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Title: Moments with Mark Twain
Author: Twain, Mark
Language: English
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MOMENTS WITH
MARK TWAIN
❖
[Illustration: Copyright, 1907, by Underwood & Underwood]
Moments With
MARK TWAIN
_Selected by_ ❦ ❦ ❦
ALBERT BIGELOW PAINE
[Illustration]
Harper & Brothers Publishers
New York and London
MOMENTS WITH MARK TWAIN
Copyright, 1920, by The Mark Twain Company
Printed in the United States of America
Published March, 1920
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CONTENTS
CHAP. PAGE
I. _From_ “SKETCHES NEW AND OLD” 1
II. _From_ “THE INNOCENTS ABROAD” 7
III. _From_ “ROUGHING IT” 58
IV. _From_ “THE GILDED AGE” 101
V. _From_ “ADVENTURES OF TOM SAWYER” 113
VI. _From_ “THE STOLEN WHITE ELEPHANT” 129
VII. _From_ “A TRAMP ABROAD” 131
VIII. _From_ “LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI” 155
IX. _From_ “THE PRINCE AND THE PAUPER” 182
X. _From_ “THE ADVENTURES OF HUCKLEBERRY FINN” 199
XI. _From_ “A CONNECTICUT YANKEE IN KING ARTHUR’S COURT” 223
XII. _From_ “RAMBLING NOTES OF AN IDLE EXCURSION” 244
XIII. _From_ “PUDD’NHEAD WILSON’S CALENDAR” 247
XIV. _From_ “THE PRIVATE HISTORY OF A CAMPAIGN THAT FAILED” 254
XV. _From_ “THE PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF JOAN OF ARC” 261
XVI. _From_ “SAINT JOAN OF ARC” 272
XVII. _From_ “FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR” 273
XVIII. _From_ “CONCERNING THE JEWS” 283
XIX. _From_ “CHRISTIAN SCIENCE” 285
XX. _From_ “ITALIAN WITHOUT A MASTER” 288
XXI. _From_ “EVE’S DIARY” 290
XXII. MISCELLANEOUS 291
XXIII. _From_ “THE DEATH OF JEAN” 298
XXIV. _From_ ONE OF HIS LATEST MEMORANDA 299
FOREWORD
Beginning his preface to the “Uniform Edition” of his works, Mark Twain
wrote:
“So far as I remember, I have never seen an Author’s Preface which had
any purpose but one—to furnish reasons for the publication of the book.
Prefaces wear many disguises, call themselves by various names, and
pretend to come on various businesses, but I think that upon examination
we are quite sure to find that their errand is always the same: they are
there to apologize for the book; in other words, furnish reasons for its
publication. This often insures brevity.”
Accepting the above as gospel (as necessarily we must, in this book,)
one is only required here to furnish a few more or less plausible
excuses for its existence. Very well, then, we can think of two:
First: To prove to those who have read Mark Twain sparingly, or know him
mainly from hearsay, that he was something more than a mere fun-maker.
Second: To provide for those who have read largely of his work something
of its essence, as it were—put up in a form which may be found
convenient when one has not time, or inclination, to search the volumes.
These are the excuses—now, an added word as to method: The examples have
been arranged chronologically, so that the reader, following them in
order, may note the author’s evolution—the development of his humor, his
observation, his philosophy and his literary style. They have been
selected with some care, in the hope that those who know the author best
may consider him fairly represented.
Feeling now that this little volume is sufficiently explained, the
compiler begs to offer it, without further extenuation, to all who do
honor to the memory of our foremost laughing philosopher.
MOMENTS WITH
MARK TWAIN
❖
_FROM_ “SKETCHES NEW AND OLD” (1865–67)
ANSWERS TO CORRESPONDENTS
“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 those 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 all 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 unloveable 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.
HOW I EDITED AN AGRICULTURAL PAPER
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,” 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.
_FROM_ “THE INNOCENTS ABROAD” (1867–68)
ON KEEPING A JOURNAL
At certain periods it becomes the dearest ambition of a man to keep a
faithful record of his performances, in a book; and he dashes at his
work with an enthusiasm that imposes on him the notion that keeping a
journal is the veriest pastime in the world, and the pleasantest. But if
he only lives twenty-one days, he will find out that only those rare
natures that are made up of pluck, endurance, devotion to duty for
duty’s sake, and invincible determination, may hope to venture upon so
tremendous an enterprise as the keeping of a journal and not sustain a
shameful defeat.... If you wish to inflict a heartless and malignant
punishment upon a young person, pledge him to keep a journal a year.
THE “QUAKER CITY” IN A STORM
And the last night of the seven was the stormiest of all. There was no
thunder, no noise but the pounding bows of the ship, the keen whistling
of the gale through the cordage, and the rush of the seething waters.
But the vessel climbed aloft as if she would climb to heaven—then paused
an instant that seemed a century, and plunged headlong down again, as
from a precipice. The sheeted sprays drenched the decks like rain. The
blackness of darkness was everywhere. At long intervals a flash of
lightning clove it with a quivering line of fire, that revealed a
heaving world of water where was nothing before, kindled the dusky
cordage to glittering silver, and lit up the faces of the men with a
ghastly lustre!
Fear drove many on deck that were used to avoiding the night winds and
the spray. Some thought the vessel could not live through the night, and
it seemed less dreadful to stand out in the midst of the wild tempest
and _see_ the peril that threatened than to be shut up in the sepulchral
cabins, under the dim lamps, and imagine the horrors that were abroad on
the ocean. And once out—once where they could see the ship struggling in
the strong grasp of the storm—once where they could hear the shriek of
the winds, and face the driving spray and look out upon the majestic
picture the lightnings disclosed, they were prisoners to a fierce
fascination they could not resist, and so remained. It was a wild
night—and a very, very long one.
THE BEAUTIFUL STRANGER
While we stood admiring the cloud-capped peaks and the lowlands robed in
misty gloom, a finer picture burst upon us and chained every eye like a
magnet—a stately ship, with canvas piled on canvas till she was one
towering mass of bellying sail. She came speeding over the sea like a
great bird. Africa and Spain were forgotten. All homage was for the
beautiful stranger. While everybody gazed, she swept superbly by and
flung the Stars and Stripes to the breeze! Quicker than thought hats and
handkerchiefs flashed in the air, and a cheer went up! She was beautiful
before—she was radiant now. Many a one on her decks knew then for the
first time how tame a sight his country’s flag is at home compared with
what it is in a foreign land. To see it is to see a vision of home
itself and all its idols, and feel a thrill that would stir a very river
of sluggish blood!
TANGIER
What a funny old town it is! It seems like profanation to laugh and jest
and bandy the frivolous chat of our day amid its hoary relics. Only the
stately phraseology and the measured speech of the sons of the Prophet
are suited to a venerable antiquity like this. Here is a crumbling wall
that was old when Columbus discovered America; was old when Peter the
Hermit roused the knightly men of the Middle Ages to arm for the first
Crusade; was old when Charlemagne and his paladins beleaguered enchanted
castles and battled with giants and genii in the fabled days of the
olden time; was old when Christ and his disciples walked the earth;
stood where it stands to-day when the lips of Memnon were vocal, and men
bought and sold in the streets of ancient Thebes!
AMERICAN BEAUTIES
I will conclude this chapter with a remark that I am sincerely proud to
be able to make—and glad, as well, that my comrades cordially indorse
it, to wit: by far the handsomest women we have seen in France were born
and reared in America.
I feel, now, like a man who has redeemed a failing reputation and shed
luster upon a dimmed escutcheon, by a single just deed done at the
eleventh hour.
Let the curtain fall, to slow music.
AN EARLY MEMORY
It is hard to forget repulsive things. I remember yet how I ran off from
school once when I was a boy, and then, pretty late at night, concluded
to climb into the window of my father’s office and sleep on a lounge,
because I had a delicacy about going home and getting thrashed. As I lay
on the lounge and my eyes grew accustomed to the darkness, I fancied I
could see a long, dusky, shapeless thing stretched upon the floor. A
cold shiver went through me. I turned my face to the wall. That did not
answer. I was afraid that the thing would creep over and seize me in the
dark. I turned back and stared at it for minutes and minutes—they seemed
hours. It appeared to me that the lagging moonlight never, never would
get to it. I turned to the wall and counted twenty, to pass the feverish
time away. I looked—the pale square was nearer. I turned again and
counted fifty—it was almost touching it. With desperate will I turned
again and counted one hundred, and faced about, all in a tremble. A
white human hand lay in the moonlight! Such an awful sinking at the
heart—such a sudden gasp for breath. I felt—I cannot tell _what_ I felt.
When I recovered strength enough, I faced the wall again. But no boy
could have remained so, with that mysterious hand behind him. I counted
again, and looked—the most of a naked arm was exposed. I put my hands
over my eyes and counted until I could stand it no longer, and then—the
pallid face of a man was there, with the corners of the mouth drawn
down, and the eyes fixed and glassy in death! I raised to a sitting
posture and glowered on the corpse till the light crept down the bare
breast,—line by line—inch by inch—past the nipple,—and then it disclosed
a ghastly stab!
I went away from there. I do not say that I went away in any sort of a
hurry, but I simply went——that is sufficient. I went out at the window,
and I carried the sash along with me. I did not need the sash, but it
was handier to take it than it was to leave it, and so I took it. I was
not scared, but I was considerably agitated.
When I reached home, they whipped me, but I enjoyed it. It seemed
perfectly delightful. That man had been stabbed near the office that
afternoon, and they carried him in there to doctor him, but he only
lived an hour. I have slept in the same room with him often, since
then—in my dreams.
AT THE AMBROSIAN LIBRARY
We saw a manuscript of Virgil, with annotations in the handwriting of
Petrarch, the gentleman who loved another man’s Laura, and lavished upon
her all through life a love which was a clear waste of the raw material.
It was sound sentiment, but bad judgment. It brought both parties fame,
and created a fountain of commiseration for them in sentimental breasts
that is running yet. But who says a word in behalf of poor Mr. Laura? (I
do not know his other name.) Who glorifies him? Who bedews him with
tears? Who writes poetry about him? Nobody. How do you suppose _he_
liked the state of things that has given the world so much pleasure?...
Let the world go on fretting about Laura and Petrarch if it will; but as
for me, my tears and my lamentations shall be lavished upon the unsung
defendant.
We saw also an autograph letter of Lucrezia Borgia, a lady for whom I
have always entertained the highest respect, on account of her rare
histrionic capabilities, her opulence in solid gold goblets made of
gilded wood, her high distinction as an operatic screamer, and the
facility with which she could order a sextuple funeral and get the
corpses ready for it. We saw one single coarse yellow hair from
Lucrezia’s head, likewise. It awoke emotions, but we still live. In this
same library we saw some drawings by Michael Angelo (these Italians call
him Mickel Angelo), and Leonardo da Vinci. (They spell it Vinci and
pronounce it Vinchy; foreigners always spell better than they
pronounce.) We reserve our opinion of these sketches.
OUR NEED OF REPOSE
Just in this one matter lies the main charm of life in Europe—comfort.
In America, we hurry—which is well; but when the day’s work is done, we
go on thinking of losses and gains, we plan for the morrow, we even
carry our business cares to bed with us, and toss and worry over them
when we ought to be restoring our racked bodies and brains with sleep.
We burn up our energies with these excitements, and either die early or
drop into a lean and mean old age at a time of life which they call a
man’s prime in Europe. When an acre of ground has produced long and
well, we let it lie fallow and rest for a season; we take no man clear
across the continent in the same coach he started in—the coach is
stabled somewhere on the plains and its heated machinery allowed to cool
for a few days; when a razor has seen long service and refuses to hold
an edge, the barber lays it away for a few weeks, and the edge comes
back of its own accord. We bestow thoughtful care upon inanimate
objects, but none upon ourselves. What a robust people, what a nation of
thinkers we might be, if we would only lay ourselves on the shelf
occasionally, and renew our edges!
I do envy these Europeans the comfort they take. When the work of the
day is done, they forget it.
VENICE
It was a long, long ride. But toward evening, as we sat silent and
hardly conscious of where we were—subdued into that meditative calm that
comes so surely after a conversational storm—some one shouted:
“VENICE!”
And sure enough, afloat on the placid sea a league away, lay a great
city with its towers and domes and steeples drowsing in a golden midst
of sunset.
The venerable Mother of the Republics is scarce a fit subject for
flippant speech or the idle gossiping of tourists. It seems a sort of
sacrilege to disturb the glamour of old romance that pictures her to us
softly from afar off as through a tinted mist, and curtains her ruin and
her desolation from our view. One ought, indeed, to turn away from her
rags, her poverty, and her humiliation, and think of her only as she was
when she sunk the fleets of Charlemagne; when she humbled Frederick
Barbarossa or waved her victorious banners above the battlements of
Constantinople.
There was music everywhere—choruses, string bands, brass bands, flutes,
everything. I was so surrounded, walled in with music, magnificence, and
loveliness, that I became inspired with the spirit of the scene, and
sang one tune myself. However, when I observed that the other gondolas
had sailed away, and my gondolier was preparing to go overboard, I
stopped.
In the glare of the day, there is little poetry about Venice, but under
the charitable moon her stained palaces are white again, their battered
sculptures are hidden in shadows, and the old city seems crowned once
more with the grandeur that was hers five hundred years ago. It is easy,
then, in fancy, to people these silent canals with plumed gallants and
fair ladies—with Shylocks in gaberdine and sandals, venturing loans upon
the rich argosies of Venetian commerce—with Othellos and Desdemonas,
with Iagos and Roderigos—with noble fleets and victorious legions
returning from the wars. In the treacherous sunlight we see Venice
decayed, forlorn, poverty-stricken, and commerceless—forgotten and
utterly insignificant. But in the moonlight, her fourteen centuries of
greatness fling their glories about her, and once more is she the
princeliest among the nations of the earth.
Yes, I think we have seen all Venice. We have seen in these old churches
a profusion of costly and elaborate sepulchre ornamentation such as we
never dreamt of before. We have stood in the dim religious light of
these hoary sanctuaries, in the midst of long ranks of dusty monuments
and effigies of the great dead of Venice, until we seemed drifting back,
back, back, into the solemn past, and looking upon the scenes and
mingling with the people of a remote antiquity. We have been in a
half-waking sort of a dream all the time. I do not know how else to
describe the feeling. A part of our being has remained still in the
nineteenth century, while another part of it has seemed in some
unaccountable way walking among the phantoms of the tenth.
We have seen famous pictures until our eyes are weary with looking at
them and refuse to find interest in them any longer.... We have striven
hard to learn. We have had some success. We have mastered some things,
possibly of trifling import in the eyes of the learned, but to us they
give pleasure, and we take as much pride in our little acquirements as
do others who have learned far more, and we love to display them full as
well. When we see a monk going about with a lion and looking tranquilly
up to heaven, we know that that is St. Mark. When we see a monk with a
book and a pen, looking tranquilly up to heaven, trying to think of a
word, we know that that is St. Matthew. When we see a monk sitting on a
rock, looking tranquilly up to heaven, with a human skull beside him,
and without other baggage, we know that that is St. Jerome. Because we
know that he always went flying light in the matter of baggage. When we
see a party looking tranquilly up to heaven, unconscious that his body
is shot through and through with arrows, we know that that is St.
Sebastian. When we see other monks looking tranquilly up to heaven, but
having no trademark, we always ask who those parties are. We do this
because we humbly wish to learn....
And so, having satisfied ourselves, we depart to-morrow, and leave the
venerable Queen of the Republics to summon her vanished ships, and
marshal her shadowy armies, and know again in dreams the pride of her
old renown.
AT PISA
The Baptistery, which is a few years older than the Leaning Tower, is a
stately rotunda of huge dimensions, and was a costly structure. In it
hangs the lamp whose measured swing suggested to Galileo the pendulum.
It looked an insignificant thing to have conferred upon the world of
science and mechanics such a mighty extension of their dominions as it
has. Pondering, in its suggestive presence, I seemed to see a crazy
universe of swinging disks, the toiling children of this sedate parent.
He appeared to have an intelligent expression about him of knowing that
he was not a lamp at all; that he was a Pendulum; a pendulum disguised,
for prodigious and inscrutable purposes of his own deep devising, and
not a common pendulum either, but the old original patriarchal
Pendulum—the Abraham Pendulum of the world.
CHRISTIAN PERSUASION
How times have changed, between the older ages and the new! Some
seventeen or eighteen centuries ago, the ignorant men of Rome were wont
to put Christians in the arena of the Coliseum yonder, and turn the wild
beasts in upon them, for show. It was for a lesson as well. It was to
teach the people to abhor and fear the new doctrine the followers of
Christ were teaching. The beasts tore the victims limb from limb and
made poor mangled corpses of them in the twinkling of an eye. But when
the Christians came into power, when the holy Mother Church became
mistress of the barbarians, she taught them the error of their ways by
no such means. No, she put them in this pleasant Inquisition and pointed
to the Blessed Redeemer, who was so gentle and so merciful toward all
men, and they urged the barbarians to love him; and they did all they
could to persuade them to love and honor him—first by twisting their
thumbs out of joint with a screw; then by nipping their flesh with
pincers—red-hot ones, because they are the most comfortable in cold
weather; then by skinning them alive a little, and finally by roasting
them in public. They always convinced those barbarians. The true
religion, properly administered, as the good Mother Church used to
administer it, is very, very soothing. It is wonderfully persuasive
also. There is a great difference between feeding parties to wild beasts
and stirring up their finer feelings in an Inquisition. One is the
system of degraded barbarians, the other of enlightened civilized
people. It is a great pity the playful Inquisition is no more.
TAKING IT OUT OF THE GUIDES
I never felt so fervently thankful, so soothed, so tranquil, so filled
with a blessed peace, as I did yesterday when I learned that Michael
Angelo was dead.
But we have taken it out of this guide. He has marched us through miles
of pictures and sculpture in the vast corridors of the Vatican; and
through miles of pictures and sculpture in twenty other palaces; he has
shown us the great picture in the Sistine Chapel, and frescoes enough to
fresco the heavens—pretty much all done by Michael Angelo. So with him
we have played that game which has vanquished so many guides for
us—imbecility and idiotic questions. These creatures never suspect—they
have no idea of a sarcasm.
He shows us a figure and says: “Statoo brunzo.” (Bronze statue).
We look at it indifferently and the doctor asks: “By Michael Angelo?”
“No—not know who.”
Then he shows us the ancient Roman Forum. The doctor asks: “Michael
Angelo?”
A stare from the guide. “No—a thousan’ year before he is born.”
Then an Egyptian obelisk. Again: “Michael Angelo?”
“Oh, mon dieu, genteelman! Zis is TWO thousan’ year before he is born.”
He grows so tired of that unceasing question sometimes, that he dreads
to show us anything at all. The wretch has tried all the ways he can
think of to make us comprehend that Michael Angelo is only responsible
for the creation of a _part_ of the world, but somehow he has not
succeeded yet. Relief for overtasked eyes and brain from study and
sightseeing is necessary, or we shall become idiotic, sure enough.
Therefore this guide must continue to suffer. If he does not enjoy it,
so much the worse for him. We do.
In this place I might as well jot down a chapter concerning those
necessary nuisances, European guides. Many a man has wished in his heart
he could do without his guide; but knowing he could not, has wished he
could get some amusement out of him as a remuneration for the affliction
of his society. We accomplished this latter matter, and if our
experience can be made useful to others they are welcome to it.
Guides know about enough English to tangle everything up so that a man
can make neither head nor tail of it. They know their story by heart—the
history of every statue, painting, cathedral, or other wonder they show
you. They know it and tell it as a parrot would—and if you interrupt,
and throw them off the track, they have to go back and begin over again.
All their lives long, they are employed in showing strange things to
foreigners and listening to their bursts of admiration. It is human
nature to take delight in exciting admiration. It is what prompts
children to say “smart” things, and to do absurd ones, and in other ways
“show off” when company is present. It is what makes gossips turn out in
rain and storm to go and be the first to tell a startling bit of news.
Think, then, what a passion it becomes with a guide, whose privilege it
is, every day, to show to strangers wonders that throw them into perfect
ecstasies of admiration! He gets so that he could not by any possibility
live in a soberer atmosphere. After we discovered this, we _never_ went
into ecstasies any more—we never admired anything—we never showed any
but impassible faces and stupid indifference in the presence of the
sublimest wonders a guide had to display. We had found their weak point.
We have made good use of it ever since. We have made some of those
people savage, at times, but we have never lost our own serenity.
The doctor asks the questions, generally, because he can keep his
countenance, and look more like an inspired idiot, and throw more
imbecility into the tone of his voice than any man that lives. It comes
natural to him.
The guides in Genoa are delighted to secure an American party, because
Americans have so much wonder, and deal so much in sentiment and emotion
before any relic of Columbus. Our guide there fidgeted about as if he
had swallowed a spring mattress. He was full of animation—full of
impatience. He said:
“Come wis me, genteelmen!—come! I show you ze letter writing by
Christopher Colombo! write it himself!—write it wis his own hand!—come!”
He took us to the municipal palace. After much impressive fumbling of
keys and opening of locks, the stained and aged document was spread
before us. The guide’s eyes sparkled. He danced about us and tapped the
parchment with his finger:
“What I tell you, genteelmen! Is it not so? See! handwriting Christopher
Colombo!—write it himself!”
We looked indifferent—unconcerned. The doctor examined the document very
deliberately, during a painful pause. Then he said, without any show of
interest:
“Ah—Ferguson—what—what did you say was the name of the party who wrote
this?”
“Christopher Colombo! ze great Christopher Colombo.”
Another deliberate examination.
“Ah—did he write it himself, or—or how?”
“He write it himself!—Christopher Colombo! he’s own handwriting, write
by himself!”
Then the doctor laid the document down and said:
“Why, I have seen boys in America only fourteen years old that could
write better than that.”
“But zis is ze great Christo——”
“I don’t care who it is! It’s the worst writing I ever saw. Now you
mustn’t think you can impose on us because we are strangers. We are not
fools, by a good deal. If you have got any specimens of penmanship of
real merit, trot them out!—and if you haven’t, drive on!”
We drove on. The guide was considerably shaken up, but he made one more
venture. He had something which he thought would overcome us. He said:
“Ah, genteelmen, you come wis me! I show you beautiful, oh, magnificent
bust Christopher Colombo!—splendid, grand, magnificent!”
He brought us before the beautiful bust—for it _was_ beautiful—and
sprang back and struck an attitude:
“Ah, look, genteelmen!—beautiful, grand,—bust Christopher
Colombo!—Beautiful bust, beautiful pedestal!”
The doctor put up his eyeglass—procured for such occasions:
“Ah—what did you say this gentleman’s name was?”
“Christopher Colombo! ze great Christopher Colombo!”
“Christopher Colombo—the great Christopher Colombo. Well what did _he_
do?”
“Discover America!—discover America, oh, ze devil!”
“Discover America. No—that statement will hardly wash. We are just from
America ourselves. We heard nothing about it. Christopher
Colombo—pleasant name—is—is he dead?”
“Oh, corpo di Baccho!—three hundred year!”
“What did he die of?”
“I do not know!—I cannot tell.”
“Smallpox, think?”
“I do not know, genteelmen!—I do not know _what_ he die of!”
“Measles, likely?”
“Maybe—maybe—I do not know—I think he die of somethings.”
“Parents living?”
“Im-posseeble!”
“Ah—which is the bust and which is the pedestal?”
“Santa Maria!—_zis_ ze bust!—_zis_ ze pedestal!”
“Ah, I see, I see—happy combination—very happy combination, indeed.
Is—is this the first time this gentleman was ever on a bust?”
That joke was lost on the foreigner—guides cannot master subtleties of
the American joke.
We have made it interesting for this Roman guide. Yesterday we spent
three or four hours in the Vatican again, that wonderful world of
curiosities. We came very near expressing interest, sometimes—even
admiration—it was very hard to keep from it. We succeeded though.
Nobody else ever did, in the Vatican museums. The guide was
bewildered—nonplussed. He walked his legs off, nearly, hunting up
extraordinary things, and exhausted all his ingenuity on us, but it
was a failure; we never showed any interest in anything. He had
reserved what he considered to be his greatest wonder till the last—a
royal Egyptian mummy; the best-preserved in the world, perhaps. He
took us there. He felt so sure, this time, that some of his old
enthusiasm came back to him:
“See, genteelmen!—Mummy! Mummy!”
The eyeglass came up as calmly, as deliberately as ever.
“Ah,—Ferguson—what did I understand you to say the gentleman’s name
was?”
“Name?—he got no name! Mummy!—’Gyptian mummy!”
“Yes, yes. Born here?”
“No! _’Gyptian_ mummy!”
“Ah, just so. Frenchman, I presume?”
“No!—_Not_ Frenchman, not Roman!—born in Egypta!”
“Born in Egypta. Never heard of Egypta before. Foreign locality, likely.
Mummy—mummy. How calm he is—how self-possessed. Is, ah—is he dead?”
“Oh, SACRE BLEU, been dead three thousan’ year!”
The doctor turned on him savagely:
“Here, now, what do you mean by such conduct as this! Playing us for
Chinamen because we are strangers and trying to learn. Trying to impose
your vile second-hand carcasses on _us_!—thunder and lightning, I’ve a
notion to—to—if you’ve got a nice _fresh_ corpse, fetch him out!—or, by
George, we’ll brain you!”
We make it exceedingly interesting for this Frenchman. However, he has
paid us back, partly, without knowing it. He came to the hotel this
morning to ask if we were up, and he endeavored as well as he could to
describe us, so that the landlord would know which persons he meant. He
finished with the casual remark that we were lunatics. The observation
was so innocent and so honest that it amounted to a very good thing for
a guide to say.
There is one remark (already mentioned) which never yet has failed to
disgust these guides. We use it always, when we can think of nothing
else to say. After they have exhausted their enthusiasm pointing out to
us and praising the beauties of some ancient bronze image or
broken-legged statue, we look at it stupidly and in silence for five,
ten, fifteen minutes—as long as we can hold out, in fact—and then ask:
“Is—is he dead?”
A SURFEIT OF ART
When I was a schoolboy and was to have a new knife, I could not make up
my mind as to which was the prettiest in the showcase, and I did not
think any of them were particularly pretty; and so I chose with a heavy
heart. But when I looked at my purchase, at home, where no glittering
blades came into composition with it, I was astonished to see how
handsome it was. To this day my new hats look better out of the shop
than they did in it, with other new hats. It begins to dawn upon me now,
that possibly, what I have been taking for uniform ugliness in the
galleries may be uniform beauty, after all. I honestly hope it is, to
others, but certainly it is not to me. Perhaps the reason I used to
enjoy going to the Academy of Fine Arts in New York was because there
were but a few hundred paintings in it, and it did not surfeit me to go
through the list. I suppose the Academy was bacon and beans in the
Forty-Mile Desert, and a European gallery is a state dinner of thirteen
courses. One leaves no sign after him of the one dish, but the thirteen
frighten away his appetite and give him no satisfaction.
There is one thing I am certain of, though. With all the Michael
Angelos, the Raphaels, the Guidos, and the other old masters, the
sublime history of Rome remains unpainted! They painted Virgins enough,
and Popes enough, and saintly scarecrows enough, to people Paradise,
almost, and these things are all they did paint. “Nero fiddling o’er
burning Rome,” the assassination of Caesar, the stirring spectacle of a
hundred thousand people bending forward with rapt interest, in the
coliseum, to see two skilful gladiators hacking away each other’s lives,
a tiger springing upon a kneeling martyr—these and a thousand other
matters which we read of with a living interest, must be sought for only
in books—not among the rubbish left by the old masters—who are no more,
I have the satisfaction of informing the public.
AT POMPEII
Everywhere, you see things that make you wonder how old these old houses
were before the night of destruction came—things, too, which bring back
those long-dead inhabitants and place them living before your eyes. For
instance: The steps (two feet thick—lava blocks) that lead up out of the
school, and the same kind of steps that lead up into the dress circle of
the principal theater, are almost worn through! For ages the boys
hurried out of that school, and for ages their parents hurried into that
theater, and the nervous feet that have been dust and ashes for eighteen
centuries have left their record for us to read to-day. I imagined I
could see crowds of gentlemen and ladies thronging into the theater,
with tickets for secured seats in their hands, and on the wall I read
the imaginary placard, in infamous grammar, “POSITIVELY NO FREE LIST,
EXCEPT MEMBERS OF THE PRESS!” Hanging about the doorway (I fancied) were
slouchy Pompeiian street boys uttering slang and profanity, and keeping
a wary eye out for checks. I entered the theater, and sat down in one of
the long rows of stone benches in the dress circle, and looked at the
place for the orchestra, and the ruined stage, and around at the wide
sweep of empty boxes, and thought to myself, “This house won’t pay.” I
tried to imagine the music in full blast, the leader of the orchestra
beating time, and the “versatile” So-and-So (who had “just returned from
a most successful tour in the provinces to play his last and farewell
engagement of positively six nights only, in Pompeii, previous to his
departure for Herculaneum”) charging around the stage and piling the
agony mountains high—but I could not do it with such a “house” as that;
those empty benches tied my fancy down to dull reality. I said, these
people that ought to be here have been dead, and still, and moldering to
dust for ages and ages, and will never care for the trifles and follies
of life any more forever—“Owing to circumstances, etc., etc., there will
not be any performance to-night.” Close down the curtains. Put out the
lights.
FAME
After browsing among the stately ruins of Rome, of Baiae, of Pompeii,
and after glancing down the long marble ranks of battered and nameless
imperial heads that stretch down the corridors of the Vatican, one thing
strikes me with a force it never had before: the unsubstantial,
unlasting character of fame. Men lived long lives, in the olden time,
and struggled feverishly through them, toiling like slaves, in oratory,
in generalship, or in literature, and then laid them down and died,
happy in the possession of an enduring history and a deathless name.
Well, twenty little centuries flutter away, and what is left of these
things? A crazy inscription on a block of stone, which snuffy
antiquaries bother over and tangle up and make nothing out of but a bare
name (which they spell wrong)—no history, no tradition, no
poetry—nothing that can give it even a passing interest. What may be
left of General Grant’s great name forty centuries hence? This—in the
Encyclopedia for A.D. 5868, possibly.
“Uriah S. (or Z.) Grant—popular poet of ancient times in the Aztec
provinces of the United States of British America. Some authors say
flourished about A.D. 742; but the learned Ah-ah Foo-foo states that he
was a contemporary of Scharkspyre, the English poet, and flourished
about A.D. 1328, some three centuries _after_ the Trojan war instead of
before it. He wrote ‘Rock me to Sleep, Mother,’”
These thoughts sadden me. I will to bed.
ATHENS FROM THE ACROPOLIS
The full moon was riding high in the cloudless heavens now. We sauntered
carelessly and unthinkingly to the edge of the lofty battlements of the
citadel, and looked down—a vision! And such a vision! Athens by
moonlight! The prophet that thought the splendors of the New Jerusalem
were revealed to him, surely saw this instead! It lay in the level plain
right under our feet—all spread abroad like a picture—and we looked down
upon it as we might have looked from a balloon. We saw no semblance of a
street, but every house, every window, every clinging vine, every
projection, was as distinct and sharply marked as if the time were
noonday; and yet there was no glare, no glitter, nothing harsh or
repulsive—the noiseless city was flooded with the mellowest light that
ever streamed from the moon, and seemed like some living creature
wrapped in peaceful slumber. On its further side was a little temple,
whose delicate pillars and ornate front glowed with a rich luster that
chained the eye like the spell; and nearer by, the palace of the king
reared its creamy walls out of the midst of a great garden of shrubbery
that was flecked all over with a random shower of amber lights—a spray
of golden sparks that lost their brightness in the glory of the moon,
and glinted softly upon the sea of dark foliage like the pallid stars of
the milky way. Overhead the stately columns, majestic still in their
ruin—under foot the dreaming city—in the distance the silver sea—not on
the broad earth is there another picture half so beautiful!
As we turned and moved again through the temple, I wished that the
illustrious men who had sat in it in the remote ages could visit it
again and reveal themselves to our curious eyes—Plato, Aristotle,
Demosthenes, Socrates, Phocion, Pythagoras, Euclid, Pindar, Xenophon,
Herodotus, Praxiteles and Phidias, Zeuxis the painter. What a
constellation of celebrated names! But more than all, I wished that old
Diogenes, groping so patiently with his lantern, searching so zealously
for one solitary honest man in all the world, might meander along and
stumble on our party. I ought not to say it, maybe, but still I suppose
he would have put out his light.
CONSTANTINOPLE
Commercial morals, especially, are bad. There is no gainsaying that.
Greek, Turkish, and Armenian morals consist only in attending church
regularly on the appointed Sabbaths, and in breaking the ten
commandments all the balance of the week. It comes natural to them to
lie and cheat in the first place, and then they go on and improve on
nature until they arrive at perfection. In recommending his son to a
merchant as a valuable salesman, a father does not say he is a nice,
moral, upright boy, and goes to Sunday-school and is honest, but he
says, “This boy is worth his weight in broad pieces of a hundred—for
behold, he will cheat whomsoever hath dealings with him, and from the
Euxine to the waters of Marmora there abideth not so gifted a liar!” How
is that for a recommendation? The missionaries tell me that they hear
encomiums like that passed upon people every day. They say of a person
they admire, “Ah, he is a charming swindler, and a most exquisite liar!”
TURKISH JOURNALISM
The newspaper business has its inconveniences in Constantinople. Two
Greek papers and one French one were suppressed here within a few days
of each other. No victories of the Cretans are allowed to be printed.
From time to time the Grand Vizier sends a notice to the various editors
that the Cretan insurrection is entirely suppressed, and although that
editor knows better, he still has to print the notice. The Levant Herald
is too fond of speaking praisefully of Americans to be popular with the
Sultan, who does not relish our sympathy with the Cretans, and therefore
that paper has to be particularly circumspect in order to keep out of
trouble. Once the editor, forgetting the official notice in his paper
that the Cretans were crushed out, printed a letter of a very different
tenor, from the American Consul in Crete, and was fined two hundred and
fifty dollars for it. Shortly he printed another from the same source
and was imprisoned three months for his pains. I think I could get the
assistant editorship of the Levant Herald, but I am going to try to
worry along without it.
THE CAMEL
By half-past six we were under way, and all the Syrian world seemed to
be under way also. The road was filled with mule trains and long
processions of camels. This reminds me that we have been trying for some
time to think what a camel looks like, and now we have made it out. When
he is down on all his knees, flat on his breast to receive his load, he
looks something like a goose, swimming; and when he is upright he looks
like an ostrich with an extra set of legs. Camels are not beautiful, and
their long under lip gives them an exceedingly “gallus” expression. They
have immense flat, forked cushions of feet, that make a track in the
dust like a pie with a slice cut out of it. They are not particular
about their diet. They would eat a tombstone if they could bite it. A
thistle grows about here which has needles on it that would pierce
through leather, I think; if one touches you, you can find relief in
nothing but profanity. The camels eat these. They show by their actions
that they enjoy them. I suppose it would be a real treat to a camel to
have a keg of nails for supper.
