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Title: Europe and elsewhere
Author: Twain, Mark
Language: English
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*** Start of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "Europe and elsewhere" ***

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Transcriber’s Note:

This version of the text cannot represent certain typographical effects.
Italics are delimited with the ‘_’ character (_italic_). Bold characters
are delimited with the ‘=’ character.

The few footnotes have been collected at the end of each chapter.

Minor errors, attributable to the printer, have been corrected. Please
see the transcriber’s note at the end of this text for details regarding
the handling of any textual issues encountered during its preparation.

EUROPE AND ELSEWHERE

[Illustration]

[Illustration:

AND I ROSE TO RECEIVE MY GUEST, AND BRACED MYSELF FOR THE
THUNDERCRASH AND THE BRIMSTONE STENCH WHICH
SHOULD ANNOUNCE HIS ARRIVAL
]

(_See p. 326_)

EUROPE
AND ELSEWHERE

MARK TWAIN

WITH AN APPRECIATION BY
BRANDER MATTHEWS
AND AN INTRODUCTION BY
ALBERT BIGELOW PAINE

[Illustration]

HARPER & BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS
NEW YORK AND LONDON

------------------------------------------------------------------------

EUROPE AND ELSEWHERE

--------------

_First Edition_
E-X

CONTENTS

CHAP. PAGE
AN APPRECIATION vii
INTRODUCTION xxxi
I. A MEMORABLE MIDNIGHT EXPERIENCE 1
II. TWO MARK TWAIN EDITORIALS 14
III. THE TEMPERANCE CRUSADE AND WOMAN’S RIGHTS 24
IV. O’SHAH 31
V. A WONDERFUL PAIR OF SLIPPERS 87
VI. AIX, THE PARADISE OF THE RHEUMATICS 94
VII. MARIENBAD--A HEALTH FACTORY 113
VIII. DOWN THE RHÔNE 129
IX. THE LOST NAPOLEON 169
X. SOME NATIONAL STUPIDITIES 175
XI. THE CHOLERA EPIDEMIC IN HAMBURG 186
XII. QUEEN VICTORIA’S JUBILEE 193
XIII. LETTERS TO SATAN 211
XIV. A WORD OF ENCOURAGEMENT FOR OUR BLUSHING EXILES 221
XV. DUELING 225
XVI. SKELETON PLAN OF A PROPOSED CASTING VOTE PARTY 233
XVII. THE UNITED STATES OF LYNCHERDOM 239
XVIII. TO THE PERSON SITTING IN DARKNESS 250
XIX. TO MY MISSIONARY CRITICS 273
XX. THOMAS BRACKETT REED 297
XXI. THE FINISHED BOOK 299
XXII. AS REGARDS PATRIOTISM 301
XXIII. DR. LOEB’S INCREDIBLE DISCOVERY 304
XXIV. THE DERVISH AND THE OFFENSIVE STRANGER 310
XXV. INSTRUCTIONS IN ART 315
XXVI. SOLD TO SATAN 326
XXVII. THAT DAY IN EDEN 339
XXVIII. EVE SPEAKS 347
XXIX. SAMUEL ERASMUS MOFFETT 351
XXX. THE NEW PLANET 355
XXXI. MARJORIE FLEMING, THE WONDER CHILD 358
XXXII. ADAM’S SOLILOQUY 377
XXXIII. BIBLE TEACHING AND RELIGIOUS PRACTICE 387
XXXIV. THE WAR PRAYER 394
XXXV. CORN-PONE OPINIONS 399

AN APPRECIATION

-------

(This “Biographical Criticism” was prepared by Prof. Brander Matthews,
as an introduction to the Uniform Edition of Mark Twain’s Works,
published in 1899).

It is a common delusion of those who discuss contemporary literature
that there is such an entity as the “reading public,” possessed of a
certain uniformity of taste. There is not one public; there are many
publics--as many, in fact, as there are different kinds of taste; and
the extent of an author’s popularity is in proportion to the number of
these separate publics he may chance to please. Scott, for example,
appealed not only to those who relished romance and enjoyed excitement,
but also to those who appreciated his honest portrayal of sturdy
characters. Thackeray is preferred by ambitious youth who are
insidiously flattered by his tacit compliments to their knowledge of the
world, by the disenchanted who cannot help seeing the petty meannesses
of society, and by the less sophisticated in whom sentiment has not gone
to seed in sentimentality. Dickens in his own day bid for the approval
of those who liked broad caricature (and were therefore pleased with
Stiggins and Chadband), of those who fed greedily on plentiful pathos
(and were therefore delighted with the deathbeds of Smike and Paul
Dombey and Little Nell) and also of those who asked for unexpected
adventure (and were therefore glad to disentangle the melodramatic
intrigues of Ralph Nickleby).

In like manner the American author who has chosen to call himself Mark
Twain has attained to an immense popularity because the qualities he
possesses in a high degree appeal to so many and so widely varied
publics--first of all, no doubt, to the public that revels in hearty and
robust fun, but also to the public which is glad to be swept along by
the full current of adventure, which is sincerely touched by manly
pathos, which is satisfied by vigorous and exact portrayal of character,
and which respects shrewdness and wisdom and sanity and a healthy hatred
of pretense and affectation and sham. Perhaps no one book of Mark
Twain’s--with the possible exception of _Huckleberry Finn_--is equally a
favorite with all his readers; and perhaps some of his best
characteristics are absent from his earlier books or but doubtfully
latent in them. Mark Twain is many sided; and he has ripened in
knowledge and in power since he first attracted attention as a wild
Western funny man. As he has grown older he has reflected more; he has
both broadened and deepened. The writer of “comic copy” for a
mining-camp newspaper has developed into a liberal humorist, handling
life seriously and making his readers think as he makes them laugh,
until to-day Mark Twain has perhaps the largest audience of any author
now using the English language. To trace the stages of this evolution
and to count the steps whereby the sagebrush reporter has risen to the
rank of a writer of world-wide celebrity, is as interesting as it is
instructive.

Samuel Langhorne Clemens was born November 30, 1835, at Florida,
Missouri. His father was a merchant who had come from Tennessee and who
removed soon after his son’s birth to Hannibal, a little town on the
Mississippi. What Hannibal was like and what were the circumstances of
Mr. Clemen’s boyhood we can see for ourselves in the convincing pages of
_Tom Sawyer_. Mr. Howells has called Hannibal “a loafing, out-at-elbows,
down-at-the-heels, slave-holding Mississippi town”; and Mr. Clemens, who
silently abhorred slavery, was of a slave-owning family.

When the future author was but twelve his father died, and the son had
to get his education as best he could. Of actual schooling he got little
and of book learning still less, but life itself is not a bad teacher
for a boy who wants to study, and young Clemens did not waste his
chances. He spent six years in the printing office of the little local
paper,--for, like not a few others on the list of American authors that
stretches from Benjamin Franklin to William Dean Howells, he began his
connection with literature by setting type. As a journeyman printer the
lad wandered from town to town and rambled even as far east as New York.

