
+him.  It was almost religion, there in the silver-mines, to precede such
+a meal with whisky cocktails.  Artemus, with the true cosmopolitan
+instinct, always deferred to the customs of the country he was in, and so
+he ordered three of those abominations.  Hingston was present.  I said I
+would rather not drink a whisky cocktail.  I said it would go right to my
+head, and confuse me so that I would be in a helpless tangle in ten
+minutes.  I did not want to act like a lunatic before strangers.  But
+Artemus gently insisted, and I drank the treasonable mixture under
+protest, and felt all the time that I was doing a thing I might be sorry
+for.  In a minute or two I began to imagine that my ideas were clouded.
+I waited in great anxiety for the conversation to open, with a sort of
+vague hope that my understanding would prove clear, after all, and my
+misgivings groundless.
+
+Artemus dropped an unimportant remark or two, and then assumed a look of
+superhuman earnestness, and made the following astounding speech.  He
+said:
+
+“Now there is one thing I ought to ask you about before I forget it.  You
+have been here in Silver land--here in Nevada--two or three years, and,
+of course, your position on the daily press has made it necessary for you
+to go down in the mines and examine them carefully in detail, and
+therefore you know all about the silver-mining business.  Now what I want
+to get at is--is, well, the way the deposits of ore are made, you know.
+For instance.  Now, as I understand it, the vein which contains the
+silver is sandwiched in between casings of granite, and runs along the
+ground, and sticks up like a curb stone.  Well, take a vein forty feet
+thick, for example, or eighty, for that matter, or even a hundred--say
+you go down on it with a shaft, straight down, you know, or with what you
+call 'incline' maybe you go down five hundred feet, or maybe you don't go
+down but two hundred--anyway, you go down, and all the time this vein
+grows narrower, when the casings come nearer or approach each other, you
+may say--that is, when they do approach, which, of course, they do not
+always do, particularly in cases where the nature of the formation is
+such that they stand apart wider than they otherwise would, and which
+geology has failed to account for, although everything in that science
+goes to prove that, all things being equal, it would if it did not, or
+would not certainly if it did, and then, of course, they are.  Do not you
+
+think it is?”
+
+I said to myself:
+
+“Now I just knew how it would be--that whisky cocktail has done the
+business for me; I don't understand any more than a clam.”
+
+And then I said aloud:
+
+“I--I--that is--if you don't mind, would you--would you say that over
+again?  I ought--”
+
+“Oh, certainly, certainly!  You see I am very unfamiliar with the
+subject, and perhaps I don't present my case clearly, but I--”
+
+“No, no-no, no-you state it plain enough, but that cocktail has muddled
+me a little.  But I will--no, I do understand for that matter; but I would
+get the hang of it all the better if you went over it again--and I'll pay
+better attention this time.”
+
+He said, “Why, what I was after was this.”
+
+[Here he became even more fearfully impressive than ever, and emphasized
+each particular point by checking it off on his finger-ends.]
+
+“This vein, or lode, or ledge, or whatever you call it, runs along
+between two layers of granite, just the same as if it were a sandwich.
+Very well.  Now suppose you go down on that, say a thousand feet, or
+maybe twelve hundred (it don't really matter) before you drift, and then
+you start your drifts, some of them across the ledge, and others along
+the length of it, where the sulphurets--I believe they call them
+sulphurets, though why they should, considering that, so far as I can
+see, the main dependence of a miner does not so lie, as some suppose, but
+in which it cannot be successfully maintained, wherein the same should
+not continue, while part and parcel of the same ore not committed to
+either in the sense referred to, whereas, under different circumstances,
+the most inexperienced among us could not detect it if it were, or might
+overlook it if it did, or scorn the very idea of such a thing, even
+though it were palpably demonstrated as such.  Am I not right?”
+
+I said, sorrowfully: “I feel ashamed of myself, Mr.  Ward.  I know I
+ought to understand you perfectly well, but you see that treacherous
+whisky cocktail has got into my head, and now I cannot understand even
+the simplest proposition.  I told you how it would be.”
+
+“Oh, don't mind it, don't mind it; the fault was my own, no doubt--though
+I did think it clear enough for--”
+
+“Don't say a word.  Clear!  Why, you stated it as clear as the sun to
+anybody but an abject idiot; but it's that confounded cocktail that has
+played the mischief.”
+
+“No; now don't say that.  I'll begin it all over again, and--”
+
+“Don't now--for goodness' sake, don't do anything of the kind, because I
+tell you my head is in such a condition that I don't believe I could
+understand the most trifling question a man could ask me.
+
+“Now don't you be afraid.  I'll put it so plain this time that you can't
+help but get the hang of it.  We will begin at the very beginning.”
+ [Leaning far across the table, with determined impressiveness wrought
+upon his every feature, and fingers prepared to keep tally of each point
+enumerated; and I, leaning forward with painful interest, resolved to
+comprehend or perish.]  “You know the vein, the ledge, the thing that
+contains the metal, whereby it constitutes the medium between all other
+forces, whether of present or remote agencies, so brought to bear in
+favor of the former against the latter, or the latter against the former
+or all, or both, or compromising the relative differences existing within
+the radius whence culminate the several degrees of similarity to which--”
+
+I said: “Oh, hang my wooden head, it ain't any use!--it ain't any use to
+try--I can't understand anything.  The plainer you get it the more I
+can't get the hang of it.”
+
+I heard a suspicious noise behind me, and turned in time to see Hingston
+dodging behind a newspaper, and quaking with a gentle ecstasy of
+laughter.  I looked at Ward again, and he had thrown off his dread
+solemnity and was laughing also.  Then I saw that I had been sold--that I
+had been made a victim of a swindle in the way of a string of plausibly
+worded sentences that didn't mean anything under the sun.  Artemus Ward
+was one of the best fellows in the world, and one of the most
+companionable.  It has been said that he was not fluent in conversation,
+but, with the above experience in my mind, I differ.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CANNIBALISM IN THE CARS--[Written about 1867.]
+
+I visited St. Louis lately, and on my way West, after changing cars at
+Terre Haute, Indiana, a mild, benevolent-looking gentleman of about
+forty-five, or maybe fifty, came in at one of the way-stations and sat
+down beside me.  We talked together pleasantly on various subjects for an
+hour, perhaps, and I found him exceedingly intelligent and entertaining.
+When he learned that I was from Washington, he immediately began to ask
+questions about various public men, and about Congressional affairs; and
+I saw very shortly that I was conversing with a man who was perfectly
+familiar with the ins and outs of political life at the Capital, even to
+the ways and manners, and customs of procedure of Senators and
+Representatives in the Chambers of the national Legislature.  Presently
+two men halted near us for a single moment, and one said to the other:
+
+“Harris, if you'll do that for me, I'll never forget you, my boy.”
+
+My new comrade's eye lighted pleasantly.  The words had touched upon a
+happy memory, I thought.  Then his face settled into thoughtfulness
+--almost into gloom.  He turned to me and said,
+
+“Let me tell you a story; let me give you a secret chapter of my life
+--a chapter that has never been referred to by me since its events
+transpired.  Listen patiently, and promise that you will not interrupt
+me.”
+
+I said I would not, and he related the following strange adventure,
+speaking sometimes with animation, sometimes with melancholy, but always
+with feeling and earnestness.
+
+
+                         THE STRANGER'S NARRATIVE
+
+“On the 19th of December, 1853, I started from St. Louis on the evening
+train bound for Chicago.  There were only twenty-four passengers, all
+told.  There were no ladies and no children.  We were in excellent
+spirits, and pleasant acquaintanceships were soon formed.  The journey
+bade fair to be a happy one; and no individual in the party, I think, had
+even the vaguest presentiment of the horrors we were soon to undergo.
+
+“At 11 P.M. it began to snow hard.  Shortly after leaving the small
+village of Welden, we entered upon that tremendous prairie solitude that
+stretches its leagues on leagues of houseless dreariness far away toward
+the Jubilee Settlements.  The winds, unobstructed by trees or hills, or
+even vagrant rocks, whistled fiercely across the level desert, driving
+the falling snow before it like spray from the crested waves of a stormy
+sea.  The snow was deepening fast; and we knew, by the diminished speed
+of the train, that the engine was plowing through it with steadily
+increasing difficulty.  Indeed, it almost came to a dead halt sometimes,
+in the midst of great drifts that piled themselves like colossal graves
+across the track.  Conversation began to flag.  Cheerfulness gave place
+to grave concern.  The possibility of being imprisoned in the snow, on
+the bleak prairie, fifty miles from any house, presented itself to every
+mind, and extended its depressing influence over every spirit.
+
+“At two o'clock in the morning I was aroused out of an uneasy slumber by
+the ceasing of all motion about me.  The appalling truth flashed upon me
+instantly--we were captives in a snow-drift!  'All hands to the rescue!'
+Every man sprang to obey.  Out into the wild night, the pitchy darkness,
+the billowy snow, the driving storm, every soul leaped, with the
+consciousness that a moment lost now might bring destruction to us all.
+Shovels, hands, boards--anything, everything that could displace snow,
+was brought into instant requisition.  It was a weird picture, that small
+company of frantic men fighting the banking snows, half in the blackest
+shadow and half in the angry light of the locomotive's reflector.
+
+“One short hour sufficed to prove the utter uselessness of our efforts.