AT NOAH’S TOMB
Noah’s tomb is built of stone, and is covered with a long stone
building. Bucksheesh let us in. The building had to be long, because the
grave of the honored old navigator is two hundred and ten feet long
itself! It is only about four feet high, though. He must have cast a
shadow like a lightning-rod. The proof that this is the genuine spot
where Noah was buried can only be doubted by uncommonly incredulous
people. The evidence is pretty straight. Shem, the son of Noah, was
present at the burial, and showed the place to his descendants, who
transmitted the knowledge to their descendants, and the lineal
descendants of these introduced themselves to us to-day. It was pleasant
to make the acquaintance of members of so respectable a family. It was a
thing to be proud of. It was the next thing to being acquainted with
Noah himself.
DAMASCUS
Damascus dates back anterior to the days of Abraham, and is the oldest
city in the world. It was founded by Uz, the grandson of Noah. “The
early history of Damascus is shrouded in the mists of a hoary
antiquity.” Leave the matters written of in the first eleven chapters of
the Old Testament out, and no recorded event has occurred in the world
but Damascus was in existence to receive the news of it. Go back as far
as you will into the vague past, there was always a Damascus. In the
writings of every century for more than four thousand years, its name
has been mentioned, and its praises sung. To Damascus, years are only
moments, decades are only flitting trifles of time. She measures time,
not by days and months and years, but by the empires she has seen rise
and prosper and crumble to ruin. She is a type of immortality. She saw
the foundations of Baalbec, and Thebes, and Ephesus laid; she saw these
villages grow into mighty cities, and amaze the world with their
grandeur—and she has lived to see them desolate, deserted, and given
over to the owls and the bats. She saw the Israelitish empire exalted,
and she saw it annihilated. She saw Greece rise, and flourish two
thousand years, and die. In her old age she saw Rome built; she saw it
overshadow the world with its power; she saw it perish. The few hundreds
of years of Genoese and Venetian might and splendor were, to grave old
Damascus, only a trifling scintillation hardly worth remembering.
Damascus has seen all that has ever occurred on earth, and still she
lives. She has looked upon the dry bones of a thousand empires and will
see the tombs of a thousand more before she dies. Though another claims
the name, old Damascus is by right the Eternal City.
AT BANIAS
It seems curious enough to us to be standing on ground that was once
actually pressed by the feet of the Saviour. The situation is suggestive
of a reality and a tangibility that seem at variance with the vagueness
and mystery and ghostliness that one naturally attaches to the character
of a god. I cannot comprehend yet that I am sitting where a god has
stood, and looking upon the brook and the mountains which that god
looked upon, and am surrounded by dusky men and women whose ancestors
saw him, and even talked with him, face to face, and carelessly, just as
they would have done with any other stranger. I cannot comprehend this;
the gods of my understanding have been always hidden in clouds, and very
far away.
A HEALER IN PALESTINE
As soon as the tribe found out that we had a doctor in our party, they
began to flock in from all quarters. Dr. B., in the charity of his
nature, had taken a child from a wagon who sat near by, and put some
sort of a wash upon its diseased eyes. That woman went off and started
the whole nation, and it was a sight to see them swarm! The lame, the
halt, the blind, the leprous—all the distempers that are bred of
indolence, dirt, and iniquity—were represented in the congress in ten
minutes, and still they came! Every woman that had a sick baby brought
it along, and every woman that hadn’t, borrowed one. What reverent and
what worshiping looks they bent upon that dread, mysterious power, the
Doctor! They watched him take his phials out; they watched him measure
the particles of white powder; they watched him add drops of one
precious liquid, and drops of another; they lost not the slightest
movement; their eyes were riveted upon him with a fascination that
nothing could distract. I believe they thought he was gifted like a god.
When each individual got his portion of medicine, his eyes were radiant
with joy—notwithstanding by nature they are a thankless and impassive
race—and upon his face was written the unquestioning faith that nothing
on earth could prevent the patient from getting well, now.
Christ knew how to preach to these simple, superstitious,
disease-tortured creatures: He healed the sick. They flocked to our poor
human doctor this morning when the fame of what he had done to the sick
child went abroad in the land, and they worshiped him with their eyes
while they did not know as yet whether there was virtue in his simples
or not. The ancestors of these—people precisely like them in color,
dress, manners, costumes, simplicity—flocked in vast multitudes after
Christ, and when they saw Him make the afflicted whole with a word, it
is no wonder they worshiped Him. No wonder His deeds were the talk of
the nation. No wonder the multitude that followed Him was so great that
at one time—thirty miles from here—they had to let a sick man down
through the roof because no approach could be made to the door; no
wonder His audiences were so great at Galilee that He had to preach from
a ship removed a little distance from the shore; no wonder that even in
the desert places about Bethsaida, five thousand invaded His solitude,
and He had to feed them by a miracle or else see them suffer for their
confiding faith and devotion; no wonder when there was a great commotion
in a city in those days, one neighbor explained it to another in words
to this effect: “They say that Jesus of Nazareth is come!”
THE BIBLE
It is hard to make a choice of the most beautiful passage in a book
which is so gemmed with beautiful passages, as the Bible; but it is
certain that not many things within its lids may take rank above the
exquisite story of Joseph. Who taught those ancient writers their
simplicity of language, their felicity of expression, their pathos, and,
above all, their faculty of sinking themselves entirely out of sight of
the reader and making the narrative stand out alone and seem to tell
itself? Shakespeare is always present when one reads his book; Macaulay
is present when we follow the march of his stately sentences; but the
Old Testament writers are hidden from view.
GALILEE AT NIGHT
In the starlight, Galilee has no boundaries but the broad compass of the
heavens, and is a theater meet for great events; meet for the birth of a
religion able to save a world; and meet for the stately figure appointed
to stand upon its stage and proclaim its high decrees. But in the
sunlight, one says: Is it for the deeds which were done and the words
which were spoken in this little acre of rocks and sand eighteen
centuries gone, that the bells are ringing to-day in the remote islands
of the sea and far and wide over continents that clasp the circumference
of the huge globe?
DISTANCE IN THE EAST
In Constantinople you ask, “How far is it to the Consulate?” and they
answer, “About ten minutes.” “How far is it to the Lloyds’ Agency?”
“Quarter of an hour.” “How far is it to the lower bridge?” “Four
minutes.” I cannot be positive about it, but I think that there, when a
man orders a pair of pantaloons, he says he wants them a quarter of a
minute in the legs and nine seconds around the waist.
A PLEASANT INCIDENT
I cannot think of anything now more certain to make one shudder, than to
have a soft-footed camel sneak up behind him and touch him on the ear
with its cold, flabby under lip. A camel did this for one of the boys,
who was drooping over his saddle in a brown study. He glanced up and saw
the majestic apparition hovering above him, and made frantic efforts to
get out of the way, but the camel reached out and bit him on the
shoulder before he accomplished it. This was the only pleasant incident
of the journey.
SACRED MARVELS
Imagination labors best in distant fields. I doubt if any man can stand
in the Grotto of the Annunciation and people with the phantom images of
his mind its too tangible walls of stone.
They showed us a broken granite pillar, depending from the roof, which
they said was hacked in two by the Moslem conquerors of Nazareth, in the
vain hope of pulling down the sanctuary. But the pillar remained
miraculously suspended in the air, and, unsupported itself, supported
then and still supports the roof. By dividing this statement up among
eight, it was found not difficult to believe it.
These gifted Latin monks never do anything by halves. If they were to
show you the Brazen Serpent that was elevated in the wilderness, you
could depend upon it that they had on hand the pole it was elevated on
also, and even the hole it stood in. They have got the “Grotto” of the
Annunciation here; and just as convenient to it as one’s throat is to
his mouth, they have also the Virgin’s Kitchen, and even her
sitting-room, where she and Joseph watched the infant Saviour play with
Hebrew toys, eighteen hundred years ago. All under one roof, and all
clean, spacious, comfortable “grottoes.” It seems curious that
personages intimately connected with the Holy Family always lived in
grottoes—in Nazareth, in Bethlehem, in imperial Ephesus—and yet nobody
else in their day and generation thought of doing anything of the kind.
If they ever did, their grottoes are all gone, and I suppose we ought to
wonder at the peculiar marvel of the preservation of these I speak of.
When the Virgin fled from Herod’s wrath, she hid in a grotto in
Bethlehem, and the same is there to this day. The slaughter of the
innocents in Bethlehem was done in a grotto; the Saviour was born in a
grotto—both are shown to pilgrims yet. It is exceedingly strange that
these tremendous events all happened in grottoes—and exceedingly
fortunate, likewise, because the strongest houses must crumble to ruin
in time, but a grotto in the living rock will last forever.
AT ADAM’S GRAVE
The tomb of Adam! How touching it was, here in a land of strangers, far
away from home, and friends, and all who cared for me, thus to discover
the grave of a blood relation. True, a distant one, but still a
relation. The unerring instinct of nature thrilled its recognition. The
fountain of my filial affection was stirred to its profoundest depths,
and I gave way to tumultuous emotion. I leaned upon a pillar and burst
into tears. I deem it no shame to have wept over the grave of my poor
dead relative. Let him who would sneer at my emotion close this volume
here, for he will find little to his taste in my journeyings through the
Holy Land. Noble old man—he did not live to see me—he did not live to
see his child. And I—I—alas, I did not live to see _him_. Weighed down
by sorrow and disappointment, he died before I was born—six thousand
brief summers before I was born. But let us try to bear it with
fortitude. Let us trust that he is better off where he is. Let us take
comfort in the thought that his loss is our eternal gain.
THE WANDERING JEW
And so we came at last to another wonder, of deep and abiding
interest—the veritable house where the unhappy wretch once lived who has
been celebrated in song and story for more than eighteen hundred years
as the Wandering Jew. On the memorable day of the Crucifixion he stood
in this old doorway with his arms akimbo, looking out upon the
struggling mob that was approaching, and when the weary Saviour would
have sat down and rested him a moment, pushed him rudely away and said,
“Move on!” The Lord said, “Move on, thou, likewise,” and the command has
never been revoked from that day to this. All men know now that the
miscreant upon whose head that just curse fell has roamed up and down
the wide world, for ages and ages, seeking rest and never finding
it—courting death but always in vain—longing to stop, in city, in
wilderness, in desert solitudes, yet hearing always that relentless
warning to march—march on! They say—do these hoary traditions—that when
Titus sacked Jerusalem and slaughtered eleven hundred thousand Jews in
her streets and byways, the Wandering Jew was seen always in the
thickest of the fight, and that when battle-axes gleamed in the air, he
bowed his head beneath them; when swords flashed their deadly
lightnings, he sprang in their way; he bared his breast to whizzing
javelins, to hissing arrows, to any and to every weapon that promised
death and forgetfulness, and rest. But it was useless—he walked forth
out of the carnage without a wound. And it is said that five hundred
years afterwards he followed Mahomet when he carried destruction to the
cities of Arabia, and then turned against him, hoping in this way to win
the death of a traitor. His calculations were wrong again. No quarter
was given to any living creature but one, and that was the only one of
all the host that did not want it. He sought death five hundred years
later, in the wars of the Crusades, and offered himself to famine and
pestilence at Ascalon. He escaped again—he could not die. These repeated
annoyances could have at last but one effect—they shook his confidence.
Since then the Wandering Jew has carried on a kind of desultory toying
with the most promising of the aids and implements of destruction, but
with small hope, as a general thing. He has speculated some in cholera
and railroads and has taken almost a lively interest in infernal
machines and patent medicines. He is old, now, and grave, as becomes an
age like his; he indulges in no light amusements save that he goes
sometimes to executions, and is fond of funerals.
BEDOUINS
We had had a glimpse, from a mountain top, of the Dead Sea, lying like a
blue shield in the plain of the Jordan, and now we were marching down a
close, flaming, rugged, desolate defile, where no living creature could
enjoy life, except, perhaps, a salamander. It was such a dreary,
repulsive, horrible solitude! It was the “wilderness” where John
preached, with camel’s hair about his loins—raiment enough—but he never
could have got his locusts and wild honey here. We were moping along
down through this dreadful place, every man in the rear. Our guards—two
gorgeous young Arab sheiks, with cargoes of swords, guns, pistols, and
daggers on board—were loafing ahead.
“Bedouins!”
Every man shrunk up and disappeared in his clothes like a mud-turtle. My
first impulse was to dash forward and destroy the Bedouins. My second
was to dash to the rear to see if there were any coming in that
direction. I acted on the latter impulse. So did all the others. If any
Bedouins had approached us, then, from that point of compass, they would
have paid dearly for their rashness. We all remarked that, afterwards.
There would have been scenes of riot and bloodshed there that no pen
could describe. I know that, because each man told what he would have
done, individually; and such a medley of strange and unheard-of
inventions of cruelty you could not conceive of. One man said he had
calmly made up his mind to perish where he stood, if need be, but never
yield an inch; he was going to wait, with deadly patience, till he could
count the stripes on the first Bedouin’s jacket, and then count them and
let him have it. Another was going to sit still till the first lance
reached within an inch of his breast, and then dodge it and seize it. I
forbear to tell what he was going to do to that Bedouin that owned it.
It makes my blood run cold to think of it.
A SMITTEN LAND
Palestine sits in sackcloth and ashes. Over it broods the spell of a
curse that has withered its fields and fettered its energies. Where
Sodom and Gomorrah reared their domes and towers, that solemn sea now
floods the plain, in whose bitter waters no living thing exists—over
whose waveless surface the blistering air hangs motionless and
dead—about whose borders nothing grows but weeds, and scattering tufts
of cane, and that treacherous fruit that promises refreshment to
parching lips, but turns to ashes at the touch. Nazareth is forlorn;
about that ford of Jordan where the hosts of Israel entered the Promised
Land with songs of rejoicing, one finds only a squalid camp of fantastic
Bedouins of the desert; Jericho the accursed lies a moldering ruin
to-day, even as Joshua’s miracle left it more than three thousand years
ago; Bethlehem and Bethany, in their poverty and their humiliation, have
nothing about them now to remind one that they once knew the high honor
of the Saviour’s presence; the hallowed spot where the shepherds watched
their flocks by night, and where the angels sang “Peace on earth, good
will to men,” is untenanted by any living creature, and unblessed by any
feature that is pleasant to the eye. Renowned Jerusalem itself, the
stateliest name in history, has lost all its ancient grandeur, and is
become a pauper village; the riches of Solomon are no longer there to
compel the admiration of visiting Oriental queens; the wonderful temple,
which was the pride and glory of Israel, is gone, and the Ottoman
crescent is lifted above the spot where, on that most memorable day in
the annals of the world, they reared the Holy Cross. The noted Sea of
Galilee, where Roman fleets once rode at anchor and the disciples of the
Saviour sailed in their ships, was long ago deserted by the devotees of
war and commerce, and its borders are a silent wilderness; Capernaum is
a shapeless ruin; Magdala is the home of beggared Arabs; Bethsaida and
Chorazin have vanished from the earth, and the “desert places” round
about them, where thousands of men once listened to the Saviour’s voice
and ate the miraculous bread, sleep in the hush of a solitude that is
inhabited only by birds of prey and skulking foxes.
Palestine is desolate and unlovely. And why should it be otherwise? Can
the _curse_ of the Deity beautify a land?
THE SPHINX
After years of waiting, it was before me at last. The great face was so
sad, so earnest, so longing, so patient. There was a dignity not of
earth in its mien, and in its countenance a benignity such as never
anything human wore. It was stone, but seemed sentient. If ever image of
stone thought, it was thinking. It was looking toward the verge of the
landscape, yet looking _at_ nothing—nothing but distance and vacancy. It
was looking over and beyond everything of the present, and far into the
past. It was gazing out over the ocean of Time—over lines of
century-waves which, further and further receding, closed nearer and
nearer together, and blended at last into one unbroken tide, away toward
the horizon of remote antiquity. It was thinking of the wars of departed
ages; of the empires it had seen created and destroyed; of the nations
whose birth it had witnessed, whose progress it had watched, whose
annihilation it had noted; of the joy and sorrow, the life and death,
the grandeur and decay, of five thousand slow revolving years. It was
the type of an attribute of man—of a faculty of his heart and brain. It
was MEMORY—RETROSPECTION—wrought into visible, tangible form. All who
know what pathos there is in memories of days that are accomplished and
faces that have vanished—albeit only a trifling score of years gone
by—will have some appreciation of the pathos that dwells in these grave
eyes that look so steadfastly back upon the things they knew before
History was born—before tradition had being—things that were, and forms
that moved, in a vague era which even Poetry and Romance scarce know
of—and passed one by one away and left the stony dreamer solitary in the
midst of a strange new age, and uncomprehended scenes.
The Sphinx is grand in its loneliness; it is imposing in its magnitude;
it is impressive in the mystery that hangs over its story. And there is
that in the overshadowing majesty of this eternal figure of stone, with
its accusing memory of the deeds of all ages, which reveals to one
something of what he shall feel when he shall stand at last in the awful
presence of God.
MEMORIES OF THE PILGRIMAGE
We shall remember something of pleasant France; and something also of
Paris, though it flashed upon us a splendid meteor, and was gone again,
we hardly knew how or where. We shall remember, always, how we saw
majestic Gibraltar glorified with the rich coloring of a Spanish sunset
and swimming in a sea of rainbows. In fancy we shall see Milan again,
and her stately cathedral with its marble wilderness of graceful spires.
And Padua—Verona—Como, jeweled with stars; and patrician Venice, afloat
on her stagnant flood—silent, desolate, haughty—scornful of her humbled
state—wrapping herself in memories of her lost fleets, of battle and
triumph, and all the pageantry of a glory that is departed.
We cannot forget Florence—Naples—nor the foretaste of heaven that is in
the delicious atmosphere of Greece—and surely not Athens and the broken
temples of the Acropolis. Surely not venerable Rome—nor the green plain
that compasses her round about, contrasting its brightness with her gray
decay—nor the ruined arches that stand apart in the plain and clothe
their looped and windowed raggedness with vines. We shall remember St.
Peter’s; not as one sees it when he walks the streets of Rome and
fancies all her domes are just alike, but as he sees it leagues away,
when every meaner edifice has faded out of sight and that one dome looms
superbly up in the flush of sunset, full of dignity and grace, strongly
outlined as a mountain.
We shall remember Constantinople and the Bosporus—the colossal
magnificence of Baalbec—the Pyramids of Egypt—the prodigious form, the
benignant countenance of the Sphinx—Oriental Smyrna—sacred
Jerusalem—Damascus, the “Pearl of the East,” the pride of Syria, the
fabled Garden of Eden, the home of princes and genii of the Arabian
Nights, the oldest metropolis on the earth, the one city in all the
world that has kept its name and held its place and looked serenely on
while the Kingdoms and Empires of four thousand years have risen to
life, enjoyed their little season of pride and pomp and then vanished
and been forgotten!
_FROM_ “ROUGHING IT”
STARTING WEST
(1870–71)
We were six days going from St. Louis to “St. Joe”—a trip that was so
dull, and sleepy, and eventless that it has left no more impression on
my memory than if its duration had been six minutes instead of that many
days. No record is left in my mind, now, concerning it, but a confused
jumble of savage looking snags, which we deliberately walked over with
one wheel or the other; and of reefs which we butted and butted, and
then retired from and climbed over in some softer place; and of
sand-bars which we roosted on occasionally, and rested, and then got out
our crutches and sparred over. In fact, the boat might almost as well
have gone to St. Joe by land, for she was walking most of the time,
anyhow—climbing over reefs and clambering over snags patiently and
laboriously all day long. The captain said she was a “bully” boat, and
all she wanted was more “shear” and a bigger wheel. I thought she wanted
a pair of stilts, but I had the deep sagacity not to say so.
GEORGE BEMIS AND “THE ALLEN”
Mr. George Bemis was dismally formidable. George Bemis was our fellow
traveler. We had never seen him before. He wore in his belt an old
original “Allen” revolver, such as irreverent people called a
“pepper-box.” Simply drawing the trigger back, cocked and fired the
pistol. As the trigger came back, the hammer would begin to rise and the
barrel to turn over, and presently down would drop the hammer, and away
would speed the ball. To aim along the turning barrel and hit the thing
aimed at was a feat which was probably never done with an “Allen” in the
world. But George’s was a reliable weapon, nevertheless, because, as one
of the stage-drivers afterwards said, “If she didn’t get what she went
after, she would fetch something else.”
And so she did. She went after a deuce of spades nailed against a tree,
once, and fetched a mule standing about thirty yards to the left of it.
Bemis did not want the mule; but the owner came out with a
double-barreled shot-gun and persuaded him to buy it, anyhow.
THE OVERLAND STAGE
Our coach was a great swinging and swaying stage, of the most sumptuous
description—an imposing cradle on wheels. It was drawn by six handsome
horses, and by the side of the driver sat the “conductor,” the
legitimate captain of the craft; for it was his business to take charge
and care of the mails, baggage, express matter, and passengers. We three
were the only passengers, this trip. We sat on the back seat, inside.
About all the rest of the coach was full of mail bags—for we had three
days’ delayed mails with us. Almost touching our knees, a perpendicular
wall of mail matter rose up to the roof. There was a great pile of it
strapped on top of the stage, and both the fore and hind boots were
full. We had twenty-seven hundred pounds of it aboard, the driver
said—“a little for Brigham, and Carson, and ’Frisco, but the heft of it
for the Injuns, which is powerful troublesome ’thout they get plenty of
truck to read.” But as he just then got up a fearful convulsion of his
countenance which was suggestive of a wink being swallowed by an
earthquake, we guessed that his remark was intended to be facetious, and
to mean that we would unload the most of our mail matter somewhere on
the plains and leave it to the Indians, or whosoever wanted it.
We changed horses every ten miles, all day long, and fairly flew over
the hard level road. We jumped out and stretched our legs every time the
coach stopped, and so the night found us still vivacious and unfatigued.
MORNING ON THE PLAINS
Another night of alternate tranquillity and turmoil. But morning came,
by and by. It was another glad awakening to fresh breezes, vast expanses
of level greensward, bright sunlight, an impressive solitude, utterly
without visible human beings or human habitations, and an atmosphere of
such amazing magnifying properties that trees that seemed close at hand
were more than three miles away. We resumed undress uniform, climbed
a-top of the flying coach, dangled our legs over the side, shouted
occasionally at our frantic mules, merely to see them lay their ears
back and scamper faster, tied our hats on to keep our hair from blowing
away, and leveled an outlook over the world-wide carpet about us for
things new and strange to gaze at. Even at this day it thrills me
through and through to think of the life, the gladness and the wild
sense of freedom that used to make the blood dance in my veins on those
fine overland mornings.
THE CAYOTE
The cayote is a long, slim, sick and sorry-looking skeleton, with a gray
wolf-skin stretched over it, a tolerably bushy tail that forever sags
down with a despairing expression of forsakenness and misery, a furtive
and evil eye, and a long, sharp face, with slightly lifted lip and
exposed teeth. He has a general slinking expression all over. The cayote
is a living, breathing allegory of Want. He is _always_ hungry. He is
always poor, out of luck and friendless. The meanest creatures despise
him, and even the fleas would desert him for a velocipede. He is so
spiritless and cowardly that even while his exposed teeth are pretending
a threat, the rest of his face is apologizing for it. And he is _so_
homely!—so scrawny, and ribby, and coarse-haired, and pitiful. When he
sees you he lifts his lip and lets a flash of his teeth out, and then
turns a little out of the course he was pursuing, depresses his head a
bit, and strikes a long, soft-footed trot through the sagebrush,
glancing over his shoulder at you, from time to time, till he is about
out of easy pistol range, and then he stops and takes a deliberate
survey of you; he will trot fifty yards and stop again—another fifty and
stop again; and finally the gray of his gliding body blends with the
gray of the sagebrush, and he disappears. All this is when you make no
demonstration against him; but if you do, he develops a livelier
interest in his journey, and instantly electrifies his heels and puts
such a deal of real estate between himself and your weapon, that by the
time you have raised the hammer you see that you need a minie rifle, and
by the time you have got him in line you need a rifled cannon, and by
the time you have “drawn a bead” on him you see well enough that nothing
but an unusually long-winded streak of lightning could reach him where
he is now. But if you start a swift-footed dog after him, you will enjoy
it ever so much—especially if it is a dog that has a good opinion of
himself, and has been brought up to think he knows something about
speed. The cayote will go swinging gently off on that deceitful trot of
his, and every little while he will smile a fraudful smile over his
shoulder that will fill that dog entirely full of encouragement and
worldly ambition, and make him lay his head still lower to the ground,
and stretch his neck further to the front, and pant more fiercely, and
stick his tail out straighter behind, and move his furious legs with a
yet wilder frenzy, and leave a broader and broader, and higher and
denser cloud of desert sand smoking behind, and marking his long wake
across the level plain! And all this time the dog is only a short twenty
feet behind the cayote, and to save the soul of him he cannot understand
why it is that he cannot get perceptibly closer; and he begins to get
aggravated, and it makes him madder and madder to see how gently the
cayote glides along and never pants or sweats or ceases to smile; and he
grows still more and more incensed to see how shamefully he has been
taken in by an entire stranger, and what an ignoble swindle that long,
calm, soft-footed trot is; and next he notices that he is getting
fagged, and that the cayote actually has to slacken speed a little to
keep from running away from him—and _then_ that town-dog is mad in
earnest, and he begins to strain and weep and swear, and paw the sand
higher than ever, and reach for the cayote with concentrated and
desperate energy. This “spurt” finds him six feet behind the gliding
enemy, and two miles from his friends. And then, in the instant that a
wild new hope is lighting up his face, the cayote turns and smiles
blandly upon him once more, and with a something about it which seems to
say, “Well, I shall have to tear myself away from you, bud—business is
business, and it will not do for me to be fooling along this way all
day”—and forthwith there is a rushing sound, and the sudden splitting of
a long crack through the atmosphere, and behold that dog is solitary and
alone in the midst of a vast solitude!
THE PONY RIDER
In a little while all interest was taken up in stretching our necks and
watching for the “pony-rider”—the fleet messenger who sped across the
continent from St. Joe to Sacramento, carrying letters nineteen hundred
miles in eight days! Think of that for perishable horse and human flesh
and blood to do! The pony-rider was usually a little bit of a man,
brimful of spirit and endurance. No matter what time of the day or night
his watch came on, and no matter whether it was winter or summer,
raining, snowing, hailing, or sleeting, or whether his “beat” was a
level straight road or a crazy trail over mountain crags and precipices,
or whether it led through peaceful regions that swarmed with hostile
Indians, he must be always ready to leap into the saddle and be off like
the wind! There was no idling-time for a pony-rider on duty. He rode
fifty miles without stopping by daylight, moonlight, starlight, or
through the blackness of darkness—just as it happened. He rode a
splendid horse that was born for a racer and fed and lodged like a
gentleman; kept him at his utmost speed for ten miles, and then, as he
came crashing up to the station where stood two men holding fast a
fresh, impatient steed, the transfer of rider and mail-bag was made in
the twinkling of an eye, and away flew the eager pair and were out of
sight before the spectator could get hardly the ghost of a look. Both
rider and horse went “flying light.” The rider’s dress was thin, and
fitted close; he wore a “roundabout,” and a skull-cap, and tucked his
pantaloons into his boot tops like a race-rider. He carried no arms—he
carried nothing that was not absolutely necessary, for even the postage
on his literary freight was worth _five dollars a letter_. He got but
little frivolous correspondence to carry—his bag had business letters in
it, mostly. His horse was stripped of all unnecessary weight, too. He
wore a little wafer of a racing-saddle, and no visible blanket. He wore
light shoes, or none at all. The little flat mail-pockets strapped under
the rider’s thighs would each hold about the bulk of a child’s primer.
They held many and many an important business chapter and newspaper
letter, but these were written on paper as airy and thin as gold-leaf,
nearly, and thus bulk and weight were economized. The stage-coach
traveled about a hundred to a hundred and twenty-five miles a day
(twenty-four hours), the pony-rider about two hundred and fifty. There
were about eighty pony-riders in the saddle all the time, night and day,
stretching in a long, scattering procession from Missouri to California,
forty flying eastward, and forty toward the west, and among them making
four hundred gallant horses earn a stirring livelihood and see a deal of
scenery every single day in the year.
We had had a consuming desire, from the beginning, to see a pony-rider,
but somehow or other all that passed us and all that met us managed to
streak by in the night, and so we heard only a whiz and a hail, and the
swift phantom of the desert was gone before we could get our heads out
of the windows. But now we were expecting one along every moment, and
would see him in broad daylight. Presently the driver exclaims:
“HERE HE COMES.”
Every neck is stretched further, and every eye strained wider. Away
across the endless dead level of the prairie a black speck appears
against the sky, and it is plain that it moves. Well, I should think so!
In a second or two it becomes a horse and rider, rising and falling,
rising and falling,—sweeping toward us nearer and nearer—growing more
and more distinct, more and more sharply defined—nearer and still
nearer, and the flutter of the hoofs comes faintly to the ear—another
instant a whoop and a hurrah from our upper deck, a wave of the rider’s
hand, but no reply, and a man and horse burst past our excited faces,
and go winging away like a belated fragment of a storm!
So sudden is it all, and so like a flash of unreal fancy, that but for
the flake of white foam left quivering and perishing on a mail-sack
after the vision had flashed by and disappeared, we might have doubted
whether we had seen any actual horse and man at all, maybe.
INDIAN COUNTRY
We had now reached a hostile Indian country, and during the afternoon we
passed Laparelle Station, and enjoyed great discomfort all the time we
were in the neighborhood, being aware that many of the trees we dashed
by at arm’s length concealed a lurking Indian or two. During the
preceding night an ambushed savage had sent a bullet through the
pony-rider’s jacket, but he had ridden on, just the same, because
pony-riders were not allowed to stop and inquire into such things except
when killed. As long as they had life enough in them they had to stick
to the horse and ride, even if the Indians had been waiting for them a
week, and were entirely out of patience. About two hours and a half
before we arrived at Laparelle Station, the keeper in charge of it had
fired four times at an Indian, but he said with an injured air that the
Indian had “skipped around so’s to spile everything—and ammunition’s
blamed skurse, too.” The most natural inference conveyed by his manner
of speaking was, that in “skipping around,” the Indian had taken an
unfair advantage.... We shut the blinds down very tightly that first
night in the hostile Indian country, and lay on our arms. We slept on
them some, but most of the time we only lay on them. We did not talk
much, but kept quiet and listened. It was an inky-black night, and
occasionally rainy. We were among woods and rocks, hills and gorges—so
shut in, in fact, that when we peeped through a chink in a curtain, we
could discern nothing. The driver and conductor on top were still, too,
or only spoke at long intervals, in low tones, as is the way of men in
the midst of invisible dangers. We listened to raindrops pattering on
the roof; and the grinding of the wheels through the muddy gravel; and
the low wailing of the wind; and all the time we had that absurd sense
upon us, inseparable from travel at night in a close-curtained vehicle,
the sense of remaining perfectly still in one place, notwithstanding the
jolting and swaying of the vehicle, the trampling of the horses, and the
grinding of the wheels. We listened a long time, with intent faculties
and bated breath; every time one of us would relax, and draw a long sigh
of relief and start to say something, a comrade would be sure to utter a
sudden “Hark!” and instantly the experimenter was rigid and listening
again.
AT THE SUMMIT OF THE ROCKIES
And now, at last, we were fairly in the renowned SOUTH PASS, and
whirling gaily along, high above the common world. We were perched upon
the extreme summit of the great range of the Rocky Mountains, toward
which we had been climbing, patiently climbing, ceaselessly climbing,
for days and nights together—and about us was gathered a convention of
Nature’s kings that stood ten, twelve, and even thirteen thousand feet
high—grand old fellows who would have to stoop to see Mount Washington,
in the twilight. We were in such an airy elevation above the creeping
populations of the earth, that now and then when the obstructing crags
stood out of the way it seemed that we could look around and abroad and
contemplate the whole great globe, with its dissolving views of
mountains, seas, and continents stretching away through the mystery of
the summer haze.
INCIDENTS BY THE WAY
At the Green River station we had breakfast—hot biscuits, fresh antelope
steaks, and coffee—the only decent meal we tasted between the United
States and Great Salt Lake City and the only one we were ever really
thankful for. Think of the monotonous execrableness of the thirty that
went before it, to leave this one simple breakfast looming up in my
memory like a shot-tower after all these years have gone by!
At five p. m. we reached Fort Bridger, one hundred and seventeen miles
from the South Pass, and one thousand and twenty-five miles from St.
Joseph. Fifty-two miles further on, near the head of Echo Canyon, we met
sixty United States soldiers from Camp Floyd. The day before, they had
fired upon three hundred or four hundred Indians, whom they supposed
gathered together for no good purpose. In the fight that had ensued,
four Indians were captured, and the main body chased four miles, but
nobody killed. This looked like business. We had a notion to get out and
join the sixty soldiers, but upon reflecting that there were four
hundred of the Indians, we concluded to go on and join the Indians.
MORMON BEAUTIES
Our stay in Salt Lake City amounted to only two days, and therefore we
had no time to make the customary inquisition into the workings of
polygamy and get up the usual statistics and deductions preparatory to
calling the attention of the nation at large once more to the matter. I
had the will to do it. With the gushing self-sufficiency of youth I was
feverish to plunge in headlong and achieve a great reform here—until I
saw the Mormon women. Then I was touched. My heart was wiser than my
head. It warmed toward these poor, ungainly, and pathetically “homely”
creatures, and as I turned to hide the generous moisture in my eyes, I
said, “No—the man that marries one of them has done an act of Christian
charity which entitles him to the kindly applause of mankind, not harsh
censure—and the man that marries sixty of them has done a deed of
open-handed generosity so sublime that the nations should stand
uncovered in his presence and worship in silence.”
THE ALKALI DESERT
The poetry was all in the anticipation—there is none in the reality.
Imagine a vast, waveless ocean stricken dead and turned to ashes;
imagine this solemn waste tufted with ash-dusted sage-bushes; imagine
the lifeless silence and solitude that belong to such a place; imagine a
coach, creeping like a bug through the midst of this shoreless level,
and sending up tumbled volumes of dust as if it were a bug that went by
steam; imagine this aching monotony of toiling and plowing kept up hour
after hour, and the shore still as far away as ever, apparently; imagine
team, driver, coach and passengers so deeply coated with ashes that they
are all one colorless color; imagine ash-drifts roosting above mustaches
and eyebrows like snow accumulations on boughs and bushes. This is the
reality of it.
The sun beats down with dead, blistering, relentless malignity; the
perspiration is welling from every pore in man and beast, but scarcely a
sign of it finds its way to the surface—it is absorbed before it gets
there; there is not the faintest breath of air stirring; there is not a
merciful shred of cloud in all the brilliant firmament; there is not a
living creature visible in any direction whither one searches the blank
level that stretches its monotonous miles on every hand; there is not a
sound—not a sigh—not a whisper—not a buzz, or a whir of wings, or
distant pipe of bird—not even a sob from the lost souls that doubtless
people that dead air.
ARRIVAL IN CARSON CITY
By and by Carson City was pointed out to us. It nestled in the edge of a
great plain and was a sufficient number of miles away to look like an
assemblage of mere white spots in the shadow of a grim range of
mountains overlooking it, whose summits seemed lifted clear out of
companionship and consciousness of earthly things.