When he was nineteen he went back to the home of his boyhood and
presently resolved to become a pilot on the Mississippi. How he learned
the river he has told us in _Life on the Mississippi_, wherein his
adventures, his experiences, and his impressions while he was a cub
pilot are recorded with a combination of precise veracity and abundant
humor which makes the earlier chapters of that marvelous book a most
masterly fragment of autobiography. The life of a pilot was full of
interest and excitement and opportunity, and what young Clemens saw and
heard and divined during the years when he was going up and down the
mighty river we may read in the pages of _Huckleberry Finn_ and
_Pudd’nhead Wilson_. But toward the end of the ’fifties the railroads
began to rob the river of its supremacy as a carrier; and in the
beginning of the ’sixties the Civil War broke out and the Mississippi no
longer went unvexed to the sea. The skill, slowly and laboriously
acquired, was suddenly rendered useless, and at twenty-five the young
man found himself bereft of his calling. As a border state, Missouri was
sending her sons into the armies of the Union and into the armies of the
Confederacy, while many a man stood doubting, not knowing which way to
turn. The ex-pilot has given us the record of his very brief and
inglorious service as a soldier of the South. When this escapade was
swiftly ended, he went to the Northwest with his brother, who had been
appointed Territorial Secretary of Nevada. Thus the man who had been
born on the borderland of North and South, who had gone East as a
jour-printer, who had been again and again up and down the Mississippi,
now went West while he was still plastic and impressionable; and he had
thus another chance to increase that intimate knowledge of American life
and American character which is one of the most precious of his
possessions.

While still on the river he had written a satiric letter or two which
found their way into print. In Nevada he went to the mines and lived the
life he has described in _Roughing It_, but when he failed to “strike it
rich,” he naturally drifted into journalism and back into a newspaper
office again. The _Virginia City Enterprise_ was not overmanned, and the
newcomer did all sorts of odd jobs, finding time now and then to write a
sketch which seemed important enough to permit of his signature. He now
began to sign himself Mark Twain, taking the name from a call of the man
who heaves the lead on a Mississippi River steamboat, and who cries, “By
the mark, three,” “Mark Twain,” and so on. The name of Mark Twain soon
began to be known to those who were curious in newspaper humor. After a
while he was drawn across the mountains to San Francisco, where he found
casual employment on the _Morning Call_, and where he joined himself to
a little group of aspiring _literators_ which included Mr. Bret Harte,
Mr. Noah Brooks, Mr. Charles Henry Webb, and Mr. Charles Warren
Stoddard.

It was in 1867 that Mr. Webb published Mark Twain’s first book, _The
Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras_; and it was in 1867 that the
proprietors of the _Alta California_ supplied him with the funds
necessary to enable him to become one of the passengers on the steamer
_Quaker City_, which had been chartered to take a select party on what
is now known as the Mediterranean trip. The weekly letters, in which he
set forth what befell him on this journey, were printed in the _Alta_
Sunday after Sunday, and were copied freely by the other Californian
papers. These letters served as the foundation of a book published in
1869 and called _The Innocents Abroad_, a book which instantly brought
to the author celebrity and cash.

Both of these valuable aids to ambition were increased by his next step,
his appearance on the lecture platform. Mr. Noah Brooks, who was present
at his first attempt, has recorded that Mark Twain’s “method as a
lecturer was distinctly unique and novel. His slow, deliberate drawl,
the anxious and perturbed expression of his visage, the apparently
painful effort with which he framed his sentences, the surprise that
spread over his face when the audience roared with delight or
rapturously applauded the finer passages of his word painting, were
unlike anything of the kind they had ever known.” In the thirty years
since that first appearance the method has not changed, although it has
probably matured. Mark Twain is one of the most effective of platform
speakers and one of the most artistic, with an art of his own which is
very individual and very elaborate in spite of its seeming simplicity.

Although he succeeded abundantly as a lecturer, and although he was the
author of the most widely circulated book of the decade, Mark Twain
still thought of himself only as a journalist; and when he gave up the
West for the East he became an editor of the Buffalo _Express_, in which
he had bought an interest. In 1870 he married; and it is perhaps not
indiscreet to remark that his was another of those happy unions of which
there have been so many in the annals of American authorship. In 1871 he
removed to Hartford, where his home has been ever since; and at the same
time he gave up newspaper work.

In 1872 he wrote _Roughing It_, and in the following year came his first
sustained attempt at fiction, _The Gilded Age_, written in collaboration
with Mr. Charles Dudley Warner. The character of “Colonel Mulberry
Sellers” Mark Twain soon took out of this book to make it the central
figure of a play which the late John T. Raymond acted hundreds of times
throughout the United States, the playgoing public pardoning the
inexpertness of the dramatist in favor of the delicious humor and the
compelling veracity with which the chief character was presented. So
universal was this type and so broadly recognizable its traits that
there were few towns wherein the play was presented in which some one
did not accost the actor who impersonated the ever-hopeful schemer to
declare: “I’m the original of Sellers! Didn’t Mark ever tell you? Well,
he took the Colonel from me!”

Encouraged by the welcome accorded to this first attempt at fiction,
Mark Twain turned to the days of his boyhood and wrote _Tom Sawyer_,
published in 1875. He also collected his sketches, scattered here and
there in newspapers and magazines. Toward the end of the ’seventies he
went to Europe again with his family; and the result of this journey is
recorded in _A Tramp Abroad_, published in 1880. Another volume of
sketches, _The Stolen White Elephant_, was put forth in 1882; and in the
same year Mark Twain first came forward as a historical novelist--if
_The Prince and the Pauper_ can fairly be called a historical novel. The
year after, he sent forth the volume describing his _Life on the
Mississippi_; and in 1884 he followed this with the story in which that
life has been crystallized forever, _Huckleberry Finn_, the finest of
his books, the deepest in its insight, and the widest in its appeal.

This Odyssey of the Mississippi was published by a new firm, in which
the author was a chief partner, just as Sir Walter Scott had been an
associate of Ballantyne and Constable. There was at first a period of
prosperity in which the house issued the _Personal Memoirs_ of Grant,
giving his widow checks for $350,000 in 1886, and in which Mark Twain
himself published _A Connecticut Yankee at King Arthur’s Court_, a
volume of _Merry Tales_, and a story called _The American Claimant_,
wherein “Colonel Sellers” reappears. Then there came a succession of
hard years; and at last the publishing house in which Mark Twain was a
partner failed, as the publishing house in which Walter Scott was a
partner had formerly failed. The author of _Huckleberry Finn_ at sixty
found himself suddenly saddled with a load of debt, just as the author
of _Waverley_ had been burdened full threescore years earlier; and Mark
Twain stood up stoutly under it, as Scott had done before him. More
fortunate than the Scotchman, the American has lived to pay the debt in
full.

Since the disheartening crash came, he has given to the public a third
Mississippi River tale, _Pudd’nhead Wilson_, issued in 1894; and a third
historical novel _Joan of Arc_, a reverent and sympathetic study of the
bravest figure in all French history, printed anonymously in _Harper’s
Magazine_ and then in a volume acknowledged by the author in 1896. As
one of the results of a lecturing tour around the world he prepared
another volume of travels, _Following the Equator_, published toward the
end of 1897. Mention must also be made of a fantastic tale called _Tom
Sawyer Abroad_, sent forth in 1894, of a volume of sketches, _The
Million Pound Bank-Note_, assembled in 1893, and also of a collection of
literary essays, _How to Tell a Story_, published in 1897.

This is but the barest outline of Mark Twain’s life--such a brief
summary as we must have before us if we wish to consider the conditions
under which the author has developed and the stages of his growth. It
will serve, however, to show how various have been his forms of
activity--printer, pilot, miner, journalist, traveler, lecturer,
novelist, publisher--and to suggest the width of his experience of life.

A humorist is often without honor in his own country. Perhaps this is
partly because humor is likely to be familiar, and familiarity breeds
contempt. Perhaps it is partly because (for some strange reason) we tend
to despise those who make us laugh, while we respect those who make us
weep--forgetting that there are formulas for forcing tears quite as
facile as the formulas for forcing smiles. Whatever the reason, the fact
is indisputable that the humorist must pay the penalty of his humor; he
must run the risk of being tolerated as a mere fun maker, not to be
taken seriously, and unworthy of critical consideration. This penalty
has been paid by Mark Twain. In many of the discussions of American
literature he is dismissed as though he were only a competitor of his
predecessors, Artemus Ward and John Phœnix, instead of being, what he is
really, a writer who is to be classed--at whatever interval only time
may decide--rather with Cervantes and Molière.