+The storm barricaded the track with a dozen drifts while we dug one away.
+And worse than this, it was discovered that the last grand charge the
+engine had made upon the enemy had broken the fore-and-aft shaft of the
+driving-wheel!  With a free track before us we should still have been
+helpless.  We entered the car wearied with labor, and very sorrowful.
+We gathered about the stoves, and gravely canvassed our situation.  We
+had no provisions whatever--in this lay our chief distress.  We could not
+freeze, for there was a good supply of wood in the tender.  This was our
+only comfort.  The discussion ended at last in accepting the
+disheartening decision of the conductor, viz., that it would be death for
+any man to attempt to travel fifty miles on foot through snow like that.
+We could not send for help, and even if we could it would not come.  We
+must submit, and await, as patiently as we might, succor or starvation!
+I think the stoutest heart there felt a momentary chill when those words
+were uttered.
+
+“Within the hour conversation subsided to a low murmur here and there
+about the car, caught fitfully between the rising and falling of the
+blast; the lamps grew dim; and the majority of the castaways settled
+themselves among the flickering shadows to think--to forget the present,
+if they could--to sleep, if they might.
+
+“The eternal night--it surely seemed eternal to us--wore its lagging hours
+away at last, and the cold gray dawn broke in the east.  As the light
+grew stronger the passengers began to stir and give signs of life, one
+after another, and each in turn pushed his slouched hat up from his
+forehead, stretched his stiffened limbs, and glanced out of the windows
+upon the cheerless prospect.  It was cheerless, indeed!--not a living
+thing visible anywhere, not a human habitation; nothing but a vast white
+desert; uplifted sheets of snow drifting hither and thither before the
+wind--a world of eddying flakes shutting out the firmament above.
+
+“All day we moped about the cars, saying little, thinking much.  Another
+lingering dreary night--and hunger.
+
+“Another dawning--another day of silence, sadness, wasting hunger,
+hopeless watching for succor that could not come.  A night of restless
+slumber, filled with dreams of feasting--wakings distressed with the
+gnawings of hunger.
+
+
+“The fourth day came and went--and the fifth!  Five days of dreadful
+imprisonment!  A savage hunger looked out at every eye.  There was in it
+a sign of awful import--the foreshadowing of a something that was vaguely
+shaping itself in every heart--a something which no tongue dared yet to
+frame into words.
+
+“The sixth day passed--the seventh dawned upon as gaunt and haggard and
+hopeless a company of men as ever stood in the shadow of death.  It must
+out now!  That thing which had been growing up in every heart was ready
+to leap from every lip at last!  Nature had been taxed to the utmost--she
+must yield.  RICHARD H. GASTON of Minnesota, tall, cadaverous, and pale,
+rose up.  All knew what was coming.  All prepared--every emotion, every
+semblance of excitement--was smothered--only a calm, thoughtful
+seriousness appeared in the eyes that were lately so wild.
+
+“'Gentlemen: It cannot be delayed longer!  The time is at hand!  We must
+determine which of us shall die to furnish food for the rest!'
+
+
+“MR. JOHN J. WILLIAMS of Illinois rose and said: 'Gentlemen--I nominate
+the Rev. James Sawyer of Tennessee.'
+
+“MR. Wm. R. ADAMS of Indiana said: 'I nominate Mr. Daniel Slote of New
+York.'
+
+“MR. CHARLES J. LANGDON: 'I nominate Mr. Samuel A.  Bowen of St. Louis.'
+
+“MR. SLOTE: 'Gentlemen--I desire to decline in favor of Mr. John A. Van
+Nostrand, Jun., of New Jersey.'
+
+“MR. GASTON: 'If there be no objection, the gentleman's desire will be
+acceded to.'
+
+“MR. VAN NOSTRAND objecting, the resignation of Mr. Slote was rejected.
+The resignations of Messrs. Sawyer and Bowen were also offered, and
+refused upon the same grounds.
+
+“MR. A. L. BASCOM of Ohio: 'I move that the nominations now close, and
+that the House proceed to an election by ballot.'
+
+
+“MR. SAWYER: 'Gentlemen--I protest earnestly against these proceedings.
+They are, in every way, irregular and unbecoming.  I must beg to move
+that they be dropped at once, and that we elect a chairman of the meeting
+and proper officers to assist him, and then we can go on with the
+business before us understandingly.'
+
+“MR. BELL of Iowa: 'Gentlemen--I object.  This is no time to stand upon
+forms and ceremonious observances.  For more than seven days we have been
+without food.  Every moment we lose in idle discussion increases our
+distress.  I am satisfied with the nominations that have been made--every
+gentleman present is, I believe--and I, for one, do not see why we should
+not proceed at once to elect one or more of them.  I wish to offer a
+resolution--'
+
+“MR. GASTON: 'It would be objected to, and have to lie over one day under
+the rules, thus bringing about the very delay you wish to avoid.  The
+gentleman from New Jersey--'
+
+“MR. VAN NOSTRAND: 'Gentlemen--I am a stranger among you; I have not
+sought the distinction that has been conferred upon me, and I feel a
+delicacy--'
+
+“MR. MORGAN Of Alabama (interrupting): 'I move the previous question.'
+
+“The motion was carried, and further debate shut off, of course.  The
+motion to elect officers was passed, and under it Mr. Gaston was chosen
+chairman, Mr. Blake, secretary, Messrs.  Holcomb, Dyer, and Baldwin a
+committee on nominations, and Mr. R. M. Howland, purveyor, to assist the
+committee in making selections.
+
+“A recess of half an hour was then taken, and some little caucusing
+followed.  At the sound of the gavel the meeting reassembled, and the
+committee reported in favor of Messrs. George Ferguson of Kentucky,
+Lucien Herrman of Louisiana, and W. Messick of Colorado as candidates.
+The report was accepted.
+
+“MR. ROGERS of Missouri: 'Mr. President--The report being properly before
+the House now, I move to amend it by substituting for the name of Mr.
+Herrman that of Mr. Lucius Harris of St. Louis, who is well and
+honorably known to us all.  I do not wish to be understood as casting the
+least reflection upon the high character and standing of the gentleman
+from Louisiana--far from it.  I respect and esteem him as much as any
+gentleman here present possibly can; but none of us can be blind to the
+fact that he has lost more flesh during the week that we have lain here
+than any among us--none of us can be blind to the fact that the committee
+has been derelict in its duty, either through negligence or a graver
+fault, in thus offering for our suffrages a gentleman who, however pure
+his own motives may be, has really less nutriment in him--'
+
+“THE CHAIR: 'The gentleman from Missouri will take his seat.  The Chair
+cannot allow the integrity of the committee to be questioned save by the
+regular course, under the rules.  What action will the House take upon
+the gentleman's motion?'
+
+“MR. HALLIDAY of Virginia: 'I move to further amend the report by
+substituting Mr. Harvey Davis of Oregon for Mr. Messick.  It may be urged
+by gentlemen that the hardships and privations of a frontier life have
+rendered Mr. Davis tough; but, gentlemen, is this a time to cavil at
+toughness?  Is this a time to be fastidious concerning trifles?  Is this
+a time to dispute about matters of paltry significance?  No, gentlemen,
+bulk is what we desire--substance, weight, bulk--these are the supreme
+requisites now--not talent, not genius, not education.  I insist upon my
+motion.'
+
+“MR. MORGAN (excitedly): 'Mr.  Chairman--I do most strenuously object to
+this amendment.  The gentleman from Oregon is old, and furthermore is
+bulky only in bone--not in flesh.  I ask the gentleman from Virginia if
+it is soup we want instead of solid sustenance? if he would delude us
+with shadows? if he would mock our suffering with an Oregonian specter?
+I ask him if he can look upon the anxious faces around him, if he can
+gaze into our sad eyes, if he can listen to the beating of our expectant
+hearts, and still thrust this famine-stricken fraud upon us?  I ask him
+if he can think of our desolate state, of our past sorrows, of our dark
+future, and still unpityingly foist upon us this wreck, this ruin, this
+tottering swindle, this gnarled and blighted and sapless vagabond from
+Oregon's inhospitable shores?  Never!' [Applause.]
+
+“The amendment was put to vote, after a fiery debate, and lost.  Mr.
+Harris was substituted on the first amendment.  The balloting then began.
+Five ballots were held without a choice.  On the sixth, Mr. Harris was
+elected, all voting for him but himself.  It was then moved that his
+election should be ratified by acclamation, which was lost, in
+consequence of his again voting against himself.
+
+“MR. RADWAY moved that the House now take up the remaining candidates,
+and go into an election for breakfast.  This was carried.
+
+“On the first ballot there was a tie, half the members favoring one
+candidate on account of his youth, and half favoring the other on account
+of his superior size.  The President gave the casting vote for the
+latter, Mr. Messick.  This decision created considerable dissatisfaction
+among the friends of Mr. Ferguson, the defeated candidate, and there was
+some talk of demanding a new ballot; but in the midst of it a motion to
+adjourn was carried, and the meeting broke up at once.
+
+“The preparations for supper diverted the attention of the Ferguson
+faction from the discussion of their grievance for a long time, and then,
+when they would have taken it up again, the happy announcement that Mr.
+Harris was ready drove all thought of it to the winds.