We arrived, disembarked, and the stage went on. It was a “wooden” town;
its population two thousand souls. The main street consisted of four or
five blocks of little frame stores which were too high to sit down on,
but not too high for various other purposes; in fact hardly high enough.
They were packed close together, side by side, as if room were scarce in
that mighty plain. The sidewalk was of boards that were more or less
loose and inclined to rattle when walked upon. In the middle of the
town, opposite the stores, was the “plaza,” which is native to all towns
beyond the Rocky Mountains—a large, unfenced, level vacancy, with a
liberty pole in it, and very useful as a place for public auctions,
horse trades, and mass meetings, and likewise for teamsters to camp in.
Two other sides of the plaza were faced by stores, offices and stables.
The rest of Carson City was pretty scattering.
We were introduced to several citizens, at the stage-office and on the
way up to the Governor’s from the hotel—among others, to a Mr. Harris,
who was on horseback; he began to say something, but interrupted himself
with the remark:
“I’ll have to get you to excuse me a minute; yonder is the witness that
swore I helped to rob the California coach—a piece of impertinent
intermeddling, sir, for I am not even acquainted with the man.”
Then he rode over and began to rebuke the stranger with a six-shooter,
and the stranger began to explain with another. When the pistols were
emptied, the stranger resumed his work (mending a whip-lash), and Mr.
Harris rode by with a polite nod, homeward bound, with a bullet through
one of his lungs, and several through his hips; and from them issued
little rivulets of blood that coursed down the horse’s sides and made
the animal look quite picturesque. I never saw Harris shoot a man after
that but it recalled to mind that first day in Carson.
LAKE TAHOE
Three months of camp life on Lake Tahoe would restore an Egyptian mummy
to his pristine vigor, and give him an appetite like an alligator. I do
not mean the oldest and driest mummies, of course, but the fresher ones.
The air up there in the clouds is very pure and fine, bracing and
delicious. And why shouldn’t it be?—it is the same the angels breathe. I
think that hardly any amount of fatigue can be gathered together that a
man cannot sleep off in one night on the sand by its side. Not under a
roof, but under the sky; it seldom or never rains there in the summer
time. I know a man who went there to die. But he made a failure of it.
He was a skeleton when he came, and could barely stand. He had no
appetite, and did nothing but read tracts and reflect on the future.
Three months later he was sleeping out-of-doors regularly, eating all he
could hold, three times a day, and chasing game over mountains three
thousand feet high for recreation. And he was a skeleton no longer, but
weighed part of a ton. This is no fancy sketch, but the truth. His
disease was consumption. I confidently commend his experience to other
skeletons.
... As soon as we had eaten breakfast we got in the boat and skirted
along the lake shore about three miles and disembarked. We liked the
appearance of the place, and so we claimed some three hundred acres of
it and stuck our “notice” on a tree. It was yellow pine timber land—a
dense forest of trees a hundred feet high and from one to five feet
through at the butt. It was necessary to fence our property or we could
not hold it. That is to say, it was necessary to cut down trees here and
there and make them fall in such a way as to form a sort of enclosure
(with pretty wide gaps in it). We cut down three trees apiece, and found
it such heart-breaking work that we decided to “rest our case” on those;
if they held the property, well and good; if they didn’t, let the
property spill out through the gaps and go; it was no use to work
ourselves to death merely to save a few acres of land. Next day we came
back to build a house—for a house was also necessary, in order to hold
the property. We decided to build a substantial log-house and excite the
envy of the Brigade boys; but by the time we had cut and trimmed the
first log it seemed unnecessary to be so elaborate, and so we concluded
to build it of saplings. However, two saplings duly cut and trimmed,
compelled recognition of the fact that a still modester architecture
would satisfy the law, and so we concluded to build a “brush” house. We
devoted the next day to this work, but we did so much “sitting around”
and discussing that by the middle of the afternoon we had achieved only
a half way sort of affair which one of us had to watch while the other
cut brush, lest if both turned our backs we might not be able to find it
again, it had such a strong family resemblance to the surrounding
vegetation. But we were satisfied with it.... We slept in the sand close
to the water’s edge, between two protecting boulders, which took care of
the stormy night winds for us. We never took any paregoric to make us
sleep. At the first break of dawn we were always up and running
footraces to tone down excess of physical vigor and exuberance of
spirits. That is, Johnny was—but I held his hat. While smoking the pipe
of peace after breakfast we watched the sentinel peaks put on the glory
of the sun, and followed the conquering light as it swept among the
shadows, and set the captive crags and forests free. We watched the
tinted pictures grow and brighten upon the water till every little
detail of forest, precipice, and pinnacle was wrought in and finished,
and the miracle of the enchanter complete. Then to “business.”
That is, drifting around in the boat. We were on the north shore. There,
the rocks on the bottom are sometimes gray, sometimes white. This gives
the marvelous transparency of the water a fuller advantage than it has
elsewhere on the lake. We usually pushed out a hundred yards or so from
the shore and then lay down on the thwarts in the sun, and let the boat
drift by the hour whither it would. We seldom talked. It interrupted the
Sabbath stillness, and marred the dreams, the luxurious rest and
indolence brought.... So singularly clear was the water, that where it
was only twenty or thirty feet deep the bottom was so perfectly distinct
that the boat seemed floating in air! Yes, where it was even _eighty_
feet deep. Every little pebble was distinct, every speckled trout, every
hand’s-breadth of sand. Often, as we lay on our faces, a granite
boulder, as large as a village church, would start out of the bottom
apparently, and seem climbing up rapidly to the surface, till presently
it threatened to touch our faces, and we could not resist the impulse to
seize the oar and avert the danger. But the boat would float on, and the
boulder descend again, and then we could see that when we had been
exactly above it, it must still have been twenty or thirty feet below
the surface. Down through the transparency of these great depths, the
water was not _merely_ transparent, but dazzlingly, brilliantly so. All
objects seen through it had a bright, strong vividness, not only of
outline, but of every minute detail, which they would not have had when
seen simply through the same depth of atmosphere. So empty and airy did
all spaces seem below us, and so strong was the sense of floating high
aloft in mid-nothingness, that we called these boat-excursions
“balloon-voyages.” ... Sometimes, on lazy afternoons, we lolled on the
sand in camp, and smoked pipes and read some old well-worn novels. At
night, by the camp-fire, we played euchre and seven-up to strengthen the
mind—and played them with cards so greasy and defaced that only a whole
summer’s acquaintance with them could enable the student to tell the ace
of clubs from the jack of diamonds.
We never slept in our “house.” It never occurred to us, for one thing;
and besides, it was built to hold the ground, and that was enough. We
did not wish to strain it.
SELLING OUT A MINE
The Gould & Curry claim comprised twelve hundred feet, and it all
belonged originally to the two men whose name it bears. Mr. Curry owned
two-thirds of it—and he said that he sold it out for twenty-five hundred
dollars in cash, and an old plug horse that ate up his market value in
hay and barley in seventeen days by the watch. And he said that Gould
sold out for a pair of second-hand government blankets and a bottle of
whisky that killed nine men in three hours, and that an unoffending
stranger that smelt the cork was disabled for life. Four years afterward
the mine thus disposed of was worth in the San Francisco market seven
million six hundred thousand dollars in gold coin.
BUCK FANSHAW’S FUNERAL
There was a grand time over Buck Fanshaw when he died. He was a
representative citizen. He had “killed his man”—not in his own quarrel,
it is true, but in defence of a stranger unfairly beset by numbers. He
had kept a sumptuous saloon. He had been the proprietor of a dashing
helpmeet whom he could have discarded without the formality of a
divorce. He had a high position in the fire department and had been a
very Warwick in politics. When he died there was great lamentation
throughout the town, but especially in the vast bottom stratum of
society.
On the inquest it was shown that Buck Fanshaw, in the delirium of a
wasting typhoid fever, had taken arsenic, shot himself through the body,
cut his throat, and jumped out of a four-story window and broken his
neck—and after due deliberation, the jury, sad and tearful, but with
intelligence unblinded by its sorrow, brought in a verdict of death “by
the visitation of God.” What could the world do without juries?
Prodigious preparations were made for the funeral. All the vehicles in
town were hired, all the saloons put in mourning, all the municipal and
fire-company flags hung at half-mast, and all the firemen ordered to
muster in uniform and bring their machines duly draped in black. Now—let
it be remarked in parenthesis—as all the people of the earth had
representative adventures in the Silverland, and as each adventurer had
brought the slang of his nation or of his locality with him, the
combination made the slang of Nevada the richest and the most infinitely
varied and copious that had ever existed anywhere in the world, perhaps,
except in the mines of California in the “early days.” Slang was the
language of Nevada. It was hard to preach a sermon without it, and be
understood. Such phrases as “You bet!” “Oh, no, I reckon not.” “No Irish
need apply,” and a hundred others, became so common as to fall from the
lips of a speaker unconsciously—and very often when they did not touch
the subject under discussion and consequently failed to mean anything.
After Buck Fanshaw’s inquest, a meeting of the short-haired brotherhood
was held, for nothing could be done on the Pacific coast without a
public meeting and an expression of sentiment. Regretful resolutions
were passed and various committees appointed; among others, a committee
of one was deputed to call on the minister, a fragile, gentle, spiritual
new fledgling from an Eastern theological seminary, and as yet
unacquainted with the ways of the mines. The committeeman, “Scotty”
Briggs, made his visit; and in after days it was worth something to hear
the minister tell about it. Scotty was a stalwart rough, whose customary
suit, when on weighty official business, like committee work, was a fire
helmet, flaming red flannel shirt, patent leather belt with spanner and
revolver attached, coat hung over arm, and pants stuffed into boot tops.
He formed something of a contrast to the pale theological student. It is
fair to say of Scotty, however, in passing, that he had a warm heart,
and a strong love for his friends, and never entered into a quarrel when
he could reasonably keep out of it. Indeed, it was commonly said that
when ever one of Scotty’s fights was investigated, it always turned out
that it had originally been no affair of his, but out of native
good-heartedness he had dropped in of his own accord to help the man who
was getting the worst of it. He and Buck Fanshaw were bosom friends, for
years, and had often taken adventurous “potluck” together. On one
occasion, they had thrown off their coats and taken the weaker side in a
fight among strangers, and after gaining a hard earned victory, turned
and found that the men they were helping had deserted early and not only
that, but had stolen their coats and made off with them! But to return
to Scotty’s visit to the minister. He was on a sorrowful mission, now,
and his face was the picture of woe. Being admitted to the presence he
sat down before the clergyman, placed his fire hat on an unfinished
manuscript sermon under the minister’s nose, took from it a red silk
handkerchief, wiped his brow and heaved a sigh of dismal impressiveness,
explanatory of his business. He choked, and even shed tears; but with an
effort he mastered his voice and said in lugubrious tones:
“Are you the duck that runs the gospel-mill next door?”
“Am I the—pardon me, I believe I do not understand?”
With another sigh and a half-sob, Scotty rejoined:
“Why, you see, we are in a bit of trouble, and the boys thought maybe
you would give us a lift, if we’d tackle you—that is, if I’ve got the
rights of it and you are the head clerk of the doxology-works next
door.”
“I am the shepherd in charge of the flock whose fold is next door.”
“The which?”
“The spiritual adviser of the little company of believers whose
sanctuary adjoins these premises.”
Scotty scratched his head, reflected a moment, and then said:
“You rather hold over me, pard. I reckon I can’t call that hand. Ante
and pass the buck.”
“How? I beg pardon. What did I understand you to say?”
“Well, you’ve ruther got the bulge on me. Or may’be we’ve both got the
bulge, somehow. You don’t smoke me and I don’t smoke you. You see, one
of the boys has passed in his checks, and we want to give him a good
send-off, and so the thing I’m on now is to roust out somebody to jerk a
little chin-music for us and waltz him through handsome.”
“My friend, I seem to grow more and more bewildered. Your observations
are wholly incomprehensible to me. Cannot you simplify them in some way?
At first I thought perhaps I understood you, but I grope now. Would it
not expedite matters if you restricted yourself to categorical
statements of facts, unencumbered with obstructive accumulations of
metaphor and allegory?”
Another pause, and more reflection. Then, said Scotty:
“I’ll have to pass, I judge.”
“How?”
“You’ve raised me out, pard.”
“I still fail to catch your meaning.”
“Why, that last lead of yourn is too many for me—that’s the idea. I
can’t neither trump nor follow suit.”
The clergyman sank back in his chair perplexed. Scotty leaned his head
on his hand and gave himself up to thought. Presently his face came up,
sorrowful, but confident.
“I’ve got it now, so’s you can savvy,” he said. “What we want is a
gospel-sharp. See?”
“A what?”
“Gospel-sharp. Parson.”
“Oh! Why did you not say so before? I am a clergyman—a parson.”
“Now you talk! You see my blind and straddle it like a man. Put it
there!”—extending a brawny paw, which closed over the minister’s small
hand and gave it a shake indicative of fraternal sympathy and fervent
gratification.
“Now we’re all right, pard. Let’s start fresh. Don’t you mind my
shuffling a little—becuz we’re in a power of trouble. You see, one of
the boys has gone up the flume——”
“Gone where?”
“Up the flume—throwed up the sponge, you understand.”
“Thrown up the sponge?”
“Yes—kicked the bucket——”
“Ah—has departed to that mysterious country from whose bourne no
traveler returns.”
“Return! I reckon not. Why, pard, he’s _dead!_”
“Yes, I understand.”
“Oh, you do? Well I thought maybe you might be getting tangled some
more. Yes, you see he’s dead again——”
“_Again!_ Why, has he ever been dead before?”
“Dead before? No! Do you reckon a man has got as many lives as a cat?
But you bet you, he’s awful dead now, poor old boy, and I wish I’d never
seen this day. I don’t want no better friend than Buck Fanshaw. I knowed
him by the back; and when I know a man and like him, I freeze to him—you
hear _me_. Take him all round, pard, there never was a bullier man in
the mines. No man ever knowed Buck Fanshaw to go back on a friend. But
it’s all up, you know, it’s all up. It _ain’t_ no use. They’ve scooped
him.”
“Scooped him?”
“Yes—death has. Well, well, well, we’ve got to give him up. Yes, indeed.
It’s a kind of a hard world, after all, _ain’t_ it? But pard, he was a
rustler! You ought to see him get started once. He was a bully boy with
a glass eye! Just spit in his face and give him room according to his
strength, and it was just beautiful to see him peel and go in. He was
the worst son of a thief that ever drawed breath. Pard, he was _on_ it!
He was on it bigger than an Injun!”
“On it? On what?”
“On the shoot. On the shoulder. On the fight, you understand. _He_
didn’t give a continental for _any_ body. _Beg_ your pardon, friend, for
coming so near saying a cuss-word—but you see I’m on an awful strain, in
this palaver, on account of having to cramp down and draw everything so
mild. But we’ve got to give him up. There ain’t any getting around that,
I don’t reckon. Now if we can get you to help plant him——”
“Preach the funeral discourse? Assist at the obsequies?”
“Obs’quies is good. Yes. That’s it—that’s our little game. We are going
to get the thing up regardless, you know. He was always nifty himself,
and so you bet you his funeral ain’t going to be no slouch—solid silver
door-plate on his coffin, six plumes on the hearse, and one nigger on
the box in a biled shirt and a plug hat—how’s that for high? And we’ll
take care of _you_ pard. We’ll fix you all right. There’ll be a kerridge
for you; and whatever you want, you just ’scape out and we’ll ’tend to
it. We’ve got a shebang fixed up for you to stand behind, in No. 1’s
house, and don’t you be afraid. Just go in and toot your horn, if you
don’t sell a clam. Put Buck through as bully as you can, pard, for
anybody that knowed him will tell you that he was one of the whitest men
that was ever in the mines. You can’t draw it too strong. He never could
stand it to see things going wrong. He’s done more to make this town
quiet and peaceable than any man in it. I’ve seen him lick four Greasers
in eleven minutes, myself. If a thing wanted regulating, _he_ warn’t a
man to go browsing around for somebody to do it, but he would prance in
and regulate it himself. He warn’t a Catholic. Scasely. He was down on
’em. His word was ‘No Irish need apply!’ But it didn’t make no
difference about that when it came down to what a man’s rights was—and
so, when some roughs jumped the Catholic boneyard and started in to
stake out town lots in it he _went_ for ’em! And he _cleaned_ ’em, too!
I was there, pard, and I seen it myself.”
“That was very well, indeed—at least the impulse was—whether the act was
strictly defensible or not. Had deceased any religious convictions? That
is to say, did he feel a dependence upon, or acknowledge allegiance to a
higher power?”
More reflection.
“I reckon you’ve stumped me again, pard. Could you say it over once
more, and say it slow?”
“Well, to simplify it somewhat, was he, or rather had he ever been
connected with any organization sequestered for secular concerns and
devoted to self-sacrifice in the interests of morality?”
“All down but nine—set ’em up on the other alley, pard.”
“What did I understand you to say?”
“Why, you’re most too many for me, you know. When you get in with your
left I hunt grass every time. Every time you draw, you fill; but I don’t
seem to have any luck. Let’s have a new deal.”
“How? Begin again?”
“That’s it.”
“Very well. Was he a good man, and——”
“There—I see that; don’t put up another chip till I look at my hand. A
good man, says you? Pard, it ain’t no name for it. He was the best man
that ever—pard, you would have doted on that man. He could lam any
galoot of his inches in America. It was him that put down the riot last
election before it got a start; and everybody said he was the only man
that could have done it. He waltzed in with a spanner in one hand and a
trumpet in the other, and sent fourteen men home on a shutter in less
than three minutes. He had that riot all broke up and prevented nice
before anybody ever got a chance to strike a blow. He was always for
peace, and he would _have_ peace—he could not stand disturbances. Pard,
he was a great loss to this town. It would please the boys if you would
chip in something like that and do him justice. Here once when the Micks
got to throwing stones through the Methodis’ Sunday-school windows, Buck
Fanshaw, all of his own notion, shut up his saloon and took a couple of
six-shooters and mounted guard over the Sunday-school. Says he, ‘No
Irish need Apply!’ And they didn’t. He was the bulliest man in the
mountains, pard! He could run faster, jump higher, hit harder, and hold
more tanglefoot whisky without spilling than any man in seventeen
counties. Put that in, pard—it’ll please the boys more than anything you
could say. And you can say, pard, that he never shook his mother.”
“Never shook his mother?”
“That’s it—any of the boys will tell you so.”
“Well, but why _should_ he shake her?”
“That’s what _I_ say—but some people does.”
“Not people of any repute.”
“Well, some that averages pretty so-so.”
“In my opinion the man that would offer personal violence to his own
mother ought to——”
“Cheese it, pard; you’ve banked your ball clean outside the string. What
I was drivin’ at, was, that he never _throwed_ off on his mother—don’t
you see? No indeedy. He give her a house to live in, and town lots, and
plenty of money; and he looked after her and took care of her all the
time; and when she was down with the smallpox I’m d—d if he didn’t set
up nights and nuss her himself! _Beg_ your pardon for saying it, but it
hopped out too quick for yours truly. You’ve treated me like a
gentleman, pard, and I ain’t the man to hurt your feelings intentional.
I think you’re white. I think you’re a square man, pard. I like you, and
I’ll lick any man that don’t. I’ll lick him till he can’t tell himself
from a last year’s corpse! Put it _there_!” (Another fraternal
hand-shake—and exit).
The obsequies were all that “the boys” could desire. Such a marvel of
funeral pomp had never been seen in Virginia. The plumed hearse, the
dirge-breathing brass bands, the closed marts of business, the flags
drooping at half-mast, the long, plodding procession of uniformed secret
societies, military battalions and fire companies, draped engines,
carriages of officials, and citizens in vehicles and on foot, attracted
multitudes of spectators to the sidewalks, roofs, and windows; and for
years afterward, the degree of grandeur attained by any civic display in
Virginia was determined by comparison with Buck Fanshaw’s funeral.
Scotty Briggs, as a pall-bearer and a mourner, occupied a prominent
place at the funeral, and when the sermon was finished and the last
sentence of the prayer for the dead man’s soul ascended, he responded in
a low voice, but with feeling:
“AMEN. No Irish need apply.”
AN ABANDONED TOWN
We lived in a small cabin on a verdant hillside, and there were not five
other cabins in view over the wide expanse of hill and forest. Yet a
flourishing city of two or three thousand population had occupied this
grassy dead solitude during the flush times of twelve or fifteen years
before, and where our cabin stood had once been the heart of the teaming
hive, the center of the city. When the mines gave out the town fell into
decay, and in a few years wholly disappeared—streets, dwellings, shops,
everything—and left no sign. The grassy slopes were as green and smooth
and desolate of life as if they had never been disturbed. The mere
handful of miners still remaining had seen the town spring up, spread,
grow, and flourish in its pride; and they had seen it sicken and die,
and pass away like a dream. With it their hopes had died, and their zest
of life. They had long ago resigned themselves to their exile, and
ceased to correspond with their distant friends or turn longing eyes
toward their distant homes. They had accepted banishment, forgotten the
world and been forgotten of the world. They were far from telegraphs and
railroads, and they stood, as it were, in a living grave, dead to the
events that stirred the globe’s great populations, dead to the common
interests of men, isolated and outcast from brotherhood with their kind.
It was the most singular, and almost the most touching and melancholy
exile that fancy can imagine.
A HAWAIIAN TEMPLE
Near by is an interesting ruin—the meager remains of an ancient temple—a
place where human sacrifices were offered up in those old by-gone days
when the simple child of nature, yielding momentarily to sin when sorely
tempted, acknowledged his error when calm reflection had shown it to
him, and came forward with noble frankness and offered up his
grandmother as an atoning sacrifice—in those old days when the luckless
sinner could keep on cleansing his conscience and achieving periodical
happiness as long as his relations held out; long, long before the
missionaries braved a thousand privations to come and make them
permanently miserable by telling them how beautiful and how blissful a
place heaven is, and how nearly impossible it is to get there; and
showed the poor native how dreary a place perdition is and what
unnecessarily liberal facilities there are for going to it; showed him
how, in his ignorance, he had gone and fooled away all his kinsfolk to
no purpose; showed him what rapture it is to work all day long for fifty
cents to buy food for next day with, as compared with fishing for a
pastime and lolling in the shade through eternal summer, and eating of
the bounty that nobody labored to provide but Nature. How sad it is to
think of the multitudes who have gone to their graves in this beautiful
island and never knew there was a hell.
A HAWAIIAN STATESMAN
The President is the King’s father. He is an erect, strongly built,
massive-featured, white-haired, tawny old gentleman of eighty years of
age, or thereabouts. He was simply but well dressed, in a blue cloth
coat and white vest, and white pantaloons, without spot, dust, or
blemish upon them. He bears himself with a calm, stately dignity, and is
a man of noble presence. He was a young man and a distinguished warrior
under that terrific fighter, Kamehameha I., more than half a century
ago. A knowledge of his career suggested some such thought as this:
“This man, naked as the day he was born, and war-club and spear in hand,
has charged at the head of a horde of savages against other hordes of
savages more than a generation and a half ago, and reveled in slaughter
and carnage; has worshiped wooden images on his devout knees; has seen
hundreds of his race offered up in heathen temples as sacrifices to
wooden idols, at a time when no missionary’s foot had ever pressed this
soil, and he had never heard of the white man’s God; has believed his
enemy could secretly pray him to death; has seen the day, in his
childhood, when it was a crime punishable by death for a man to eat with
his wife, or for a plebeian to let his shadow fall upon the king—and now
look at him an educated Christian; neatly and handsomely dressed; a
high-minded, elegant gentleman; a traveler, in some degree, and one who
has been the honored guest of royalty in Europe; a man practiced in
holding the reins of an enlightened government, and well versed in the
politics of his country and in general, practical information. Look at
him, sitting there presiding over the deliberations of a legislative
body, among whom are white men—a grave, dignified, statesmanlike
personage, and as seemingly natural and fitted to the place as if he had
been born in it and had never been out of it in his lifetime. How the
experiences of this old man’s eventful life shame the cheap inventions
of romance!”
HAWAIIAN RELIGION
Quite a broad tract of land near the temple, extending from the sea to
the mountain, was sacred to the god Lono in olden times—so sacred that
if a common native set his sacrilegious foot upon it, it was judicious
for him to make his will, because his time had come. He might go around
it by water, but he could not cross it. It was well sprinkled with pagan
temples and stocked with awkward, homely idols carved out of logs of
wood. There was a temple devoted to prayers for rain—and with fine
sagacity it was placed at a point so well up on the mountain side that
if you prayed there twenty-four times a day for rain you would be likely
to get it every time. You would seldom get to your Amen before you would
have to hoist your umbrella.
THE CRATER OF HALEAKALA
Presently, vagrant white clouds came drifting along, high over the sea
and the valley; then they came in couples and groups; then in imposing
squadrons; gradually joining their forces, they banked themselves
solidly together, a thousand feet under us, and _totally shut out land
and ocean_—not a vestige of _anything_ was left in view, but just a
little of the rim of the crater, circling away from the pinnacle whereon
we sat (for a ghostly procession of wanderers from the filmy hosts
without had drifted through a chasm in the crater wall and filed round
and round, and gathered and sunk and blended together till the abyss was
stored to the brim with a fleecy fog). Thus banked, motion ceased, and
silence reigned. Clear to the horizon, league on league, the snowy floor
stretched without a break—not level, but in rounded folds, with shallow
creases between, and here and there stately piles of vapory architecture
lifting themselves aloft out of the common plain—some near at hand, some
in the middle distances, and others relieving the monotony of the remote
solitudes. There was little conversation, for the impressive scene
overawed speech. I felt like the Last Man, neglected of the judgment,
and left pinnacled in mid-heaven, a forgotten relic of a vanished world.
_FROM_ “THE GILDED AGE” (1873)
COLONEL SELLER’S GREAT IDEA
Washington was not able to ignore the cold entirely. He was nearly as
close to the stove as he could get, and yet he could not persuade
himself that he felt the slightest heat, notwithstanding the isinglass
door was still gently and serenely glowing. He tried to get a trifle
closer to the stove, and the consequence was he tripped the supporting
poker and the stove-door tumbled to the floor. And then there was a
revelation—there was nothing in the stove but a lighted tallow candle!
The poor youth blushed and felt as if he must die with shame. But the
Colonel was only disconcerted for a moment—he straightaway found his
voice again:
“A little idea of my own, Washington—one of the greatest things in the
world! You must write and tell your father about it—don’t forget that,
now. I have been reading up some European scientific reports—friend of
mine, Count Fugier sent them to me—sends me all sorts of things from
Paris—he thinks the world of me, Fugier does. Well, I saw that the
Academy of France had been testing the properties of heat, and they came
to the conclusion that it was a non-conductor or something like that,
and of course its influence must necessarily be deadly in nervous
organizations with excitable temperaments, especially where there is any
tendency toward rheumatic affections. Bless you, I saw in a moment what
was the matter with us, and says I, out goes your fires!—no more slow
torture and certain death for me, sir. What you want is the _appearance_
of heat, not the heat itself—that’s the idea. Well, how to do it was the
next thing. I just put my head to work, pegged away a couple of days,
and here you are! Rheumatism? Why a man can’t any more start a case of
rheumatism in this house than he can shake an opinion out of a mummy!
Stove with a candle in it and transparent door—that’s it—it has been the
salvation of this family. Don’t you fail to write your father about it,
Washington. And tell him the idea is mine—I’m no more conceited than
most people, I reckon, but you know it is human nature for a man to want
credit for a thing like that.”
COLONEL SELLERS LETS HIMSELF OUT
The supper at Colonel Sellers’s was not sumptuous, in the beginning, but
it improved on acquaintance. That is to say, that what Washington
regarded at first sight as mere lowly potatoes, presently became
awe-inspiring agricultural productions that had been reared in some
ducal garden beyond the sea, under the sacred eye of the duke himself,
who had sent them to Sellers; the bread was from corn which could be
grown in only one favored locality in the earth and only a favored few
could get it; the Rio coffee, which at first seemed execrable to the
taste, took to itself an improved flavor when Washington was told to
drink it slowly and not hurry what should be a lingering luxury in order
to be fully appreciated—it was from the private stores of a Brazilian
nobleman with an unrememberable name. The Colonel’s tongue was a
magician’s wand that turned dried apples into figs and water into wine
as easily as it could change a hovel into a palace and present poverty
into imminent future riches.
Washington slept in a cold bed in a carpetless room and woke up in a
palace in the morning; at least the palace lingered during the moment
that he was rubbing his eyes and getting his bearings—and then it
disappeared and he recognized that the Colonel’s inspiring talk had been
influencing his dreams. Fatigue had made him sleep late; when he entered
the sitting-room he noticed that the old haircloth sofa was absent; when
he sat down to breakfast the Colonel tossed six or seven dollars in
bills on the table, counted them over, said he was a little short and
must call upon his banker; then returned the bills to his wallet with
the indifferent air of a man who is used to money. The breakfast was not
an improvement upon the supper, but the Colonel talked it up and
transformed it into an oriental feast. By and by, he said:
“I intend to look out for you, Washington, my boy. I hunted up a place
for you yesterday, but I am not referring to that, now—that is a mere
livelihood—mere bread and butter; but when I say I mean to look out for
you I mean something very different. I mean to put things in your way
that will make a mere livelihood a trifling thing. I’ll put you in a way
to make more money than you’ll ever know what to do with. You’ll be
right here where I can put my hand on you when anything turns up. I’ve
got some prodigious operations on foot; but I’m keeping quiet; mum’s the
word; your old hand don’t go around pow-wowing and letting everybody see
his k’yards and find out his little game. But all in good time,
Washington, all in good time. You’ll see. Now, there’s an operation in
corn that looks well. Some New York men are trying to get me to go into
it—buy up all the growing crops and just boss the market when they
mature—ah, I tell you, it’s a great thing. And it only costs a trifle;
two millions or two and a half will do it. I haven’t exactly promised
yet—there’s no hurry—the more indifferent I seem, you know, the more
anxious those fellows will get. And then there is the hog
speculation—that’s bigger still. We’ve got quiet men at work” (he was
very impressive here), “mousing around, to get propositions out of all
the farmers in the whole West and Northwest for the hog crop, and other
agents quietly getting propositions and terms out of all the
manufactories—and don’t you see, if we can get all the hogs and all the
slaughter-houses into our hands on the dead quiet—whew! it would take
three ships to carry the money. I’ve looked into the thing—calculated
all the chances for and all the chances against, and though I shake my
head and hesitate and keep on thinking, apparently, I’ve got my mind
made up that if the thing can be done on a capital of six millions,
that’s the horse to put up money on! Why, Washington—but what’s the use
of talking about it—any man can see that there’s whole Atlantic oceans
of cash in it, gulfs and bays thrown in. But there’s a bigger thing than
that, yet—a bigger——”
“Why, Colonel, you can’t want anything bigger!” said Washington, his
eyes blazing. “Oh, I wish I could go into either of those speculations—I
only wish I had money—I wish I wasn’t cramped and kept down and fettered
with poverty, and such prodigious chances lying right here in sight! Oh,
it is a fearful thing to be poor. But don’t throw away those things—they
are so splendid that I can see how sure they are. Don’t throw them away
for something still better and maybe fail in it! I wouldn’t, Colonel. I
would stick to these. I wish father were here and were his old self
again. Oh, he never in his life had such chances as these are. Colonel,
you _can’t_ improve on these—no man can improve on them!”
A sweet, compassionate smile played about the Colonel’s features, and he
leaned over the table with the air of a man who is “going to show you”
and do it without the least trouble:
“Why Washington, my boy, these things are nothing. They _look_ large—of
course they look large to a novice—but to a man who has been all his
life accustomed to large operations—pshaw! They’re well enough to while
away an idle hour with, or furnish a bit of employment that will give a
trifle of idle capital a chance to earn its bread while it is waiting
for something to _do_, but—now just listen a moment—just let me give you
an idea of what we old veterans of commerce call ‘business.’ Here’s the
Rothschilds’ proposition—this is between you and me, you understand——”
Washington nodded three or four times impatiently, and his glowing eyes
said, “Yes, yes—hurry—I understand——”
“——for I wouldn’t have it get out for a fortune. They want me to go in
with them on the sly—agent was here two weeks ago about it—go in on the
sly” (voice down to an impressive whisper, now) “and buy up a hundred
and thirteen wildcat banks in Ohio, Indiana, Kentucky, Illinois, and
Missouri—notes of these banks are at all sorts of discount now—average
discount of the hundred and thirteen is forty-four per cent.—buy them
all up, you see, and then all of a sudden let the cat out of the bag!
Whiz! the stock of every one of those wildcats would spin up to a
tremendous premium before you could turn a handspring—profit on the
speculation not a dollar less than forty millions!” (An eloquent pause
while the marvelous vision settled into W.’s focus.) “Where’s your hogs
now! Why, my dear innocent boy, we would just sit down on the front
doorsteps and peddle banks like lucifer matches!”
Washington finally got his breath and said:
“Oh, it is perfectly wonderful! Why couldn’t these things have happened
in father’s day. And I—it’s of no use—they simply lie before my face and
mock me. There is nothing for me to do but to stand helpless and see
other people reap the astonishing harvest.”
“Never mind, Washington, don’t you worry. I’ll fix you. There’s plenty
of chances. How much money have you got?”
In the presence of so many millions, Washington could not keep from
blushing when he had to confess that he had but eighteen dollars in the
world.
“Well, all right—don’t despair. Other people had been obliged to begin
with less. I have a small idea that may develop into something for us
both, all in good time. Keep your money close and add to it. I’ll make
it breed. I’ve been experimenting (to pass away the time) on a little
preparation for curing sore eyes—a kind of decoction nine-tenths water
and the other tenth drugs that don’t cost more than a dollar a barrel;
I’m still experimenting; there’s one ingredient wanted yet to perfect
the thing, and somehow I can’t just manage to hit upon the thing that’s
necessary, and I don’t dare talk with a chemist, of course. But I’m
progressing, and before many weeks I wager the country will ring with
the fame of Beriah Sellers’ Infallible Imperial Oriental Optic Liniment
and Salvation for Sore Eyes—the Medical Wonder of the Age! Small bottles
fifty cents, large ones a dollar. Average cost, five and seven cents for
the two sizes. The first year sell, say, ten thousand bottles in
Missouri, seven thousand in Iowa, three thousand in Arkansas, four
thousand in Kentucky, six thousand in Illinois, and say twenty-five
thousand in the rest of the country. Total, fifty-five thousand bottles;
profit clear of all expenses, twenty thousand dollars at the very lowest
calculation. All the capital needed is to manufacture the first two
thousand bottles—say a hundred and fifty dollars—then the money would
begin to flow in. The second year, sales would reach 200,000
bottles—clear profit, say, $75,000—and in the meantime the great factory
would be building in St. Louis, to cost, say, $100,000. The third year
we could easily sell 1,000,000 bottles in the United States and——”
“Oh, splendid!” said Washington. “Let’s commence right away—let’s——”
“——1,000,000 bottles in the United States—profit at least $350,000—and
_then_ it would begin to be time to turn our attention toward the _real_
idea of the business.”