Like the heroines of the problem plays of the modern theater, Mark Twain
has had to live down his past. His earlier writing gave but little
promise of the enduring qualities obvious enough in his later works. Mr.
Noah Brooks has told us how he was advised, if he wished to “see genuine
specimens of American humor, frolicsome, extravagant, and audacious,” to
look up the sketches which the then almost unknown Mark Twain was
printing in a Nevada newspaper. The humor of Mark Twain is still
American, still frolicsome, extravagant, and audacious; but it is riper
now and richer, and it has taken unto itself other qualities existing
only in germ in these firstlings of his muse. The sketches in _The
Jumping Frog_ and the letters which made up _The Innocents Abroad_ are
“comic copy,” as the phrase is in newspaper offices--comic copy not
altogether unlike what John Phœnix had written and Artemus Ward, better
indeed than the work of these newspaper humorists (for Mark Twain had it
in him to develop as they did not), but not essentially dissimilar.

And in the eyes of many who do not think for themselves, Mark Twain is
only the author of these genuine specimens of American humor. For when
the public has once made up its mind about any man’s work, it does not
relish any attempt to force it to unmake this opinion and to remake it.
Like other juries, it does not like to be ordered to reconsider its
verdict as contrary to the facts of the case. It is always sluggish in
beginning the necessary readjustment, and not only sluggish, but
somewhat grudging. Naturally it cannot help seeing the later works of a
popular writer from the point of view it had to take to enjoy his
earlier writings. And thus the author of _Huckleberry Finn_ and _Joan of
Arc_ is forced to pay a high price for the early and abundant popularity
of _The Innocents Abroad_.

No doubt, a few of his earlier sketches were inexpensive in their
elements; made of materials worn threadbare by generations of earlier
funny men, they were sometimes cut in the pattern of his predecessors.
No doubt, some of the earliest of all were crude and highly colored, and
may even be called forced, not to say violent. No doubt, also, they did
not suggest the seriousness and the melancholy which always must
underlie the deepest humor, as we find it in Cervantes and Molière, in
Swift and in Lowell. But even a careless reader, skipping through the
book in idle amusement, ought to have been able to see in _The Innocents
Abroad_ that the writer of that liveliest of books of travel was no mere
merry-andrew, grinning through a horse collar to make sport for the
groundlings; but a sincere observer of life, seeing through his own eyes
and setting down what he saw with abundant humor, of course, but also
with profound respect for the eternal verities.

George Eliot in one of her essays calls those who parody lofty themes
“debasers of the moral currency.” Mark Twain is always an advocate of
the sterling ethical standard. He is ready to overwhelm an affectation
with irresistible laughter, but he never lacks reverence for the things
that really deserve reverence. It is not at the Old Masters that he
scoffs in Italy, but rather at those who pay lip service to things which
they neither enjoy nor understand. For a ruin or a painting or a legend
that does not seem to him to deserve the appreciation in which it is
held he refuses to affect an admiration he does not feel; he cannot help
being honest--he was born so. For meanness of all kinds he has a burning
contempt; and on Abelard he pours out the vials of his wrath. He has a
quick eye for all humbugs and a scorching scorn for them; but there is
no attempt at being funny in the manner of the cockney comedians when he
stands in the awful presence of the Sphinx. He is not taken in by the
glamour of Palestine; he does not lose his head there; he keeps his
feet: but he knows that he is standing on holy ground; and there is
never a hint of irreverence in his attitude.

_A Tramp Abroad_ is a better book than _The Innocents Abroad_; it is
quite as laughter-provoking, and its manner is far more restrained. Mark
Twain was then master of his method, sure of himself, secure of his
popularity; and he could do his best and spare no pains to be certain
that it was his best. Perhaps there is a slight falling off in
_Following the Equator_; a trace of fatigue, of weariness, of
disenchantment. But the last book of travels has passages as broadly
humorous as any of the first; and it proves the author’s possession of a
pithy shrewdness not to be suspected from a perusal of its earliest
predecessor. The first book was the work of a young fellow rejoicing in
his own fun and resolved to make his readers laugh with him or at him;
the latest book is the work of an older man, who has found that life is
not all laughter, but whose eye is as clear as ever and whose tongue is
as plain-spoken.

These three books of travel are like all other books of travel in that
they relate in the first person what the author went forth to see.
Autobiographic also are _Roughing It_ and _Life on the Mississippi_, and
they have always seemed to me better books than the more widely
circulated travels. They are better because they are the result of a
more intimate knowledge of the material dealt with. Every traveler is of
necessity but a bird of passage; he is a mere carpetbagger; his
acquaintance with the countries he visits is external only; and this
acquaintanceship is made only when he is a full-grown man. But Mark
Twain’s knowledge of the Mississippi was acquired in his youth; it was
not purchased with a price; it was his birthright; and it was internal
and complete. And his knowledge of the mining camp was achieved in early
manhood when the mind is open and sensitive to every new impression.
There is in both these books a fidelity to the inner truth, a certainty
of touch, a sweep of vision, not to be found in the three books of
travels. For my own part I have long thought that Mark Twain could
securely rest his right to survive as an author on those opening
chapters in _Life on the Mississippi_ in which he makes clear the
difficulties, the seeming impossibilities, that fronted those who wished
to learn the river. These chapters are bold and brilliant, and they
picture for us forever a period and a set of conditions, singularly
interesting and splendidly varied, that otherwise would have had to
forego all adequate record.

III

It is highly probable that when an author reveals the power of evoking
views of places and of calling up portraits of people such as Mark Twain
showed in _Life on the Mississippi_, and when he has the masculine grasp
of reality Mark Twain made evident in _Roughing It_, he must needs
sooner or later turn from mere fact to avowed fiction and become a
story-teller. The long stories which Mark Twain has written fall into
two divisions--first, those of which the scene is laid in the present,
in reality, and mostly in the Mississippi Valley, and second, those of
which the scene is laid in the past, in fantasy mostly, and in Europe.

As my own liking is a little less for the latter group, there is no need
for me now to linger over them. In writing these tales of the past Mark
Twain was making up stories in his head; personally I prefer the tales
of his in which he has his foot firm on reality. _The Prince and the
Pauper_ has the essence of boyhood in it; it has variety and vigor; it
has abundant humor and plentiful pathos; and yet I for one would give
the whole of it for the single chapter in which Tom Sawyer lets the
contract for whitewashing his aunt’s fence.

Mr. Howells has declared that there are two kinds of fiction he likes
almost equally well--“a real novel and a pure romance”; and he joyfully
accepts _A Connecticut Yankee at King Arthur’s Court_ as “one of the
greatest romances ever imagined.” It is a humorous romance overflowing
with stalwart fun; and it is not irreverent, but iconoclastic, in that
it breaks not a few disestablished idols. It is intensely American and
intensely nineteenth century and intensely democratic--in the best sense
of that abused adjective. The British critics were greatly displeased
with the book;--and we are reminded of the fact that the Spanish still
somewhat resent _Don Quixote_ because it brings out too truthfully the
fatal gap in the Spanish character between the ideal and the real. So
much of the feudal still survives in British society that Mark Twain’s
merry and elucidating assault on the past seemed to some almost an
insult to the present.