+
+“We improvised tables by propping up the backs of car-seats, and sat down
+with hearts full of gratitude to the finest supper that had blessed our
+vision for seven torturing days.  How changed we were from what we had
+been a few short hours before!  Hopeless, sad-eyed misery, hunger,
+feverish anxiety, desperation, then; thankfulness, serenity, joy too deep
+for utterance now.  That I know was the cheeriest hour of my eventful
+life.  The winds howled, and blew the snow wildly about our prison house,
+but they were powerless to distress us any more.  I liked Harris.  He
+might have been better done, perhaps, but I am free to say that no man
+ever agreed with me better than Harris, or afforded me so large a degree
+of satisfaction.  Messick was very well, though rather high-flavored,
+but for genuine nutritiousness and delicacy of fiber, give me Harris.
+Messick had his good points--I will not attempt to deny it, nor do I wish
+to do it--but he was no more fitted for breakfast than a mummy would be,
+sir--not a bit.  Lean?--why, bless me!--and tough?  Ah, he was very
+tough!  You could not imagine it--you could never imagine anything like
+it.”
+
+“Do you mean to tell me that--”
+ “Do not interrupt me, please.  After breakfast we elected a man by the
+name of Walker, from Detroit, for supper.  He was very good.  I wrote his
+wife so afterward.  He was worthy of all praise.  I shall always remember
+Walker.  He was a little rare, but very good.  And then the next morning
+we had Morgan of Alabama for breakfast. He was one of the finest men I
+ever sat down to--handsome, educated, refined, spoke several languages
+fluently--a perfect gentleman--he was a perfect gentleman, and singularly juicy.
+For supper we had that Oregon patriarch, and he was a fraud,
+there is no question about it--old, scraggy, tough, nobody can picture
+the reality.  I finally said, gentlemen, you can do as you like, but I
+will wait for another election.  And Grimes of Illinois said, 'Gentlemen,
+I will wait also.  When you elect a man that has something to recommend
+him, I shall be glad to join you again.'  It soon became evident that
+there was general dissatisfaction with Davis of Oregon, and so, to
+preserve the good will that had prevailed so pleasantly since we had had
+Harris, an election was called, and the result of it was that Baker of
+Georgia was chosen.  He was splendid!  Well, well--after that we had
+Doolittle, and Hawkins, and McElroy (there was some complaint about
+McElroy, because he was uncommonly short and thin), and Penrod, and two
+Smiths, and Bailey (Bailey had a wooden leg, which was clear loss, but he
+was otherwise good), and an Indian boy, and an organ-grinder, and a
+gentleman by the name of Buckminster--a poor stick of a vagabond that
+wasn't any good for company and no account for breakfast.  We were glad
+we got him elected before relief came.”
+
+“And so the blessed relief did come at last?”
+
+“Yes, it came one bright, sunny morning, just after election.  John
+Murphy was the choice, and there never was a better, I am willing to
+testify; but John Murphy came home with us, in the train that came to
+succor us, and lived to marry the widow Harris--”
+
+“Relict of--”
+
+“Relict of our first choice.  He married her, and is happy and respected
+and prosperous yet.  Ah, it was like a novel, sir--it was like a romance.
+This is my stopping-place, sir; I must bid you goodby.  Any time that you
+can make it convenient to tarry a day or two with me, I shall be glad to
+have you.  I like you, sir; I have conceived an affection for you.
+I could like you as well as I liked Harris himself, sir.  Good day, sir,
+and a pleasant journey.”
+
+He was gone.  I never felt so stunned, so distressed, so bewildered in my
+life.  But in my soul I was glad he was gone.  With all his gentleness of
+manner and his soft voice, I shuddered whenever he turned his hungry eye
+upon me; and when I heard that I had achieved his perilous affection, and
+that I stood almost with the late Harris in his esteem, my heart fairly
+stood still!
+
+I was bewildered beyond description.  I did not doubt his word; I could
+not question a single item in a statement so stamped with the earnestness
+of truth as his; but its dreadful details overpowered me, and threw my
+thoughts into hopeless confusion.  I saw the conductor looking at me.
+I said, “Who is that man?”
+
+“He was a member of Congress once, and a good one.  But he got caught in
+a snow-drift in the cars, and like to have been starved to death.  He got
+so frost-bitten and frozen up generally, and used up for want of
+something to eat, that he was sick and out of his head two or three
+months afterward.  He is all right now, only he is a monomaniac, and when
+he gets on that old subject he never stops till he has eat up that whole
+car-load of people he talks about.  He would have finished the crowd by
+this time, only he had to get out here.  He has got their names as pat as
+A B C.  When he gets them all eat up but himself, he always says: 'Then
+the hour for the usual election for breakfast having arrived, and there
+being no opposition, I was duly elected, after which, there being no
+objections offered, I resigned.  Thus I am here.'”
+
+I felt inexpressibly relieved to know that I had only been listening to
+the harmless vagaries of a madman instead of the genuine experiences of a
+bloodthirsty cannibal.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THE KILLING OF JULIUS CAESAR “LOCALIZED”--[Written about 1865.]
+
+Being the only true and reliable account ever published; taken from the
+Roman “Daily Evening Fasces,” of the date of that tremendous occurrence.
+
+Nothing in the world affords a newspaper reporter so much satisfaction as
+gathering up the details of a bloody and mysterious murder and writing
+them up with aggravating circumstantiality.  He takes a living delight in
+this labor of love--for such it is to him, especially if he knows that
+all the other papers have gone to press, and his will be the only one
+that will contain the dreadful intelligence.  A feeling of regret has
+often come over me that I was not reporting in Rome when Caesar was
+killed--reporting on an evening paper, and the only one in the city, and
+getting at least twelve hours ahead of the morning-paper boys with this
+most magnificent “item” that ever fell to the lot of the craft.  Other
+events have happened as startling as this, but none that possessed so
+peculiarly all the characteristics of the favorite “item” of the present
+day, magnified into grandeur and sublimity by the high rank, fame, and
+social and political standing of the actors in it.
+
+However, as I was not permitted to report Caesar's assassination in the
+regular way, it has at least afforded me rare satisfaction to translate
+the following able account of it from the original Latin of the Roman
+Daily Evening Fasces of that date--second edition:
+
+
+Our usually quiet city of Rome was thrown into a state of wild excitement
+yesterday by the occurrence of one of those bloody affrays which sicken
+the heart and fill the soul with fear, while they inspire all thinking
+men with forebodings for the future of a city where human life is held so
+cheaply and the gravest laws are so openly set at defiance.  As the
+result of that affray, it is our painful duty, as public journalists, to
+record the death of one of our most esteemed citizens--a man whose name
+is known wherever this paper circulates, and whose fame it has been our
+pleasure and our privilege to extend, and also to protect from the tongue
+of slander and falsehood, to the best of our poor ability.  We refer to
+Mr. J. Caesar, the Emperor-elect.
+
+The facts of the case, as nearly as our reporter could determine them
+from the conflicting statements of eye-witnesses, were about as
+follows:--The affair was an election row, of course.  Nine-tenths of the
+ghastly butcheries that disgrace the city nowadays grow out of the
+bickerings and jealousies and animosities engendered by these accursed
+elections.  Rome would be the gainer by it if her very constables were
+elected to serve a century; for in our experience we have never even been
+able to choose a dog-pelter without celebrating the event with a dozen
+knockdowns and a general cramming of the station-house with drunken
+vagabonds overnight. It is said that when the immense majority for Caesar
+at the polls in the market was declared the other day, and the crown was
+offered to that gentleman, even his amazing unselfishness in refusing it
+three times was not sufficient to save him from the whispered insults of
+such men as Casca, of the Tenth Ward, and other hirelings of the
+disappointed candidate, hailing mostly from the Eleventh and Thirteenth
+and other outside districts, who were overheard speaking ironically and
+contemptuously of Mr. Caesar's conduct upon that occasion.
+
+We are further informed that there are many among us who think they are
+justified in believing that the assassination of Julius Caesar was a
+put-up thing--a cut-and-dried arrangement, hatched by Marcus Brutus and a
+lot of his hired roughs, and carried out only too faithfully according to
+the program.  Whether there be good grounds for this suspicion or not, we
+leave to the people to judge for themselves, only asking that they will
+read the following account of the sad occurrence carefully and
+dispassionately before they render that judgment.
+
+The Senate was already in session, and Caesar was coming down the street
+toward the capitol, conversing with some personal friends, and followed,
+as usual, by a large number of citizens.  Just as he was passing in front
+of Demosthenes and Thucydides' drug store, he was observing casually to a
+gentleman, who, our informant thinks, is a fortune-teller, that the Ides
+of March were come.  The reply was, “Yes, they are come, but not gone
+yet.”  At this moment Artemidorus stepped up and passed the time of day,
+and asked Caesar to read a schedule or a tract or something of the kind,
+which he had brought for his perusal.  Mr. Decius Brutus also said
+something about an “humble suit” which he wanted read.  Artexnidorus
+begged that attention might be paid to his first, because it was of
+personal consequence to Caesar.  The latter replied that what concerned
+himself should be read last, or words to that effect.  Artemidorus begged
+and beseeched him to read the paper instantly!--[Mark that: It is hinted
+by William Shakespeare, who saw the beginning and the end of the
+unfortunate affray, that this “schedule” was simply a note discovering to
+Caesar that a plot was brewing to take his life.]--However, Caesar
+shook him off, and refused to read any petition in the street.  He then
+entered the capitol, and the crowd followed him.