“The _real_ idea of it! Ain’t $350,000 a year pretty real——”
“Stuff! Why, what an infant you are, Washington—what a guileless,
shortsighted, easily-contented innocent you are, my poor little
country-bred know-nothing! Would I go to all that trouble and bother for
the poor crumbs a body might pick up in _this_ country? Now do I look
like a man who—does my history suggest that I am a man who deals in
trifles, contents himself with the narrow horizon that hems in the
common herd, sees no further than the end of his nose? Now, _you_ know
that that is not me. Couldn’t be me. _You_ ought to know that if I throw
my time and abilities into a patent medicine, it’s a patent medicine
whose field of operations is the solid earth! its clients the swarming
nations that inhabit it! Why what is the republic of America for an
eye-water country? Lord bless you, it is nothing but a barren highway
that you’ve got to cross to get _to_ the true eye-water market! Why,
Washington, in the Oriental countries people swarm like the sands of the
desert; every square mile of land upholds its thousands upon thousands
of struggling human creatures—and every separate and individual devil of
them’s got the ophthalmia! It’s as natural to them as noses are, and
sin. It’s born with them, it stays with them, that’s all that some of
them have left when they die. Three years of introductory trade in the
Orient and what will be the result? Why, our headquarters would be in
Constantinople and our hindquarters in Further India! Factories and
warehouses in Cairo, Ispahan, Bagdad, Damascus, Jerusalem, Yedo, Peking,
Bangkok, Delhi, Bombay, and Calcutta! Annual income—well, God only knows
how many millions and millions apiece!”
Washington was so dazed, so bewildered—his heart and his eyes had
wandered so far away among the strange lands beyond the seas, and such
avalanches of coin and currency had fluttered and jingled confusedly
down before him, that he was now as one who had been whirling round and
round for a time, and stopping all at once, finds his surroundings still
whirling and all objects a dancing chaos. However, little by little the
Sellers family cooled down and crystallized into shape, and the poor
room lost its glitter and resumed its poverty. Then the youth found his
voice and begged Sellers to drop everything and hurry up the eye-water;
and he got out his eighteen dollars and tried to force it upon the
Colonel—pleaded with him to take it—implored him to do it. But the
Colonel would not; said he would not need the capital (in his native
magnificent way he called that eighteen dollars capital) till the
eye-water was an accomplished fact. He made Washington easy in his mind,
though, by promising that he would call for it just as soon as the
invention was finished, and he added the glad tidings that nobody but
just they two should be admitted to a share in the speculation.
When Washington left the breakfast table he worshiped that man.
_FROM_ “ADVENTURES OF TOM SAWYER” (1874–5)
A SPECULATION IN WHITEWASH
Saturday morning was come, and all the summer world was bright and
fresh, and brimming with life. There was a song in every heart; and if
the heart was young the music issued at the lips. There was cheer in
every face and a spring in every step. The locust trees were in bloom
and the fragrance of the blossoms filled the air. Cardiff Hill, beyond
the village and above it, was green with vegetation, and it lay just far
enough away to seem a Delectable Land, dreamy, reposeful, and inviting.
Tom appeared on the sidewalk with a bucket of whitewash and a
long-handled brush. He surveyed the fence, and all gladness left him and
a deep melancholy settled down upon his spirit. Thirty yards of board
fence nine feet high. Life to him seemed hollow, and existence but a
burden. Sighing he dipped his brush and passed it along the topmost
plank; repeated the operation; did it again; compared the insignificant
whitewashed streak with the far-reaching continent of unwhitewashed
fence, and sat down on a tree box discouraged. Jim came skipping out at
the gate with a tin pail, and singing “Buffalo Gals.” Bringing water
from the town pump had always been hateful work in Tom’s eyes, before,
but now it did not strike him so. He remembered that there was company
at the pump. White, mulatto, and negro boys and girls were always there
waiting their turns, resting, trading playthings, quarreling, fighting,
skylarking. And he remembered that although the pump was only a hundred
and fifty yards off, Jim never got back with a bucket of water under an
hour—and even then somebody generally had to go after him. Tom said:
“Say, Jim, I’ll fetch the water if you’ll whitewash some.”
Jim shook his head and said:
“Can’t, Mars Tom. Ole missis, she tole me I got to go an’ git dis water
an’ not stop foolin’ ’roun’ wid anybody. She say she spec Mars Tom gwine
to ax me to whitewash, an’ so she tole me go ’long an’ ’tend to my own
business—she ’lowed _she’d_ ’tend to de whitewashin’.”
“Oh, never you mind what she said, Jim. That’s the way she always talks.
Gimme the bucket—I won’t be gone only a minute. _She_ won’t ever know.”
“Oh, I dasn’t Mars Tom. Ole missis she’d take an’ tar de head off’n me.
’Deed she would.”
“_She!_ She never licks anybody—whacks ’em over the head with her
thimble—and who cares for that, I’d like to know. She talks awful, but
talk don’t hurt—anyway it don’t if she don’t cry. Jim, I’ll give you a
marvel. I’ll give you a white alley!”
Jim began to waver.
“White alley, Jim! And it’s a bully taw.”
“My! Dat’s a mighty gay marvel, _I_ tell you! But Mars Tom I’s powerful
afraid ole missis——”
“And besides, if you will I’ll show you my sore toe.”
Jim was only human—this attraction was too much for him. He put down his
pail, took the white alley, and bent over the toe with absorbing
interest while the bandage was being unwound. In another moment he was
flying down the street with his pail and a tingling rear, Tom was
whitewashing with vigor, and Aunt Polly was retiring from the field with
a slipper in her hand and triumph in her eye.
But Tom’s energy did not last. He began to think of the fun he had
planned for this day, and his sorrows multiplied. Soon the free boys
would come tripping along on all sorts of delicious expeditions, and
they would make a world of fun of him for having to work—the very
thought of it burnt him like fire. He got out his worldly wealth and
examined it—bits of toys, marbles, and trash; enough to buy an exchange
of _work_, maybe, but not half enough to buy so much as half an hour of
pure freedom. So he returned his straitened means to his pocket, and
gave up the idea of trying to buy the boys. At this dark and hopeless
moment an inspiration burst upon him! Nothing less than a great,
magnificent inspiration.
He took up his brush and went tranquilly to work. Ben Rogers hove in
sight presently—the very boy, of all boys, whose ridicule he had been
dreading. Ben’s gait was the hop-skip-and-jump—proof enough that his
heart was light and his anticipations high. He was eating an apple, and
giving a long, melodious whoop, at intervals, followed by a deep-toned
ding-dong-dong, ding-dong-dong, for he was personating a steamboat. As
he drew near, he slackened speed, took the middle of the street, leaned
far over to starboard and rounded to, ponderously and with laborious
pomp and circumstance—for he was personating the “Big Missouri,” and
considered himself to be drawing nine feet of water. He was the boat and
captain and engine-bells combined, so he had to imagine himself standing
on his own hurricane deck; giving the orders and executing them: “Stop
her, sir! Ting-a-ling-ling!” The headway ran almost out and he drew up
slowly toward the sidewalk.
“Ship up to back! Ting-a-ling-ling!” His arms straightened and stiffened
down his sides.
“Set her back on the starboard! Ting-a-ling-ling! Chow! ch-chow-wow!
Chow!” His right hand, meantime, describing stately circles—for it was
representing a forty-foot wheel.
“Let her go back on the labboard! Ting-a-ling-ling! Chow-ch-chow chow!”
The left hand began to describe circles.
“Stop the stabboard! Ting-a-ling-ling! Stop the labboard! Come ahead on
the stabboard! Stop her! Let your outside turn over slow!
Ting-a-ling-ling! Chow-ow-ow! Get out that head-line! _Lively_ now!
Come—out with your spring-line—what’re you about there! Take a turn
round that stump with the bight of it! Stand by that stage, now—let her
go! Done with the engines, sir! Ting-a-ling-ling! _Sh’t! sh’t! sh’t!”_
(trying the gauge-cocks).
Tom went on whitewashing—paid no attention to the steamboat. Ben stared
a moment and then said:
“Hi-_yi. You’re_ up a stump, ain’t you!”
No answer. Tom surveyed his last touch with the eye of an artist, then
he gave his brush another gentle sweep and surveyed the result, as
before. Ben ranged up alongside of him. Tom’s mouth watered for the
apple, but he stuck to his work. Ben said—
“Hello, old chap, you got to work, hey?”
Tom wheeled suddenly and said:
“Why, it’s you Ben! I warn’t noticing.”
“Say—_I’m_ going in a swimming, _I_ am. Don’t you wish you could? But of
course you’d ruther _work_—wouldn’t you? Course you would!”
Tom contemplated the boy a bit, and said:
“What do you call work?”
“Why, ain’t _that_ work?”
Tom resumed his whitewashing, and answered carelessly:
“Well, maybe it is, and maybe it ain’t. All I know, is, it suits Tom
Sawyer.”
“Oh, come, now, you don’t mean to let on that you _like_ it?”
The brush continued to move.
“Like it? Well, I don’t see why I oughtn’t to like it. Does a boy get a
chance to whitewash a fence every day?”
That put the thing in a new light. Ben stopped nibbling his apple. Tom
swept his brush daintily—added a touch here and there—criticised the
effect again—Ben watching every move and getting more and more
interested, more and more absorbed. Presently he said:
“Say, Tom, let _me_ whitewash a little.”
Tom considered, was about to consent; but he altered his mind:
“No—no—I reckon it wouldn’t hardly do, Ben. You see, Aunt Polly’s awful
particular about this fence—right here on the street, you know—but if it
was the back fence I wouldn’t mind and _she_ wouldn’t. Yes, she’s awful
particular about this fence; it’s got to be done very careful; I reckon
there ain’t one boy in a thousand, maybe two thousand, that can do the
way it’s got to be done.”
“No—is that so? Oh come, now—lemme just try. Only just a little—I’d let
_you_, if you was me, Tom.”
“Ben, I’d like to, honest injun; but Aunt Polly—well, Jim wanted to do
it, but she wouldn’t let him. Sid wanted to do it, and she wouldn’t let
Sid. Now don’t you see how I’m fixed? If you was to tackle this fence
and anything was to happen to it——”
“Oh, shucks, I’ll be just as careful. Now lemme try. Say—I’ll give you
the core of my apple.”
“Well, here—— No, Ben, now don’t. I’m afeard——”
“I’ll give you _all_ of it!”
Tom gave up the brush with reluctance in his face, but alacrity in his
heart. And while the late steamer “Big Missouri” worked and sweated in
the sun, the retired artist sat on a barrel in the shade close by,
dangled his legs, munched his apple, and planned the slaughter of more
innocents. There was no lack of material; boys happened along every
little while; they came to jeer, but remained to whitewash. By the time
Ben was fagged out, Tom had traded the next chance to Billy Fisher for a
kite, in good repair; and when _he_ played out, Johnny Miller bought in
for a dead rat and a string to swing it with—and so on, and so on, hour
after hour. And when the middle of the afternoon came, from being a poor
poverty-stricken boy in the morning, Tom was literally rolling in
wealth. He had beside the things before mentioned, twelve marbles, part
of a jew’s-harp, a piece of blue bottle-glass to look through, a spool
cannon, a key that wouldn’t unlock anything, a fragment of chalk, a
glass stopper of a decanter, a tin soldier, a couple of tadpoles, six
fire-crackers, a kitten with only one eye, a brass door-knob, a
dog-collar—but no dog—the handle of a knife, four pieces of orange-peel,
and a dilapidated old window-sash.
He had had a nice, good, idle time all the while—plenty of company—and
the fence had three coats of whitewash on it! If he hadn’t run out of
whitewash, he would have bankrupted every boy in the village.
TOM FALLS IN LOVE
As he was passing by the house where Jeff Thatcher lived, he saw a new
girl in the garden—a lovely little blue-eyed creature with yellow hair
plaited into two long tails, white summer frock and embroidered
pantalettes. The fresh-crowned hero fell without firing a shot. A
certain Amy Lawrence vanished out of his heart and left not even a
memory of herself behind. He had thought he loved her to distraction; he
had regarded his passion as adoration; and behold it was only a poor
little evanescent partiality. He had been months winning her; she had
confessed hardly a week ago; he had been the happiest and the proudest
boy in the world only seven short days, and here in one instant of time
she had gone out of his heart like a casual stranger whose visit is
done.
He worshiped this new angel with furtive eye, till he saw that she had
discovered him; then he pretended he did not know she was present, and
began to “show off” in all sorts of absurd boyish ways, in order to win
her admiration. He kept up this grotesque foolishness for some time; but
by and by, while he was in the midst of some dangerous gymnastic
performances, he glanced aside and saw that the little girl was wending
her way toward the house. Tom came up to the fence and leaned on it,
grieving, and hoping she would tarry yet a while longer. She halted a
moment on the steps and then moved toward the door. Tom heaved a great
sigh as she put her foot on the threshold. But his face lit up, right
away, for she tossed a pansy over the fence a moment before she
disappeared.
HUCK
Huckleberry came and went, at his own free will. He slept on doorsteps
in fine weather and in empty hogsheads in wet; he did not have to go to
school or to church, or call any being master or obey anybody; he could
go fishing or swimming when and where he chose, and stay as long as it
suited him; nobody forbade him to fight; he could sit up as late as he
pleased; he was always the first that went barefoot in the spring and
the last to resume leather in the fall; he never had to wash, nor put on
clean clothes; he could swear wonderfully. In a word, everything that
goes to make life precious, that boy had. So thought every harassed,
hampered, respectable boy in St. Petersburg.
THE PIRATES’ ISLAND
They built a fire against the side of a great log, twenty or thirty
steps within the somber depths of the forest, and then cooked some bacon
in the frying-pan for supper, and used up half of the corn “pone” stock
they had brought. It seemed glorious sport to be feasting in that wild
free way in the virgin forest of an unexplored and uninhabited island,
far from the haunts of men, and they said they never would return to
civilization. The climbing fire lit up their faces and threw its ruddy
glare upon the pillared tree-trunks of their forest temple, and upon the
varnished foliage and festooning vines.
Gradually their talk died out and drowsiness began to steal upon the
eyelids of the little waifs. The pipe dropped from the fingers of the
Red-Handed, and he slept the sleep of the conscience-free and the weary.
The Terror of the Seas and the Black Avenger of the Spanish Main had
more difficulty in getting to sleep. They said their prayers inwardly,
and lying down, since there was nobody there with authority to make them
kneel and recite aloud; in truth, they had a mind not to say them at
all, but they were afraid to proceed to such lengths as that, lest they
might call down a sudden and special thunderbolt from Heaven....
When Tom awoke in the morning, he wondered where he was. He sat up and
rubbed his eyes and looked around. Then he comprehended. It was the cool
gray dawn, and there was a delicious sense of repose and peace in the
deep pervading calm and silence of the woods. Not a leaf stirred; not a
sound obtruded upon great Nature’s meditation. Beaded dewdrops stood
upon the leaves and grasses. A white layer of ashes covered the fire,
and a thin blue breath of smoke rose straight into the air. Joe and Huck
still slept.
TOM LEARNS TO SMOKE
After a dainty egg and fish dinner, Tom said he wanted to learn to
smoke, now. Joe caught at the idea and said he would like to try, too.
So Huck made pipes and filled them. These novices had never smoked
anything before but cigars made of grapevine, and they “bit” the tongue,
and were not considered manly anyway.
Now they stretched themselves out on their elbows and began to puff,
charily, and with slender confidence. The smoke had an unpleasant taste,
and they gagged a little, but Tom said:
“Why, it’s just as easy! If I’d a knowed _this_ was all, I’d a learnt
long ago.”
“So would I,” said Joe. “It’s just nothing.”
“Why, many a time I’ve looked at people smoking, and thought ‘well, I
wish I could do that’; but I never thought I could,” said Tom.
“That’s just the way with me, hain’t it, Huck? You’ve heard me talk just
that way—haven’t you Huck? I’ll leave it to Huck if I haven’t.”
“Yes—heaps of times,” said Huck.
“Well, I have too,” said Tom; “oh, hundreds of times. Once down by the
slaughter-house. Don’t you remember, Huck? Bob Tanner was there, and
Johnny Miller, and Jeff Thatcher, when I said it. Don’t you remember,
Huck, ’bout me saying that?”
“Yes, that’s so,” said Huck. “That was the day after I lost a white
alley. No, ’twas the day before.”
“There—I told you so,” said Tom. “Huck recollects it.”
“I bleeve I could smoke this pipe all day,” said Joe. “_I_ don’t feel
sick.”
“Neither do I,” said Tom. “_I_ could smoke it all day. But I bet you
Jeff Thatcher couldn’t.”
“Jeff Thatcher! Why, he’d keel over just with two draws. Just let him
try it once. _He’d_ see!”
“I bet he would. And Johnny Miller—I wish I could see Johnny Miller
tackle it once.”
“Oh, don’t _I_!” said Joe, “Why, I bet you Johnny Miller couldn’t any
more do this than nothing. Just one little snifter would fetch _him_.”
“’Deed it would, Joe. Say—I wish the boys could see us now.”
“So do I.”
“Say—boys, don’t say anything about it, and sometime when they’re
around, I’ll come up to you and say ‘Joe, got a pipe? I want a smoke.’
And you’ll say, kind of careless like, as if it warn’t anything, you’ll
say, ‘Yes, I got my _old_ pipe, and another one, but my tobacker ain’t
very good.’ And I’ll say, ‘Oh, that’s all right, if it’s _strong_
enough.’ And then you’ll out with the pipes, and we’ll light up just as
ca’m, and then just see ’em look!”
“By jings, that’ll be gay, Tom! I wish it was _now_!”
“So do I! And when we tell ’em we learned when we was off pirating,
won’t they wish they’d been along?”
“Oh, I reckon not! I’ll just _bet_ they will!”
So the talk ran on. But presently it began to flag a trifle, and grow
disjointed. The silences widened; the expectoration marvelously
increased. Every pore inside the boys’ cheeks became a spouting
fountain; they could scarcely bail out the cellars under their tongues
fast enough to prevent an inundation; little overflowings down their
throats occurred in spite of all they could do, and sudden retchings
followed every time. Both boys were looking very pale and miserable,
now. Joe’s pipe dropped from his nerveless fingers. Tom’s followed. Both
fountains were going furiously and both pumps bailing with might and
main. Joe said feebly:
“I’ve lost my knife. I reckon I better go and find it.”
Tom said, with quivering lips and halting utterance:
“I’ll help you. You go over that way and I’ll hunt around by the spring.
No, you needn’t come, Huck—we can find it.”
So Huck sat down again, and waited an hour. Then he found it lonesome,
and went to find his comrades. They were wide apart in the woods, both
very pale, both fast asleep. But something informed him that if they had
had any trouble they had got rid of it.
They were not talkative at supper that night. They had a humble look,
and when Huck prepared his pipe after the meal and was going to prepare
theirs, they said no, they were not feeling very well—something they ate
at dinner had disagreed with them.
_FROM_ “THE STOLEN WHITE ELEPHANT” (1878)
DESCRIBING AN ELEPHANT
“There are cases in detective history to show that criminals have been
detected through peculiarities in their appetites. Now, what does this
elephant eat? and how much?”
“Well, as to _what_ he eats—he will eat _anything_. He will eat a man,
he will eat a Bible—he will eat anything _between_ a man and a Bible.”
“Good—very good, indeed, but too general. Details are necessary—details
are the only valuable thing in our trade. Very well—as to men: At one
meal—or, if you prefer, during one day—how many men will he eat, if
fresh?”
“He would not care whether they were fresh or not; at a single meal he
would eat five ordinary men.”
“Very good; five men; we will put that down. What nationalities would he
prefer?”
“He is indifferent about nationalities. He prefers acquaintances, but is
not prejudiced against strangers.”
“Very good. Now, as to Bibles. How many Bibles would he eat at a meal?”
“He would eat an entire edition.”
“Now that is more exact. I will put that down. Very well; he likes men
and Bibles; so far, so good. What else will he eat? I want particulars.”
“He will leave Bibles to eat bricks, he will leave bricks to eat
bottles, he will leave bottles to eat clothing, he will leave clothing
to eat cats, he will leave cats to eat oysters, he will leave oysters to
eat ham, he will leave ham to eat sugar, he will leave sugar to eat pie,
he will leave pie to eat potatoes, he will leave potatoes to eat bran,
he will leave bran to eat hay, he will leave hay to eat oats, he will
leave oats to eat rice, for he was mainly raised on it. There is nothing
whatever that he will not eat but European butter, and he would eat that
if he could taste it.”
“Very good. General quantity at a meal—say about——”
“Well, anywhere from a quarter to a half a ton.”
“And he drinks——”
“Everything that is fluid. Milk, water, whisky, molasses, castor oil,
camphene, carbolic acid—it is no use to go into particulars; whatever
fluid occurs to you set it down. He will drink anything that is fluid,
except European coffee.”
_FROM_ “A TRAMP ABROAD” (1878–9)
WAGNER
One day we took the train and went down to Mannheim to see King Lear
played in German. It was a mistake. We sat in our seats three whole
hours and never understood anything but the thunder and lightning; and
even that was reversed to suit German ideas, for the thunder came first
and the lightning followed after.... Another time we went to Mannheim
and attended a shivaree—otherwise an opera—the one called Lohengrin. The
banging and slamming and booming and crashing were something beyond
belief. The racking and pitiless pain of it remains stored up in my
memory alongside the memory of the time that I had my teeth fixed. There
were circumstances which made it necessary for me to stay through the
four hours to the end, and I stayed; but the recollection of that long,
dragging, relentless season of suffering is indestructible. To have to
endure it in silence, and sitting still, made it all the harder. I was
in a railed compartment with eight or ten strangers, of the two sexes,
and this compelled repression; yet at times the pain was so exquisite
that I could hardly keep the tears back. At those times, as the howlings
and wailings and shriekings of the singers, and the ragings and roarings
and explosions of the vast orchestra rose higher and higher, and wilder
and wilder, and fiercer and fiercer, I could have cried if I had been
alone. Those strangers would not have been surprised to see a man do
such things who was being gradually skinned, but they would have
marveled at it here, and made remarks about it, no doubt, whereas there
was nothing in the present case which was an advantage over being
skinned. There was a wait of half an hour at the end of the first act,
and I could have gone out and rested during that time, but I could not
trust myself to do it, for I felt that I should desert and stay out.
There was another wait of half an hour toward nine o’clock, but I had
gone through so much by that time that I had no spirit left, and so had
no desire but to be let alone.
I do not wish to suggest that the rest of the people there were like me,
for, indeed, they were not. Whether it was that they naturally liked
that noise, or whether it was that they had learned to like it by
getting used to it, I did not at that time know; but they did like
it—this was plain enough. While it was going on they sat and looked rapt
and grateful as cats do when one strokes their backs; and whenever the
curtain fell they rose to their feet, in one solid mighty multitude, and
the air was snowed thick with waving handkerchiefs, and hurricanes of
applause swept the place. This was not comprehensible to me. Of course,
there were many people there who were not under compulsion to stay; yet
the tiers were as full at the close as they had been at the beginning.
This showed that the people liked it....
I suppose there are two kinds of music—one kind which one feels, just as
an oyster might, and another sort which requires a higher faculty, a
faculty which must be assisted and developed by teaching. Yet if base
music gives certain of us wings, why should we want any other? But we
do. We want it because the higher and better like it. But we want it
without giving it the necessary time and trouble; so we climb into that
upper tier, that dress circle, by a lie; we _pretend_ we like it. I know
several of that sort of people—and I propose to be one of them myself
when I get home with my fine European education.
MIDNIGHT ENTERTAINMENT
At last all sleepiness forsook me. I recognized the fact that I was
hopelessly and permanently wide-awake. Wide-awake, and feverish and
thirsty. When I had lain tossing there as long as I could endure it, it
occurred to me that it would be a good idea to dress and go out in the
great square and take a refreshing wash in the fountain, and smoke and
reflect there until the remnant of the night was gone.
I believed I could dress in the dark without waking Harris. I had
banished my shoes after the mouse, but my slippers would do for a summer
night. So I rose softly, and gradually got on everything—down to one
sock. I couldn’t seem to get on the track of that sock, any way I could
fix it. But I had to have it; so I went down on my hands and knees, with
one slipper on and the other in my hand, and began to paw gently around
and rake the floor, but with no success. I enlarged my circle, and went
on pawing and raking. With every pressure of my knee, how the floor
creaked! and every time I chanced to rake against any article, it seemed
to give out thirty-five or thirty-six times more noise than it would
have in the daytime. In those cases I always stopped and held my breath
till I was sure Harris had not awakened—then I crept along again. I
moved on and on, but I could not find the sock; I could not seem to find
anything but furniture. I could not remember that there was much
furniture in the room when I went to bed, but the place was alive with
it now—especially chairs—chairs everywhere—had a couple of families
moved in, in the meantime? And I never could seem to glance on one of
those chairs, but always struck it full and square with my head. My
temper rose, by steady and sure degrees, and as I pawed on and on, I
fell to making vicious comments under my breath.
Finally, with a venomous access of irritation, I said I would leave
without the sock; so I rose up and made straight for the door—as I
supposed—and suddenly confronted my dim spectral image in the mirror. It
startled the breath out of me, for an instant; it was also showed me
that I was lost, and had no sort of idea where I was. When I realized
this, I was so angry that I had to sit down on the floor and take hold
of something to keep from lifting the roof off with an explosion of
opinion. If there had been only one mirror, it might possibly have
helped to locate me; but there were two, and two were as bad as a
thousand; besides, these were on opposite sides of the room. I could see
the dim blur of the windows, but in my turned-around condition they were
exactly where they ought not to be, and so they only confused me instead
of helping me.
I started to get up, and knocked down an umbrella; it made a noise like
a pistol-shot when it struck that hard, slick, carpetless floor; I
grated my teeth and held my breath—Harris did not stir. I set the
umbrella slowly and carefully against the wall, but as soon as I took my
hand away, its heel slipped from under it and down it came again with
another bang. I shrunk together and listened a moment in silent fury—no
harm done, everything quiet. With the most painstaking care and nicety I
stood the umbrella up once more, took my hand away, and down it came
again.
I have been strictly reared, but if it had not been so dark and solemn
and awful there in that lonely, vast room, I do believe I should have
said something then which could not have been put in a Sunday-school
book without injuring the sale of it. If my reasoning powers had not
been already sapped dry by my harassments, I would have known better
than to try to set an umbrella on end on one of those glassy German
floors in the dark; it can’t be done in the daytime without four
failures to one success. I had one comfort, though—Harris was yet still
and silent—he had not stirred.
The umbrella could not locate me—there were four standing around the
room, and all alike. I thought I would feel along the wall and find the
door in that way. I rose up and began this operation, but raked down a
picture. It was not a large one, but it made noise enough for a
panorama. Harris gave out no sound, but I felt that if I experimented
any further with the pictures I should be sure to wake him. Better give
up trying to get out. Yes, I would find King Arthur’s Round Table once
more—I had already found it several times—and used it for a base of
departure on an exploring tour for my bed; if I could find my bed I
could find my water-pitcher. I would quench my raging thirst and turn
in. So I started on my hands and knees, because I could go faster that
way, and with more confidence, too, and not knock things down. By and by
I found the table—with my head—rubbed the bruise a little, then rose up
and started, with hands abroad and fingers spread, to balance myself. I
found a chair; then the wall; then another chair; then a sofa; then an
alpenstock, then another sofa; this confounded me, for I had thought
there was only one sofa. I hunted up the table again and took a fresh
start; found some more chairs.
It occurred to me, now, as it ought to have done before, that as the
table was round, it was therefore no value as a place to aim from; so I
moved off once more and at random among the wilderness of chairs and
sofas—wandered off into unfamiliar regions, and presently knocked a
candlestick off a mantelpiece and knocked off a lamp, grabbed at the
lamp and knocked off a water-pitcher with a rattling crash, and thought
to myself, “I’ve found you at last—I judged I was close upon you.”
Harris shouted “murder,” and “thieves,” and finished with “I’m
absolutely drowned.”
The crash had roused the house. Mr. X. pranced in, in his long
night-garment, with a candle, young Z. after him with another candle; a
procession swept in at another door, with candles and lanterns—landlord
and two German guests in their nightgowns, and a chambermaid in hers.
I looked around; I was at Harris’s bed, a sabbath day’s journey from my
own. There was only one sofa; it was against the wall; there was only
one chair where a body could get at it—I had been revolving around it
like a planet, and colliding with it like a comet half the night.
I explained how I had been employing myself, and why. Then the
landlord’s party left, and the rest of us set about our preparations for
breakfast, for the dawn was ready to break. I glanced furtively at my
pedometer, and found I had made 47 miles. But I did not care, for I had
come out for a pedestrian tour anyway.
FOREIGN QUOTATIONS
I have a prejudice against people who print things in a foreign language
and add no translation. When I am the reader, and the author considers
me able to do the translating myself, he pays me quite a nice
compliment—but if he would do the translating for me I would try to get
along without the compliment.
REFLECTIONS ON THE ANT
Now and then, while we rested, we watched the laborious ant at his work.
I found nothing new in him—certainly nothing to change my opinion of
him. It seems to me that in the matter of intellect the ant must be a
strangely overrated bird. During many summers, now, I have watched him,
when I ought to have been in better business, and I have not yet come
across a living ant that seemed to have any more sense than a dead one.
I refer to the ordinary ant, of course; I have had no experience of
those wonderful Swiss and African ones which vote, keep drilled armies,
hold slaves, and dispute about religion. Those particular ants may be
all that the naturalist paints them, but I am persuaded that the average
ant is a sham. I admit his industry, of course; he is the hardest
working creature in the world—when anybody is looking—but his
leather-headedness is the point I make against him. He goes out
foraging, he makes a capture, and then what does he do? Go home? No—he
goes anywhere but home. He doesn’t know where home is. His home may be
only three feet away,—no matter, he can’t find it. He makes his capture,
as I have said; it is generally something which can be of no sort of use
to himself or anybody else; it is usually seven times bigger than it
ought to be; he lifts it bodily up in the air by main force and starts;
not toward home, but in the opposite direction; not calmly and wisely,
but with a frantic haste which is wasteful of his strength; he fetches
up against a pebble, and instead of going around it, he climbs over it
backwards dragging his booty after him, tumbles down on the other side,
jumps up in a passion, kicks the dust off his clothes, moistens his
hands, grabs his property viciously, yanks it this way, then that,
shoves it ahead of him a moment, turns tail and lugs it after him
another moment, gets madder and madder, then presently hoists it into
the air and goes tearing away in an entirely new direction; comes to a
weed; it never occurs to him to go around it; no, he must climb it; and
he does climb it, dragging his worthless property to the top—which is as
bright a thing to do as it would be for me to carry a sack of flour from
Heidelberg to Paris by way of Strasburg steeple; when he gets up there
he finds that that is not the place; takes a cursory glance at the
scenery and either climbs down again or tumbles down, and starts off
once more—as usual in a new direction. At the end of half an hour, he
fetches up within six inches of the place he started from and lays his
burden down; meantime he has been over all the ground for two yards
around, and climbed all the weeds and pebbles he came across. Now he
wipes the sweat from his brow, strokes his limbs, and then marches
aimlessly off, in as violent a hurry as ever. He traverses a good deal
of zig-zag country, and by and by stumbles on his same booty again. He
does not remember ever having seen it before; he looks around to see
which is not the way home, grabs his bundle and starts; he goes through
the same adventures he had before; finally stops to rest, and a friend
comes along. Evidently the friend remarks that a last year’s grasshopper
leg is a very noble acquisition, and inquires where he got it. Evidently
the proprietor does not remember exactly where he did get it, but thinks
he got it “around here somewhere.” Evidently the friend contracts to
help him freight it home. Then, with a judgment peculiarly antic (pun
not intentional), they take hold of opposite ends of that grasshopper
leg and begin to tug with all their might in opposite directions.
Presently they take a rest and confer together. They decide that
something is wrong, they can’t make out what. Then they go at it again,
just as before. Same result. Mutual recriminations follow. Evidently
each accuses the other of being an obstructionist. They warm up, and the
dispute ends in a fight. They lock themselves together and chew each
other’s jaws for a while; then they roll and tumble on the ground till
one loses a horn or a leg and has to haul off for repairs. They make up
and go to work again in the same old insane way, but the crippled ant is
at a disadvantage; tug as he may, the other one drags off the booty and
him at the end of it. Instead of giving up, he hangs on, and gets his
shins bruised against every obstruction that comes in the way. By and
by, when that grasshopper leg has been dragged all over the same old
ground once more, it is finally dumped at about the spot where it
originally lay, the two perspiring ants inspect it thoughtfully and
decide that dried grasshopper legs are a poor sort of property after
all, and then each starts off in a different direction to see if he
can’t find an old nail or something else that is heavy enough to afford
entertainment and at the same time valueless enough to make an ant want
to own it.
FOREIGN QUOTATIONS AGAIN
When really learned men write books for other learned men to read, they
are justified in using as many learned words as they please—their
audience will understand them; but a man that writes a book for the
general public to read is not justified in disfiguring his pages with
untranslated foreign expressions. It is an insolence toward the majority
of the purchasers, for it is a very frank and impudent way of saying,
“Get the translations made yourself, if you want them; this book is not
written for the ignorant classes.” There are men who know a foreign
language so well and have used it so long in their daily life that they
seem to discharge whole volleys of it into their English writings
unconsciously, and so they omit to translate, as much as half the time.
That is a great cruelty to nine out of ten of the man’s readers. What is
the excuse for this? The writer would say he only uses the foreign
language where the delicacy of his point cannot be conveyed in English.
Very well, then he writes his best things for the tenth man, and he
ought to warn the other nine not to buy his book. However, the excuse he
offers is at least an excuse; but there is another set of men who ...
know a _word_ here and there, of a foreign language, or a few beggarly
little three-word phrases, filched from the back of the dictionary, and
these they are continually peppering into their literature, with a
pretense of knowing that language—what excuse can they offer? The
foreign words and phrases which they use have their exact equivalents in
a nobler language—English; yet they think they “adorn their page” when
they say _Strasse_ for street, and _Bahnhof_ for railway station, and so
on—flaunting these fluttering rags of poverty in the reader’s face, and
imagining he will be ass enough to take them for the sign of untold
riches held in reserve.
THE JUNGFRAU
There was something subduing in the influence of that silent and solemn
and awful presence; one seemed to meet the immutable, the
indestructible, the eternal, face to face, and to feel the trivial and
fleeting nature of his own existence the more sharply by the contrast.
One had the sense of being under the brooding contemplation of a spirit,
not an inert mass of rocks and ice—a spirit which had looked down,
through the slow drift of the ages, upon a million vanished races of
men, and judged them; and would judge a million more—and still be there,
watching, unchanged and unchangeable, after all life should be gone and
the earth have become a vacant desolation.