But no critic, British or American, has ventured to discover any
irreverence in _Joan of Arc_, wherein, indeed, the tone is almost devout
and the humor almost too much subdued. Perhaps it is my own distrust of
the so-called historical novel, my own disbelief that it can ever be
anything but an inferior form of art, which makes me care less for this
worthy effort to honor a noble figure. And elevated and dignified as is
the _Joan of Arc_, I do not think that it shows us Mark Twain at his
best; although it has many a passage that only he could have written, it
is perhaps the least characteristic of his works. Yet it may well be
that the certain measure of success he has achieved in handling a
subject so lofty and so serious, will help to open the eyes of the
public to see the solid merits of his other stories, in which his humor
has fuller play and in which his natural gifts are more abundantly
displayed.

Of these other stories three are “real novels,” to use Mr. Howells’s
phrase; they are novels as real as any in any literature. _Tom Sawyer_
and _Huckleberry Finn_ and _Pudd’nhead Wilson_ are invaluable
contributions to American literature--for American literature is nothing
if it is not a true picture of American life and if it does not help us
to understand ourselves. _Huckleberry Finn_ is a very amusing volume,
and a generation has read its pages and laughed over it immoderately;
but it is very much more than a funny book; it is a marvelously accurate
portrayal of a whole civilization. Mr. Ormsby, in an essay which
accompanies his translation of _Don Quixote_, has pointed out that for a
full century after its publication that greatest of novels was enjoyed
chiefly as a tale of humorous misadventure, and that three generations
had laughed over it before anybody suspected that it was more than a
mere funny book. It is perhaps rather with the picaresque romances of
Spain that _Huckleberry Finn_ is to be compared than with the
masterpiece of Cervantes; but I do not think it will be a century or
take three generations before we Americans generally discover how great
a book _Huckleberry Finn_ really is, how keen its vision of character,
how close its observation of life, how sound its philosophy, and how it
records for us once and for all certain phases of Southwestern society
which it is most important for us to perceive and to understand. The
influence of slavery, the prevalence of feuds, the conditions and the
circumstances that make lynching possible--all these things are set
before us clearly and without comment. It is for us to draw our own
moral, each for himself, as we do when we see Shakespeare acted.

_Huckleberry Finn_, in its art, for one thing, and also in its broader
range, is superior to _Tom Sawyer_ and to _Pudd’nhead Wilson_, fine as
both these are in their several ways. In no book in our language, to my
mind, has the boy, simply as a boy, been better realized than in _Tom
Sawyer_. In some respects _Pudd’nhead Wilson_ is the most dramatic of
Mark Twain’s longer stories, and also the most ingenious; like _Tom
Sawyer_ and _Huckleberry Finn_, it has the full flavor of the
Mississippi River, on which its author spent his own boyhood, and from
contact with the soil of which he always rises reinvigorated.

It is by these three stories, and especially by _Huckleberry Finn_, that
Mark Twain is likely to live longest. Nowhere else is the life of the
Mississippi Valley so truthfully recorded. Nowhere else can we find a
gallery of Southwestern characters as varied and as veracious as those
Huck Finn met in his wanderings. The histories of literature all praise
the _Gil Blas_ of Le Sage for its amusing adventures, its natural
characters, its pleasant humor, and its insight into human frailty; and
the praise is deserved. But in everyone of these qualities _Huckleberry
Finn_ is superior to _Gil Blas_. Le Sage set the model of the picaresque
novel, and Mark Twain followed his example; but the American book is
richer than the French--deeper, finer, stronger. It would be hard to
find in any language better specimens of pure narrative, better examples
of the power of telling a story and of calling up action so that the
reader cannot help but see it, than Mark Twain’s account of the
Shepherdson-Grangerford feud, and his description of the shooting of
Boggs by Sherburn and of the foiled attempt to lynch Sherburn afterward.

These scenes, fine as they are, vivid, powerful, and most artistic in
their restraint, can be matched in the two other books. In _Tom Sawyer_
they can be paralleled by the chapter in which the boy and the girl are
lost in the cave, and Tom, seeing a gleam of light in the distance,
discovers that it is a candle carried by Indian Joe, the one enemy he
has in the world. In _Pudd’nhead Wilson_ the great passages of
_Huckleberry Finn_ are rivaled by that most pathetic account of the weak
son willing to sell his own mother as a slave “down the river.” Although
no one of the books is sustained throughout on this high level, and
although, in truth, there are in each of them passages here and there
that we could wish away (because they are not worthy of the association
in which we find them), I have no hesitation in expressing here my own
conviction that the man who has given us four scenes like these is to be
compared with the masters of literature; and that he can abide the
comparison with equanimity.

Perhaps I myself prefer these three Mississippi Valley books above all
Mark Twain’s other writings (although with no lack of affection for
those also) partly because these have the most of the flavor of the soil
about them. After veracity and the sense of the universal, what I best
relish in literature is this native aroma, pungent, homely, and abiding.
Yet I feel sure that I should not rate him so high if he were the author
of these three books only. They are the best of him, but the others are
good also, and good in a different way. Other writers have given us this
local color more or less artistically, more or less convincingly: one
New England and another New York, a third Virginia, and a fourth
Georgia, and a fifth Wisconsin; but who so well as Mark Twain has given
us the full spectrum of the Union? With all his exactness in reproducing
the Mississippi Valley, Mark Twain is not sectional in his outlook; he
is national always. He is not narrow; he is not Western or Eastern; he
is American with a certain largeness and boldness and freedom and
certainty that we like to think of as befitting a country so vast as
ours and a people so independent.

In Mark Twain we have “the national spirit as seen with our own eyes,”
declared Mr. Howells; and, from more points of view than one, Mark Twain
seems to me to be the very embodiment of Americanism. Self-educated in
the hard school of life, he has gone on broadening his outlook as he has
grown older. Spending many years abroad, he has come to understand other
nationalities, without enfeebling his own native faith. Combining a
mastery of the commonplace with an imaginative faculty, he is a
practical idealist. No respecter of persons, he has a tender regard for
his fellow man. Irreverent toward all outworn superstitions, he has ever
revealed the deepest respect for all things truly worthy of reverence.
Unwilling to take pay in words, he is impatient always to get at the
root of the matter, to pierce to the center, to see the thing as it is.
He has a habit of standing upright, of thinking for himself, and of
hitting hard at whatsoever seems to him hateful and mean; but at the
core of him there is genuine gentleness and honest sympathy, brave
humanity and sweet kindliness. Perhaps it is boastful for us to think
that these characteristics which we see in Mark Twain are
characteristics also of the American people as a whole; but it is
pleasant to think so.

Mark Twain has the very marrow of Americanism. He is as intensely and as
typically American as Franklin or Emerson or Hawthorne. He has not a
little of the shrewd common sense and the homely and unliterary
directness of Franklin. He is not without a share of the aspiration and
the elevation of Emerson; and he has a philosophy of his own as
optimistic as Emerson’s. He possesses also somewhat of Hawthorne’s
interest in ethical problems, with something of the same power of
getting at the heart of them; he, too, has written his parables and
apologues wherein the moral is obvious and unobtruded. He is
uncompromisingly honest; and his conscience is as rugged as his style
sometimes is.