+
+About this time the following conversation was overheard, and we consider
+that, taken in connection with the events which succeeded it, it bears an
+appalling significance:  Mr. Papilius Lena remarked to George W. Cassias
+(commonly known as the “Nobby Boy of the Third Ward”), a bruiser in the
+pay of the Opposition, that he hoped his enterprise to-day might thrive;
+and when Cassias asked “What enterprise?” he only closed his left eye
+temporarily and said with simulated indifference, “Fare you well,” and
+sauntered toward Caesar.  Marcus Brutus, who is suspected of being the
+ringleader of the band that killed Caesar, asked what it was that Lena
+had said.  Cassias told him, and added in a low tone, “I fear our purpose
+is discovered.”
+
+Brutus told his wretched accomplice to keep an eye on Lena, and a moment
+after Cassias urged that lean and hungry vagrant, Casca, whose reputation
+here is none of the best, to be sudden, for he feared prevention.  He
+then turned to Brutus, apparently much excited, and asked what should be
+done, and swore that either he or Caesar would never turn back--he would
+kill himself first.  At this time Caesar was talking to some of the
+back-country members about the approaching fall elections, and paying
+little attention to what was going on around him.  Billy Trebonius got
+into conversation with the people's friend and Caesar's--Mark Antony--and
+under some pretense or other got him away, and Brutus, Decius, Casca,
+Cinna, Metellus Cimber, and others of the gang of infamous desperadoes
+that infest Rome at present, closed around the doomed Caesar.  Then
+Metellus Cimber knelt down and begged that his brother might be recalled
+from banishment, but Caesar rebuked him for his fawning conduct, and
+refused to grant his petition.  Immediately, at Cimber's request, first
+Brutus and then Cassias begged for the return of the banished Publius;
+but Caesar still refused.  He said he could not be moved; that he was as
+fixed as the North Star, and proceeded to speak in the most complimentary
+terms of the firmness of that star and its steady character.  Then he
+said he was like it, and he believed he was the only man in the country
+that was; therefore, since he was “constant” that Cimber should be
+banished, he was also “constant” that he should stay banished, and he'd
+be hanged if he didn't keep him so!
+
+Instantly seizing upon this shallow pretext for a fight, Casca sprang at
+Caesar and struck him with a dirk, Caesar grabbing him by the arm with
+his right hand, and launching a blow straight from the shoulder with his
+left, that sent the reptile bleeding to the earth.  He then backed up
+against Pompey's statue, and squared himself to receive his assailants.
+Cassias and Cimber and Cinna rushed upon him with their daggers drawn,
+and the former succeeded in inflicting a wound upon his body; but before
+he could strike again, and before either of the others could strike at
+all, Caesar stretched the three miscreants at his feet with as many blows
+of his powerful fist.  By this time the Senate was in an indescribable
+uproar; the throng of citizens in the lobbies had blockaded the doors in
+their frantic efforts to escape from the building, the sergeant-at-arms
+and his assistants were struggling with the assassins, venerable senators
+had cast aside their encumbering robes, and were leaping over benches and
+flying down the aisles in wild confusion toward the shelter of the
+committee-rooms, and a thousand voices were shouting “Po-lice!  Po-lice!”
+ in discordant tones that rose above the frightful din like shrieking
+winds above the roaring of a tempest.  And amid it all great Caesar stood
+with his back against the statue, like a lion at bay, and fought his
+assailants weaponless and hand to hand, with the defiant bearing and the
+unwavering courage which he had shown before on many a bloody field.
+Billy Trebonius and Caius Legarius struck him with their daggers and
+fell, as their brother-conspirators before them had fallen.  But at last,
+when Caesar saw his old friend Brutus step forward armed with a murderous
+knife, it is said he seemed utterly overpowered with grief and amazement,
+and, dropping his invincible left arm by his side, he hid his face in the
+folds of his mantle and received the treacherous blow without an effort
+to stay the hand that gave it.  He only said, “Et tu, Brute?” and fell
+lifeless on the marble pavement.
+
+We learn that the coat deceased had on when he was killed was the same
+one he wore in his tent on the afternoon of the day he overcame the
+Nervii, and that when it was removed from the corpse it was found to be
+cut and gashed in no less than seven different places.  There was nothing
+in the pockets.  It will be exhibited at the coroner's inquest, and will
+be damning proof of the fact of the killing.  These latter facts may be
+relied on, as we get them from Mark Antony, whose position enables him to
+learn every item of news connected with the one subject of absorbing
+interest of-to-day.
+
+LATER: While the coroner was summoning a jury, Mark Antony and other
+friends of the late Caesar got hold of the body, and lugged it off to the
+Forum, and at last accounts Antony and Brutus were making speeches over
+it and raising such a row among the people that, as we go to press, the
+chief of police is satisfied there is going to be a riot, and is taking
+measures accordingly.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THE WIDOW'S PROTEST
+One of the saddest things that ever came under my notice (said the
+banker's clerk) was there in Corning during the war.  Dan Murphy enlisted
+as a private, and fought very bravely.  The boys all liked him, and when
+a wound by and by weakened him down till carrying a musket was too heavy
+work for him, they clubbed together and fixed him up as a sutler.  He
+made money then, and sent it always to his wife to bank for him.  She was
+a washer and ironer, and knew enough by hard experience to keep money
+when she got it.  She didn't waste a penny.
+
+On the contrary, she began to get miserly as her bank-account grew.  She
+grieved to part with a cent, poor creature, for twice in her hard-working
+life she had known what it was to be hungry, cold, friendless, sick, and
+without a dollar in the world, and she had a haunting dread of suffering
+so again.  Well, at last Dan died; and the boys, in testimony of their
+esteem and respect for him, telegraphed to Mrs. Murphy to know if she
+would like to have him embalmed and sent home; when you know the usual
+custom was to dump a poor devil like him into a shallow hole, and then
+inform his friends what had become of him.  Mrs.  Murphy jumped to the
+conclusion that it would only cost two or three dollars to embalm her
+dead husband, and so she telegraphed “Yes.”  It was at the “wake” that
+the bill for embalming arrived and was presented to the widow.
+
+She uttered a wild, sad wail that pierced every heart, and said,
+“Sivinty-foive dollars for stooffin' Dan, blister their sowls!  Did thim
+divils suppose I was goin' to stairt a Museim, that I'd be dalin' in such
+expinsive curiassities!”
+
+The banker's clerk said there was not a dry eye in the house.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THE SCRIPTURAL PANORAMIST--[Written about 1866.]
+
+“There was a fellow traveling around in that country,” said Mr.
+Nickerson, “with a moral-religious show--a sort of scriptural panorama
+--and he hired a wooden-headed old slab to play the piano for him.
+After the first night's performance the showman says:
+
+“'My friend, you seem to know pretty much all the tunes there are, and
+you worry along first rate.  But then, didn't you notice that sometimes
+last night the piece you happened to be playing was a little rough on the
+proprieties, so to speak--didn't seem to jibe with the general gait of
+the picture that was passing at the time, as it were--was a little
+foreign to the subject, you know--as if you didn't either trump or follow
+suit, you understand?'
+
+“'Well, no,' the fellow said; 'he hadn't noticed, but it might be; he had
+played along just as it came handy.'
+
+“So they put it up that the simple old dummy was to keep his eye on the
+panorama after that, and as soon as a stunning picture was reeled out he
+was to fit it to a dot with a piece of music that would help the audience
+to get the idea of the subject, and warm them up like a camp-meeting
+revival.  That sort of thing would corral their sympathies, the showman
+said.
+
+“There was a big audience that night-mostly middle-aged and old people
+who belong to the church, and took a strong interest in Bible matters,
+and the balance were pretty much young bucks and heifers--they always
+come out strong on panoramas, you know, because it gives them a chance to
+taste one another's complexions in the dark.
+
+“Well, the showman began to swell himself up for his lecture, and the old
+mud-Jobber tackled the piano and ran his fingers up and down once or
+twice to see that she was all right, and the fellows behind the curtain
+commenced to grind out the panorama.  The showman balanced his weight on
+
+his right foot, and propped his hands over his hips, and flung his eyes
+over his shoulder at the scenery, and said:
+
+“'Ladies and gentlemen, the painting now before you illustrates the
+beautiful and touching parable of the Prodigal Son.  Observe the happy
+expression just breaking over the features of the poor, suffering youth
+--so worn and weary with his long march; note also the ecstasy beaming
+from the uplifted countenance of the aged father, and the joy that
+sparkles in the eyes of the excited group of youths and maidens, and
+seems ready to burst into the welcoming chorus from their lips.  The
+lesson, my friends, is as solemn and instructive as the story is tender
+and beautiful.'
+
+“The mud-Jobber was all ready, and when the second speech was finished,
+struck up:
+
+                    “Oh, we'll all get blind drunk
+                    When Johnny comes marching home!
+
+“Some of the people giggled, and some groaned a little.  The showman
+couldn't say a word; he looked at the pianist sharp, but he was all
+lovely and serene--he didn't know there was anything out of gear.
+
+“The panorama moved on, and the showman drummed up his grit and started
+in fresh.