While I was feeling these things, I was groping, without knowing it,
toward an understanding of what the spell is which people find in the
Alps, and in no other mountains—that strange, deep, nameless influence,
which once felt, cannot be forgotten—once felt, leaves always behind it
a restless longing to feel it again—a longing which is like
homesickness; a grieving, haunting yearning, which will plead, implore,
and persecute till it has its will. I met dozens of people, imaginative
and unimaginative, cultivated and uncultivated, who had come from far
countries and roamed through the Swiss Alps year after year—they could
not explain why. They had come first, they said, out of idle curiosity,
because everybody talked about it; they had come since because they
could not help it, and they should keep on coming, while they lived, for
the same reason; they had tried to break their chains and stay away, but
it was futile; now, they had no desire to break them. Others came nearer
formulating what they felt: they said they could find perfect rest and
peace nowhere else when they were troubled; all frets and worries and
chafings sank to sleep in the presence of the benignant serenity of the
Alps: the Great Spirit of the Mountain breathed his own peace upon their
hurt minds and sore hearts, and healed them; they could not think base
thoughts or do mean and sordid things here, before the visible throne of
God.
CLIMBING THE GEMMI PASS
When we began that ascent, we could see a microscopic chalet perched
away up against heaven on what seemed to be the highest mountain near
us. It was on our right, across the narrow head of the valley. But when
we got up abreast it on its own level, mountains were towering high
above on every hand, and we saw that its altitude was just about that of
the little Gasternthal which we had visited the evening before. Still it
seemed a long way up in the air, in that waste and lonely wilderness of
rocks. It had an unfenced grass-plot in front of it which seemed about
as big as a billiard table, and this grass plot slanted so sharply
downwards, and was so brief, and ended so exceedingly soon at the verge
of the absolute precipice, that it was a shuddery thing to think of a
person’s venturing to trust his foot on an incline so situated at all.
Suppose a man stepped on an orange peel in that yard; there would be
nothing for him to seize; nothing could keep him from rolling; five
revolutions would bring him to the edge, and over he would go. What a
frightful distance he would fall!—for there are very few birds that fly
as high as his starting-point. He would strike and bounce, two or three
times, on his way down, but this would be no advantage to him. I would
as soon take an airing on the slant of a rainbow as in such a front
yard. I would rather, in fact, for the distance down would be about the
same, and it is pleasanter to slide than to bounce.
DESCENT OF GEMMI PASS
We began our descent, now, by the most remarkable road I have ever seen.
It wound in corkscrew curves down the face of the colossal precipice—a
narrow way, with always the solid rock wall at one elbow, and
perpendicular nothingness at the other. We met an everlasting procession
of guides, porters, mules, litters, and tourists climbing up this steep
and muddy path, and there was no room to spare when you had to pass a
tolerably fat mule. I always took the inside, when I heard or saw the
mule coming, and flattened myself against the wall. I preferred the
inside, of course, but I should have had to take it anyhow, because the
mule prefers the outside. A mule’s preference—on a precipice—is a thing
to be respected. Well, his choice is always the outside. His life is
mostly devoted to carrying bulky panniers and packages which rest
against his body—therefore he is habituated to taking the outside edge
of mountain paths, to keep his bundles from rubbing against rocks or
banks on the other. When he goes into the passenger business he absurdly
clings to his old habit, and keeps one leg of his passenger always
dangling over the great deeps of the lower world while that passenger’s
heart is in the highlands, so to speak. More than once I saw a mule’s
hind foot cave out over the outer edge and send earth and rubbish into
the bottomless abyss; and I noticed that upon these occasions the rider,
whether male or female, looked tolerably unwell.
There was one place where an 18–inch breadth of light masonry had been
added to the verge of the path, and as there was a very sharp turn,
here, a panel of fencing had been set up there at some ancient time, as
a protection. This panel was old and gray and feeble, and the light
masonry had been loosened by recent rains. A young American girl came
along on a mule, and in making the turn the mule’s hind foot caved all
the loose masonry and one of the fence posts overboard; the mule gave a
violent lurch inboard to save himself, and succeeded in the effort, but
the girl turned as white as the snow of Mont Blanc for a moment.
The path here was simply a groove cut in the face of the precipice;
there was a four-foot breadth of solid rock under the traveler, and a
four-foot breadth of solid rock just above his head, like the roof of a
narrow porch; he could look out from this gallery and see a sheer
summitless and bottomless wall of rock before him, across a gorge or
crack a biscuit’s toss in width—but he could not see the bottom of his
own precipice unless he lay down and projected his nose over the edge. I
did not do this, because I did not wish to soil my clothes.
ALP CLIMBING
There is probably no pleasure equal to the pleasure of climbing a
dangerous Alp; but it is a pleasure which is confined strictly to people
who can find pleasure in it. I have not jumped to this conclusion; I
have traveled to it per gravel train, so to speak. I have thought the
whole thing out, and am quite sure I am right. A born climber’s appetite
for climbing is hard to satisfy; when it comes upon him he is like a
starving man with a feast before him; he may have other business on
hand, but it must wait. Mr. Girdlestone had had his usual summer holiday
in the Alps, and had spent it in the usual way, hunting for unique
chances to break his neck; his vacation was over, and his luggage packed
for England, but all of a sudden a hunger had come upon him to climb the
tremendous Weisshorn once more, for he had heard of a new and utterly
impossible route up it. His baggage was unpacked at once, and now he and
a friend, laden with knapsacks, ice-axes, coils of rope, and canteens of
milk, were just setting out. They would spend the night high up among
the snows, somewhere, and get up at two in the morning and finish the
enterprise. I had a strong desire to go with them, but forced it down—a
feat which Mr. Girdlestone, with all his fortitude, could not do.
THE OLD MASTERS
We visited the picture galleries and the other regulation “sights” of
Milan—not because I wanted to write about them again, but to see if I
had learned anything in twelve years. I afterwards visited the great
galleries of Rome and Florence for the same purpose. I found I had
learned one thing. When I wrote about the Old Masters before, I said the
copies were better than the originals. That was a mistake of large
dimensions. The Old Masters were still unpleasing to me, but they were
truly divine contrasted with the copies. The copy is to the original as
the pallid, smart, inane new waxwork group is to the vigorous, earnest,
dignified group of living men and women whom it professes to duplicate.
There is a mellow richness, a subdued color, in the old pictures, which
is to the eye what muffled and mellowed sound is to the ear. That is the
merit which is most loudly praised in the old picture, and is the one
which the copy most conspicuously lacks, and which the copyist must not
hope to compass. It was generally conceded by the artists with whom I
talked, that that subdued splendor, that mellow richness, is imparted to
the picture by _age_. Then why should we worship the Old Master for it,
who didn’t impart it, instead of worshiping Old Time, who did? Perhaps
the picture was a clanging bell, until time muffled it and sweetened it.
In conversation with an artist in Venice, I asked,
“What is it that people see in Old Masters? I have been in the Doge’s
palace and I saw several acres of very bad drawing, very bad
perspective, and very incorrect proportions. Paul Veronese’s dogs do not
resemble dogs; all the horses look like bladders on legs; one man had a
_right_ leg on the left side of his body; in the large picture where the
Emperor (Barbarossa?) is prostrate before the Pope, there are three men
in the foreground who are over thirty feet high, if one may judge by the
size of a kneeling little boy in the center of the foreground; and
according to the same scale, the Pope is 7 feet high and the Doge is a
shriveled dwarf of 4 feet.”
The artist said:
“Yes, the Old Masters often drew badly; they did not care much for truth
and exactness in minor details; but after all, in spite of bad drawing,
bad perspective, bad proportions, and a choice of subjects which no
longer appeal to people as strongly as they did three hundred years ago,
there is a _something_ about their pictures which is divine—a something
which is above and beyond the art of any epoch since—a something which
would be the despair of artists but that they never hope or expect to
attain it, and therefore do not worry about it.”
That is what he said—and he said what he believed; and not only
believed, but felt.
Reasoning—especially reasoning without technical knowledge—must be put
aside, in cases of this kind. It cannot assist the inquirer. It will
lead him, in the most logical progression, to what, in the eyes of the
artists, would be a most illogical conclusion. Thus: bad drawing, bad
proportions, bad perspective, indifference to truthful detail, color
which gets its merit from time, and not from the artist—these things
constitute the Old Master; conclusion, the Old Master was a bad painter,
the Old Master was not an Old Master at all, but an Old Apprentice. Your
friend the artist will grant your premises, but deny your conclusion; he
will maintain that notwithstanding this formidable list of confessed
defects, there is still a something that is divine and unapproachable
about the Old Master, and that there is no arguing the fact away by any
system of reasoning whatever.
I can believe that. There are women who have an indefinable charm in
their faces which makes them beautiful to their intimates; but a cold
stranger who tried to reason the matter out and find this beauty would
fail. He would say of one of these women: This chin is too short, this
nose is too long, this forehead is too high, this hair is too red, this
complexion is too pallid, the perspective of the entire composition is
incorrect; conclusion, the woman is not beautiful. But her nearest
friend might say, and say truly, “Your premises are right, your logic is
faultless, but your conclusion is wrong, nevertheless; she is an Old
Master—she is beautiful, but only to such as know her; it is a beauty
which cannot be formulated, but it is there just the same.”
I found more pleasure in contemplating the Old Masters this time than I
did when I was in Europe in former years, but still it was a calm
pleasure; there was nothing overheated about it.
_FROM_ “LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI” (1874–5)
THE PERMANENT AMBITION
When I was a boy, there was but one permanent ambition among my comrades
in our village on the west bank of the Mississippi River. That was to be
a steamboatman. We had transient ambitions of other sorts, but they were
only transient. When a circus came and went, it left us all burning to
become clowns; the first negro minstrel show that ever came to our
section left us all suffering to try that kind of life; now and then we
had a hope that, if we lived and were good, God would permit us to be
pirates. These ambitions faded out, each in its turn; but the ambition
to be a steamboatman always remained.
My father was a justice of the peace, and I supposed he possessed the
power of life and death over all men, and could hang anybody that
offended him. This was distinction enough for me as a general thing; but
the desire to be a steamboatman kept intruding, nevertheless. I first
wanted to be a cabin-boy, so that I could come out with a white apron on
and shake a tablecloth over the side, where all my old comrades could
see me; later I thought I would rather be the deckhand who stood on the
end of the stage-plank with the coil of rope in his hand, because he was
particularly conspicuous. But these were only day-dreams—they were too
heavenly to be contemplated as real possibilities. By and by one of our
boys went away. He was not heard of for a long time. At last he turned
up as apprentice engineer or “striker” on a steamboat. This thing shook
the bottom out of all my Sunday-school teachings. That boy had been
notoriously worldly, and I just the reverse; yet he was exalted to this
eminence, and I left in obscurity and misery.
This creature’s career could produce but one result, and it speedily
followed. Boy after boy managed to get on the river. The minister’s son
became an engineer. The doctor’s and the postmaster’s sons became “mud
clerks”; the wholesale liquor dealer’s son became a barkeeper on a boat;
four sons of the chief merchant, and two sons of the county judge,
became pilots. Pilot was the grandest position of all. The pilot, even
in those days of trivial wages, had a princely salary—from a hundred and
fifty to two hundred and fifty dollars a month, and no board to pay. Two
months of his wages would pay a preacher’s salary for a year. Now some
of us were left disconsolate. We could not get on the river—at least our
parents would not let us.
So, by and by, I ran away. I said I would never come home again till I
was a pilot and could come in glory.
FIRST LESSONS IN PILOTING
The boat backed out from New Orleans at four in the afternoon, and it
was “our watch” until eight. Mr. Bixby, my chief, “straightened her up,”
ploughed her along past the sterns of the other boats that lay at the
Levee, and then said, “Here, take her; shave those steamships as close
as you’d peel an apple.” I took the wheel, and my heart-beat fluttered
up into the hundreds; for it seemed to me that we were about to scrape
the side of every ship in the line, we were so close. I held my breath
and began to claw the boat away from the danger; and I had my own
opinion of the pilot who had known no better than to get us into such
peril, but I was too wise to express it. In half a minute I had a wide
margin of safety intervening between the _Paul Jones_ and the ships; and
within ten seconds more I was set aside in disgrace, and Mr. Bixby was
going into danger again and flaying me alive with abuse of my cowardice.
I was stung, but I was obliged to admire the easy confidence with which
my chief loafed from side to side of his wheel, and trimmed the ships so
closely that disaster seemed ceaselessly imminent. When he had cooled a
little he told me that the easy water was close ashore and the current
outside, and therefore we must hug the bank, up-stream, to get the
benefit of the former, and stay well out, down-stream, to take advantage
of the latter. In my own mind I resolved to be a down-stream pilot and
leave the up-streaming to people dead to prudence.
Now and then Mr. Bixby called my attention to certain things. Said he,
“This is Six-Mile Point.” I assented. It was pleasant enough
information, but I could not see the bearing of it. I was not conscious
that it was a matter of any interest to me. Another time he said, “This
is Nine-Mile Point.” Later he said, “This is Twelve-Mile Point.” They
were all about level with the water’s edge; they all looked about alike
to me; they were monotonously unpicturesque. I hoped Mr. Bixby would
change the subject. But no; he would crowd up around a point, hugging
the shore with affection, and then say: “The slack water ends here,
abreast this bunch of China-trees; now we cross over.” So he crossed
over. He gave me the wheel once or twice, but I had no luck. I either
came near chipping off the edge of a sugar plantation, or I yawed too
far from shore, and so dropped back into disgrace again and got abused.
The watch was ended at last, and we took supper and went to bed. At
midnight the glare of a lantern shone in my eyes, and the night watchman
said:
“Come, turn out!”
And then he left. I could not understand this extraordinary procedure;
so I presently gave up trying to, and dozed off to sleep. Pretty soon
the watchman was back again, and this time he was gruff. I was annoyed.
I said:
“What do you want to come bothering around here in the middle of the
night for? Now, as like as not, I’ll not get to sleep again to-night.”
The watchman said:
“Well, if this ain’t good, I’m blessed.”
The “off-watch” was just turning in, and I heard some brutal laughter
from them, and such remarks as, “Hello, watchman! ain’t the new cub
turned out yet? He’s delicate likely. Give him some sugar in a rag, and
send for the chambermaid to sing ‘Rock-a-bye Baby,’ to him.”
About this time Mr. Bixby appeared on the scene. Something like a minute
later I was climbing the pilot-house steps with some of my clothes on
and the rest in my arms. Mr. Bixby was close behind, commenting. Here
was something fresh—this thing of getting up in the middle of the night
to go to work. It was a detail in piloting that had never occurred to me
at all. I knew that boats ran all night, but somehow I had never
happened to reflect that somebody had to get up out of a warm bed to run
them. I began to fear that piloting was not quite so romantic as I had
imagined it was; there was something very real and worklike about this
new phase of it.
It was rather a dingy night, although a fair number of stars were out.
The big mate was at the wheel, and he had the old tub pointed at a star
and was holding her straight up the middle of the river. The shores on
either hand were not much more than half a mile apart, but they seemed
wonderfully far away and ever so vague and indistinct. The mate said:
“We’ve got to land at Jones’s plantation, sir.”
The vengeful spirit in me exulted. I said to myself, “I wish you joy of
your job, Mr. Bixby; you’ll have a good time finding Mr. Jones’s
plantation such a night as this; and I hope you never _will_ find it as
long as you live.”
Mr. Bixby said to the mate:
“Upper end of the plantation, or the lower?”
“Upper.”
“I can’t do it. The stumps there are out of the water at this stage.
It’s no great distance to the lower, and you’ll have to get along with
that.”
“All right, sir. If Jones don’t like it, he’ll have to lump it, I
reckon.”
And then the mate left. My exultation began to cool and my wonder to
come up. Here was a man who not only proposed to find this plantation on
such a night, but to find either end of it you preferred. I dreadfully
wanted to ask a question, but I was carrying about as many short answers
as my cargo-room would admit of, so I held my peace. All I desired to
ask Mr. Bixby was the simple question whether he was ass enough to
really imagine he was going to find that plantation on a night when all
plantations were exactly alike, and all the same color. But I held in. I
used to have fine inspirations of prudence in those days.
Mr. Bixby made for the shore and soon was scraping it, just the same as
if it had been daylight. And not only that but singing:
“Father in heaven, the day is declining,” etc.
It seemed to me that I had put my life into the keeping of a peculiarly
reckless outcast. Presently he turned on me and said:
“What’s the name of the first point above New Orleans?”
I was gratified to be able to answer promptly, and I did. I said I
didn’t know.
“Don’t _know_?”
This manner jolted me. I was down at the foot again, in a moment. But I
had to say just what I had said before.
“Well, you’re a smart one!” said Mr. Bixby. “What’s the name of the
_next_ point?”
Once more I didn’t know.
“Well, this beats anything. Tell me the name of any point or place I
told you.”
I studied a while and decided that I couldn’t.
“Look here! What do you start out from, above Twelve-Mile Point, to
cross over?”
“I—I—don’t know.”
“You—you—don’t know?” mimicking my drawling manner of speech. “What _do_
you know?”
“I—I—nothing, for certain.”
“By the great Cæsar’s ghost, I believe you! You’re the stupidest
dunderhead I ever saw or ever heard of, so help me Moses! The idea of
_you_ being a pilot—_you_! Why you don’t know enough to pilot a cow down
a lane.”
Oh, but his wrath was up! He was a nervous man, and he shuffled from one
side of his wheel to the other as if the floor was hot. He would boil a
while to himself, and then overflow and scald me again.
“Look here! What do you suppose I told you the names of those points
for?”
I tremblingly considered a moment, and the devil of temptation provoked
me to say:
“Well—to—to—be entertaining, I thought.”
This was a red flag to the bull. He raged and stormed so (he was
crossing the river at the time) that I judge it made him blind, because
he ran over the steering-gear of a trading-scow. Of course the traders
sent up a volley of red-hot profanity. Never was a man so grateful as
Mr. Bixby was; because he was brimful, and here were subjects who could
_talk back_. He threw open a window, thrust his head out and such an
eruption followed as I never had heard before. The fainter and farther
away the scowmen’s curses drifted, the higher Mr. Bixby lifted his voice
and the weightier his adjectives grew. When he closed the window he was
empty. You could have drawn a seine through his system and not caught
curses enough to disturb your mother with. Presently he said to me in
the gentlest way:
“My boy, you must get a little memorandum book; and every time I tell
you a thing, put it down right away. There’s only one way to be a pilot,
and that is to get this entire river by heart. You have to know it just
like A B C.”
That was a dismal revelation to me; for my memory was never loaded with
anything but blank cartridges. However, I did not feel discouraged long.
I judged that it was best to make allowances, for doubtless Mr. Bixby
was “stretching.” Presently he pulled a rope and struck a few strokes on
the big bell. The stars were all gone now, and the night was as black as
ink. I could hear the wheels churn along the bank, but I was not
entirely certain that I could see the shore. The voice of the invisible
watchman called up from the hurricane deck:
“What’s this, sir?”
“Jones’s plantation.”
I said to myself, “I wish that I might venture to offer a small bet that
it isn’t,” But I did not chirp. I only waited to see. Mr. Bixby handled
the engine bells, and in due time the boat’s nose came to the land, a
torch glowed from the forecastle, a man skipped ashore, a darkey’s voice
on the bank said, “Gimme de k’yarpet bag, Mass’ Jones,” and the next
moment we were standing up the river again, all serene. I reflected
deeply a while, and then said—but not aloud—“Well, the finding of that
plantation was the luckiest accident that ever happened; but it couldn’t
happen again in a hundred years.”
PERPLEXING LESSONS
At the end of what seemed a tedious while, I had managed to pack my head
full of islands, towns, bars, “points,” and bends, and a curiously
inanimate mass of lumber it was, too. However, inasmuch as I could shut
my eyes and reel off a good long string of these names without leaving
out more than ten miles of river in every fifty, I began to feel that I
could take a boat down to New Orleans if I could make her skip those
little gaps. But of course my complacency could hardly get start enough
to lift my nose a trifle into the air, before Mr. Bixby would think of
something to fetch it down again. One day he turned on me suddenly with
this settler:
“What is the shape of Walnut Bend?”
He might as well have asked me my grandmother’s opinion of protoplasm. I
reflected respectfully, and then said I didn’t know it had any
particular shape. My gunpowdery chief went off with a bang, of course,
and then went on loading and firing until he was out of adjectives.
I had learned long ago that he only carried just so many rounds of
ammunition and was sure to subside into a very placable and even
remorseful old smoothbore as soon as they were all gone. That word “old”
is merely affectionate; he was not more than thirty-four. I waited. By
and by he said:
“My boy, you’ve got to know the _shape_ of the river perfectly. It is
all there is left to steer by on a very dark night. Everything else is
blotted out and gone. But mind you, it hasn’t the same shape in the
night that it has in the daytime.”
“How on earth am I ever going to learn it then?”
“How do you follow a hall at home in the dark? Because you know the
shape of it. You can’t see it.”
“Do you mean to say that I’ve got to know all the million trifling
variations of shape in the banks of this interminable river as well as I
know the shape of the front hall at home?”
“On my honor, you’ve got to know them _better_ than any man ever did
know the shapes of the halls in his own house.”
“I wish I was dead!”
“Now, I don’t want to discourage you, but——”
“Well, pile it on me; I might as well have it now as another time.”
“You see, this has got to be learned; there isn’t any getting around it.
A clear starlight night throws such heavy shadows that, if you didn’t
know the shape of a shore perfectly, you would claw away from every
bunch of timber, because you would take the black shadow of it for a
solid cape; and you see you would be getting scared to death every
fifteen minutes by the watch. You would be fifty yards from shore all
the time when you ought to be within fifty feet of it. You can’t see a
snag in one of those shadows, but you know exactly where it is, and the
shape of the river tells you when you are coming to it. Then there’s
your pitch-dark night; the river is a very different shape on a
pitch-dark night from what it is on a starlight night. All shores seem
to be straight lines, then, and mighty dim ones, too; and you’d _run_
them for straight lines, only you know better. You boldly drive your
boat right into what seems to be a solid, straight wall (you knowing
very well that in reality there is a curve there), and that wall falls
back and makes way for you. Then there’s your gray mist. You take a
night when there’s one of these grisly drizzly, gray mists, and then
there isn’t _any_ particular shape to a shore. A gray mist would tangle
the head of the oldest man that ever lived. Well, then, different kinds
of _moonlight_ change the shape of the river in different ways. You
see——”
“Oh, don’t say any more, please! Have I got to learn the shape of the
river according to all these five hundred thousand different ways? If I
tried to carry all that cargo in my head it would make me
stoop-shouldered.”
“_No!_ you only learn the shape of _the_ river; and you learn it with
such absolute certainty that you can always steer by the shape that’s
_in your head_, and never the one that’s before your eyes.”
“Very well, I’ll try it; but, after I have learned it, can I depend on
it? Will it keep the same form and not go fooling around?”
Before Mr. Bixby could answer, Mr. W. came in to take the watch and he
said:
“Bixby, you’ll have to look out for President’s Island, and all that
country clear away up above the Old Hen and Chickens. The banks are
caving and the shape of the shore changing like everything. Why you
wouldn’t know the point above 40. You can go up inside the old sycamore
snag, now.”
So that question was answered. Here were leagues of shore changing
shape. My spirits were down in the mud again. Two things seemed pretty
apparent to me. One was, that in order to be a pilot a man has got to
learn more than any one man ought to be allowed to know; and the other
was, that he must learn it all over again in a different way every
twenty-four hours.
That night we had the watch until twelve. Now it was an ancient river
custom for the two pilots to chat a bit when the watch changed. While
the relieving pilot put on his gloves and lit his cigar, his partner,
the retiring pilot, would say something like this:
“I judge the upper bar is making down a little at Hale’s Point; had
quarter twain with the lower lead and mark twain with the other.”
“Yes, I thought it was making down a little, last trip. Meet any boats?”
“Met one abreast the head of 21, but she was away over hugging the bar,
and I couldn’t make her out entirely. I took her for the _Sunny
South_—hadn’t any skylight forward of the chimneys.”
And so on. And as the relieving pilot took the wheel his partner would
mention that we were in such-and-such a bend, and say we were abreast of
such a man’s woodyard or plantation. This was courtesy; I supposed it
was _necessity_. But Mr. W. came on watch full twelve minutes late on
this particular night—a tremendous breach of etiquette; in fact, it is
the unpardonable sin among pilots. So Mr. Bixby gave him no greeting
whatever, but simply surrendered the wheel and marched out of the
pilot-house without a word. I was appalled; it was a villainous night
for blackness, we were in a particularly wide and blind part of the
river, where there was no shape or substance to anything, and it seemed
incredible that Mr. Bixby should have left that poor fellow to kill the
boat trying to find out where he was. But I resolved that I would stand
by him anyway. He should find that he was not wholly friendless. So I
stood around, and waited to be asked where we were. But Mr. W. plunged
on serenely through the solid firmament of black cats that stood for an
atmosphere and never opened his mouth. “He is a proud devil!” thought I;
“here is a limb of Satan that would rather send us all to destruction
than put himself under obligations to me, because I am not yet one of
the salt of the earth and privileged to snub captains and lord it over
everything dead and alive in a steamboat.” I presently climbed up on the
bench; I did not think it was safe to go to sleep while this lunatic was
on watch.
However, I must have gone to sleep in the course of time, because the
next thing I was aware of was the fact that day was breaking, Mr. W.
gone, and Mr. Bixby at the wheel again. So it was four o’clock and all
well—but me; I felt like a skinful of dry bones, and all of them trying
to ache at once.
Mr. Bixby asked me what I had stayed up there for. I confessed that it
was to do Mr. W. a benevolence—tell him where he was. It took five
minutes for the entire preposterousness of the thing to filter into Mr.
Bixby’s system, and then I judged it filled him nearly up to the chin;
because he paid me a compliment—and not much of a one either. He said:
“Well, taking you by and large, you seem to be more different kinds of
an ass than any creature I ever saw before. What did you suppose he
wanted to know for?”
I said I thought it might be a convenience to him.
“Convenience! D——nation! Didn’t I tell you that a man’s got to know the
river in the night the same as he’d know his front hall?”
“Well, I can follow the front hall in the dark if I know it _is_ the
front hall; but suppose you set me down in the middle of it in the dark
and did not tell me which hall it is; how am I to know?”
“Well, you’ve _got_ to, on the river!”
“All right. Then I’m glad I never said anything to Mr. W.”
“I should say so! Why, he’d have slammed you through the window and
utterly ruined a hundred dollars’ worth of window-sash and stuff.”
I was glad this damage had been saved, for it would have made me
unpopular with the owners. They always hated anybody who had the name of
being careless and injuring things.
I went to work now to learn the shape of the river; and of all the
eluding and ungraspable objects that ever I tried to get mind or hands
on, that was the chief. I would fasten my eyes upon a sharp, wooded
point that projected far into the river some miles ahead of me, and go
laboriously photographing its shape into my brain; and just as I was
beginning to succeed to my satisfaction, we would draw up toward it and
the exasperating thing would begin to melt away and fold back into the
bank! If there had been a conspicuous dead tree standing up in the very
point of the cape, I would find that tree inconspicuously merged into
the general forest, and occupying the middle of a straight shore, when I
got abreast of it! No prominent hill would stick to its shape long
enough for me to make up my mind what its form really was, but it was as
dissolving and changeful as if it had been a mountain of butter in the
hottest corner of the tropics. Nothing ever had the same shape when I
was coming down-stream that it had borne when I went up. I mentioned
these little difficulties to Mr. Bixby. He said:
“That’s the very main virtue of the thing. If the shapes didn’t change
every three seconds they wouldn’t be of any use. Take this place where
we are now, for instance. As long as that hill over yonder is only one
hill, I can boom right along the way I’m going; but the moment it splits
at the top and forms a V, I know I’ve got to scratch to starboard in a
hurry, or I’ll bang this boat’s brains out against a rock; and then the
moment one of the prongs of the V swings behind the other, I’ve got to
waltz to larboard again, or I’ll have a misunderstanding with a snag
that would snatch the keelson out of this steamboat as neatly as if it
were a sliver in your hand. If that hill didn’t change its shape on bad
nights there would be an awful steamboat graveyard around here inside of
a year.”
It was plain that I had got to learn the shape of the river in all the
different ways that could be thought of,—upside down, wrong end first,
inside out, fore-and-aft, and “thortships,”—and then know what to do on
gray nights when it hadn’t any shape at all. So I set about it. In the
course of time I began to get the best of this knotty lesson, and my
self-complacency moved to the front once more. Mr. Bixby was all fixed,
and ready to start it to the rear again. He opened on me in this
fashion:
“How much water did we have in the middle crossing at Hole-in-the-Wall,
trip before last?”
I considered this an outrage. I said:
“Every trip, down and up, the leadsmen are singing through that tangled
place for three-quarters of an hour on a stretch. How do you reckon I
can remember such a mess as that?”
“My boy, you’ve got to remember it. You’ve got to remember the exact
spot and the exact marks the boat lay in when we had the shoalest water,
in every one of the five hundred shoal places between St. Louis and New
Orleans; and you mustn’t get the shoal soundings and marks of one trip
mixed up with the shoal soundings and marks of another, either, for
they’re not often twice alike. You must keep them separate.”
When I came to myself again, I said:
“When I get so that I can do that, I’ll be able to raise the dead, and
then I won’t have to pilot a steamboat to make a living. I want to
retire from this business. I want a slush-bucket and a brush; I’m only
fit for a roustabout. I haven’t got brains enough to be a pilot; and if
I had I wouldn’t have strength enough to carry them around unless I went
on crutches.”
“Now, drop that! When I say I’ll learn a man the river, I mean it. And
you can depend on it, I’ll learn him or kill him.”
A TEST OF COURAGE
The growth of courage in the pilot-house is steady all the time, but it
does not reach a high and satisfactory condition until sometime after
the young pilot has been “standing his own watch” alone and under the
staggering weight of all the responsibilities connected with the
position. When an apprentice has become pretty thoroughly acquainted
with the river, he goes clattering along so fearlessly with his
steamboat, night or day, that he presently begins to imagine that it is
_his_ courage that animates him; but the first time the pilot steps out
and leaves him to his own devices he finds out it was the other man’s.
He discovers that the article has been left out of his own cargo
altogether. The whole river is bristling with exigencies in a moment; he
is not prepared for them; he does not know how to meet them; all his
knowledge forsakes him; and within fifteen minutes he is as white as a
sheet and scared almost to death. Therefore, pilots wisely train these
cubs by various strategic tricks to look danger in the face a little
more calmly. A favorite way of theirs is to play a friendly swindle upon
the candidate.
Mr. Bixby served me in this fashion once, and for years afterward I used
to blush, even in my sleep, when I thought of it. I had become a good
steersman; so good, indeed, that I had all the work to do on our watch,
night and day. Mr. Bixby seldom made a suggestion to me; all he ever did
was to take the wheel on particularly bad nights or in particularly bad
crossings, land the boat when she needed to be landed, play gentleman of
leisure nine-tenths of the watch, and collect the wages. The lower river
was about bank-full, and if anybody had questioned my ability to run any
crossing between Cairo and New Orleans without help or instruction, I
should have felt irreparably hurt. The idea of being afraid of any
crossing in the lot, in the _daytime_, was a thing too preposterous for
contemplation. Well, one matchless summer’s day I was bowling down the
bend above Island 66, brim full of self-conceit and carrying my nose as
high as a giraffe’s, when Mr. Bixby said:
“I am going below a while. I suppose you know the next crossing?”
This was almost an affront. It was about the plainest and simplest
crossing in the whole river. One couldn’t come to any harm, whether he
ran it right or not; and as for depth, there never had been any bottom
there. I knew all this perfectly well.
“Know how to _run_ it? Why, I can run it with my eyes shut.”
“How much water is there in it?”
“Well, that is an odd question. I couldn’t get bottom there with a
church steeple.”
“You think so, do you?”
The very tone of the question shook my confidence. That was what Mr.
Bixby was expecting. He left, without saying anything more. I began to
imagine all sorts of things. Mr. Bixby, unknown to me, of course, sent
somebody down to the forecastle with some mysterious instructions to the
leadsmen, another messenger was sent to whisper among the officers, and
then Mr. Bixby went into hiding behind a smoke-stack where he could
observe results. Presently the captain stepped out on the hurricane
deck; next the chief mate appeared; then a clerk. Every moment or two a
straggler was added to my audience; and before I got to the head of the
island I had fifteen or twenty people assembled down there under my
nose. I began to wonder what the trouble was. As I started across, the
captain glanced aloft at me and said, with a sham uneasiness in his
voice:
“Where is Mr. Bixby?”
“Gone below, sir.”
But that did the business for me. My imagination began to construct
dangers out of nothing, and they multiplied faster than I could keep the
run of them. All at once I imagined I saw shoal water ahead! The wave of
coward agony that surged through me then came near dislocating every
joint in me. All my confidence in that crossing vanished. I seized the
bell-rope; dropped it, ashamed; seized it again; dropped it once more;
clutched it tremblingly once again, and pulled it so feebly that I could
hardly hear the stroke myself. Captain and mate sang out instantly, and
both together:
“Starboard lead there! and quick about it!” This was another shock. I
began to climb the wheel like a squirrel; but I would hardly get the
boat started to port before I would see new dangers on that side, and
away I would spin to the other; only to find perils accumulating to
starboard, and be crazy to get to port again. Then came the leadsman’s
sepulchral cry:
“D-e-e-p four!”
Deep four in a bottomless crossing! The terror of it took my breath
away.
“M-a-r-k three! M-a-r-k three! Quarter-less-three! Half twain!”
This was frightful! I seized the bell-rope and stopped the engines.
“Quarter twain! Quarter twain! _Mark_ twain!”
I was helpless. I did not know what in the world to do. I was quaking
from head to foot, and I could have hung my hat on my eyes, they stuck
out so far.
“Quarter-_less_-twain! Nine-and-a-half!”
We were _drawing_ nine! My hands were in a nerveless flutter. I could
not ring a bell intelligibly with them. I flew to the speaking-tube and
shouted to the engineer:
“Oh, Ben, if you love me, _back_ her! Quick, Ben! Oh, back the immortal
_soul_ out of her!”
I heard the door close gently. I looked around, and there stood Mr.
Bixby, smiling, a bland, sweet smile. Then the audience on the hurricane
deck sent up a thundergust of humiliating laughter. I saw it all, now,
and I felt meaner than the meanest man in human history. I laid in the
lead, set the boat in her marks, came ahead on the engines, and said:
“It was a fine trick to play on an orphan, _wasn’t_ it? I suppose I’ll
never hear the last of how I was ass enough to heave the lead at the
head of 66.”
“Well, no, you won’t, maybe. In fact I hope you won’t; for I want you to
learn something by that experience. Didn’t you know there was no bottom
in that crossing?”
“Yes, sir, I did.”
“Very well, then. You shouldn’t have allowed me or anybody else to shake
your confidence in that knowledge. Try to remember that. And another
thing: when you get into a dangerous place, don’t turn coward. That
isn’t going to help matters any.”
It was a good enough lesson, but pretty hardly learned. Yet about the
hardest part of it was that for months I so often had to hear a phrase
which I had conceived a particular distaste for. It was, “Oh, Ben, if
you love me, back her!”
_FROM_ “THE PRINCE AND THE PAUPER” (1877–80)
BIRTHS OF HIGH AND LOW DEGREE
In the ancient city of London, on a certain autumn day, in the second
quarter of the sixteenth century, a boy was born to a poor family of the
name of Canty, who did not want him. On the same day another English
child was born to a rich family of the name of Tudor, who did want him.