No American author has to-day at his command a style more nervous, more
varied, more flexible, or more various than Mark Twain’s. His colloquial
ease should not hide from us his mastery of all the devices of rhetoric.
He may seem to disobey the letter of the law sometimes, but he is always
obedient to the spirit. He never speaks unless he has something to say;
and then he says it tersely, sharply, with a freshness of epithet and an
individuality of phrase, always accurate, however unacademic. His
vocabulary is enormous, and it is deficient only in the dead words; his
language is alive always, and actually tingling with vitality. He
rejoices in the daring noun and in the audacious adjective. His instinct
for the exact word is not always unerring, and now and again he has
failed to exercise it; but there is in his prose none of the flatting
and sharping he censured in Fenimore Cooper’s. His style has none of the
cold perfection of an antique statue; it is too modern and too American
for that, and too completely the expression of the man himself, sincere
and straightforward. It is not free from slang, although this is far
less frequent than one might expect; but it does its work swiftly and
cleanly. And it is capable of immense variety. Consider the tale of the
Blue Jay in _A Tramp Abroad_, wherein the humor is sustained by unstated
pathos; what could be better told than this, with every word the right
word and in the right place? And take Huck Finn’s description of the
storm when he was alone on the island, which is in dialect, which will
not parse, which bristles with double negatives, but which none the less
is one of the finest passages of descriptive prose in all American
literature.

After all, it is as a humorist pure and simple that Mark Twain is best
known and best beloved. In the preceding pages I have tried to point out
the several ways in which he transcends humor, as the word is commonly
restricted, and to show that he is no mere fun maker. But he is a fun
maker beyond all question, and he has made millions laugh as no other
man of our century has done. The laughter he has aroused is wholesome
and self-respecting; it clears the atmosphere. For this we cannot but be
grateful. As Lowell said, “let us not be ashamed to confess that, if we
find the tragedy a bore, we take the profoundest satisfaction in the
farce. It is a mark of sanity.” There is no laughter in Don Quixote, the
noble enthusiast whose wits are unsettled; and there is little on the
lips of Alceste the misanthrope of Molière; but for both of them life
would have been easier had they known how to laugh. Cervantes himself,
and Molière also, found relief in laughter for their melancholy; and it
was the sense of humor which kept them tolerantly interested in the
spectacle of humanity, although life had pressed hardly on them both. On
Mark Twain also life has left its scars; but he has bound up his wounds
and battled forward with a stout heart, as Cervantes did, and Molière.
It was Molière who declared that it was a strange business to undertake
to make people laugh; but even now, after two centuries, when the best
of Molière’s plays are acted, mirth breaks out again and laughter
overflows.

It would be doing Mark Twain a disservice to liken him to Molière, the
greatest comic dramatist of all time; and yet there is more than one
point of similarity. Just as Mark Twain began by writing comic copy
which contained no prophecy of a masterpiece like _Huckleberry Finn_, so
Molière was at first the author only of semiacrobatic farces on the
Italian model in no wise presaging _Tartuffe_ and _The Misanthrope_.
Just as Molière succeeded first of all in pleasing the broad public that
likes robust fun, and then slowly and step by step developed into a
dramatist who set on the stage enduring figures plucked out of the
abounding life about him, so also has Mark Twain grown, ascending from
_The Jumping Frog_ to _Huckleberry Finn_, as comic as its elder brother
and as laughter-provoking, but charged also with meaning and with
philosophy. And like Molière again, Mark Twain has kept solid hold of
the material world; his doctrine is not of the earth earthy, but it is
never sublimated into sentimentality. He sympathizes with the spiritual
side of humanity, while never ignoring the sensual. Like Molière, Mark
Twain takes his stand on common sense and thinks scorn of affectation of
every sort. He understands sinners and strugglers and weaklings; and he
is not harsh with them, reserving his scorching hatred for hypocrites
and pretenders and frauds.

At how long an interval Mark Twain shall be rated after Molière and
Cervantes it is for the future to declare. All that we can see clearly
now is that it is with them that he is to be classed--with Molière and
Cervantes, with Chaucer and Fielding, humorists all of them, and all of
them manly men.

[Illustration]

INTRODUCTION

A number of articles in this volume, even the more important, have not
heretofore appeared in print. Mark Twain was nearly always
writing--busily trying to keep up with his imagination and enthusiasm: A
good many of his literary undertakings remained unfinished or were held
for further consideration, in time to be quite forgotten. Few of these
papers were unimportant, and a fresh interest attaches to them to-day in
the fact that they present some new detail of the author’s devious
wanderings, some new point of observation, some hitherto unexpressed
angle of his indefatigable thought.

The present collection opens with a chapter from a book that was never
written, a book about England, for which the author made some
preparation, during his first visit to that country, in 1872. He filled
several notebooks with brief comments, among which appears this single
complete episode, the description of a visit to Westminster Abbey by
night. As an example of what the book might have been we may be sorry
that it went no farther.

It was not, however, quite in line with his proposed undertaking, which
had been to write a more or less satirical book on English manners and
customs. Arriving there, he found that he liked the people and their
country too well for that, besides he was so busy entertaining, and
being entertained, that he had little time for critical observation. In
a letter home he wrote:

I came here to take notes for a book, but I haven’t done much but
attend dinners and make speeches. I have had a jolly good time, and I
do hate to go away from these English folks; they make a stranger feel
entirely at home, and they laugh so easily that it is a comfort to
make after-dinner speeches here.

England at this time gave Mark Twain an even fuller appreciation than he
had thus far received in his own country. To hunt out and hold up to
ridicule the foibles of hosts so hospitable would have been quite
foreign to his nature. The notes he made had little satire in them,
being mainly memoranda of the moment....

“Down the Rhône,” written some twenty years later, is a chapter from
another book that failed of completion. Mark Twain, in Europe partly for
his health, partly for financial reasons, had agreed to write six
letters for the New York _Sun_, two of which--those from Aix and
Marienbad--appear in this volume. Six letters would not make a book of
sufficient size and he thought he might supplement them by making a
drifting trip down the Rhône, the “river of angels,” as Stevenson called
it, and turning it into literature.

The trip itself proved to be one of the most delightful excursions of
his life, and his account of it, so far as completed, has interest and
charm. But he was alone, with only his boatman (the “Admiral”) and his
courier, Joseph Very, for company, a monotony of human material that was
not inspiring. He made some attempt to introduce fictitious characters,
but presently gave up the idea. As a whole the excursion was too drowsy
and comfortable to stir him to continuous effort; neither the notes nor
the article, attempted somewhat later, ever came to conclusion.

Three articles in this volume, beginning with “To the Person Sitting in
Darkness,” were published in the _North American Review_ during 1901-02,
at a period when Mark Twain had pretty well made up his mind on most
subjects, and especially concerning the interference of one nation with
another on matters of religion and government. He had recently returned
from a ten years’ sojourn in Europe and his opinion was eagerly sought
on all public questions, especially upon those of international aspect.
He was no longer regarded merely as a humorist, but as a sort of Solon
presiding over a court of final conclusions. A writer in the _Evening
Mail_ said of this later period:

Things have reached the point where, if Mark Twain is not at a public
meeting or banquet, he is expected to console it with one of his
inimitable letters of advice and encouragement.

His old friend, W. D. Howells, expressed an amused fear that Mark
Twain’s countrymen, who in former years had expected him to be merely a
humorist, should now, in the light of his wider acceptance abroad,
demand that he be mainly serious.

He was serious enough, and fiercely humorous as well, in his article “To
the Person Sitting in Darkness” and in those which followed it. It
seemed to him that the human race, always a doubtful quantity, was
behaving even worse than usual. On New Year’s Eve, 1900-01, he wrote:

A GREETING FROM THE NINETEENTH TO THE
TWENTIETH CENTURY

I bring you the stately nation named Christendom, returning,
bedraggled, besmirched, and dishonored, from pirate raids in
Kiao-Chau, Manchuria, South Africa, and the Philippines, with her soul
full of meanness, her pocket full of boodle, and her mouth full of
pious hypocracies. Give her soap and a towel, but hide the
looking-glass.