+
+“'Ladies and gentlemen, the fine picture now unfolding itself to your
+gaze exhibits one of the most notable events in Bible history--our
+Saviour and His disciples upon the Sea of Galilee.  How grand, how
+awe-inspiring are the reflections which the subject invokes!  What
+sublimity of faith is revealed to us in this lesson from the sacred
+writings!  The Saviour rebukes the angry waves, and walks securely
+upon the bosom of the deep!'
+
+“All around the house they were whispering, 'Oh, how lovely, how
+beautiful!' and the orchestra let himself out again:
+
+                    “A life on the ocean wave,
+                    And a home on the rolling deep!
+
+“There was a good deal of honest snickering turned on this time, and
+considerable groaning, and one or two old deacons got up and went out.
+The showman grated his teeth, and cursed the piano man to himself; but
+the fellow sat there like a knot on a log, and seemed to think he was
+doing first-rate.
+
+“After things got quiet the showman thought he would make one more
+stagger at it, anyway, though his confidence was beginning to get mighty
+shaky.  The supes started the panorama grinding along again, and he says:
+
+“'Ladies and gentlemen, this exquisite painting represents the raising of
+Lazarus from the dead by our Saviour.  The subject has been handled with
+marvelous skill by the artist, and such touching sweetness and tenderness
+of expression has he thrown into it that I have known peculiarly
+sensitive persons to be even affected to tears by looking at it.  Observe
+the half-confused, half-inquiring look upon the countenance of the
+awakened Lazarus.  Observe, also, the attitude and expression of the
+Saviour, who takes him gently by the sleeve of his shroud with one hand,
+while He points with the other toward the distant city.'
+“Before anybody could get off an opinion in the case the innocent old ass
+at the piano struck up:
+
+                    “Come rise up, William Ri-i-ley,
+                    And go along with me!
+
+“Whe-ew!  All the solemn old flats got up in a huff to go, and everybody
+else laughed till the windows rattled.
+
+“The showman went down and grabbed the orchestra and shook him up and
+says:
+
+“'That lets you out, you know, you chowder-headed old clam.  Go to the
+doorkeeper and get your money, and cut your stick--vamose the ranch!
+Ladies and gentlemen, circumstances over which I have no control compel
+me prematurely to dismiss the house.'”
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CURING A COLD--[Written about 1864]
+
+It is a good thing, perhaps, to write for the amusement of the public,
+but it is a far higher and nobler thing to write for their instruction,
+their profit, their actual and tangible benefit.  The latter is the sole
+object of this article.  If it prove the means of restoring to health one
+solitary sufferer among my race, of lighting up once more the fire of
+hope and joy in his faded eyes, or bringing back to his dead heart again
+the quick, generous impulses of other days, I shall be amply rewarded for
+my labor; my soul will be permeated with the sacred delight a Christian
+feels when he has done a good, unselfish deed.
+
+Having led a pure and blameless life, I am justified in believing that no
+man who knows me will reject the suggestions I am about to make, out of
+fear that I am trying to deceive him.  Let the public do itself the honor
+to read my experience in doctoring a cold, as herein set forth, and then
+follow in my footsteps.
+
+When the White House was burned in Virginia City, I lost my home, my
+happiness, my constitution, and my trunk.  The loss of the two first
+named articles was a matter of no great consequence, since a home without
+a mother, or a sister, or a distant young female relative in it, to
+remind you, by putting your soiled linen out of sight and taking your
+boots down off the mantelpiece, that there are those who think about you
+and care for you, is easily obtained.  And I cared nothing for the loss
+of my happiness, because, not being a poet, it could not be possible that
+melancholy would abide with me long.  But to lose a good constitution and
+a better trunk were serious misfortunes.  On the day of the fire my
+constitution succumbed to a severe cold, caused by undue exertion in
+getting ready to do something.  I suffered to no purpose, too, because
+the plan I was figuring at for the extinguishing of the fire was so
+elaborate that I never got it completed until the middle of the following
+week.
+
+The first time I began to sneeze, a friend told me to go and bathe my
+feet in hot water and go to bed.  I did so.  Shortly afterward, another
+friend advised me to get up and take a cold shower-bath.  I did that
+also.  Within the hour, another friend assured me that it was policy to
+“feed a cold and starve a fever.”  I had both.  So I thought it best to
+fill myself up for the cold, and then keep dark and let the fever starve
+awhile.
+
+In a case of this kind, I seldom do things by halves; I ate pretty
+heartily; I conferred my custom upon a stranger who had just opened his
+restaurant that morning; he waited near me in respectful silence until I
+had finished feeding my cold, when he inquired if the people about
+Virginia City were much afflicted with colds?  I told him I thought they
+were.  He then went out and took in his sign.
+
+I started down toward the office, and on the way encountered another
+bosom friend, who told me that a quart of salt-water, taken warm, would
+come as near curing a cold as anything in the world.  I hardly thought I
+had room for it, but I tried it anyhow.  The result was surprising.  I
+believed I had thrown up my immortal soul.
+
+Now, as I am giving my experience only for the benefit of those who are
+troubled with the distemper I am writing about, I feel that they will see
+the propriety of my cautioning them against following such portions of it
+as proved inefficient with me, and acting upon this conviction, I warn
+them against warm salt-water.  It may be a good enough remedy, but I
+think it is too severe.  If I had another cold in the head, and there
+were no course left me but to take either an earthquake or a quart of
+warm saltwater, I would take my chances on the earthquake.
+
+After the storm which had been raging in my stomach had subsided, and no
+more good Samaritans happening along, I went on borrowing handkerchiefs
+again and blowing them to atoms, as had been my custom in the early
+stages of my cold, until I came across a lady who had just arrived from
+over the plains, and who said she had lived in a part of the country
+where doctors were scarce, and had from necessity acquired considerable
+skill in the treatment of simple “family complaints.”  I knew she must
+have had much experience, for she appeared to be a hundred and fifty
+years old.
+
+She mixed a decoction composed of molasses, aquafortis, turpentine, and
+various other drugs, and instructed me to take a wine-glass full of it
+every fifteen minutes.  I never took but one dose; that was enough; it
+robbed me of all moral principle, and awoke every unworthy impulse of my
+nature.  Under its malign influence my brain conceived miracles of
+meanness, but my hands were too feeble to execute them; at that time, had
+it not been that my strength had surrendered to a succession of assaults
+from infallible remedies for my cold, I am satisfied that I would have
+tried to rob the graveyard.  Like most other people, I often feel mean,
+and act accordingly; but until I took that medicine I had never reveled
+in such supernatural depravity, and felt proud of it.  At the end of two
+days I was ready to go to doctoring again.  I took a few more unfailing
+remedies, and finally drove my cold from my head to my lungs.
+
+I got to coughing incessantly, and my voice fell below zero; I conversed
+in a thundering bass, two octaves below my natural tone; I could only
+compass my regular nightly repose by coughing myself down to a state of
+utter exhaustion, and then the moment I began to talk in my sleep, my
+discordant voice woke me up again.
+
+My case grew more and more serious every day.  A Plain gin was
+recommended; I took it.  Then gin and molasses; I took that also.  Then
+gin and onions; I added the onions, and took all three.  I detected no
+particular result, however, except that I had acquired a breath like a
+buzzard's.
+
+I found I had to travel for my health.  I went to Lake Bigler with my
+reportorial comrade, Wilson.  It is gratifying to me to reflect that we
+traveled in considerable style; we went in the Pioneer coach, and my
+friend took all his baggage with him, consisting of two excellent silk
+handkerchiefs and a daguerreotype of his grandmother.  We sailed and
+hunted and fished and danced all day, and I doctored my cough all night.
+By managing in this way, I made out to improve every hour in the
+twenty-four.  But my disease continued to grow worse.
+
+A sheet-bath was recommended.  I had never refused a remedy yet, and it
+seemed poor policy to commence then; therefore I determined to take a
+sheet-bath, notwithstanding I had no idea what sort of arrangement it
+was.  It was administered at midnight, and the weather was very frosty.
+My breast and back were bared, and a sheet (there appeared to be a
+thousand yards of it) soaked in ice-water, was wound around me until I
+resembled a swab for a Columbiad.
+
+It is a cruel expedient.  When the chilly rag touches one's warm flesh,
+it makes him start with sudden violence, and gasp for breath just as men
+do in the death-agony.  It froze the marrow in my bones and stopped the
+beating of my heart.  I thought my time had come.
+
+Young Wilson said the circumstance reminded him of an anecdote about a
+negro who was being baptized, and who slipped from the parson's grasp,
+and came near being drowned.  He floundered around, though, and finally
+rose up out of the water considerably strangled and furiously angry, and
+started ashore at once, spouting water like a whale, and remarking, with
+great asperity, that “one o' dese days some gen'l'man's nigger gwyne to
+get killed wid jis' such damn foolishness as dis!”
+
+Never take a sheet-bath--  never.  Next to meeting a lady acquaintance who,
+for reasons best known to herself, don't see you when she looks at you,
+and don't know you when she does see you, it is the most uncomfortable
+thing in the world.
+
+But, as I was saying, when the sheet-bath failed to cure my cough,
+a lady friend recommended the application of a mustard plaster to my
+breast.  I believe that would have cured me effectually, if it had not
+been for young Wilson.  When I went to bed, I put my mustard plaster
+--which was a very gorgeous one, eighteen inches square--where I could
+reach it when I was ready for it.  But young Wilson got hungry in the
+night, and here is food for the imagination.