All England wanted him, too. England had so longed for him, and hoped
for him, and prayed God for him, that, now that he was really come, the
people went nearly mad for joy. Mere acquaintances hugged and kissed
each other and cried. Everybody took a holiday, and high and low, rich
and poor, feasted and danced and sang, and got very mellow; and they
kept this up for days and nights together. By day, London was a sight to
see, with gay banners waving from every balcony and housetop, and
splendid pageants marching along. By night it was again a sight to see,
with its great bonfires at every corner, and its troops of revelers
making merry around them. There was no talk in all England but of the
new baby, Edward Tudor, Prince of Wales, who lay lapped in silks and
satins, unconscious of all this fuss, and not knowing that great lords
and ladies were tending him and watching over him—and not caring,
either. But there was no talk about the other baby, Tom Canty, lapped in
his poor rags, except among the family of paupers whom he had just come
to trouble with his presence.
THE CANTY HOME
The house which Tom’s father lived in was up a foul little pocket called
Offal Court, out of Pudding Lane. It was small, decayed, and rickety,
but it was packed full of wretchedly poor families. Canty’s tribe
occupied a room on the third floor. The mother and father had a sort of
bedstead in the corner; but Tom, his grandmother, and his two sisters,
Bet and Nan, were not restricted—they had all the floor to themselves,
and might sleep where they chose. There were the remains of a blanket or
two, and some bundles of ancient and dirty straw, but these could not
rightly be called beds, for they were not organized; they were kicked
into a general pile mornings, and selections made from the mass at
night, for service.
LONDON BRIDGE
This structure, which had stood for six hundred years, and had been a
noisy and populous thoroughfare all that time, was a curious affair, for
a closely packed rank of stores and shops, with family quarters
overhead, stretched along both sides of it, from one bank of the river
to the other. The Bridge was a sort of a town to itself; it had its inn,
its beer houses, its bakeries, its haberdasheries, its food markets, its
manufacturing industries and even its church. It looked upon the two
neighbors which it linked together—London and Southwark—as being well
enough, as suburbs, but not otherwise particularly important. It was a
close corporation, so to speak; it was a narrow town, of a single street
a fifth of a mile long, its population was but a village population, and
everybody in it knew all his fellow townsmen intimately, and had known
their fathers and mothers before them—and all their little family
affairs into the bargain. It had its aristocracy, of course—its fine old
families of butchers, and bakers, and what-not, who had occupied the
same old premises for five or six hundred years, and knew the great
history of the Bridge from beginning to end, and all its strange
legends; and who always talked bridgy talk, and thought bridgy thoughts,
and lied in a long, level, direct, substantial bridgy way.
TOM CANTY, KING
He opened his eyes—the richly clad First Lord of the Bedchamber was
kneeling by his couch. The gladness of the lying dream faded away—the
poor boy recognized that he was still a captive and a king. The room was
filled with courtiers clothed in purple mantles—the mourning
color[1]—and with noble servants of the monarch. Tom sat up in bed and
gazed out from the heavy silken curtains upon this fine company.
The weighty business of dressing began, and one courtier after another
knelt and paid his court and offered to the little king his condolences
upon his heavy loss, while the dressing proceeded. In the beginning, a
shirt was taken up by the Chief Equerry in Waiting, who passed it to the
First Lord of the Buckhounds, who passed it to the Second Gentleman of
the Bedchamber, who passed it to the Head Ranger of Windsor Forest, who
passed it to the Third Groom of the Stole, who passed it to the
Chancellor Royal of the Duchy of Lancaster, who passed it to the Master
of the Wardrobe, who passed it to Norroy King-at-Arms, who passed it to
the Constable of the Tower, who passed it to the Chief Steward of the
Household, who passed it to the Hereditary Grand Diaperer, who passed it
to the Lord High Admiral of England, who passed it to the Archbishop of
Canterbury, who passed it to the First Lord of the Bedchamber, who took
what was left of it and put it on Tom. Poor little wondering chap, it
reminded him of passing buckets at a fire....
A secretary of state presented an order of the Council appointing the
morrow at eleven for the reception of the foreign ambassadors, and
desired the king’s assent.
Tom turned an inquiring look toward Hertford, who whispered:
“Your majesty will signify consent. They come to testify their royal
masters’ sense of the heavy calamity which hath visited your grace and
the realm of England.”
Tom did as he was bidden. Another secretary began to read a preamble
concerning the expenses of the late king’s household, which had amounted
to £28,000 during the preceding six months—a sum so vast that it made
Tom Canty gasp; he gasped again when the fact appeared that £20,000 of
this money were still owing and unpaid; and once more when it appeared
that the king’s coffers were about empty, and his twelve hundred
servants much embarrassed for lack of the wages due them. Tom spoke out,
with lively apprehension.
“We be going to the dogs, ’tis plain. ’Tis meet and necessary that we
take a smaller house and set the servants at large, sith they be of no
value but to make delay, and trouble one with offices that harass the
spirit and shame the soul, they misbecoming any but a doll, that hath
nor brains nor hands to help itself withal. I remember me of a small
house that standeth over against the fish-market, by Billingsgate——”
A sharp pressure upon Tom’s arm stopped his foolish tongue and sent a
blush to his face; but no countenance there betrayed any sign that this
strange speech had been remarked or given concern.
THE LITTLE KING IN PRISON
Hendon’s[2] arts all failed with the king—he could not be comforted, but
a couple of women who were chained near him, succeeded better. Under
their gentle ministrations he found peace and learned a degree of
patience. He was very grateful, and came to love them dearly and to
delight in the sweet and soothing influence of their presence. He asked
them why they were in prison, and when they said they were Baptists, he
smiled and inquired:
“Is that a crime to be shut up for in a prison? Now I grieve, for I
shall lose ye—they will not keep ye long for such a little thing.”
They did not answer; and something in their faces made him uneasy. He
said, eagerly:
“You do not speak—be good to me, and tell me—there will be no other
punishment? Prithee, tell me there is no fear of that.”
They tried to change the topic, but his fears were aroused, and he
pursued it:
“Will they scourge thee? No, no, they would not be so cruel! Say they
would not. Come, they _will_ not, will they?”
The women betrayed confusion and distress, but there was no avoiding an
answer, so one of them said, in a voice choked with emotion:
“Oh, thou’lt break our hearts, thou gentle spirit! God will help us to
bear our——”
“It is a confession!” the king broke in. “Then they _will_ scourge thee,
the stony-hearted wretches. But oh, thou must not weep, I cannot bear
it. Keep up thy courage—I shall come to my own in time to save thee from
this bitter thing and I will do it!”
When the king awoke in the morning, the women were gone.
“They are saved!” he said, joyfully; then added, despondently, “but woe
is me!—for they were my comforters.”
Each of them had left a shred of ribbon pinned to his clothing, in token
of remembrance. He said he would keep these things always; and that soon
he would seek out these dear good friends of his and take them under his
protection.
Just then the jailer came in with some subordinates and commanded that
the prisoners be conducted to the jail-yard. The king was overjoyed—it
would be a blessed thing to see the blue sky and breathe the fresh air
once more. He fretted and chafed at the slowness of the officers, but
his turn came at last and he was released from his staple and ordered to
follow the other prisoners, with Hendon.
The court, or quadrangle, was stone-paved, and open to the sky. The
prisoners entered it through a massive archway of masonry, and were
placed in file, standing, with their backs against the wall. A rope was
stretched in front of them, and they were also guarded by their
officers. It was a chill and lowering morning, and a light snow which
had fallen during the night whitened the great empty space and added to
the general dismalness of its aspect. Now and then a wintry wind
shivered through the place and sent the snow eddying hither and thither.
In the center of the court stood two women, chained to posts. A glance
showed the king that these were his good friends. He shuddered, and said
to himself, “Alack, they are not gone free, as I had thought. To think
that such as these should know the lash!—in England! Ay, there’s the
shame of it—not in Heathenesse, but Christian England! They will be
scourged; and I, whom they have comforted and kindly entreated, must
look on and see the great wrong done; it is strange, so strange! that I,
the very source of power in this broad realm, am helpless to protect
them. But let these miscreants look well to themselves, for there is a
day coming when I will require of them a heavy reckoning for this work.
For every blow they strike now they shall feel a hundred then.”
A great gate swung open and a crowd of citizens poured in. They flocked
around the two women, and hid them from the king’s view. A clergyman
entered and passed through the crowd, and he also was hidden. The king
now heard talking, back and forth, as if questions were being asked and
answered, but he could not make out what was said. Next there was a deal
of bustle and preparation, and much passing and repassing of officials
through that part of the crowd that stood on the further side of the
women; and while this proceeded a deep hush gradually fell upon the
people.
Now, by command, the masses parted and fell aside, and the king saw a
spectacle that froze the marrow in his bones. Fagots had been piled
about the two women, and a kneeling man was lighting them!
The women bowed their heads, and covered their faces with their hands;
the yellow flames began to climb upward among the snapping and crackling
fagots, and wreaths of blue smoke to stream away on the wind; the
clergyman lifted his hands and began a prayer—just then two young girls
came flying through the great gate, uttering piercing screams, and threw
themselves upon the women at the stake. Instantly they were torn away by
the officers, and one of them was kept in a tight grip, but the other
broke loose, saying she would die with her mother; and before she could
be stopped she had flung her arms about her mother’s neck again. She was
torn away once more, and with her gown on fire. Two or three men held
her, and the burning portion of her gown was snatched off and thrown
flaming aside, she struggling all the while to free herself, and saying
she would be alone in the world now, and begging to be allowed to die
with her mother. Both the girls screamed continually, and fought for
freedom; but suddenly this tumult was drowned under a volley of
heart-piercing shrieks of mortal agony. The king glanced from the
frantic girls to the stake, then turned away and leaned his ashen face
against the wall, and looked no more. He said, “That which I have seen,
in that one little moment, will never go out from my memory, but will
abide there; and I shall see it all the days, and dream of it all the
nights, till I die. Would God I had been blind!”
Hendon was watching the king. He said to himself, with satisfaction,
“His disorder mendeth; he hath changed, and groweth gentler. If he had
followed his wont, he would have stormed at these varlets, and said he
was king, and commanded that the women be turned loose unscathed. Soon
his delusion will pass away and be forgotten, and his poor mind will be
whole again. God speed the day!”
That same day several prisoners were brought in to remain over night,
who were being conveyed, under guard, to various places in the kingdom,
to undergo punishment for crimes committed. The king conversed with
these,—he had made it a point, from the beginning, to instruct himself
for the kingly office by questioning prisoners whenever the opportunity
offered—and the tale of their woes wrung his heart. One of them was a
poor half-witted woman who had stolen a yard or two of cloth from a
weaver—she was to be hanged for it. Another was a man who had been
accused of stealing a horse; he said the proof had failed, and he had
imagined that he was safe from the halter; but no—he was hardly free
before he was arraigned for killing a deer in the king’s park; this was
proved against him, and now he was on his way to the gallows. There was
a tradesman’s apprentice whose case particularly distressed the king;
this youth said he found a hawk one evening that had escaped from its
owner, and he took it home with him, imagining himself entitled to it;
but the court convicted him of stealing it, and sentenced him to death.
The king was furious over these inhumanities, and wanted Hendon to break
jail and fly with him to Westminster, so that he could mount his throne
and hold out his scepter in mercy over these unfortunate people and save
their lives. “Poor child,” sighed Hendon, “these woeful tales have
brought his malady upon him again—alack, but for this evil hap, he would
have been well in a little time.”
Among these prisoners was an old lawyer—a man with a strong face and a
dauntless mien. Three years past, he had written a pamphlet against the
Lord Chancellor, accusing him of injustice, and had been punished for it
by the loss of his ears in the pillory and degradation from the bar, and
in addition had been fined £3,000 and sentenced to imprisonment for
life. Lately he had repeated his offense; and in consequence was now
under sentence to lose _what remained of his ears_, pay a fine of
£5,000, be branded on both cheeks, and remain in prison for life.
“These be honorable scars,” he said, and turned back his gray hair and
showed the mutilated stubs of what had once been his ears.
The king’s eyes burned with passion. He said: “None believe in
me—neither wilt thou. But no matter—within the compass of a month thou
shalt be free; and more, the laws that have dishonored thee, and shamed
the English name, shall be swept from the statute books. The world is
made wrong, kings should go to school to their own laws at times, and so
learn mercy.”
TOM CANTY THE FIRST
Whilst the true king wandered about the land, poorly clad, poorly fed,
cuffed and derided by tramps one while, herding with thieves and
murderers in a jail another, and called idiot and impostor by all
impartially, the mock King Tom Canty enjoyed a quite different
experience.
When we saw him last, royalty was just beginning to have a bright side
for him. This bright side went on brightening more and more every day;
in a very little while it was become almost all sunshine and
delightfulness. He lost his fears! his misgivings faded out and died;
his embarrassments departed, and gave place to an easy and confident
bearing.
He ordered my Lady Elizabeth and my Lady Jane Gray into his presence
when he wanted to play or talk, and dismissed them when he was done with
them, with the air of one familiarly accustomed to such performances. It
no longer confused him to have these lofty personages kiss his hand at
parting.
He came to enjoy being conducted to bed in state at night, and dressed
with intricate and solemn ceremony in the morning. It came to be a proud
pleasure to march to dinner attended by a glittering procession of
officers of state and gentlemen-at-arms; insomuch, indeed, that he
doubled his guard of gentlemen-at-arms, and made them a hundred. He
liked to hear the bugles sounding down the long corridors, and the
distant voices responding, “Way for the king!”
He even learned to enjoy sitting in throned state in council, and
seeming to be something more than the Lord Protector’s mouthpiece. He
liked to receive great ambassadors and their gorgeous trains, and listen
to the affectionate messages they brought from illustrious monarchs who
called him “brother.”
Oh, happy Tom Canty, late of Offal Court!
TOM IS RECOGNIZED
The great pageant moved on, and still on, under one triumphal arch after
another, and past a bewildering succession of spectacular and symbolical
tableaux, each of which typified and exalted some virtue, or talent, or
merit, of the little king’s. Throughout the whole of Cheapside, from
every penthouse and window, hung banners and streamers; and the richest
carpets, stuffs, and cloth-of-gold tapestried the streets,—specimens of
the great wealth of the stores within; and the splendor of this
throughfare was equaled in the other streets, and in some even
surpassed.
“And all these wonders and these marvels are to welcome me—me!” murmured
Tom Canty.
The mock king’s cheeks were flushed with excitement, his eyes were
flashing, his senses swam in a delirium of pleasure. At this point, just
as he was raising his hand to fling another rich largess, he caught
sight of a pale, astounded face which was strained forward out of the
second rank of the crowd, its intense eyes riveted upon him. A sickening
consternation struck through him; he recognized his mother! and up flew
his hand, palm outward, before his eyes,—that old involuntary gesture,
born of a forgotten episode, and perpetuated by habit. In an instant
more she had torn her way out of the press, and past the guards, and was
at his side. She embraced his leg, she covered it with kisses, she
cried, “O, my child, my darling!” lifting toward him a face that was
transfigured with joy and love. The same instant an officer of the
King’s Guard snatched her away with a curse, and sent her reeling back
whence she came, with a vigorous impulse from his strong arm. The words,
“I do not know you, woman!” were falling from Tom Canty’s lips when this
piteous thing occurred; but it smote him to the heart to see her treated
so; and as she turned for a last glimpse of him, whilst the crowd was
swallowing her from his sight, she seemed so wounded, so broken-hearted,
that a shame fell upon him which consumed his pride to ashes, and
withered his stolen royalty. His grandeurs were stricken valueless; they
seemed to fall away from him like rotten rags.
The procession moved on, and still on, through ever augmenting splendors
and ever augmenting tempests of welcome; but to Tom Canty they were as
if they had not been. He neither saw nor heard. Royalty had lost its
grace and sweetness; its pomps were become a reproach. Remorse was
eating his heart out. He said, “Would God I were free of my captivity!”
_FROM_ “THE ADVENTURES OF HUCKLEBERRY FINN” (1876–83)
HUCK AND NIGGER JIM[3] START ON THEIR LONG DRIFT
When it was beginning to come on dark we poked our heads out of the
cottonwood thicket, and looked up and down and across; nothing in sight;
so Jim took up some of the top planks of the raft and built a snug
wigwam to get under in blazing weather and rainy, and to keep the things
dry. Jim made a floor for the wigwam, and raised it a foot or more above
the level of the raft, so now the blankets and all the traps were out of
reach of steamboat waves. Right in the middle of the wigwam we made a
layer of dirt about five or six inches deep with a frame around it for
to hold it to its place; this was to build a fire on in sloppy weather
or chilly; the wigwam would keep it from being seen. We made an extra
steering-oar, too, because one of the others might get broke on a snag
or something. We fixed up a short forked stick to hang the old lantern
on, because we must always light the lantern whenever we see a steamboat
coming down-stream, to keep from getting run over; but we wouldn’t have
to light it for the up-stream boats unless we see we was in what they
call a “crossing”; for the river was pretty high yet, very low banks
being still a little under water; so up-bound boats didn’t always run
the channel, but hunted easy water.
This second night we run between seven and eight hours, with a current
that was making over four mile an hour. We catched fish and talked, and
we took a swim now and then to keep off sleepiness. It was kind of
solemn, drifting down the big, still river, laying on our backs looking
up at the stars, and we didn’t ever feel like talking loud, and it
warn’t often that we laughed—only a little kind of a low chuckle. We had
mighty good weather as a general thing, and nothing ever happened to us
at all—that night, nor the next, nor the next.
Every night we passed towns, some of them away up on black hillsides,
nothing but just a shiny bed of lights; not a house could you see. The
fifth night we passed St. Louis, and it was like the whole world lit up.
In St. Petersburg they used to say there was twenty or thirty thousand
people in St. Louis, but I never believed it till I see that wonderful
spread of lights at two o’clock that still night. There warn’t a sound
there; everybody was asleep.
Every night now I used to slip ashore toward ten o’clock at some little
village, and buy ten or fifteen cents’ worth of meal or bacon or other
stuff to eat; and sometimes I lifted a chicken that warn’t roosting
comfortable, and took him along. Pap always said, take a chicken when
you get a chance, because if you don’t want him yourself you can easy
find somebody that does, and a good deed aint ever forgot. I never see
pap when he didn’t want the chicken himself, but that is what he used to
say, anyway.
THE GRANGERFORD-SHEPHERDSON FEUD[4]
Col. Grangerford was a gentleman, you see. He was a gentleman all over;
and so was his family. He was well born, as the saying is, and that’s
worth as much in a man as it is in a horse, so the Widow Douglas said,
and nobody ever denied that she was of the first aristocracy in our
town; and pap he always said it, too, though he warn’t no more quality
than a mudcat himself. Col. Grangerford was very tall and very slim, and
had a darkish-paly complexion, not a sign of red in it anywheres; he was
clean-shaved every morning all over his thin face, and he had the
thinnest kind of lips, and the thinnest kind of nostrils, and a high
nose, and heavy eyebrows, and the blackest kind of eyes, sunk so deep
back that they seemed like they was looking out of caverns at you, as
you may say. His forehead was high, and his hair was gray and straight
and hung to his shoulders. His hands was long and thin, and every day of
his life he put on a clean shirt and a full suit from head to foot made
out of linen so white it hurt your eyes to look at it; and on Sundays he
wore a blue tail-coat with brass buttons on it. He carried a mahogany
cane with a silver head to it. There warn’t no frivolishness about him,
not a bit, and he warn’t ever loud. He was as kind as he could be—you
could feel that, you know, and so you had confidence. Sometimes he
smiled, and it was good to see; but when he straightened himself up like
a liberty-pole, and the lightning begun to flicker out from under his
eyebrows, you wanted to climb a tree first, and find out what the matter
was afterwards. He didn’t ever have to tell anybody to mind their
manners—everybody was always good-mannered where he was. Everybody loved
to have him around, too; he was sunshine most always—I mean he made it
seem like good weather. When he turned into a cloudbank it was awful
dark for half a minute, and that was enough; there wouldn’t nothing go
wrong for a week.
When him and the old lady came down in the morning all the family got up
out of their chairs and give them good day, and didn’t set down again
till _they_ had set down. Then Tom and Bob went to the sideboard where
the decanter was, and mixed a glass of bitters and handed it to him, and
he held it in his hand and waited till Tom’s and Bob’s was mixed, and
then they bowed and said, “Our duty to you, sir, and madam”; and _they_
bowed the least bit in the world and said thank you, and so they drank,
all three, and Bob and Tom poured a spoonful of water on the sugar and
the mite of whisky or apple brandy in the bottom of their tumblers, and
give it to me and Buck,[5] and we drank to the old people too.
Bob was the oldest and Tom next—tall, beautiful men with very broad
shoulders and brown faces, and long black hair and black eyes. They
dressed in white linen from head to foot, like the old gentleman, and
wore broad Panama hats.
Then there was Miss Charlotte; she was twenty-five, and tall and proud
and grand, but as good as she could be when she warn’t stirred up; but
when she was she had a look that would make you wilt in your tracks,
like her father. She was beautiful.
So was her sister, Miss Sophia, but it was a different kind. She was
gentle and sweet like a dove, and she was only twenty.
Each person had their own nigger to wait on them—Buck too. My nigger had
a monstrous easy time, because I warn’t used to having anybody do
anything for me, but Buck’s was on the jump most of the time.
This was all there was of the family now, but there used to be
more—three sons; they got killed; and Emmeline that died.
The old gentleman owned a lot of farms and over a hundred niggers.
Sometimes a stack of people would come there, horseback, from ten or
fifteen miles around, and stay five or six days, and have such
junketings round about and on the river, and dances and picnics in the
woods daytimes, and balls at the house nights. These people was mostly
kinfolks of the family. The men brought their guns with them. It was a
handsome lot of quality, I tell you.
There was another clan of aristocracy around there—five or six
families—mostly of the name of Shepherdson. They was as high-toned and
well born and rich and grand as the tribe of Grangerfords. The
Shepherdsons and Grangerfords used the same steamboat-landing, which was
about two miles above our house; so sometimes when I went up there with
a lot of our folks I used to see a lot of the Shepherdsons there on
their fine horses.
One day Buck and me was away out in the woods hunting, and heard a horse
coming. We was crossing the road. Buck says:
“Quick! Jump for the woods!”
We done it, and then peeped down the woods through the leaves. Pretty
soon a splendid young man came galloping down the road, setting his
horse easy and looking like a soldier. He had his gun across his pommel.
I had seen him before. It was young Harney Shepherdson. I heard Buck’s
gun go off at my ear, and Harney’s hat tumbled off from his head. He
grabbed his gun and rode straight to the place where we was hid. But we
didn’t wait. We started through the woods on a run. The woods warn’t
thick, so I looked over my shoulder to dodge the bullet, and twice I
seen Harney cover Buck with his gun; and then he rode away the way he
came—to get his hat, I reckon, but I couldn’t see. We never stopped
running till we got home. The old gentleman’s eyes blazed a minute—’twas
pleasure, mainly, I judged—then his face sort of smoothed down, and he
says, kind of gentle:
“I don’t like that shooting from behind a bush. Why didn’t you step into
the road, my boy?”
“The Shepherdsons don’t, father. They always take advantage.”
Miss Charlotte she held her head up like a queen while Buck was telling
his tale, and her nostrils spread and her eyes snapped. The two young
men looked dark, but never said nothing. Miss Sophia she turned pale,
but the color come back when she found the man warn’t hurt.
Soon as I could get Buck down by the corn-cribs under the trees by
ourselves, I says:
“Did you want to kill him, Buck?”
“Well, I bet I did.”
“What did he do to you?”
“Him? He never done nothing to me.”
“Well, then, what did you want to kill him for?”
“Why, nothing—only it’s on account of the feud.”
“What’s a feud?”
“Why, where was you raised? Don’t you know what a feud is?”
“Never heard of it before—tell me about it.”
“Well,” says Buck, “a feud is this way: A man has a quarrel with another
man, and kills him; then that other man’s brother kills _him_; then the
other brothers, on both sides, goes for one another; then the _cousins_
chip in—and by and by everybody’s killed off, and there ain’t no more
feud. But it’s kind of slow, and takes a long time.”
“Has this one been going on long, Buck?”
“Well, I should _reckon_! It started thirty year ago, or som’ers along
there. There was trouble ’bout something, and then a lawsuit to settle
it; and the suit went agin one of the men, and so he up and shot the man
that won the suit—which he would naturally do, of course. Anybody
would.”
“What was the trouble about, Buck?—land?”
“I reckon maybe—I don’t know.”
“Well, who done the shooting? Was it a Grangerford or a Shepherdson?”
“Laws, how do _I_ know? It was so long ago.”
“Don’t anybody know?”
“Oh, yes, pa knows, I reckon, and some of the other old people; but they
don’t know now what the row was about in the first place.”
“Has there been many killed, Buck?”
“Yes; right smart chance of funerals. But they don’t always kill. Pa’s
got a few buckshot in him; but he don’t mind it ’cuz he don’t weigh
much, anyway. Bob’s been carved up some with a bowie, and Tom’s been
hurt once or twice.”
“Has anybody been killed this year, Buck?”
“Yes, we got one and they got one. ’Bout three months ago my cousin Bud,
fourteen years old, was riding through the woods on t’other side of the
river, and didn’t have no weapon with him, which was blame’ foolishness,
and in a lonesome place he hears a horse a-coming behind him, and sees
old Baldy Shepherdson a-linkin’ after him with his gun in his hand and
his white hair a-flying in the wind; and ’stead of jumping off and
taking to the brush, Bud ’lowed he could outrun him; so they had it, nip
and tuck, for five mile or more, the old man a-gaining all the time; so
at last Bud seen it warn’t any use, so he stopped and faced around so as
to have the bullet-holes in front, you know, and the old man he rode up
and shot him down. But he didn’t get much chance to enjoy his luck, for
inside of a week our folks laid _him_ out.”
“I reckon that old man a coward, Buck.”
“I reckon he _warn’t_ a coward. Not by a blame’ sight. There ain’t a
coward amongst them Shepherdsons—not a one. And there ain’t no cowards
amongst the Grangerfords either. Why, that old man kep’ up his end in a
fight one day for half an hour against three Grangerfords, and come out
winner. They was all a-horseback; he lit off of his horse and got behind
a little woodpile, and kep’ his horse before him to stop the bullets;
but the Grangerfords stayed on their horses and capered around the old
man, and peppered away at him, and he peppered away at them. Him and his
horse both went home pretty leaky and crippled, but the Grangerfords had
to be _fetched_ home—and one of ’em was dead, and another died the next
day. No, sir; if a body’s out hunting for cowards he don’t want to fool
away any time amongst them Shepherdsons becuz they don’t breed any of
that _kind_.”
Next Sunday we all went to church, about three mile, everybody
a-horseback. The men took their guns along, so did Buck, and kept them
between their knees or stood them handy against the wall. The
Shepherdsons done the same. It was pretty ornery preaching—all about
brotherly love, and such-like tiresomeness; but everybody said it was a
good sermon, and they all talked it over going home, and had such a
powerful lot to say about faith and good works and free grace and
preforeordestination, and I don’t know what all, that it did seem to me
to be one of the roughest Sundays I had run across yet.
About an hour after dinner everybody was dozing around, some in their
chairs and some in their rooms, and it got to be pretty dull. Buck and a
dog was stretched out on the grass in the sun sound asleep. I went up to
our room, and judged I would take a nap myself. I found that sweet Miss
Sophia standing in her door, which was next to ours, and she took me in
her room and shut the door very soft, and asked me if I liked her, and I
said I did; and she asked me if I would do something for her and not
tell anybody, and I said I would. Then she said she’d forgot her
Testament, and left it in the seat at church between two other books,
and would I slip out quiet and go there and fetch it to her, and not say
nothing to nobody. I said I would. So I slid out and slipped off up the
road, and there warn’t anybody at the church, except maybe a hog or two,
for there warn’t any lock on the door, and hogs likes a puncheon floor
in summertime because it’s cool. If you notice, most folks don’t go to
church only when they’ve got to; but a hog is different.
Says I to myself, something’s up; it ain’t natural for a girl to be in
such a sweat about a Testament. So I give it a shake, and out drops a
little piece of paper with “_Half-past two_” wrote on it with a pencil.
I ransacked it, but couldn’t find anything else. I couldn’t make
anything out of that, so I put the paper in the book again, and when I
got home and upstairs there was Miss Sophia in her door waiting for me.
She pulled me in and shut the door; then she looked in the Testament
till she found the paper, and as soon as she read it she looked glad;
and before a body could think she grabbed me and gave me a squeeze, and
said I was the best boy in the world, and not to tell anybody. She was
mighty red in the face for a minute, and her eyes lighted up, and it
made her powerful pretty. I was a good deal astonished, but when I got
my breath I asked her what the paper was about, and she asked me if I
had read it, and I said no, and she asked me if I could read writing,
and I told her “no, only coarse-hand,” and then she said the paper
warn’t anything but a book-mark to keep her place, and I might go and
play now.
I went off down to the river, studying over this thing, and pretty soon
I noticed that my nigger was following along behind. When we was out of
sight of the house he looked back and around a second, and then comes
a-running and says:
“Mars Jawge,[6] if you’ll come down into de swamp I’ll show you a whole
stack o’ water-moccasins.”
Thinks I, that’s mighty curious; he said that yesterday. He oughter to
know a body don’t love water-moccasins enough to go around hunting for
them. What is he up to, anyway? So I says:
“All right; trot ahead.”
I followed a half a mile; then he struck out over the swamp, and waded
ankle-deep as much as another half-mile. We come to a little flat piece
of land which was dry and very thick with trees and bushes and vines,
and he says:
“You shove right in dah jist a few steps, Mars Jawge; Dah’s whah dey is.
I’s seed ’m befo’; I don’t k’yer to see ’em no mo’.”
Then he slopped right along and went away, and pretty soon the trees hid
him. I poked into the place a ways and come to a little open patch as
big as a bedroom all hung around with vines, and found a man lying there
asleep—and, by jings, it was my old Jim!
I waked him up, and I reckoned it was going to be a grand surprise to
him to see me again, but it warn’t. He nearly cried he was so glad, but
he warn’t surprised. Said he swum along behind me that night, and heard
me yell every time, but dasn’t answer, because he didn’t want nobody to
pick _him_ up and take him into slavery again. Says he:
“I got hurt a little, en couldn’t swim fas’, so I wuz a considerable
ways behine you towards de las’; when you landed I reck’ned I could
ketch up wid you on de lan’ ’dout havin’ to shout at you, but when I see
dat house I begin to go slow. I ’uz off too far to hear what dey say to
you—I wuz ’fraid o’ de dogs; but when it ’uz all quiet ag’in I knowed
you’s in de house, so I struck out for de woods to wait for day. Early
in de mawnin’ some er de niggers come along, gwyne to de fields, en dey
tuk me en showed me dis place, whah de dogs can’t track me on accounts
o’ de water, end dey brings me truck to eat every night, en tells me how
you’s a-gittin’ along.”
“Why didn’t you tell my Jack to fetch me here sooner, Jim?”
“Well, ’twarn’t no use to ’sturb you, Huck, tell we could do sumfn—but
we’s all right, now. I ben a buyin’ pots en pans en vittles, as I got a
chanst, en a-patchin’ up de raf’, nights, when——”
“_What_ raft, Jim?”
“Our ole raf’.”
“You mean to say our old raft warn’t smashed all to flinders?”
“No, she warn’t. She was tore up a good deal—one en’ of her was; but dey
warn’t no great harm done, on’y our traps was mos’ all los’. Ef we hadn’
dive’ so deep en swum so fur under water, en de night hadn’t ben so
dark, en we warn’t so sk’yerd, en ben sich punkin-heads, as de sayin’
is, we’d a seed de raf’. But it’s jis’ as well we didn’t, ’kase now
she’s all fixed up ag’in mos’ as good as new, en we’s got a new lot o’
stuff, in the place o’ what ’uz los’.”
“Why, how did you get hold of the raft again, Jim—did you catch her?”
“How I gwyne to ketch her en I out in de woods? No; some er de niggers
foun’ her ketched on a snag along heah in de ben’, en dey hid her in a
crick ’mongst de willows, en dey wuz so much jawin’ ’bout which un ’um
she b’long to de mos’ dat I come to heah ’bout it pooty soon, so I ups
en settles de trouble by tellin’ ’um she don’t b’long to none uv ’um,
but to you en me; en I ast ’m if dey gwyne to grab a young white
genlman’s propaty, en git a hid’n for it? Den I gin ’m ten cents apiece,
en dey ’uz mighty well satisfied, en wisht some mo’ raf’s ’ud come along
en make ’m rich ag’in. Dey’s mighty good to me, dese niggers is, en
whatever I wants ’m to do fur me I doan’ have to ast ’m twice, honey.
Dat Jack’s a good nigger, en pooty smart.”
“Yes, he is. He ain’t ever told me you was here; told me to come, and
he’d show me a lot of water-moccasins. If anything happens _he_ ain’t
mixed up in it. He can say he never seen us together, and it’ll be the
truth.”
I don’t want to talk much about the next day. I reckon I’ll cut it
pretty short. I waked up about dawn, and was a-going to turn over and go
to sleep again when I noticed how still it was—didn’t seem to be anybody
stirring. That warn’t usual. Next I noticed that Buck was up and gone.
Well, I gets up, a-wondering, and goes down-stairs—nobody around;
everything as still as a mouse. Just the same outside. Thinks I, what
does it mean? Down by the woodpile I comes across my Jack and says:
“What’s it all about?”
Says he:
“Don’t you know, Mars Jawge?”
“No,” says I, “I don’t.”
“Well, den, Miss Sophia’s run off! ’deed she has. She run off in de
night some time—nobody don’t know jis when; run off to get married to
dat young Harney Shepherdson, you know—leastways, so dey ’spec. De
fambly foun’ it out ’bout half an hour ago—maybe a little mo’—en’ I
_tell_ you dey warn’t no time los’. Sich another hurryin’ up guns en
hosses _you_ never see! De women folks has gone for to stir up de
relations, en ole Mars Saul en de boys tuck dey guns en rode up de river
road for to try to ketch dat young man en kill him ’fo’ he kin git
acrost de river wid Miss Sophia. I reck’n dey’s gwyne to be mighty rough
times.”
“Buck went off ’thout waking me up.”
“Well, I reck’n he _did_! Dey warn’t gwyne to mix you up in it. Mars
Buck loaded up his gun en ’lowed he’s gwyne to fetch home a Shepherdson
or bust. Well, dey’ll be plenty un ’m dah, I reck’n, en you bet you
he’ll fetch one ef he gits a chanst.”
I took up the river road as hard as I could put. By and by I begin to
hear guns a good ways off. When I came into sight of the log store and
the woodpile where the steamboats lands I worked along under the trees
and brush till I got to a good place, and then I clumb up into the forks
of a cottonwood that was out of reach, and watched. There was a
wood-rank four foot high a little ways in front of the tree, and first I
was going to hide behind that; but maybe it was luckier I didn’t.