Certain missionary activities in China, in particular, invited his
attention, and in the first of the _Review_ articles he unburdened
himself. A masterpiece of pitiless exposition and sarcasm, its
publication stirred up a cyclone. Periodicals more or less orthodox
heaped upon him denunciation and vituperation. “To My Missionary
Critics,” published in the _Review_ for April, was his answer. He did
not fight alone, but was upheld by a vast following of liberal-minded
readers, both in and out of the Church. Edward S. Martin wrote him:

How gratifying it is to feel that we have a man among us who
understands the rarity of plain truth, and who delights to utter it,
and has the gift of doing so without cant, and with not too much
seriousness.

The principals of the primal human drama, our biblical parents of Eden,
play a considerable part in Mark Twain’s imaginative writings. He wrote
“Diaries” of both Adam and Eve, that of the latter being among his
choicest works. He was generally planning something that would include
one or both of the traditional ancestors, and results of this tendency
express themselves in the present volume. Satan, likewise, the
picturesque angel of rebellion and defeat, the Satan of _Paradise Lost_,
made a strong appeal and in no less than three of the articles which
follow the prince of error variously appears. For the most part these
inventions offer an aspect of humor; but again the figure of the outcast
angel is presented to us in an attitude of sorrowful kinship with the
great human tragedy.

ALBERT BIGELOW PAINE

EUROPE AND ELSEWHERE

A MEMORABLE MIDNIGHT EXPERIENCE
(1872)

“Come along--and hurry. Few people have got originality enough to think
of the expedition I have been planning, and still fewer could carry it
out, maybe, even if they _did_ think of it. Hurry, now. Cab at the
door.”

It was past eleven o’clock and I was just going to bed. But this friend
of mine was as reliable as he was eccentric, and so there was not a
doubt in my mind that his “expedition” had merit in it. I put on my coat
and boots again, and we drove away.

“Where is it? Where are we going?”

“Don’t worry. You’ll see.”

He was not inclined to talk. So I thought this must be a weighty matter.
My curiosity grew with the minutes, but I kept it manfully under the
surface. I watched the lamps, the signs, the numbers, as we thundered
down the long streets, but it was of no use--I am always lost in London,
day or night. It was very chilly--almost bleak. People leaned against
the gusty blasts as if it were the dead of winter. The crowds grew
thinner and thinner and the noises waxed faint and seemed far away. The
sky was overcast and threatening. We drove on, and still on, till I
wondered if we were ever going to stop. At last we passed by a spacious
bridge and a vast building with a lighted clock tower, and presently
entered a gateway, passed through a sort of tunnel, and stopped in a
court surrounded by the black outlines of a great edifice. Then we
alighted, walked a dozen steps or so, and waited. In a little while
footsteps were heard and a man emerged from the darkness and we dropped
into his wake without saying anything. He led us under an archway of
masonry, and from that into a roomy tunnel, through a tall iron gate,
which he locked behind us. We followed him down this tunnel, guided more
by his footsteps on the stone flagging than by anything we could very
distinctly see. At the end of it we came to another iron gate, and our
conductor stopped there and lit a little bull’s-eye lantern. Then he
unlocked the gate--and I wished he had oiled it first, it grated so
dismally. The gate swung open and we stood on the threshold of what
seemed a limitless domed and pillared cavern carved out of the solid
darkness. The conductor and my friend took off their hats reverently,
and I did likewise. For the moment that we stood thus there was not a
sound, and the silence seemed to add to the solemnity of the gloom. I
_looked_ my inquiry!

“It is the tomb of the great dead of England--_Westminster Abbey_.”

(One cannot express a start--in words.) Down among the columns--ever so
far away, it seemed--a light revealed itself like a star, and a voice
came echoing through the spacious emptiness:

“Who goes there!”

“Wright!”

The star disappeared and the footsteps that accompanied it clanked out
of hearing in the distance. Mr. Wright held up his lantern and the vague
vastness took something of form to itself--the stately columns developed
stronger outlines, and a dim pallor here and there marked the places of
lofty windows. We were among the tombs; and on every hand dull shapes of
men, sitting, standing, or stooping, inspected us curiously out of the
darkness--reached out their hands toward us--some appealing, some
beckoning, some warning us away. Effigies, they were--statues over the
graves; but they looked human and natural in the murky shadows. Now a
little half-grown black-and-white cat squeezed herself through the bars
of the iron gate and came purring lovingly about us, unawed by the time
or the place--unimpressed by the marble pomp that sepulchers a line of
mighty dead that ends with a great author of yesterday and began with a
sceptered monarch away back in the dawn of history more than twelve
hundred years ago. And she followed us about and never left us while we
pursued our work. We wandered hither and thither, uncovered, speaking in
low voices, and stepping softly by instinct, for any little noise rang
and echoed there in a way to make one shudder. Mr. Wright flashed his
lantern first upon this object and then upon that, and kept up a running
commentary that showed that there was nothing about the venerable Abbey
that was trivial in his eyes or void of interest. He is a man in
authority--being superintendent of the works--and his daily business
keeps him familiar with every nook and corner of the great pile. Casting
a luminous ray now here, now yonder, he would say:

“Observe the height of the Abbey--one hundred and three feet to the base
of the roof--I measured it myself the other day. Notice the base of this
column--old, very old--hundreds and hundreds of years; and how well they
knew how to build in those old days. Notice it--every stone is laid
horizontally--that is to say, just as nature laid it originally in the
quarry--not set up edgewise; in our day some people set them on edge,
and then wonder why they split and flake. Architects cannot teach nature
anything. Let me remove this matting--it is put there to preserve the
pavement; now, there is a bit of pavement that is seven hundred years
old; you can see by these scattering clusters of colored mosaics how
beautiful it was before time and sacrilegious idlers marred it. Now
there, in the border, was an inscription once; see, follow the
circle--you can trace it by the ornaments that have been pulled
out--here is an A, and there is an O, and yonder another A--all
beautiful old English capitals--there is no telling what the inscription
was--no record left, now. Now move along in this direction, if you
please. Yonder is where old King Sebert the Saxon, lies--his monument is
the oldest one in the Abbey; Sebert died in 616, and that’s as much as
twelve hundred and fifty years ago--think of it!--twelve hundred and
fifty years. Now yonder is the last one--Charles Dickens--there on the
floor with the brass letters on the slab--and to this day the people
come and put flowers on it. Why, along at first they almost had to
_cart_ the flowers out, there were so many. Could not _leave_ them
there, you know, because it’s where everybody walks--and a body wouldn’t
want them trampled on, anyway. All this place about here, now, is the
Poet’s Corner. There is Garrick’s monument, and Addison’s, and
Thackeray’s bust--and Macaulay lies there. And here, close to Dickens
and Garrick, lie Sheridan and Doctor Johnson--and here is old
Parr--Thomas Parr--you can read the inscription:

“Tho: Par of Y Covnty of Sallop Borne A :1483. He Lived in Y Reignes
of Ten Princes, viz: K. Edw. 4 K. Ed. 5. K. Rich 3. K. Hen. 7. K. Hen.
8. Edw. 6. QVV. Ma. Q. Eliz. K. IA. and K. Charles, Aged 152 Yeares,
And Was Buryed Here Novemb. 15. 1635.

“Very old man indeed, and saw a deal of life. (Come off the grave,
Kitty, poor thing; she keeps the rats away from the office, and there’s
no harm in her--her and her mother.) And here--this is Shakespeare’s
statue--leaning on his elbow and pointing with his finger at the lines
on the scroll:

“The cloud-capt towers, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Yea, all which it inherit shall dissolve,
And, like the baseless fabric of a vision,
Leave not a wrack behind.