+
+After sojourning a week at Lake Bigler, I went to Steamboat Springs, and,
+besides the steam-baths, I took a lot of the vilest medicines that were
+ever concocted.  They would have cured me, but I had to go back to
+Virginia City, where, notwithstanding the variety of new remedies I
+absorbed every day, I managed to aggravate my disease by carelessness and
+undue exposure.
+
+I finally concluded to visit San Francisco, and the first day I got
+there a lady at the hotel told me to drink a quart of whisky every
+twenty-four hours, and a friend up-town recommended precisely the same
+course.  Each advised me to take a quart; that made half a gallon.  I did
+it, and still live.
+
+Now, with the kindest motives in the world, I offer for the consideration
+of consumptive patients the variegated course of treatment I have lately
+gone through.  Let them try it; if it don't cure, it can't more than kill
+them.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+A CURIOUS PLEASURE EXCURSION
+
+--[Published at the time of the “Comet Scare” in the summer of 1874]
+
+[We have received the following advertisement, but, inasmuch as it
+concerns a matter of deep and general interest, we feel fully justified
+in inserting it in our reading-columns.  We are confident that our
+conduct in this regard needs only explanation, not apology.--Ed., N. Y.
+Herald.]
+
+
+ADVERTISEMENT
+
+This is to inform the public that in connection with Mr. Barnum I have
+leased the comet for a term of years; and I desire also to solicit the
+public patronage in favor of a beneficial enterprise which we have in
+view.
+
+We propose to fit up comfortable, and even luxurious, accommodations in
+the comet for as many persons as will honor us with their patronage, and
+make an extended excursion among the heavenly bodies.  We shall prepare
+1,000,000 state-rooms in the tail of the comet (with hot and cold water,
+gas, looking-glass, parachute, umbrella, etc., in each), and shall
+construct more if we meet with a sufficiently generous encouragement.
+We shall have billiard-rooms, card-rooms, music-rooms, bowling-alleys and
+many spacious theaters and free libraries; and on the main deck we
+propose to have a driving park, with upward of 100,000 miles of roadway
+in it.  We shall publish daily newspapers also.
+
+
+                          DEPARTURE OF THE COMET
+
+The comet will leave New York at 10 P.M.  on the 20th inst., and
+therefore it will be desirable that the passengers be on board by eight
+at the latest, to avoid confusion in getting under way.  It is not known
+whether passports will be necessary or not, but it is deemed best that
+passengers provide them, and so guard against all contingencies.  No dogs
+will be allowed on board.  This rule has been made in deference to the
+existing state of feeling regarding these animals, and will be strictly
+adhered to.  The safety of the passengers will in all ways be jealously
+looked to.  A substantial iron railing will be put up all around the
+comet, and no one will be allowed to go to the edge and look over unless
+accompanied by either my partner or myself.
+
+
+                            THE POSTAL SERVICE
+
+will be of the completest character.  Of course the telegraph, and the
+telegraph only, will be employed; consequently friends occupying
+state-rooms 20,000,000 and even 30,000,000 miles apart will be able to
+send a message and receive a reply inside of eleven days.  Night messages
+will be half-rate.  The whole of this vast postal system will be under
+the personal superintendence of Mr. Hale of Maine.  Meals served at all
+hours.  Meals served in staterooms charged extra.
+
+Hostility is not apprehended from any great planet, but we have thought
+it best to err on the safe side, and therefore have provided a proper
+number of mortars, siege-guns, and boarding-pikes.  History shows that
+small, isolated communities, such as the people of remote islands, are
+prone to be hostile to strangers, and so the same may be the case with
+
+
+                         THE INHABITANTS OF STARS
+
+of the tenth or twentieth magnitude.  We shall in no case wantonly offend
+the people of any star, but shall treat all alike with urbanity and
+kindliness, never conducting ourselves toward an asteroid after a fashion
+which we could not venture to assume toward Jupiter or Saturn.  I repeat
+that we shall not wantonly offend any star; but at the same time we shall
+promptly resent any injury that may be done us, or any insolence offered
+us, by parties or governments residing in any star in the firmament.
+Although averse to the shedding of blood, we shall still hold this course
+rigidly and fearlessly, not only toward single stars, but toward
+constellations.  We shall hope to leave a good impression of America
+behind us in every nation we visit, from Venus to Uranus.  And, at all
+events, if we cannot inspire love we shall at least compel respect for
+our country wherever we go.  We shall take with us, free of charge,
+
+
+                      A GREAT FORCE OF MISSIONARIES,
+
+and shed the true light upon all the celestial orbs which, physically
+aglow, are yet morally in darkness.  Sunday-schools will be established
+wherever practicable.  Compulsory education will also be introduced.
+
+The comet will visit Mars first, and proceed to Mercury, Jupiter, Venus,
+and Saturn.  Parties connected with the government of the District of
+Columbia and with the former city government of New York, who may desire
+to inspect the rings, will be allowed time and every facility.  Every
+star of prominent magnitude will be visited, and time allowed for
+excursions to points of interest inland.
+
+
+                               THE DOG STAR
+
+has been stricken from the program.  Much time will be spent in the Great
+Bear, and, indeed, in every constellation of importance.  So, also, with
+the Sun and Moon and the Milky Way, otherwise the Gulf Stream of the
+Skies.  Clothing suitable for wear in the sun should be provided.  Our
+program has been so arranged that we shall seldom go more than
+100,000,000 of miles at a time without stopping at some star.  This will
+necessarily make the stoppages frequent and preserve the interest of the
+tourist.  Baggage checked through to any point on the route.  Parties
+desiring to make only a part of the proposed tour, and thus save expense,
+may stop over at any star they choose and wait for the return voyage.
+
+After visiting all the most celebrated stars and constellations in our
+system and personally inspecting the remotest sparks that even the most
+powerful telescope can now detect in the firmament, we shall proceed with
+good heart upon
+
+
+                           A STUPENDOUS VOYAGE
+
+of discovery among the countless whirling worlds that make turmoil in the
+mighty wastes of space that stretch their solemn solitudes, their
+unimaginable vastness billions upon billions of miles away beyond the
+farthest verge of telescopic vision, till by comparison the little
+sparkling vault we used to gaze at on Earth shall seem like a remembered
+phosphorescent flash of spangles which some tropical voyager's prow
+stirred into life for a single instant, and which ten thousand miles of
+phosphorescent seas and tedious lapse of time had since diminished to an
+incident utterly trivial in his recollection.  Children occupying seats
+at the first table will be charged full fare.
+
+
+                             FIRST-CLASS FARE
+
+from the Earth to Uranus, including visits to the Sun and Moon and all
+the principal planets on the route, will be charged at the low rate of
+$2 for every 50,000,000 miles of actual travel.  A great reduction will
+be made where parties wish to make the round trip.  This comet is new and
+in thorough repair and is now on her first voyage.  She is confessedly
+the fastest on the line.  She makes 20,000,000 miles a day, with her
+present facilities; but, with a picked American crew and good weather,
+we are confident we can get 40,000,000 out of her.  Still, we shall never
+push her to a dangerous speed, and we shall rigidly prohibit racing with
+other comets.  Passengers desiring to diverge at any point or return will
+be transferred to other comets.  We make close connections at all
+principal points with all reliable lines.  Safety can be depended upon.
+It is not to be denied that the heavens are infested with
+
+
+                          OLD RAMSHACKLE COMETS
+
+that have not been inspected or overhauled in 10,000 years, and which
+ought long ago to have been destroyed or turned into hail-barges, but
+with these we have no connection whatever.  Steerage passengers not
+allowed abaft the main hatch.
+
+Complimentary round-trip tickets have been tendered to General Butler,
+Mr. Shepherd, Mr. Richardson, and other eminent gentlemen, whose public
+services have entitled them to the rest and relaxation of a voyage of
+this kind.  Parties desiring to make the round trip will have extra
+accommodation.  The entire voyage will be completed, and the passengers
+landed in New York again, on the 14th of December, 1991.  This is, at
+least, forty years quicker than any other comet can do it in.  Nearly all
+the back-pay members contemplate making the round trip with us in case
+their constituents will allow them a holiday.  Every harmless amusement
+will be allowed on board, but no pools permitted on the run of the comet
+--no gambling of any kind.  All fixed stars will be respected by us, but
+such stars as seem to need fixing we shall fix.  If it makes trouble, we
+shall be sorry, but firm.
+
+Mr. Coggia having leased his comet to us, she will no longer be called by
+his name, but by my partner's.  N. B.--Passengers by paying double fare
+will be entitled to a share in all the new stars, suns, moons, comets,
+meteors, and magazines of thunder and lightning we may discover.
+Patent-medicine people will take notice that
+
+
+                         WE CARRY BULLETIN-BOARDS
+
+and a paint-brush along for use in the constellations, and are open to
+terms.  Cremationists are reminded that we are going straight to--some
+hot places--and are open to terms.  To other parties our enterprise is a
+pleasure excursion, but individually we mean business.  We shall fly our
+comet for all it is worth.
+
+
+                         FOR FURTHER PARTICULARS,
+
+or for freight or passage, apply on board, or to my partner, but not to
+me, since I do not take charge of the comet until she is under way.