There was four or five men cavorting around on their horses in the open
place before the log store, cussing and yelling, and trying to get at a
couple of young chaps that was behind the wood-rank alongside of the
steamboat-landing—but they couldn’t come it. Every time one of them
showed himself on the river side of the woodpile he got shot at. The two
boys was squatting back to back behind the pile, so they could watch
both ways.
By and by the men stopped cavorting around and yelling. They started
riding towards the store; then up gets one of the boys, draws a steady
bead over the wood-rank, and drops one of them out of his saddle. All
the men jumped off of their horses and grabbed the hurt one and started
to carry him to the store; and that minute the two boys started on the
run. They got half-way to the tree I was in before the men noticed. Then
the men see them, and jumped on their horses and took out after them.
They gained on the boys, but it didn’t do no good, the boys had too good
a start; they got to the woodpile that was in front of my tree, and
slipped in behind it, and so they had the bulge on the men again. One of
the boys was Buck, and the other was a slim young chap about nineteen
years old.
The men ripped around awhile, and then rode away. As soon as they was
out of sight I sung out to Buck and told him. He didn’t know what to
make of my voice coming out of the tree at first. He was awful
surprised. He told me to watch out sharp and let him know when the men
come in sight again; said they was up to some devilment or
other—wouldn’t be gone long. I wished I was out of that tree, but I
dasn’t come down. Buck begun to cry and rip, and ’lowed that him and his
cousin Joe (that was the other young chap) would make up for this day
yet. He said his father and his two brothers was killed, and two or
three of the enemy. Said the Shepherdsons laid for them in ambush. Buck
said his father and brothers ought to waited for their relations—the
Shepherdsons was too strong for them. I asked him what was become of
young Harney and Miss Sophia. He said they’d got across the river and
was safe. I was glad of that; but the way Buck did take on because he
didn’t manage to kill Harney that day he shot at him—I hain’t never
heard anything like it.
All of a sudden, bang! bang! bang! goes three or four guns—the men had
slipped around through the woods and come in from behind without their
horses! The boys jumped for the river—both of them hurt—and as they swum
down the current the men run along the bank shooting at them and singing
out, “Kill them, kill them!” It made me so sick I most fell out of the
tree. I ain’t a-going to tell _all_ that happened—it would make me sick
again if I was to do that. I wished I hadn’t ever come ashore that night
to see such things. I ain’t ever going to get shut of them—lots of times
I dream about them.
I stayed in the tree till it begun to get dark, afraid to come down.
Sometimes I heard guns away off in the woods; and twice I seen little
gangs of men gallop past the log store with guns; so I reckoned the
trouble was still a-going on. I was mighty downhearted; so I made up my
mind I wouldn’t ever go anear that house again, because I reckoned I was
to blame, somehow. I judged that that piece of paper meant that Miss
Sophia was to meet Harney some-wheres at half-past two, and run off; and
I judged I ought to told her father about that paper and the curious way
she acted, and then maybe he would ’a’ locked her up, and this awful
mess wouldn’t ever happened.
When I got down out of the tree I crept along down the river bank a
piece, and found the two bodies laying in the edge of the water, and
tugged at them till I got them ashore; then I covered up their faces,
and got away as quick as I could. I cried a little when I was covering
up Buck’s face, for he was mighty good to me.
It was just dark now. I never went near the house, but struck through
the woods and made for the swamp. Jim warn’t on his island, so I tramped
off in a hurry for the crick, and crowded through the willows, red-hot
to jump aboard and get out of that awful country. The raft was gone! My
souls, but I was scared! I couldn’t get my breath for most a minute.
Then I raised a yell. A voice not twenty-five foot from me, says:
“Good lan’! is dat you, honey? Doan’ make no noise.”
It was Jim’s voice—nothing ever sounded so good before. I run along the
bank a piece and got aboard, and Jim he grabbed me and hugged me, he was
so glad to see me. He says:
“Laws bless you, chile, I ’uz right down sho’ you’s dead ag’in. Jack’s
been heah; he say he reck’n you’s been shot, kase you didn’t come home
no mo’; so I’s jes’ dis minute a-startin’ er raf’ down towards de mouf
er de crick, so’s to be all ready for to shove out en leave soon as Jack
comes ag’in en tells me for certain you _is_ dead. Lawdy, I’s mighty
glad to git you back ag’in, honey.”
I says:
“All right—that’s mighty good; they won’t find me, and they’ll think
I’ve been killed, and floated down the river—there’s something up there
that’ll help them think so—so don’t you lose no time, Jim, but just
shove off for the big water as fast as ever you can.”
I never felt easy till the raft was two mile below there and out in the
middle of the Mississippi. Then we hung up our signal lantern, and
judged that we was free and safe once more. I hadn’t had a bite to eat
since yesterday, so Jim he got out some corn-dodgers and buttermilk, and
pork and cabbage and greens—there ain’t nothing in the world so good
when it’s cooked right—and whilst I eat my supper we talked and had a
good time. I was powerful glad to get away from the feuds, and so was
Jim to get away from the swamp. We said there warn’t no home like a
raft, after all. Other places do seem so cramped up and smothery, but a
raft don’t. You feel mighty free and easy and comfortable on a raft.
_FROM_ “A CONNECTICUT YANKEE IN KING ARTHUR’S COURT” (1886–7)
MEETING THE YANKEE
It was in Warwick Castle that I came across the curious stranger whom I
am going to talk about. He attracted me by three things: his candid
simplicity, his marvelous familiarity with ancient armor, and the
restfulness of his company—for he did all the talking. We fell together,
as modest people will, in the tail of the herd that was being shown
through, and he at once began to say things which interested me. As he
talked along, softly, pleasantly, flowingly, he seemed to drift away
imperceptibly out of this world and time, and into some remote era and
old forgotten country; and so he gradually wove such a spell about me
that I seemed to move among the specters and shadows and dust and mold
of a gray antiquity, holding speech with a relic of it! Exactly as I
would speak of my nearest personal friends or enemies, or my most
familiar neighbors, he spoke of Sir Bedivere, Sir Bors de Ganis, Sir
Launcelot of the Lake, Sir Galahad, and all the other great names of the
Table Round—and how old, old, unspeakably old and faded and dry and
musty and ancient he came to look as he went on! Presently he turned to
me and said, just as one might speak of the weather, or any other common
matter—
“You know about transmigration of souls; do you know about transposition
of epochs—and bodies?”
I said I had not heard of it. He was so little interested—just as when
people speak of the weather—that he did not notice whether I made him
any answer or not. There was half a moment of silence, immediately
interrupted by the droning voice of the salaried cicerone:
“Ancient hauberk, date of the sixth century, time of King Arthur and the
Round Table; said to have belonged to the knight Sir Sagramor le
Desirous; observe the round hole through the chain-mail in the left
breast; can’t be accounted for; supposed to have been done with a bullet
since invention of firearms—perhaps maliciously by Cromwell’s soldiers.”
My acquaintance smiled—not a modern smile, but one that must have gone
out of general use many, many centuries ago—and muttered, apparently to
himself:
“Wit ye well, _I saw it done_.” Then, after a pause, added: “I did it
myself.”
By the time I had recovered from the electric surprise of this remark,
he was gone.
All that evening I sat by my fire at the Warwick Arms, steeped in a
dream of the olden time, while the rain beat upon the windows, and the
wind roared about the eaves and corners. From time to time I dipped into
old Sir Thomas Malory’s enchanting book, and fed at its rich feast of
prodigies and adventures, breathed in the fragrance of its obsolete
names, and dreamed again.
As I laid the book down there was a knock at the door, and my stranger
came in. I gave him a pipe and a chair, and made him welcome. I also
comforted him with a hot Scotch whisky; gave him another one; then still
another—hoping always for his story. After a fourth persuader, he
drifted into it himself, in a quite simple and natural way:
THE STRANGER’S HISTORY
I am an American. I was born and reared in Hartford, in the State of
Connecticut—anyway, just over the river, in the country. So I am a
Yankee of the Yankees—and practical, yes, and nearly barren of
sentiment, I suppose—or poetry, in other words. My father was a
blacksmith, my uncle was a horse doctor, and I was both, along at first.
Then I went over to the great arms factory and learned my real trade;
learned all there was to it; learned to make everything: guns,
revolvers, cannon, boilers, engines, all sorts of labor-saving
machinery. Why, I could make anything a body wanted—anything in the
world, it didn’t make any difference what; and if there wasn’t any quick
new-fangled way to make a thing, I could invent one—and do it as easy as
rolling off a log. I became head superintendent; had a couple of
thousand men under me.
Well, a man like that is a man that is full of fight—that goes without
saying. With a couple of thousand men under one, one has plenty of that
sort of amusement. I had, anyway. At last I met my match, and I got my
dose. It was during a misunderstanding conducted with crowbars with a
fellow we used to call Hercules. He laid me out with a crusher alongside
the head that made everything crack, and seemed to spring every joint in
my skull and make it overlap its neighbor. Then the world went out in
darkness, and I didn’t feel anything more, and didn’t know anything at
all—at least for a while.
When I came to again, I was sitting under an oak tree, on the grass,
with a whole beautiful and broad country landscape all to myself—nearly.
Not entirely; for there was a fellow on a horse, looking down at me—a
fellow fresh out of a picture-book. He was in old-time iron armor from
head to heel, with a helmet on his head the shape of a nail-keg with
slits in it; and he had a shield, and a sword, and a prodigious spear;
and his horse had armor on, too, and a steel horn projecting from his
forehead, and gorgeous red and green silk trappings that hung down all
around him like a bedquilt, nearly to the ground.
“Fair sir, will ye just?” said this fellow.
“Will I which?”
“Will ye try a passage of arms for land or lady or for——”
“What are you giving me?” I said. “Get along back to your circus, or
I’ll report you.”
Now what does this man do but fall back a couple of hundred yards and
then come rushing at me as hard as he could tear, with his nail-keg bent
down nearly to his horse’s neck and his long spear pointed straight
ahead. I saw he meant business, so I was up the tree when he arrived.
He allowed that I was his property, the captive of his spear. There was
argument on his side—and the bulk of the advantage—so I judged it best
to humor him. We fixed up an agreement whereby I was to go with him and
he was not to hurt me. I came down, and we started away, I walking by
the side of his horse. We marched comfortably along, through glades and
over brooks which I could not remember to have seen before—which puzzled
me and made me wonder—and yet we did not come to any circus or sign of a
circus. So I gave up the idea of a circus, and concluded he was from an
asylum. But we never came to an asylum—so I was up a stump, as you may
say. I asked him how far we were from Hartford. He said he had never
heard of the place; which I took to be a lie, but allowed it to go at
that. At the end of an hour we saw a far-away town sleeping in a valley
by a winding river; and beyond it on a hill, a vast gray fortress, with
towers and turrets, the first I had ever seen out of a picture.
“Bridgeport,” said I, pointing.
“Camelot,” said he.
My stranger had been showing signs of sleepiness. He caught himself
nodding, now, and smiled one of those pathetic, obsolete smiles of his,
and said:
“I find I can’t go on; but come with me, I’ve got it all written out,
and you can read it, if you like.”
In his chamber, he said: “First, I kept a journal; then by and by, after
years, I took the journal and turned it into a book. How long ago that
was!”
He handed me his manuscript, and pointed out the place where I should
begin:
“Begin here—I’ve already told you what goes before.” He was steeped in
drowsiness by this time. As I went out at his door I heard him murmur
sleepily: “Give you good den, fair sir.”
I sat down by my fire and examined my treasure. The first part of it—the
great bulk of it—was parchment, and yellow with age. I scanned a leaf
particularly and saw that it was a palimpsest. Under the old dim writing
of the Yankee historian appeared traces of a penmanship which was older
and dimmer still—Latin words and sentences: fragments from old monkish
legends, evidently. I turned to the place indicated by my stranger and
began to read.
THE ROUND TABLE[7]
In the middle of this groined and vaulted public square was an oaken
table which was called the Table Round. It was as large as a circus
ring; and around it sat a great company of men dressed in such various
and splendid colors that it hurt one’s eyes to look at them. They wore
their plumed hats, right along, except that whenever one addressed
himself directly to the king, he lifted his hat a trifle just as he was
beginning his remark.
Mainly they were drinking—from entire ox horns; but a few were still
munching bread or gnawing beef bones. There was about an average of two
dogs to one man; and these sat in expectant attitudes till a spent bone
was flung to them, and then they went for it by brigades and divisions,
with a rush, and there ensued a fight which filled the prospect with a
tumultuous chaos of plunging heads and bodies and flashing tails, and
the storm of howlings and barkings deafened all speech for the time; but
that was no matter, for the dog-fight was always a bigger interest
anyway; the men rose, sometimes, to observe it the better and bet on it,
and the ladies and the musicians stretched themselves out over their
balusters with the same object; and all broke into delighted
ejaculation, from time to time. In the end, the winning dog stretched
himself out comfortably with his bone between his paws, and proceeded to
growl over it, and gnaw it, and grease the floor with it, just as fifty
others were already doing; and the rest of the court resumed their
previous industries and entertainments.
As a rule, the speech and behavior of these people were gracious and
courtly; and I noticed that they were good and serious listeners when
anybody was telling anything—I mean in a dog-fightless interval. And
plainly, too, they were a childlike and innocent lot; telling lies of
the stateliest pattern with a most gentle and winning naiveté, and ready
and willing to listen to anybody else’s lie, and believe it, too. It was
hard to associate them with anything cruel or dreadful; and yet they
dealt in tales of blood and suffering with a guileless relish that made
me almost forget to shudder.
Mainly the Round Table talk was monologues—narrative accounts of the
adventures in which these prisoners were captured and their friends and
backers killed and stripped of their steeds and armor. As a general
thing—as far as I could make out—these murderous adventures were not
forays undertaken to avenge injuries, nor to settle old disputes or
sudden fallings out; no, as a rule they were simple duels between
strangers—duels between people who had never even been introduced to
each other, and between whom existed no cause of offense whatever. Many
a time I had seen a couple of boys, strangers, meet by chance, and say
simultaneously, “I can lick you,” and go at it on the spot; but I had
always imagined until now that that sort of thing belonged to children
only, and was a sign and mark of childhood; but here were these big
boobies sticking to it and taking pride in it clear up into full age,
and beyond. Yet there was something very engaging about these great
simple-hearted creatures, something attractive and lovable. There did
not seem to be brains enough in the entire nursery, so to speak, to bait
a fish-hook with; but you didn’t seem to mind that; after a little, you
soon saw that brains were not needed in a society like that, and indeed
would have marred it, spoiled its symmetry—perhaps rendered its
existence impossible.
THE YANKEE REFLECTS
Why, dear me, _any_ kind of royalty, howsoever modified, _any_ kind of
aristocracy, howsoever pruned, is rightly an insult; but if you are born
and brought up under that sort of arrangement you probably never find it
out for yourself, and don’t believe it when somebody else tells you. It
is enough to make a body ashamed of his race to think of the sort of
froth that has always occupied its thrones without shadow of right or
reason, and the seventh-rate people that have always figured as its
aristocracies—a company of monarchs and nobles who, as a rule, would
have achieved only poverty and obscurity if left, like their betters, to
their own exertions.
PERFECT GOVERNMENT
The despotism of heaven is the one absolutely perfect government. An
earthly despotism would be the absolutely perfect earthly government, if
the conditions were the same, namely, the despot the perfectest
individual of the human race, and his lease of life perpetual. But as a
perishable perfect man must die, and leave his despotism in the hands of
an imperfect successor, an earthly despotism is not merely a bad form of
government, it is the worst form that is possible.
MAIDS IN DISTRESS
There never was such a country for wandering liars; and they were of
both sexes. Hardly a month went by without one of these tramps arriving;
and generally loaded with a tale about some princess or other wanting
help to get her out of some far-away castle where she was held in
captivity by a lawless scoundrel, usually a giant. Now you would think
that the first thing the king would do after listening to such a
novelette from an entire stranger, would be to ask for credentials—yes,
and a pointer or two as to locality of castle, best route to it, and so
on. But nobody ever thought of so simple and common-sense a thing as
that. No, everybody swallowed these people’s lies whole, and never asked
a question of any sort or about anything. Well, one day when I was not
around, one of these people came along—it was a she one, this time—and
told a tale of the usual pattern. Her mistress was a captive in a vast
and gloomy castle, along with forty-four other young and beautiful
girls, pretty much all of them princesses; they had been languishing in
that cruel captivity for twenty-six years; the masters of the castle
were three stupendous brothers, each with four arms and one eye—the eye
in the center of the forehead, and as big as a fruit. Sort of fruit not
mentioned; their usual slovenliness in statistics.
Would you believe it? The king and the whole Round Table were in
raptures over this preposterous opportunity for adventure. Every knight
of the Table jumped for the chance, and begged for it; but to their
vexation and chagrin the king conferred it upon me, who had not asked
for it at all.
A KNIGHT’S AVERAGE
If knights errant were to be believed, not all castles were desirable
places to seek hospitality in. As a matter of fact, knights errant were
_not_ persons to be believed—that is, measured by modern standards of
veracity; yet, measured by the standards of their own time, and scaled
accordingly, you got the truth. It was very simple: you discounted a
statement ninety-seven per cent.; the rest was fact.
SIXTH CENTURY KINGDOMS
“Kings” and “Kingdoms” were as thick in Britain as they had been in
little Palestine in Joshua’s time, when people had to sleep with their
knees pulled up because they couldn’t stretch out without a passport.
NATURE
Training—training is everything; training is all there is _to_ a person.
We speak of nature; what we call by that misleading name is heredity and
training. We have no thoughts of our own, no opinions of our own; they
are transmitted to us, trained into us. All that is original in us, and
therefore fairly creditable or discreditable to us, can be covered up
and hidden by the point of a cambric needle, all the rest being atoms
contributed by, and inherited from, a procession of ancestors that
stretches back a billion years to the Adam-clam or grasshopper or monkey
from whom our race has been so tediously and ostentatiously and
unprofitably developed.
CONSCIENCE
If I had the remaking of man, he wouldn’t have any conscience. It is one
of the most disagreeable things connected with a person; and although it
certainly does a great deal of good, it cannot be said to pay, in the
long run; it would be much better to have less good and more comfort.
Still, this is only my opinion, and I am only one man; others, with less
experience, may think differently. They have a right to their views. I
only stand to this; I have noticed my conscience for many years, and I
know it is more trouble and bother to me than anything else I started
with. I suppose that in the beginning I prized it, because we prize
anything that is ours; and yet how foolish it was to think so. If we
look at it in another way we see how absurd it is: if I had an anvil in
me would I prize it? Of course not. And yet when you come to think,
there is no real difference between a conscience and an anvil—I mean for
comfort. I have noticed it a thousand times. And you could dissolve an
anvil with acids, when you couldn’t stand it any longer; but there isn’t
any way that you can work off a conscience—at least, so it will stay
worked off; not that I know of, anyway.
THE GERMAN TONGUE[8]
I was gradually coming to have a mysterious and shuddery reverence for
this girl; nowadays whenever she pulled out from the station and got her
train fairly started on one of those horizonless transcontinental
sentences of hers, it was borne in upon me that I was standing in the
awful presence of the Mother of the German Language. I was so impressed
with this, that sometimes when she began to empty one of these sentences
on me I unconsciously took the very attitude of reverence, and stood
uncovered; and if words had been water, I had been drowned, sure. She
had exactly the German way; whatever was in her mind to be delivered,
whether a mere remark, or a sermon, or a cyclopædia, or the history of a
war, she would get it into a single sentence or die. Whenever the
literary German dives into a sentence, that is the last you are going to
see of him till he emerges on the other side of his Atlantic with his
verb in his mouth.
GOVERNMENT BY THE PEOPLE
There is a phrase which has grown so common in the world’s mouth that it
has come to seem to have sense and meaning—the sense and meaning implied
when it is used; that is the phrase which refers to this or that or the
other nation as possibly being “capable of self-government”; and the
implied sense of it is, that there has been a nation somewhere, some
time or other which _wasn’t_ capable of it—wasn’t as able to govern
itself as some self-appointed specialists were, or would be, to govern
it. The master minds of all nations, in all ages, have sprung in
affluent multitude from the mass of the nation, and from the mass of the
nation only—not from its privileged classes; and so, no matter what the
nation’s intellectual grade was, whether high or low, the bulk of its
ability was in the long ranks of its nameless and its poor, and so it
never saw the day that it had not the material in abundance whereby to
govern itself. Which is to assert an always self-proven fact; that even
the best governed and most free and most enlightened monarchy is still
behind the best condition attainable by its people; and that the same is
true of kindred governments of lower grades, all the way down to the
lowest.
PROPHECY
A prophet doesn’t have to have any brains. They are good to have, of
course, for the ordinary exigencies of life, but they are of no use in
professional work. It is the restfullest vocation there is. When the
spirit of prophecy comes upon you, you merely take your intellect and
lay it off in a cool place for a rest, and unship your jaw and leave it
alone; it will work itself: the result is prophecy.
HARD WORK
Words realize nothing, vivify nothing to you, unless you have suffered
in your own person the thing which the words try to describe. There are
wise people who talk ever so knowingly and complacently about “the
working classes,” and satisfy themselves that a day’s hard intellectual
work is very much harder than a day’s hard manual toil, and is
righteously entitled to much bigger pay. Why, they really think that,
you know, because they know all about the one, but haven’t tried the
other. But I know all about both; and so far as I am concerned, there
isn’t money enough in the universe to hire me to swing a pick-axe thirty
days, but I will do the hardest kind of intellectual work for just as
near nothing as you can cipher it down—and I will be satisfied, too.
STILL HOPE
Yes, there is plenty good enough material for a republic in the most
degraded people that ever existed—even the Russians; plenty of manhood
in them—even in the Germans—if one could but force it out of its timid
and suspicious privacy, to overthrow and trample in the mud any throne
that ever was set up and any nobility that ever supported it.
THE HUMAN RACE
Toward the shaven monk who trudged along with his cowl tilted back and
the sweat washing down his fat jowls, the coal-burner was deeply
reverent; to the gentleman he was abject; with the small farmer and the
free mechanic he was cordial and gossipy; and when a slave passed by
with a countenance respectfully lowered, this chap’s nose was in the
air—he couldn’t even see him. Well, there are times when one would like
to hang the whole human race and finish the farce.
THE KING IN SLAVERY[9]
We had a rough time for a month, tramping to and fro in the earth, and
suffering. And what Englishman was the most interested in the slavery
question by that time? His grace, the king! Yes; from being the most
indifferent, he was become the most interested. He was become the
bitterest hater of the institution I had ever heard talk....
Now and then we had an adventure. One night we were overtaken by a
snow-storm while still a mile from the village we were making for.
Almost instantly we were shut up as in a fog, the driving snow was so
thick. You couldn’t see a thing, and we were soon lost. The slave-driver
lashed us desperately, for he saw ruin before him, but his lashings only
made matters worse, for they drove us further from the road and from
likelihood of succor. So we had to stop at last and slump down in the
snow where we were. The storm continued until toward midnight, then
ceased. By this time two of our feebler men and three of our women were
dead, and others past moving and threatened with death. Our master was
nearly beside himself. He stirred up the living and made us stand, jump,
slap ourselves, to restore our circulation, and he helped as well as he
could with his whip.
Now came a diversion. We heard shrieks and yells, and soon a woman came
running and crying; and seeing our group, she flung herself into our
midst and begged for protection. A mob of people came tearing after her,
some with torches, and they said she was a witch who had caused several
cows to die by a strange disease, and practiced her arts by help of a
devil in the form of a black cat. This poor woman had been stoned until
she hardly looked human, she was so battered and bloody. The mob wanted
to burn her.
Well, now, what do you suppose our master did? When we closed around
this poor creature to shelter her, he saw his chance. He said, burn her
here, or they shouldn’t have her at all. Imagine that! They were
willing. They fastened her to a post; they brought wood and piled it
about her; they applied the torch, while she shrieked and pleaded and
strained her two young daughters to her breast; and our brute, with a
heart solely for business, lashed us into position about the stake and
warmed us into life and commercial value by the same fire which took
away the innocent life of that poor harmless mother. That was the sort
of master we had. I took _his_ number. That snow-storm cost him nine of
his flock; and he was more brutal to us than ever, after that, for many
days together, he was so enraged over his loss.
_FROM_ “RAMBLING NOTES OF AN IDLE EXCURSION” (1877)
WHAT WE SAW IN BERMUDA
We saw no bugs or reptiles to speak of, and so I was thinking of saying
in print in a general way, that there were none at all; but one night
after I had gone to bed, the Reverend came into my room carrying
something, and asked, “Is this your boot?” I said it was, and he said he
had met a spider going off with it. Next morning he stated that just at
dawn the same spider raised his window and was coming in to get his
shirt, but saw him and fled.
I inquired, “Did he get the shirt?”
“No.”
“How did you know it was a shirt he was after?”
“I could see it in his eyes.”
We inquired around, but could hear of no Bermudian spider capable of
doing these things. Citizens said that their largest spiders could not
more than spread their legs over an ordinary saucer, and that they had
always been considered honest. Here was testimony of a clergyman against
the testimony of mere worldlings—interested ones, too. On the whole, I
judged it best to lock up my things.
Here and there on the country roads we found lemon, papaw, orange, lime,
and fig-trees; also several sorts of palms, among them the cocoa, the
date, and the palmetto. We saw some bamboos forty feet high, with stems
as thick as a man’s arm. Jungles of the mangrove-tree stood up out of
swamps, propped on their interlacing roots, as upon a tangle of stilts.
In dryer places the noble tamarind sent down its grateful cloud of
shade. Here and there the blossomy tamarisk adorned the roadside. There
was a curious gnarled and twisted black tree, without a single leaf on
it. It might have passed itself off for a dead apple tree but for the
fact that it had a star-like, red-hot flower sprinkled sparsely over its
person. It had the scattery red glow that a constellation might have
when glimpsed through smoked glass....
We saw a tree that bears grapes, and just as calmly and unostentatiously
as a vine would do it. We saw an india-rubber-tree, but out of season,
possibly, so there were no shoes on it, nor suspenders, nor anything
that a person would properly expect to find there. This gave it an
impressively fraudulent look. There was exactly one mahogany tree on the
island. I know this to be reliable, because I saw a man who said he had
counted it many a time and could not be mistaken. He was a man with a
harelip and a pure heart, and everybody said he was as true as steel.
Such men are all too few.
_FROM_ “PUDD’NHEAD WILSON’S CALENDAR” (1892–3)
Tell the truth or trump—but get the trick.
Adam was but human—this explains it all. He did not want the apple for
the apple’s sake, he wanted it only because it was forbidden. The
mistake was in not forbidding the serpent. Then he would have eaten the
serpent.
Whosoever has lived long enough to find out what life is, knows how deep
a debt of gratitude we owe to Adam, the first great benefactor of our
race. He brought death into the world.
Adam and Eve had many advantages, but the principal one was, that they
escaped teething.
There is this trouble about special providences—namely, there is so
often a doubt as to which party was intended to be the beneficiary. In
the case of the children, the bears, and the prophet, the bears got more
real satisfaction out of the episode than the prophet did, because they
got the children.
Training is everything. The peach was once a bitter almond; cauliflower
is nothing but cabbage with a college education.
Remarks of Dr. Baldwin’s, concerning upstarts: We don’t care to eat
toadstools that think they are truffles.
Let us endeavor so to live that when we come to die even the undertaker
will be sorry.
Habit is habit, and not to be flung out of the window by any man, but
coaxed down-stairs a step at a time.
One of the most striking differences between a cat and a lie is that a
cat has only nine lives.
The holy passion of Friendship is of so sweet and steady and loyal and
enduring a nature that it will last through a whole lifetime, if not
asked to lend money.
Consider well the proportions of things. It is better to be a young
junebug than an old bird of paradise.
Why is it that we rejoice at birth and grieve at a funeral? It is
because we are not the person involved.
It is easy to find fault, if one has that disposition. There was once a
man who, not being able to find any other fault with his coal,
complained that there were too many prehistoric toads in it.
All say, “How hard it is that we have to die”—a strange complaint to
come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
When angry, count four; when very angry, swear.
There are three infallible ways of pleasing an author, and the three
form a rising scale of compliment: 1, to tell him you have read one of
his books; 2, to tell him you have read all of his books; 3, to ask him
to let you read the manuscript of his forthcoming book. No. 1 admits you
to his respect; No. 2 admits you to his admiration; No. 3 carries you
clear into his heart.
As to the Adjective: when in doubt, strike it out.
Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear—not absence of fear.
Except a creature be part coward it is not a compliment to say it is
brave; it is merely a loose misapplication of the word. Consider the
flea!—incomparably the bravest of all the creatures of God, if ignorance
of fear were courage. Whether you are asleep or awake he will attack
you, caring nothing for the fact that in bulk and strength you are to
him as are the massed armies of the earth to a sucking child; he lives
both day and night and all days and nights in the very lap of peril and
the immediate presence of death, and yet is no more afraid than is the
man who walks the streets of a city that was threatened by an earthquake
ten centuries before. When we speak of Clive, Nelson and Putman as men
who “didn’t know what fear was,” we ought always to add the flea—and put
him at the head of the procession.
When I reflect upon the number of disagreeable people who I know have
gone to a better world, I am moved to lead a different life.
October. This is one of the peculiarly dangerous months to speculate in
stocks in. The others are July, January, September, April, November,
May, March, June, December, August, and February.
The true Southern watermelon is a boon apart, and not to be mentioned
with commoner things. It is chief of this world’s luxuries, king by the
grace of God over all the fruits of the earth. When one has tasted it,
he knows what the angels eat. It was not a southern watermelon that Eve
took: we know it because she repented.
Nothing so needs reforming as other people’s habits.
Behold, the fool saith, “Put not all thine eggs in the one basket”—which
is but a manner of saying, “Scatter your money and your attention”; but
the wise man saith, “Put all your eggs in the one basket and—_watch that
basket_.”
If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous, he will not bite
you. This is the principal difference between a dog and a man.
We know all about the habits of the ant, we know all about the habits of
the bee, but we know nothing at all about the habits of the oyster. It
seems almost certain that we have been choosing the wrong time for
studying the oyster.
Even popularity can be overdone. In Rome, along at first, you are full
of regrets that Michelangelo died; but by and by you only regret that
you didn’t see him do it.
_July 4._ Statistics show that we lose more fools on this day than on
all the other days of the year put together. This proves, by the number
left in stock, that one Fourth of July per year is now inadequate, the
country has grown so.
Thanksgiving Day. Let all give humble, hearty, and sincere thanks, now,
but the turkeys. In the island of Fiji they do not use turkeys; they use
plumbers. It does not become you and me to sneer at Fiji.
Few things are harder to put up with than the annoyance of a good
example.
It were not best that we should all think alike; it is difference of
opinion that makes horse races.
Even the clearest and most perfect circumstantial evidence is likely to
be at fault, after all, and therefore ought to be received with great
caution. Take the case of any pencil, sharpened by any woman: if you
have witnesses, you will find she did it with a knife; but if you take
simply the aspect of the pencil, you will say she did it with her teeth.
_April 1._ This the day upon which we are reminded of what we are on the
other three hundred and sixty-four.
It is often the case that the man who can’t tell a lie thinks he is the
best judge of one.
October 12, the _Discovery_. It was wonderful to find America, but it
would have been more wonderful to miss it.
_FROM_ “THE PRIVATE HISTORY OF A CAMPAIGN THAT FAILED” (1885)
THE MARION RANGERS
You have heard from a great many people who did something in the war; is
it not fair and right that you listen a little moment to one who started
out to do something in it, but didn’t? Thousands entered the war, got
just a taste of it, and then stepped out again permanently....
In that summer—of 1861—the first wash of the wave of war broke upon the
shores of Missouri. Our state was invaded by the Union forces. They took
possession of St. Louis, Jefferson Barracks, and some other points. The
Governor, Calib Jackson, issued his proclamation calling out fifty
thousand militia to repel the invader.
I was visiting in the small town where my boyhood had been
spent—Hannibal, Marion County. Several of us got together in a secret
place by night and formed ourselves into a military company. One Tom
Lyman, a young fellow of a good deal of spirit but of no military
experience, was made captain; I was made second lieutenant. We had no
first lieutenant; I do not know why; it was long ago. There were fifteen
of us. By the advice of an innocent connected with the organization we
called ourselves the Marion Rangers. I do not remember that any one
found fault with the name. I did not; I thought it sounded quite well.
The young fellow who proposed this title was perhaps a fair sample of
the kind of stuff we were made of. He was young, ignorant, good-natured,
well-meaning, trivial, full of romance, and given to reading chivalric
novels and singing forlorn love ditties. He had some pathetic little
nickel-plated aristocratic instincts, and detested his name, which was
Dunlap; detested it partly because it was nearly as common in that
region as Smith, but mainly because it had a plebeian sound to his ear.
So he tried to ennoble it by writing it in this way: _d’Unlap_. That
contented his eye, but left his ear unsatisfied, for people gave the new
name the same old pronunciation—emphasis on the front end of it. He then
did the bravest thing that can be imagined—a thing to make one shiver
when one remembers how the world is given to resenting shams and
affectations; he began to write his name so: _d’Un Lap_. And he waited
patiently through the long storm of mud that was flung at this work of
art, and he had his reward at last; for he lived to see that name
accepted, and the emphasis put where he wanted it by people who had
known him all his life, and to whom the tribe of Dunlaps had been as
familiar as the rain and sunshine for forty years. So sure of victory at
last is the courage that can wait. He said he had found, by consulting
some ancient French chronicles, that the name was rightly and originally
written d’Un Lap; and said that if it were translated into English it
would mean Peterson: _Lap_, Latin or Greek, he said, for stone or rock,
same as the French _pierre_, that is to say Peter; _d’_ of or from;
_un_, a or one; hence, d’Un Lap, of or from a stone or a Peter; that is
to say, one who is the son of a stone, the son of a Peter—Peterson. Our
militia company were not learned, and the explanation confused them; so
they called him Peterson Dunlap. He proved useful to us in his way; he
named our camps for us, and he generally struck a name that was “no
slouch,” as the boys said.
That is one sample of us. Another was Ed Stevens, son of the town
jeweler—trim built, handsome, graceful, neat as a cat; bright, educated,
but given over entirely to fun. There was nothing serious in life to
him. As far as he was concerned, this military expedition of ours was
simply a holiday. I should say that about half of us looked upon it in
the same way; not consciously perhaps, but unconsciously. We did not
think; we were not capable of it. As for myself, I was full of
unreasoning joy to be done with turning out of bed at midnight and four
in the morning for a while; grateful to have a change, new scenes, new
occupations, a new interest. In my thoughts that was as far as I went; I
did not go into the details; as a rule, one doesn’t at twenty-four.
Another sample was Smith, the blacksmith’s apprentice. This vast donkey
had some pluck, of a slow and sluggish nature, but a soft heart; at one
time he would knock a horse down for some impropriety, and at another he
would get homesick and cry. However, he had one ultimate credit to his
account which some of us hadn’t; he stuck to the war, and was killed in
battle at last.