“That stone there covers Campbell the poet. Here are names you know
pretty well--Milton, and Gray who wrote the ‘Elegy,’ and Butler who
wrote ‘Hudibras,’ and Edmund Spencer, and Ben Jonson--there are three
tablets to him scattered about the Abbey, and all got ‘O Rare Ben
Jonson’ cut on them--you were standing on one of them just now--he is
buried standing up. There used to be a tradition here that explains it.
The story goes that he did not dare ask to be buried in the Abbey, so he
asked King James if he would make him a present of eighteen inches of
English ground, and the king said yes, and asked him where he would have
it, and he said in Westminster Abbey. Well, the king wouldn’t go back on
his word, and so there he is sure enough--stood up on end. Years ago, in
Dean Buckland’s time--before my day--they were digging a grave close to
Jonson and they uncovered him and his head fell off. Toward night the
clerk of the works hid the head to keep it from being stolen, as the
ground was to remain open till next day. Presently the dean’s son came
along and he found a head, and hid it away for Jonson’s. And by and by
along comes a stranger, and _he_ found a head, too, and walked off with
it under his cloak, and a month or so afterward he was heard to boast
that he had Ben Jonson’s head. Then there was a deal of correspondence
about it, in the _Times_, and everybody distressed. But Mr. Frank
Buckland came out and comforted everybody by telling how he saved the
true head, and so the stranger must have got one that wasn’t of any
consequence. And then up speaks the clerk of the works and tells how
_he_ saved the right head, and so _Dean Buckland_ must have got a wrong
one. Well, it was all settled satisfactorily at last, because the clerk
of the works _proved_ his head. And then I believe they got that head
from the stranger--so now we have three. But it shows you what regiments
of people you are walking over--been collecting here for twelve hundred
years--in some places, no doubt, the bones are fairly matted together.

“And here are some unfortunates. Under this place lies Anne, queen of
Richard III, and daughter of the Kingmaker, the great Earl of
Warwick--murdered she was--poisoned by her husband. And here is a slab
which you see has once had the figure of a man in armor on it, in brass
or copper, let into the stone. You can see the shape of it--but it is
all worn away now by people’s feet; the man has been dead five hundred
years that lies under it. He was a knight in Richard II’s time. His
enemies pressed him close and he fled and took sanctuary here in the
Abbey. Generally a man was safe when he took sanctuary in those days,
but this man was not. The captain of the Tower and a band of men pursued
him and his friends and they had a bloody fight here on this floor; but
this poor fellow did not stand much of a chance, and they butchered him
right before the altar.”

We wandered over to another part of the Abbey, and came to a place where
the pavement was being repaired. Every paving stone has an inscription
on it and covers a grave. Mr. Wright continued:

“Now, you are standing on William Pitt’s grave--you can read the name,
though it is a good deal worn--and you, sir, are standing on the grave
of Charles James Fox. I found a very good place here the other
day--nobody suspected it--been curiously overlooked, somehow--but--it is
a very nice place indeed, and very comfortable” (holding his bull’s eye
to the pavement and searching around). “Ah, here it is--this is the
stone--nothing under here--nothing at all--a very nice place indeed--and
very comfortable.”

Mr. Wright spoke in a professional way, of course, and after the manner
of a man who takes an interest in his business and is gratified at any
piece of good luck that fortune favors him with; and yet with all that
silence and gloom and solemnity about me, there was something about his
idea of a nice, comfortable place that made the cold chills creep up my
back. Presently we began to come upon little chamberlike chapels, with
solemn figures ranged around the sides, lying apparently asleep, in
sumptuous marble beds, with their hands placed together above their
breasts--the figures and all their surroundings black with age. Some
were dukes and earls, some where kings and queens, some were ancient
abbots whose effigies had lain there so many centuries and suffered such
disfigurement that their faces were almost as smooth and featureless as
the stony pillows their heads reposed upon. At one time while I stood
looking at a distant part of the pavement, admiring the delicate tracery
which the now flooding moonlight was casting upon it through a lofty
window, the party moved on and I lost them. The first step I made in the
dark, holding my hands before me, as one does under such circumstances,
I touched a cold object, and stopped to feel its shape. I made out a
thumb, and then delicate fingers. It was the clasped, appealing hands of
one of those reposing images--a lady, a queen. I touched the face--by
accident, not design--and shuddered inwardly, if not outwardly; and then
something rubbed against my leg, and I shuddered outwardly and inwardly
both. It was the cat. The friendly creature meant well, but, as the
English say, she gave me “such a turn.” I took her in my arms for
company and wandered among the grim sleepers till I caught the glimmer
of the lantern again. Presently, in a little chapel, we were looking at
the sarcophagus, let into the wall, which contains the bones of the
infant princes who were smothered in the Tower. Behind us was the
stately monument of Queen Elizabeth, with her effigy dressed in the
royal robes, lying as if at rest. When we turned around, the cat, with
stupendous simplicity, was coiled up and sound asleep upon the feet of
the Great Queen! Truly this was reaching far toward the millennium when
the lion and the lamb shall lie down together. The murderer of Mary and
Essex, the conqueror of the Armada, the imperious ruler of a turbulent
empire, become a couch, at last, for a tired kitten! It was the most
eloquent sermon upon the vanity of human pride and human grandeur that
inspired Westminster preached to us that night.

We would have turned puss out of the Abbey, but for the fact that her
small body made light of railed gates and she would have come straight
back again. We walked up a flight of half a dozen steps and, stopping
upon a pavement laid down in 1260, stood in the core of English history,
as it were--upon the holiest ground in the British Empire, if profusion
of kingly bones and kingly names of old renown make holy ground. For
here in this little space were the ashes, the monuments and gilded
effigies, of ten of the most illustrious personages who have worn crowns
and borne scepters in this realm. This royal dust was the slow
accumulation of hundreds of years. The latest comer entered into his
rest four hundred years ago, and since the earliest was sepulchered,
more than eight centuries have drifted by. Edward the Confessor, Henry
the Fifth, Edward the First, Edward the Third, Richard the Second, Henry
the Third, Eleanor, Philippa, Margaret Woodville--it was like bringing
the colossal myths of history out of the forgotten ages and speaking to
them face to face. The gilded effigies were scarcely marred--the faces
were comely and majestic, old Edward the First looked the king--one had
no impulse to be familiar with him. While we were contemplating the
figure of Queen Eleanor lying in state, and calling to mind how like an
ordinary human being the great king mourned for her six hundred years
ago, we saw the vast illuminated clock face of the Parliament House
tower glowering at us through a window of the Abbey and pointing with
both hands to midnight. It was a derisive reminder that we were a part
of this present sordid, plodding, commonplace time, and not august
relics of a bygone age and the comrades of kings--and then the booming
of the great bell tolled twelve, and with the last stroke the mocking
clock face vanished in sudden darkness and left us with the past and its
grandeurs again.

We descended, and entered the nave of the splendid Chapel of Henry VII.
Mr. Wright said:

“Here is where the order of knighthood was conferred for centuries; the
candidates sat in these seats; these brasses bear their coats of arms;
these are their banners overhead, torn and dusty, poor old things, for
they have hung there many and many a long year. In the floor you see
inscriptions--kings and queens that lie in the vault below. When this
vault was opened in our time they found them lying there in beautiful
order--all quiet and comfortable--the red velvet on the coffins hardly
faded any. And the bodies were sound--I saw them myself. They were
embalmed, and looked natural, although they had been there such an awful
time. Now in this place here, which is called the chantry, is a curious
old group of statuary--the figures are mourning over George Villiers,
Duke of Buckingham, who was assassinated by Felton in Charles I’s time.
Yonder, Cromwell and his family used to lie. Now we come to the south
aisle and this is the grand monument to Mary Queen of Scots, and her
effigy--you easily see they get all the portraits from this effigy. Here
in the wall of the aisle is a bit of a curiosity pretty roughly carved:

Wm. WEST TOOME
SHOWER
1698

“William West, tomb shower, 1698. That fellow carved his name around in
several places about the Abbey.”