+It is necessary, at a time like this, that my mind should not be burdened
+with small business details.
+
+                                                       MARK TWAIN.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+RUNNING FOR GOVERNOR--[Written about 1870.]
+
+A few months ago I was nominated for Governor of the great state of New
+York, to run against Mr. John T. Smith and Mr. Blank J. Blank on an
+independent ticket.  I somehow felt that I had one prominent advantage
+over these gentlemen, and that was--good character.  It was easy to see
+by the newspapers that if ever they had known what it was to bear a good
+name, that time had gone by.  It was plain that in these latter years
+they had become familiar with all manner of shameful crimes.  But at the
+very moment that I was exalting my advantage and joying in it in secret,
+there was a muddy undercurrent of discomfort “riling” the deeps of my
+happiness, and that was--the having to hear my name bandied about in
+familiar connection with those of such people.  I grew more and more
+disturbed.  Finally I wrote my grandmother about it.  Her answer came
+quick and sharp.  She said:
+
+     You have never done one single thing in all your life to be ashamed
+     of--not one.  Look at the newspapers--look at them and comprehend
+     what sort of characters Messrs.  Smith and Blank are, and then see
+     if you are willing to lower yourself to their level and enter a
+     public canvass with them.
+
+It was my very thought!  I did not sleep a single moment that night.
+But, after all, I could not recede.
+
+I was fully committed, and must go on with the fight.  As I was looking
+listlessly over the papers at breakfast I came across this paragraph,
+and I may truly say I never was so confounded before.
+
+     PERJURY.--Perhaps, now that Mr. Mark Twain is before the people as a
+     candidate for Governor, he will condescend to explain how he came to
+     be convicted of perjury by thirty-four witnesses in Wakawak, Cochin
+     China, in 1863, the intent of which perjury being to rob a poor
+     native widow and her helpless family of a meager plantain-patch,
+     their only stay and support in their bereavement and desolation.
+     Mr. Twain owes it to himself, as well as to the great people whose
+     suffrages he asks, to clear this matter up.  Will he do it?
+
+I thought I should burst with amazement!  Such a cruel, heartless charge!
+I never had seen Cochin China!  I never had heard of Wakawak!  I didn't
+know a plantain-patch from a kangaroo!  I did not know what to do.  I was
+crazed and helpless.  I let the day slip away without doing anything at
+all.  The next morning the same paper had this--nothing more:
+
+     SIGNIFICANT.--Mr.  Twain, it will be observed, is suggestively
+     silent about the Cochin China perjury.
+
+[Mem.--During the rest of the campaign this paper never referred to me in
+any other way than as “the infamous perjurer Twain.”]
+
+Next came the Gazette, with this:
+
+     WANTED TO KNOW.--Will the new candidate for Governor deign to
+     explain to certain of his fellow-citizens (who are suffering to vote
+     for him!) the little circumstance of his cabin-mates in Montana
+     losing small valuables from time to time, until at last, these
+     things having been invariably found on Mr. Twain's person or in his
+     “trunk” (newspaper he rolled his traps in), they felt compelled to
+     give him a friendly admonition for his own good, and so tarred and
+     feathered him, and rode him on a rail; and then advised him to leave
+     a permanent vacuum in the place he usually occupied in the camp.
+     Will he do this?
+
+Could anything be more deliberately malicious than that?  For I never was
+in Montana in my life.
+
+[After this, this journal customarily spoke of me as, “Twain, the Montana
+Thief.”]
+
+I got to picking up papers apprehensively--much as one would lift a
+desired blanket which he had some idea might have a rattlesnake under it.
+One day this met my eye:
+
+
+     THE LIE NAILED.--By the sworn affidavits of Michael O'Flanagan,
+     Esq., of the Five Points, and Mr. Snub Rafferty and Mr. Catty
+     Mulligan, of Water Street, it is established that Mr. Mark Twain's
+     vile statement that the lamented grandfather of our noble
+     standard-bearer, Blank J. Blank, was hanged for highway robbery, is
+     a brutal and gratuitous LIE, without a shadow of foundation in fact.
+     It is disheartening to virtuous men to see such shameful means
+     resorted to to achieve political success as the attacking of the
+     dead in their graves, and defiling their honored names with slander.
+     When we think of the anguish this miserable falsehood must cause the
+     innocent relatives and friends of the deceased, we are almost driven
+     to incite an outraged and insulted public to summary and unlawful
+     vengeance upon the traducer.  But no! let us leave him to the agony
+     of a lacerated conscience (though if passion should get the better
+     of the public, and in its blind fury they should do the traducer
+     bodily injury, it is but too obvious that no jury could convict and
+     no court punish the perpetrators of the deed).
+
+The ingenious closing sentence had the effect of moving me out of bed
+with despatch that night, and out at the back door also, while the
+“outraged and insulted public” surged in the front way, breaking
+furniture and windows in their righteous indignation as they came,
+and taking off such property as they could carry when they went.
+And yet I can lay my hand upon the Book and say that I never slandered
+Mr. Blank's grandfather.  More: I had never even heard of him or
+mentioned him up to that day and date.
+
+[I will state, in passing, that the journal above quoted from always
+referred to me afterward as “Twain, the Body-Snatcher.”]
+
+The next newspaper article that attracted my attention was the following:
+
+     A SWEET CANDIDATE.--Mr.  Mark Twain, who was to make such a
+     blighting speech at the mass-meeting of the Independents last night,
+     didn't come to time!  A telegram from his physician stated that he
+     had been knocked down by a runaway team, and his leg broken in two
+     places--sufferer lying in great agony, and so forth, and so forth,
+     and a lot more bosh of the same sort.  And the Independents tried
+     hard to swallow the wretched subterfuge, and pretend that they did
+     not know what was the real reason of the absence of the abandoned
+     creature whom they denominate their standard-bearer.  A certain man
+     was seen to reel into Mr.  Twain's hotel last night in a state of
+     beastly intoxication.  It is the imperative duty of the Independents
+     to prove that this besotted brute was not Mark Twain himself.  We
+     have them at last!  This is a case that admits of no shirking.  The
+     voice of the people demands in thunder tones, “WHO WAS THAT MAN?”
+
+It was incredible, absolutely incredible, for a moment, that it was
+really my name that was coupled with this disgraceful suspicion.  Three
+long years had passed over my head since I had tasted ale, beer, wine or
+liquor of any kind.
+
+[It shows what effect the times were having on me when I say that I saw
+myself, confidently dubbed “Mr. Delirium Tremens Twain” in the next issue
+of that journal without a pang--notwithstanding I knew that with
+monotonous fidelity the paper would go on calling me so to the very end.]
+
+By this time anonymous letters were getting to be an important part of my
+mail matter.  This form was common:
+
+     How about that old woman you kiked of your premises which
+     was beging.                             POL. PRY.
+
+And this:
+
+     There is things which you have done which is unbeknowens to anybody
+     but me.  You better trot out a few dols, to yours truly, or you'll
+     hear through the papers from
+                                             HANDY ANDY.
+
+This is about the idea.  I could continue them till the reader was
+surfeited, if desirable.
+
+Shortly the principal Republican journal “convicted” me of wholesale
+bribery, and the leading Democratic paper “nailed” an aggravated case of
+blackmailing to me.
+
+[In this way I acquired two additional names: “Twain the Filthy
+Corruptionist” and “Twain the Loathsome Embracer.”]
+
+By this time there had grown to be such a clamor for an “answer” to all
+the dreadful charges that were laid to me that the editors and leaders of
+my party said it would be political ruin for me to remain silent any
+longer.   As if to make their appeal the more imperative, the following
+appeared in one of the papers the very next day:
+
+     BEHOLD THE MAN!--The independent candidate still maintains silence.
+     Because he dare not speak.  Every accusation against him has been
+     amply proved, and they have been indorsed and reindorsed by his own
+     eloquent silence, till at this day he stands forever convicted.
+     Look upon your candidate, Independents!  Look upon the Infamous
+     Perjurer! the Montana Thief! the Body-Snatcher!  Contemplate your
+     incarnate Delirium Tremens! your Filthy Corruptionist! your
+     Loathsome Embracer!  Gaze upon him--ponder him well--and then say if
+     you can give your honest votes to a creature who has earned this
+     dismal array of titles by his hideous crimes, and dares not open his
+     mouth in denial of any one of them!
+
+There was no possible way of getting out of it, and so, in deep
+humiliation, I set about preparing to “answer” a mass of baseless charges
+and mean and wicked falsehoods.  But I never finished the task, for the
+very next morning a paper came out with a new horror, a fresh malignity,
+and seriously charged me with burning a lunatic asylum with all its
+inmates, because it obstructed the view from my house.  This threw me
+into a sort of panic.  Then came the charge of poisoning my uncle to get
+his property, with an imperative demand that the grave should be opened.
+This drove me to the verge of distraction.  On top of this I was accused
+of employing toothless and incompetent old relatives to prepare the food
+for the foundling hospital when I was warden.  I was wavering--wavering.
+And at last, as a due and fitting climax to the shameless persecution
+that party rancor had inflicted upon me, nine little toddling children,
+of all shades of color and degrees of raggedness, were taught to rush
+onto the platform at a public meeting, and clasp me around the legs and
+call me PA!