Jo Bowers, another sample, was a huge, good-natured, flax-headed lubber;
lazy, sentimental, full of harmless brag, a grumbler by nature; an
experienced, industrious, ambitious, and often quite picturesque liar,
and yet not a successful one, for he had had no intelligent training,
but was allowed to come up just anyway. This life was serious enough to
him, and seldom satisfactory. But he was a good fellow, anyway, and the
boys all liked him. He was made orderly sergeant; Stevens was made
corporal.
These samples will answer—and they are quite fair ones. Well, this herd
of cattle started for the war. What could you expect of them? They did
as well as they knew how; but really what was justly to be expected of
them? Nothing, I should say. That is what they did....
For a time life was idly delicious, it was perfect; there was nothing to
mar it. Then came some farmers with an alarm one day. They said it was
rumored that the enemy were advancing in our direction from over Hyde’s
Prairie. The result was a sharp stir among us and general consternation.
It was a rude awakening from our pleasant trance. The rumor was but a
rumor—nothing definite about it; so, in the confusion, we did not know
which way to retreat. Lyman was for not retreating at all, in these
uncertain circumstances; but he found that if he tried to maintain that
attitude he would fare badly, for the command were in no humor to put up
with insubordination. So he yielded the point and called a council of
war—to consist of himself and the three other officers; but the privates
made such a fuss about being left out that we had to allow them to
remain, for they were already present, and doing the most of the
talking, too. The question was, which way to retreat; but all were so
flurried that nobody seemed to have even a guess to offer. Except Lyman.
He explained in a few calm words that, inasmuch as the enemy was
approaching from over Hyde’s Prairie, our course was simple; all we had
to do was not to retreat _towards_ him; any other direction would answer
our needs perfectly. Everybody saw in a moment how true this was, and
how wise; so Lyman got a great many compliments. It was now decided that
we should fall back on Mason’s farm.
It was after dark by this time, and as we could not know how soon the
enemy might arrive, it did not seem best to try to take the horses and
things with us; so we only took the guns and ammunition, and started at
once.
We heard a sound, and held our breath and listened, and it seemed to be
the enemy coming, though it could have been a cow, for it had a cough
like a cow; but we did not wait, but left a couple of guns behind and
struck out for Mason’s again, as briskly as we could scramble along in
the dark. But we got lost presently among the rugged little ravines, and
wasted a deal of time finding the way again, so it was after nine
o’clock when we reached Mason’s stile at last; and then before we could
open our mouths to give the countersign several dogs came bounding over
the fence, with great riot and noise, and each of them took a soldier by
the slack of his trousers and began to back away with him. We could not
shoot the dogs without endangering the persons they were attached to; so
we had to look on helplessly, at what was perhaps the most mortifying
spectacle of the Civil War. There was light enough, and to spare, for
the Masons had now run out on the porch with candles in their hands. The
old man and his son came and undid the dogs without difficulty, all but
Bowers’s; but they couldn’t undo his dog, they didn’t know his
combination; he was of the bull kind, and seemed to be set with a Yale
time-lock; but they got him loose at last with some scalding water, of
which Bowers got his share and returned thanks.
_FROM_ “THE PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF JOAN OF ARC”
JOAN
To arrive at a just estimate of a renowned man’s character one must
judge it by the standards of his time, not ours. Judged by the standards
of one century, the noblest characters of an earlier one lose much of
their luster; judged by the standards of to-day, there is probably no
illustrious man of four or five centuries ago whose character could meet
the test at all points. But the character of Joan of Arc is unique. It
can be measured by the standards of all times without misgiving or
apprehension as to the result. Judged by any of them, judged by all of
them, it is still flawless, it is still ideally perfect; it still
occupies the loftiest place possible to human attainment, a loftier one
than has been reached by any other mere mortal.
When we reflect that her century was the brutalest, the wickedest, the
rottenest in history since the darkest ages, we are lost in wonder at
the miracle of such a product from such a soil. The contrast between her
and her century is the contrast between day and night. She was truthful
when lying was the common speech of men; she was honest when honesty was
become a lost virtue; she was a keeper of promises when the keeping of a
promise was expected of no one; she gave her great mind to great
thoughts and great purposes when other great minds wasted themselves
upon pretty fancies or upon poor ambitions; she was modest, and fine,
and delicate, when to be loud and coarse might be said to be universal;
she was full of pity when a merciless cruelty was the rule; she was
steadfast when stability was unknown, and honorable in an age which had
forgotten what honor was; she was a rock of convictions in a time when
men believed in nothing and scoffed at all things; she was unfailingly
true in an age that was false to the core; she maintained her personal
dignity unimpaired in an age of fawnings and servilities; she was of a
dauntless courage when hope and courage had perished in the hearts of
her nation; she was spotlessly pure in mind and body when society in the
highest places was foul in both—she was all these things in an age when
crime was the common business of lords and princes, and when the highest
personages in Christendom were able to astonish even that infamous era
and make it stand aghast at the spectacle of their atrocious lives black
with unimaginable treacheries, butcheries, and bestialities.
She was perhaps the only entirely unselfish person whose name has a
place in profane history. No vestige or suggestion of self-seeking can
be found in any word or deed of hers. When she had rescued her king from
his vagabondage, and set his crown upon his head she was offered rewards
and honors, but she refused them all, and would take nothing. All she
would take for herself—if the king would grant it—was leave to go back
to her village home, and tend her sheep again, and feel her mother’s
arms about her, and be her housemaid and helper. The selfishness of this
unspoiled general of victorious army, companion of princes, an idol of
an applauding and grateful nation, reached but that far and no farther.
THE FAIRY TREE
In a noble open space carpeted with grass on the high ground toward
Vaucouleur stood a most majestic beech tree with wide-reaching arms and
a grand spread of shade, and by it a limpid spring of cold water; and on
summer days the children went there—oh, every summer for more than five
hundred years—went there and sang and danced around the tree for hours
together, refreshing themselves at the spring from time to time, and it
was most lovely and enjoyable. Also they made wreaths of flowers and
hung them upon the tree and about the spring to please the fairies that
lived there; for they liked that, being idle innocent little creatures,
as all fairies are and fond of anything delicate and pretty like wild
flowers put together in that way. And in return for this attention the
fairies did any friendly thing they could for the children, such as
keeping the spring always full and clear and cold, and driving away
serpents and insects that sting; and so there was never any unkindness
between the fairies and the children during more than five hundred
years—tradition said a thousand—but only the warmest affection and the
most perfect trust and confidence; and whenever a child died the fairies
mourned just as that child’s playmates did, and the sign of it was there
to see; for before the dawn on the day of the funeral they hung a little
immortelle over the place where the child was used to sit under the
tree. I know this to be true by my own eyes; it is not hearsay. And the
reason it was known that the fairies did it was this—that it was made
all of black flowers of a sort not known in France anywhere.
Now from time immemorial all children reared in Domremy were called the
Children of the Tree; and they loved that name, for it carried with it a
mystic privilege not granted to any other of the children of this world.
Which was this: whenever one of these came to die, then beyond the vague
and formless images drifting through his darkening mind rose soft and
rich and fair a vision of the tree—if all was well with his soul. That
was what some said. Others said the vision came in two ways: once as a
warning, one or two years in advance of death, when the soul was the
captive of sin, and then the tree appeared in its desolate winter
aspect—then that soul was smitten with an awful fear. If repentance
came, and purity of life the vision came again, this time summer-clad
and beautiful; but if it were otherwise with that soul the vision was
withheld, and it passed from life knowing its doom. Still others said
that the vision came but once and then only to the sinless dying forlorn
in distant lands and pitifully longing for some last dear reminder of
their home. And what reminder of it could go to their hearts like the
picture of the tree that was the darling of their love and the comrade
of their joys and comforter of their small griefs all through the divine
days of their vanished youth?
Now the several traditions were as I have said, some believing one and
some another. One of them I know to be the truth, and that was the last
one. I do not say anything against the others; I think they were true,
but I only _know_ that the last one was; and it is my thought that if
one keep to the things he knows, and not trouble about the things which
he cannot be sure about, he will have the steadier mind for it—and there
is profit in that. I know that when the children of the tree die in a
far land, then—if they be at peace with God—they turn their longing eyes
toward home, and there, far-shining, as through a rift in a cloud that
curtains heaven, they see the soft picture of the fairy tree, clothed in
a dream of golden light; and they see the blooming meads sloping away to
the river, and to their perishing nostrils is blown faint and sweet the
fragrance of the flowers of home. And then the vision fades and
passes—but _they_ know, _they_ know! and by their transfigured faces you
know also, you stand looking on; yes, you know the message that has
come, and that it has come from heaven.
Joan and I believed alike about this matter. But Pierre Morel, and
Jacques d’Arc and many others believed that the vision appeared twice—to
a sinner. In fact, they and many others said they _knew_ it. Probably
because their fathers had known it and had told them; for one gets most
things at second hand in this world....
Always, from the remotest times, when the children joined hands and
danced around the fairy tree they sang the song which was the tree’s
song, the song of _L’Arbre Fée de Bourlemont_. They sang it to a quaint
sweet air—a solacing sweet air which has gone murmuring through my
dreaming spirit all my life when I was weary and troubled, resting me
and carrying me through night and distance home again. No stranger can
know or feel what that song has been through the drifting centuries to
exiled Children of the Tree, homeless and heavy of heart in countries
foreign to their speech and ways. You will think it a simple thing, that
song, and poor, perchance; but if you will remember what it was to us,
and what it brought before our eyes when it floated through our
memories, then you will respect it. And you will understand how the
water wells up in our eyes and makes all things dim, and our voices
break and we cannot sing the last lines:
“And when, in exile wand’ring, we
Shall fainting yearn for glimpse of thee,
Oh, rise upon our sight!”
and you will remember that Joan of Arc sang this song with us around the
tree when she was a little child, and always loved it. And _that_
hallows it, yes, you will grant that:
_L’Arbre Fée de Bourlemont._
Song of the children
Now what has kept your leaves so green,
Arbre Fée de Bourlemont?
The children’s tears! they brought each grief,
And you did comfort them and cheer
Their bruised hearts, and steal a tear
That, healèd, rose, a leaf.
And what has built you up so strong,
Arbre Fée de Bourlemont?
The children’s love! they’ve loved you long:
Ten hundred years, in sooth,
They’ve nourished you with praise and song,
And warmed your heart and kept it young—
A thousand years of youth!
Bide always green in our young hearts,
Arbre Fée de Bourlemont!
And we shall always youthful be,
Not heeding Time his flight;
And when, in exile wand’ring, we
Shall fainting yearn for glimpse of thee,
Oh, rise upon our sight!
JOAN BEFORE RHEIMS
We marched, marched, kept on marching; and at last, on the 16th of July,
we came in sight of our goal and saw the great cathedral towers of
Rheims rise out of the distance! Huzza after huzza swept the army from
van to rear; and as for Joan of Arc, there where she sat her horse,
gazing, clothed all in white armor, dreamy, beautiful, and in her face a
deep, deep joy, a joy not of earth, oh, she was not flesh, she was a
spirit! Her sublime mission was closing—closing in flawless triumph.
To-morrow she could say, “It is finished—let me go free.”
JOAN’S REWARD
The fantastic dream, the incredible dream, the impossible dream of the
peasant child stood fulfilled; the English power was broken, the heir of
France was crowned.
She was like one transfigured, so divine was the joy that shone in her
face as she sank to her knees at the king’s feet and looked up at him
through her tears. Her lips were quivering, and her words came soft and
low and broken:
“Now, O gentle king, is the pleasure of God accomplished according to
his command that you should come to Rheims and receive the crown that
belongeth of right to you, and unto none other. My work which was given
me to do is finished; give me your peace, and let me go back to my
mother, who is poor and old, and has need of me.”
The king raised her up, and there before all that host he praised her
great deeds in most noble terms; and there he confirmed her nobility and
titles, making her the equal of a count in rank, and also appointed a
household and officers for her according to her dignity; and then he
said:
“You have saved the crown. Speak—require—demand; and whatsoever grace
you ask it shall be granted, though it make the kingdom poor to meet
it.”
Now that was fine, that was loyal. Joan was on her knees again
straightway, and said:
“Then, O gentle king, if out of your compassion you will speak the word,
I pray you give commandment that my village, poor and hard-pressed by
reason of the war, may have its taxes remitted.”
“It is so commanded. Say on.”
“That is all.”
“All? Nothing but that?”
“It is all. I have no other desire.”
“But that is nothing—less than nothing. Ask—do not be afraid.”
“Indeed, I cannot, gentle king. Do not press me. I will not have aught
else, but only this alone.”
The king seemed nonplussed, and stood still a moment, as if trying to
comprehend and realize the full stature of this strange unselfishness.
Then he raised his head and said:
“She has won a kingdom and crowned its king; and all she asks and all
she will take is this poor grace—and even this is for others, not for
herself. And it is well; her act being proportioned to the dignity of
one who carries in her head and heart riches which outvalue any that any
king could add, though he gave his all. She shall have her way. Now,
therefore, it is decreed that from this day forth Domremy, natal village
of Joan of Arc, Deliverer of France, called the Maid of Orleans, is
freed from all taxation _forever_.”
_FROM_ “SAINT JOAN OF ARC” (1899)
There is no one to compare her with, none to measure her by; for all
others among the illustrious _grew_ towards their high place in an
atmosphere and surroundings which discovered their gift to them and
nourished it and promoted it, intentionally or unconsciously. There have
been other young generals, but they were not girls; young generals, but
they have been soldiers before they were generals: she _began_ as a
general. She commanded the first army she ever saw; she led it from
victory to victory, and never lost a battle with it; there have been
young commanders-in-chief, but none so young as she: she is the only
soldier in history who has held the supreme command of a nation’s armies
at the age of seventeen.
_FROM_ “FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR”
PUDD’NHEAD WILSON’S NEW CALENDAR
(1896–7)
A man may have no bad habits and have worse.
When in doubt, tell the truth.
It is more trouble to make a maxim than it is to do right.
A dozen direct censures are easier to bear than one morganatic
compliment.
Noise proves nothing. Often a hen who has merely laid an egg cackles as
if she had laid an asteroid.
He was as shy as a newspaper is when referring to its own merits.
Truth is the most valuable thing we have. Let us economize it.
It could probably be shown by facts and figures that there is no
distinctly native American criminal class except Congress.
It is your human environment that makes climate.
Everything human is pathetic. The secret source of Humor itself is not
joy but sorrow. There is no humor in heaven.
We should be careful to get out of an experience only the wisdom that is
in it—and stop there; lest we be like the cat that sits down on a hot
stove-lid. She will never sit down on a hot stove-lid again—and that is
well; but also she will never sit down on a cold one any more.
There are those who scoff at the schoolboy, calling him frivolous and
shallow. Yet it was the schoolboy who said, “Faith is believing what you
know ain’t so.”
We can secure other people’s approval, if we do right and try hard; but
our own is worth a hundred of it, and no way has been found out of
securing that.
Truth is stranger than fiction—to some people, but I am measurably
familiar with it. Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because
Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn’t.
There is a Moral Sense, and there is an Immoral Sense. History shows us
that the Moral Sense enables us to perceive morality and how to avoid
it, and that the Immoral Sense enables us to perceive immorality and how
to enjoy it.
The English are mentioned in the Bible: Blessed are the meek, for they
shall inherit the earth.
It is easier to stay out than to get out.
Pity is for the living, envy is for the dead.
It is by the goodness of God that in our country we have those three
unspeakably precious things: Freedom of speech, freedom of conscience,
and the prudence never to practice either of them.
Man will do many things to get himself loved, he will do all things to
get himself envied.
Nothing is so ignorant as a man’s left hand, except a lady’s watch.
Be careless in your dress if you must, but keep a tidy soul.
There is no such thing as “the Queen’s English.” The property has gone
into the hands of a joint stock company and we own the bulk of the
shares.
“_Classic._” A book which people praise and don’t read.
There are people who can do all fine and heroic things but one: keep
from telling their happiness to the unhappy.
Man is the Only Animal that Blushes. Or needs to.
The universal brotherhood of man is our most precious possession, what
there is of it.
Let us be thankful for the fools. But for them the rest of us could not
succeed.
When people do not respect us we are sharply offended; yet deep down in
his private heart no man much respects himself.
Nature makes the locust with an appetite for crops: man would have made
him with an appetite for sand.
The spirit of wrath—not the words—is the sin; and the spirit of wrath is
cursing. We begin to swear before we can talk.
The man with a new idea is a Crank till the idea succeeds.
Let us be grateful to Adam our benefactor. He cut us out of the
“blessing” of idleness and won for us the “curse” of labor.
Let us not be too particular. It is better to have old second-hand
diamonds than none at all.
The Autocrat of Russia possesses more power than any other man in the
earth; but he cannot stop a sneeze.
There are several good protections against temptations, but the surest
is cowardice.
Names are not always what they seem. The common Welsh name Bzjxxllwcp is
pronounced Jackson.
To succeed in the other trades, capacity must be shown; in the law,
concealment of it will do.
Prosperity is the best protector of principle.
By trying we can easily learn to endure adversity. Another man’s, I
mean.
Few of us can stand prosperity. Another man’s, I mean.
There is an old time toast which is golden for its beauty. “When you
ascend the hill of prosperity may you not meet a friend.”
Each person is born to one possession which outvalues all his others—his
last breath.
Hunger is the handmaid of genius.
The old saw says, “Let a sleeping dog lie.” Right. Still, when there is
much at stake it is better to get a newspaper to do it.
It takes your enemy and your friend, working together, to hurt you to
the heart; the one to slander you and the other to get the news to you.
If the desire to kill and the opportunity to kill came always together,
who would escape hanging?
Simple rules for saving money: To save half, when you are fired by an
eager impulse to contribute to a charity, wait, and count forty. To save
three-quarters, count sixty. To save it all, count sixty-five.
Grief can take care of itself; but to get the full value of a joy you
must have somebody to divide it with.
He had had much experience of physicians, and said “the only way to keep
your health is to eat what you don’t want, drink what you don’t like,
and do what you’d druther not.”
The man who is ostentatious of his modesty is twin to the statue that
wears a fig-leaf.
Let me make the superstitions of a nation and I care not who makes its
laws or its songs either.
Wrinkles should merely indicate where smiles have been.
Do not undervalue the headache. While it is at its sharpest it seems a
bad investment; but when relief begins the unexpired remainder is worth
$4.00 a minute.
True irreverence is disrespect to another man’s god.
There are two times in a man’s life when he should not speculate: when
he can’t afford it, and when he can.
She was not quite what you would call refined. She was not quite what
you would call unrefined. She was the kind of person that keeps a
parrot.
Make it a point to do something every day that you don’t want to do.
This is the golden rule for acquiring the habit of doing your duty
without pain.
Don’t part with your illusions. When they are gone you may still exist
but you have ceased to live.
Often, the surest way to convey misinformation is to tell the truth.
Satan (impatiently) to Newcomer: The trouble with you Chicago people is,
that you think you are the best people down here; whereas you are merely
the most numerous.
In the first place God made idiots. This was for practice. Then He made
School Boards.
There are no people who are quite so vulgar as the over-refined ones.
In statesmanship get the formalities right, never mind about the
moralities.
Everyone is a moon, and has a dark side which he never shows to anybody.
The very ink with which all history is written is merely fluid
prejudice.
There isn’t a Parallel of Latitude but thinks it would have been the
Equator if it had had its rights.
I have traveled more than any one else, and I have noticed that even the
angels speak English with an accent.
ART
Whenever I enjoy anything in Art it means that it is mighty poor. The
private knowledge of this fact has saved me from going to pieces with
enthusiasm in front of many and many a chromo.
ITALIAN CIGARS
In Italy, as in France, the Government is the only cigar-peddler. Italy
has three or four domestic brands: the Minghetti, the Trabuco, the
Virginia, and a very coarse one which is a modification of the Virginia.
The Minghettis are large and comely, and cost three dollars and sixty
cents a hundred; I can smoke a hundred in seven days and enjoy every one
of them. The Trabucos suit me, too; I don’t remember the price. But one
has to learn to like the Virginia, nobody is born friendly to it. It
looks like a rat-tail file, but smokes better, some think. It has a
straw through it; you pull this out, and it leaves a flue, otherwise
there would be no draught, not even as much as there is to a nail. Some
prefer a nail at first.
_FROM_ “CONCERNING THE JEWS” (1898)
THE HUMAN BEING
I’m quite sure that (bar one) I have no race prejudices, and I think I
have no color prejudices nor caste prejudices nor creed prejudices.
Indeed, I know it. I can stand any society. All that I care to know is
that a man is a human being—that is enough for me; he can’t be any
worse.
THE IMMORTAL RACE
If the statistics are right the Jews constitute but _one per cent._ of
the human race. It suggests a nebulous dim puff of star dust lost in the
blaze of the Milky Way. Properly the Jew ought hardly to be heard of;
but he is heard of, has always been heard of. He is as prominent on the
planet as any other people, and his commercial importance is
extravagantly out of proportion to the smallness of his bulk. His
contributions to the world’s list of great names in literature, science,
art, music, finance, medicine, and abstruse learning are always away out
of proportion to the weakness of his numbers. He has made a marvelous
fight in this world, in all the ages; and has done it with his hands
tied behind him. He could be vain of himself, and be excused for it. The
Egyptian, the Babylonian, and the Persian rose, filled the planet with
sound and splendor then faded to dream-stuff and passed away; the Greek
and the Roman followed, and made a vast noise, and were gone; other
people have sprung up and held their torch high for a time, but it
burned out, and they sit in twilight now, or have vanished. The Jew saw
them all, beat them all, and is now what he always was, exhibiting no
decadence, no infirmities of age, no weakening of his parts, no slowing
of his energies, no dulling of his alert and aggressive mind. All things
are mortal but the Jew; all other forces pass, but he remains. What is
the secret of his immortality?
_FROM_ “CHRISTIAN SCIENCE” (1898)
THE C. S. HEALER
She was middle-aged, and large and bony, and erect, and had an austere
face and a resolute jaw and a Roman beak and was a widow in the third
degree, and her name was Fuller. I was eager to get to business and find
relief, but she was distressingly deliberate. She unpinned and unhooked
and uncoupled her upholsteries one by one, abolished the wrinkles with a
flirt of her hand, and hung the articles up; peeled off her gloves and
disposed of them, got a book out of her hand-bag, then drew a chair to
the bedside, descended into it without hurry and I hung out my tongue.
She said, with pity but without passion:
“Return it to its receptacle. We deal with the mind only, not with its
dumb servants.”
I could not offer my pulse, because the connection was broken; but she
detected the apology before I could word it, and indicated by a negative
tilt of her head that the pulse was another dumb servant that she had no
use for. Then I thought I would tell her my symptoms and how I felt, so
that she would understand the case; but that was another inconsequence,
she did not need to know those things; moreover, my remark about how I
felt was an abuse of language, a misapplication of terms.
“One does not _feel_” she explained; “there is no such thing as feeling:
therefore, to speak of a non-existent thing as existent is a
contradiction. Matter has no existence; nothing exists but mind; the
mind cannot feel pain, it can only imagine it.”
“But if it hurts, just the same——”
“It doesn’t. A thing which is unreal cannot exercise the functions of
reality. Pain is unreal; hence, pain cannot hurt.”
In making a sweeping gesture to indicate the act of shooing the illusion
of pain out of the mind, she raked her hand on a pin in her dress, said
“Ouch!” and went tranquilly on with her talk. “You should never allow
yourself to speak of how you feel, nor permit others to ask you how you
are feeling; you should never concede that you are ill, nor permit
others to talk about disease or pain or death or similar non-existences
in your presence. Such talk only encourages the mind to continue its
empty imaginings.”
Just at that point the _Stubenmädchen_ trod on the cat’s tail, and the
cat let fly a frenzy of cat profanity. I asked, with caution:
“Is a cat’s opinion about pain valuable?”
“A cat has no opinion; opinions proceed from mind only; the lower
animals being eternally perishable, have not been granted mind; without
mind, opinion is impossible.”
“She merely _imagined_ she felt a pain—the cat?”
“She cannot imagine a pain, for imagining is an effect of mind; without
mind there is no imagination. A cat has no imagination.”
“Then she had a _real_ pain?”
“I have already told you there is no such _thing_ as real pain.”
“It is strange and interesting. I do wonder what was the matter with the
cat.”
_FROM_ “ITALIAN WITHOUT A MASTER” (1903)
THE HOME PRODUCT
Necessarily we are all fond of murders, scandals, swindles, robberies,
explosions, collisions, and all such things, when we know the people,
and when they are neighbors and friends, but when they are strangers we
do not get any great pleasure out of them, as a rule. Now the trouble
with an American paper is that it has no discrimination; it rakes the
whole earth for blood and garbage and the result is that you are daily
overfed and suffer a surfeit. By habit you stow this muck every day, but
you come by and by to take no vital interest in it—indeed, you almost
get tired of it. As a rule, forty-nine-fiftieths of it concerns
strangers only—people away off yonder, a thousand miles, two thousand
miles, ten thousand miles from where you are. Why, when you come to
think of it, who cares what becomes of those people? I would not give
the assassination of one personal friend for a whole massacre of those
others. And, to my mind, one relative or neighbor mixed up in a scandal
is more interesting than a whole Sodom and Gomorrah of outlanders gone
rotten. Give me the home product every time.
THE CHARM OF UNCERTAINTY
There is a great, a peculiar charm about reading news scraps in a
language which you are not acquainted with—the charm that always goes
with the mysterious and the uncertain. You can never be absolutely sure
of the meaning of anything you read in such circumstances; you are
chasing an alert and gamy riddle all the time, and the baffling turns
and dodges of the prey make the life of the hunt. A dictionary would
soil it. Sometimes a single word of doubtful purport will cast a vale of
dreamy and golden uncertainty over a whole paragraph of cold and
practical certainties, and leave steeped in a haunting and adorable
mystery an incident which had been vulgar and commonplace but for the
benefaction. Would you be wise to draw a dictionary on that gracious
word? Would you be properly grateful?
_FROM_ “EVE’S DIARY” (1905)
HER CHIEF DESIRE
It is my prayer, it is my longing, that we may pass from this life
together—a longing which shall never perish from the earth, but shall
have place in the heart of every wife that loves, until the end of time;
and it shall be called by my name.
But if one of us must go first, it is my prayer that it shall be I; for
he is strong, I am weak, I am not so necessary to him as he is to
me—life without him would not be life; how could I endure it? This
prayer is also immortal, and will not cease from being offered while my
race continues. I am the first wife; and in the last wife I shall be
repeated.
AT EVE’S GRAVE
Adam: Wheresoever she was, _there_ was Eden.
WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS (1905)
For forty years his English has been to me a continual delight and
astonishment. In the sustained exhibition of certain great
qualities—clearness, compression, verbal exactness, and enforced and
seemingly unconscious felicity of phrasing—he is, in my belief, without
his peer in the English-writing world. _Sustained._ I intrench myself
behind that protecting word. There are others who exhibit those great
qualities as greatly as he does, but only by intervaled distributions of
rich moonlight, with stretches of veiled and dimmer landscape between;
whereas Howell’s moon sails cloudless skies all night and all the
nights.
MISCELLANEOUS (1905–9)
MAKING THE OYSTER
You can’t make an oyster out of nothing, nor you can’t do it in a day.
You’ve got to start with a vast variety of invertebrates, the
belemnites, trilobites, jubusites, amalekites, and that sort of fry, and
put them in to soak in a primary sea and observe and wait what will
happen. Some of them will turn out a disappointment; the belemnites and
the amalekites and such will be failures, and they will die out and
become extinct in the course of the nineteen million years covered by
the experiment; but all is not lost, for the jubusites will develop
gradually into encrinites and stalactites and blatherskites, and one
thing and another, as the mighty ages creep on and the periods pile
their lofty crags in the primordial seas, and at last the first grand
stages in the preparation of the world for man stands completed, the
oyster is done. Now an oyster has hardly any more reasoning power than a
man has, so it is probable that this one jumped to the conclusion that
the nineteen million years was a preparation for _him_. That would be
just like an oyster, and, anyway, this one could not know at that early
date that he was only an incident in the scheme, and that there was some
more to the scheme yet. (Mark Twain—A Biography).
THE FATALITY OF SEQUENCE
When the first living atom found itself afloat on the great Laurentian
sea the first act of that first atom led to the _second_ act of that
first atom, and so on down through the succeeding ages of all life,
until, if the steps could be traced, it would be shown that the first
act of that first atom has led inevitably to the act of my standing in
my dressing gown at this instant, talking to you. (Mark Twain—A
Biography).
LIFE’S TURNING POINT
Necessarily the scene of the real turning-point of my life (and of
yours) was the Garden of Eden. It was there that the first link was
forged of the chain that was ultimately to lead to the emptying of me
into the literary guild. Adam’s _temperament_ was the first command the
Deity ever issued to a human being on this planet. And it was the only
command Adam would _never_ be able to disobey. It said, “Be weak, be
water, be characterless, be cheaply persuadable.” The later command, to
let the fruit alone was certain to be disobeyed. Not by Adam himself,
but by his _temperament_—which he did not create and had no authority
over. For the _temperament_ is the man; the thing tricked out with
clothes and named Man is merely its shadow, nothing more. The law of the
tiger’s temperament is, Thou shalt kill; the law of the sheep’s
temperament is, Thou shalt not kill. To issue later commands requiring
the tiger to let the fat stranger alone, and requiring the sheep to
imbue its hands in the blood of the lion is not worth while, for those
commands _can’t_ be obeyed. They would invite to violations of the law
of _temperament_, which is supreme, and takes precedence of all other
authorities. I cannot help feeling disappointed in Adam and Eve. That
is, in their temperaments. Not in _them_, poor helpless young
creatures—afflicted with temperaments made out of butter; which butter
was commanded to get into contact with fire and _be melted_. What I
cannot help wishing is, that Adam and Eve had been postponed, and Martin
Luther and Joan of Arc put in their place. That splendid pair equipped
with temperaments not made of butter, but of asbestos. By neither sugary
persuasions nor by hell fire could Satan have beguiled _them_ to eat the
apple.
CLOSE OF SEVENTIETH BIRTHDAY SPEECH
Threescore years and ten!
It is the scriptural statute of limitations. After that you owe no
active duties; for you the strenuous life is over. You are a
time-expired man, to use Kipling’s military phrase; you have served your
term, well or less well, and you are mustered out. You are become an
honorary member of the republic, you are emancipated, compulsions are
not for you, nor any bugle call but “lights out.” You pay the time-worn
duty bills if you choose, or decline if you prefer—and without
prejudice—for they are not legally collectible.
The previous-engagement plea, which in forty years has cost you so many
twinges, you can lay aside forever; on this side of the grave you will
never need it again. If you shrink at thought of night, and winter, and
the late homecomings from the banquet and the lights and laughter
through the deserted street—a desolation which would not remind you now,
as for a generation it did, that your friends are sleeping and you must
creep in a-tiptoe and not disturb them, but would only remind you that
you need not tiptoe, you can never disturb them more—if you shrink at
the thought of these things you need only reply, “Your invitation honors
me and pleases me because you still keep me in your remembrance, but I
am seventy; seventy, and would nestle in the chimney corner and smoke my
pipe, and read my book, and take my rest, wishing you well in all
affection, and that when you in your turn shall arrive at Pier 70 you
may step aboard your waiting ship with a reconciled spirit, and lay your
course toward the sinking sun with a contented heart.”
THE FUTURE LIFE
(Mark Twain often allowed his fancy to play with the idea of the
orthodox heaven, its curiosities of architecture and its employments of
continuous prayer, psalm-singing, and harpistry).
“What a childish notion it was,” he said, “and how curious that only a
little while ago human beings were so willing to accept such fragile
evidences about a place of so much importance. If we should find
somewhere to-day an ancient book containing an account of a beautiful
and blooming tropical paradise secreted in the center of eternal
icebergs—an account written by men who did not even claim to have seen
it themselves—no geographical society on earth would take any stock in
that book, yet that account would be quite as authentic as any we have
of heaven. If God has such a place prepared for us, and really wanted us
to know it, He could have found some better way than a book, so liable
to alterations and misinterpretations. God has had no trouble to prove
to man the laws of the constellations and the construction of the world,
and such things as that, none of which agree with His so-called book. As
to a hereafter, we have not the slightest evidence that there is
any—_no_ evidence that appeals to logic and reason. I have never seen
what to me seemed an atom of proof that there is a future life.”
Then, after a long pause, he added:
“And yet—I am strongly inclined to expect one.” (Mark Twain—A
Biography).
RELIGION
I would not interfere with any one’s religion, either to strengthen it
or to weaken it. I am not able to believe one’s religion can affect his
hereafter one way or the other, no matter what that religion may be. But
it may easily be a great comfort to him in this life—hence it is a
valuable possession to him.
_FROM_ “THE DEATH OF JEAN”
(1909)
It is the time appointed. The funeral has begun. Four hundred miles
away, but I can see it all, just as if I were there. The scene is the
library in the Langdon homestead. Jean’s coffin stands where her mother
and I stood, forty years ago, and were married; and where Susy’s coffin
stood thirteen years ago; where her mother’s stood five years and a half
ago; and where mine will stand, after a little time.
_FROM_ “ONE OF HIS LATEST MEMORANDA”
(1909)
THE IMPARTIAL FRIEND
Death—the only immortal who treats us all alike, whose pity and whose
peace and whose refuge are for all—the soiled and the pure—the rich and
the poor—the loved and the unloved.
-----
Footnote 1:
Through an exchange of clothing with the little prince Tom Canty
suddenly found himself royalty, and upon the death of Henry VIII is
now king.
Footnote 2:
Miles Hendon, who has taken the real prince—now a wanderer—under his
protection. In the course of their adventures the two have landed in
prison.
Footnote 3:
Nigger Jim is a runaway slave to whom Huck affords protection.
Footnote 4:
Huck and Nigger Jim, drifting down the Mississippi on their raft have
been struck by a steamboat. Jim has disappeared but Huck, making his
way to shore, has been taken in by Col. Grangerford, whose family is
in bitter feud with the Shepherdsons.
Edmund Clarence Stedman declared this chapter of Huck Finn’s
adventures to be “as dramatic and powerful an episode as I know in
modern literature.”
Footnote 5:
Buck Grangerford, a boy of about Huck’s age.
Footnote 6:
On his arrival at the Grangerford home Huck had given his name as
George Jackson.
Footnote 7:
The Yankee and his captor have arrived at Camelot and are in King
Arthur’s castle.
Footnote 8:
The Yankee with the maid, Alisande, a great talker, is on the way to
rescue the imprisoned princesses.
Footnote 9:
The King and the Yankee travelling in disguise have fallen into the
clutches of a slave-dealer.
THE END
------------------------------------------------------------------------
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES
1. P. 44, changed "even the" to "even in the".
2. P. 49, changed "never revoked" to "never been revoked".
3. P. 126, changed "“Oh, don’t _I_!”" to "“Oh, don’t _I_!” said Joe,".
4. Silently corrected typographical errors and variations in spelling.
5. Anachronistic, non-standard, and uncertain spellings retained as
printed.
6. Footnotes have been re-indexed using numbers and collected together
at the end of the last chapter.
7. Enclosed italics font in _underscores_.
*** End of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "Moments with Mark Twain" ***
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