+
+I gave it up.  I hauled down my colors and surrendered.  I was not equal
+to the requirements of a Gubernatorial campaign in the state of New York,
+and so I sent in my withdrawal from the candidacy, and in bitterness of
+spirit signed it, “Truly yours, once a decent man, but now
+
+                    “MARK TWAIN, I.P., M.T., B.S., D.T., F.C., and L.E.”
+
+
+
+
+
+
+A MYSTERIOUS VISIT
+
+
+The first notice that was taken of me when I “settled down” recently was
+by a gentleman who said he was an assessor, and connected with the U. S.
+Internal Revenue Department.  I said I had never heard of his branch of
+business before, but I was very glad to see him all the same.  Would he
+sit down?  He sat down.  I did not know anything particular to say, and
+yet I felt that people who have arrived at the dignity of keeping house
+must be conversational, must be easy and sociable in company.  So, in
+default of anything else to say, I asked him if he was opening his shop
+in our neighborhood.
+
+He said he was.  [I did not wish to appear ignorant, but I had hoped he
+would mention what he had for sale.]
+
+I ventured to ask him “How was trade?”  And he said “So-so.”
+
+I then said we would drop in, and if we liked his house as well as any
+other, we would give him our custom.
+
+He said he thought we would like his establishment well enough to confine
+ourselves to it--said he never saw anybody who would go off and hunt up
+another man in his line after trading with him once.
+
+That sounded pretty complacent, but barring that natural expression of
+villainy which we all have, the man looked honest enough.
+
+I do not know how it came about exactly, but gradually we appeared to
+melt down and run together, conversationally speaking, and then
+everything went along as comfortably as clockwork.
+
+We talked, and talked, and talked--at least I did; and we laughed, and
+laughed, and laughed--at least he did.  But all the time I had my
+presence of mind about me--I had my native shrewdness turned on “full
+head,” as the engineers say.  I was determined to find out all about his
+business in spite of his obscure answers--and I was determined I would
+have it out of him without his suspecting what I was at.  I meant to trap
+him with a deep, deep ruse.  I would tell him all about my own business,
+and he would naturally so warm to me during this seductive burst of
+confidence that he would forget himself, and tell me all about his
+affairs before he suspected what I was about.  I thought to myself, My
+son, you little know what an old fox you are dealing with.  I said:
+
+“Now you never would guess what I made lecturing this winter and last
+spring?”
+
+“No--don't believe I could, to save me.  Let me see--let me see.   About
+two thousand dollars, maybe?  But no; no, sir, I know you couldn't have
+made that much.   Say seventeen hundred, maybe?”
+
+“Ha! ha!  I knew you couldn't.  My lecturing receipts for last spring and
+this winter were fourteen thousand seven hundred and fifty dollars.  What
+do you think of that?”
+
+“Why, it is amazing-perfectly amazing.  I will make a note of it.  And
+you say even this wasn't all?”
+
+“All!  Why bless you, there was my income from the Daily Warwhoop for
+four months--about--about--well, what should you say to about eight
+thousand dollars, for instance?”
+
+“Say!  Why, I should say I should like to see myself rolling in just such
+another ocean of affluence.  Eight thousand!  I'll make a note of it.
+Why man!--and on top of all this am I to understand that you had still
+more income?”
+
+“Ha! ha! ha!  Why, you're only in the suburbs of it, so to speak.
+There's my book, The Innocents Abroad--price $3.50 to $5, according to the
+binding.  Listen to me.  Look me in the eye.  During the last four months
+and a half, saying nothing of sales before that, but just simply during
+the four months and a half, we've sold ninety-five thousand copies of
+that book.  Ninety-five thousand!  Think of it.  Average four dollars a
+copy, say.  It's nearly four hundred thousand dollars, my son.  I get
+half.”
+
+“The suffering Moses!  I'll set that down.  Fourteen-seven-fifty
+--eight--two hundred.  Total, say--well, upon my word, the grand total is
+about two hundred and thirteen or fourteen thousand dollars!  Is that
+possible?”
+
+“Possible!  If there's any mistake it's the other way.  Two hundred and
+fourteen thousand, cash, is my income for this year if I know how to
+cipher.”
+
+Then the gentleman got up to go.  It came over me most uncomfortably that
+maybe I had made my revelations for nothing, besides being flattered into
+stretching them considerably by the stranger's astonished exclamations.
+But no; at the last moment the gentleman handed me a large envelope, and
+said it contained his advertisement; and that I would find out all about
+his business in it; and that he would be happy to have my custom--would,
+in fact, be proud to have the custom of a man of such prodigious income;
+and that he used to think there were several wealthy men in the city, but
+when they came to trade with him he discovered that they barely had
+enough to live on; and that, in truth, it had been such a weary, weary
+age since he had seen a rich man face to face, and talked to him, and
+touched him with his hands, that he could hardly refrain from embracing
+me--in fact, would esteem it a great favor if I would let him embrace me.
+
+This so pleased me that I did not try to resist, but allowed this
+simple-hearted stranger to throw his arms about me and weep a few
+tranquilizing tears down the back of my neck.  Then he went his way.
+
+As soon as he was gone I opened his advertisement.  I studied it
+attentively for four minutes.  I then called up the cook, and said:
+
+“Hold me while I faint!  Let Marie turn the griddle-cakes.”
+
+By and by, when I came to, I sent down to the rum-mill on the corner and
+hired an artist by the week to sit up nights and curse that stranger, and
+give me a lift occasionally in the daytime when I came to a hard place.
+
+Ah, what a miscreant he was!  His “advertisement”  was nothing in the
+world but a wicked tax-return--a string of impertinent questions about
+my private affairs, occupying the best part of four foolscap pages of
+fine print--questions, I may remark, gotten up with such marvelous
+ingenuity that the oldest man in the world couldn't understand what the
+most of them were driving at--questions, too, that were calculated to
+make a man report about four times his actual income to keep from
+swearing to a falsehood.  I looked for a loophole, but there did not
+appear to be any.  Inquiry No. 1 covered my case as generously and as
+amply as an umbrella could cover an ant-hill:
+
+     What were your profits, during the past year, from any trade,
+     business, or vocation, wherever carried on?
+
+And that inquiry was backed up by thirteen others of an equally searching
+nature, the most modest of which required information as to whether I had
+committed any burglary or highway robbery, or, by any arson or other
+secret source of emolument had acquired property which was not enumerated
+in my statement of income as set opposite to inquiry No. 1.
+
+It was plain that that stranger had enabled me to make a goose of myself.
+It was very, very plain; and so I went out and hired another artist.
+By working on my vanity, the stranger had seduced me into declaring an
+income of two hundred and fourteen thousand dollars.  By law, one
+thousand dollars of this was exempt from income tax--the only relief I
+could see, and it was only a drop in the ocean.  At the legal five per
+cent., I must pay to the government the sum of ten thousand six hundred
+and fifty dollars, income tax!
+
+[I may remark, in this place, that I did not do it.]
+
+I am acquainted with a very opulent man, whose house is a palace, whose
+table is regal, whose outlays are enormous, yet a man who has no income,
+as I have often noticed by the revenue returns; and to him I went for
+advice in my distress.  He took my dreadful exhibition of receipts, he
+put on his glasses, he took his pen, and presto!--I was a pauper!  It was
+the neatest thing that ever was.  He did it simply by deftly manipulating
+the bill of “DEDUCTIONS.”  He set down my “State, national, and municipal
+taxes” at so much; my “losses by shipwreck; fire, etc.,” at so much; my
+“losses on sales of real estate”--on “live stock sold”--on “payments for
+rent of homestead”--on “repairs, improvements, interest”--on “previously
+taxed salary as an officer of the United States army, navy, revenue
+service,” and other things.  He got astonishing “deductions” out of each
+and every one of these matters--each and every one of them.  And when he
+was done he handed me the paper, and I saw at a glance that during the
+year my income, in the way of profits, had been one thousand two hundred
+and fifty dollars and forty cents.
+
+“Now,” said he, “the thousand dollars is exempt by law.  What you want to
+do is to go and swear this document in and pay tax on the two hundred and
+fifty dollars.”
+
+[While he was making this speech his little boy Willie lifted a
+two-dollar greenback out of his vest pocket and vanished with it, and I
+would wager anything that if my stranger were to call on that little boy
+to-morrow he would make a false return of his income.]
+
+“Do you,” said I, “do you always work up the 'deductions' after this
+fashion in your own case, sir?”
+
+“Well, I should say so!  If it weren't for those eleven saving clauses
+under the head of 'Deductions' I should be beggared every year to support
+this hateful and wicked, this extortionate and tyrannical government.”
+
+This gentleman stands away up among the very best of the solid men of the
+city--the men of moral weight, of commercial integrity, of unimpeachable
+social spotlessness--and so I bowed to his example.  I went down to the
+revenue office, and under the accusing eyes of my old visitor I stood up
+and swore to lie after lie, fraud after fraud, villainy after villainy,
+till my soul was coated inches and inches thick with perjury, and my
+self-respect gone for ever and ever.
+
+But what of it?  It is nothing more than thousands of the richest and
+proudest, and most respected, honored, and courted men in America do
+every year.  And so I don't care.  I am not ashamed.  I shall simply,
+for the present, talk little and eschew fire-proof gloves, lest I fall
+into certain dreadful habits irrevocably.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Sketches New and Old, Complete, by
+Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens)
+
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