This was a sort of revelation to me. I had been wandering through the
Abbey, never imagining but that its shows were created only for us--the
people of the nineteenth century. But here is a man (become a show
himself now, and a curiosity) to whom all these things were sights and
wonders a hundred and seventy-five years ago. When curious idlers from
the country and from foreign lands came here to look, he showed them old
Sebert’s tomb and those of the other old worthies I have been speaking
of, and called them ancient and venerable; and he showed them Charles
II’s tomb as the newest and latest novelty he had; and he was doubtless
present at the funeral. Three hundred years before his time some
ancestor of his, perchance, used to point out the ancient marvels, in
the immemorial way and then say: “This, gentlemen, is the tomb of his
late Majesty Edward the Third--and I wish I could see him alive and
hearty again, as I saw him twenty years ago; yonder is the tomb of
Sebert the Saxon king--he has been lying there well on to eight hundred
years, they say. And three hundred years before _this_ party,
Westminster was still a show, and Edward the Confessor’s grave was a
novelty of some thirty years’ standing--but old “Sebert” was hoary and
ancient still, and people who spoke of Alfred the Great as a
comparatively recent man pondered over Sebert’s grave and tried to take
in all the tremendous meaning of it when the “toome shower” said, “This
man has lain here well nigh five hundred years.” It does seem as if all
the generations that have lived and died since the world was created
have visited Westminster to stare and wonder--and still found ancient
things there. And some day a curiously clad company may arrive here in a
balloon ship from some remote corner of the globe, and as they follow
the verger among the monuments they may hear him say: “This is the tomb
of Victoria the Good Queen; battered and uncouth as it looks, it once
was a wonder of magnificence--but twelve hundred years work a deal of
damage to these things.”

As we turned toward the door the moonlight was beaming in at the
windows, and it gave to the sacred place such an air of restfulness and
peace that Westminster was no longer a grisly museum of moldering
vanities, but her better and worthier self--the deathless mentor of a
great nation, the guide and encourager of right ambitions, the preserver
of just fame, and the home and refuge for the nation’s best and bravest
when their work is done.

TWO MARK TWAIN EDITORIALS

(Written 1869 and 1870, for the Buffalo _Express_, of which Mark Twain
became editor and part owner)

I
“SALUTATORY”

Being a stranger, it would be immodest and unbecoming in me to suddenly
and violently assume the associate editorship of the _Buffalo Express_
without a single explanatory word of comfort or encouragement to the
unoffending patrons of the paper, who are about to be exposed to
constant attacks of my wisdom and learning. But this explanatory word
shall be as brief as possible. I only wish to assure parties having a
friendly interest in the prosperity of the journal, that I am not going
to hurt the paper deliberately and intentionally at any time. I am not
going to introduce any startling reforms, or in any way attempt to make
trouble. I am simply going to do my plain, unpretending duty, when I
cannot get out of it; I shall work diligently and honestly and
faithfully at all times and upon all occasions, when privation and want
shall compel me to do it; in writing, I shall always confine myself
strictly to the truth, except when it is attended with inconvenience; I
shall witheringly rebuke all forms of crime and misconduct, except when
committed by the party inhabiting my own vest; I shall not make use of
slang or vulgarity upon any occasion or under any circumstances, and
shall never use profanity except in discussing house rent and taxes.
Indeed, upon second thought, I will not even use it then, for it is
unchristian, inelegant, and degrading--though to speak truly I do not
see how house rent and taxes are going to be discussed worth a cent
without it. I shall not often meddle with politics, because we have a
political editor who is already excellent, and only needs to serve a
term in the penitentiary in order to be perfect. I shall not write any
poetry, unless I conceive a spite against the subscribers.

Such is my platform. I do not see any earthly use in it, but custom is
law, and custom must be obeyed, no matter how much violence it may do to
one’s feelings. And this custom which I am slavishly following now is
surely one of the least necessary that ever came into vogue. In private
life a man does not go and trumpet his crime before he commits it, but
your new editor is such an important personage that he feels called upon
to write a “salutatory” at once, and he puts into it all that he knows,
and all that he don’t know, and some things he thinks he knows but isn’t
certain of. And he parades his list of wonders which he is going to
perform; of reforms which he is going to introduce, and public evils
which he is going to exterminate; and public blessings which he is going
to create; and public nuisances which he is going to abate. He spreads
this all out with oppressive solemnity over a column and a half of large
print, and feels that the country is saved. His satisfaction over it,
something enormous. He then settles down to his miracles and inflicts
profound platitudes and impenetrable wisdom upon a helpless public as
long as they can stand it, and then they send him off consul to some
savage island in the Pacific in the vague hope that the cannibals will
like him well enough to eat him. And with an inhumanity which is but a
fitting climax to his career of persecution, instead of packing his
trunk at once he lingers to inflict upon his benefactors a
“valedictory.” If there is anything more uncalled for than a
“salutatory,” it is one of those tearful, blubbering, long-winded
“valedictories”--wherein a man who has been annoying the public for ten
years cannot take leave of them without sitting down to cry a column and
a half. Still, it is the custom to write valedictories, and custom
should be respected. In my secret heart I admire my predecessor for
declining to print a valedictory, though in public I say and shall
continue to say sternly, it is custom and he ought to have printed one.
People never read them any more than they do the “salutatories,” but
nevertheless he ought to have honored the old fossil--he ought to have
printed a valedictory. I said as much to him, and he replied:

“I have resigned my place--I have departed this life--I am
journalistically dead, at present, ain’t I?”

“Yes.”

“Well, wouldn’t you consider it disgraceful in a corpse to sit up and
comment on the funeral?”

I record it here, and preserve it from oblivion, as the briefest and
best “valedictory” that has yet come under my notice.

MARK TWAIN.

P. S.--I am grateful for the kindly way in which the press of the land
have taken notice of my irruption into regular journalistic life,
telegraphically or editorially, and am happy in this place to express
the feeling.

II
A TRIBUTE TO ANSON BURLINGAME

(February, 1870)

On Wednesday, in St. Petersburg, Mr. Burlingame died after a short
illness. It is not easy to comprehend, at an instant’s warning, the
exceeding magnitude of the loss which mankind sustains in this
death--the loss which all nations and all peoples sustain in it. For he
had outgrown the narrow citizenship of a state and become a citizen of
the world; and his charity was large enough and his great heart warm
enough to feel for all its races and to labor for them. He was a true
man, a brave man, an earnest man, a liberal man, a just man, a generous
man, in all his ways and by all his instincts a noble man; he was a man
of education and culture, a finished conversationalist, a ready, able,
and graceful speaker, a man of great brain, a broad and deep and weighty
thinker. He was a great man--a very, very great man. He was imperially
endowed by nature; he was faithfully befriended by circumstances, and he
wrought gallantly always, in whatever station he found himself.

He was a large, handsome man, with such a face as children instinctively
trust in, and homeless and friendless creatures appeal to without fear.
He was courteous at all times and to all people, and he had the rare and
winning faculty of being always _interested_ in whatever a man had to
say--a faculty which he possessed simply because nothing was trivial to
him which any man or woman or child had at heart. When others said harsh
things about even unconscionable and intrusive bores after they had
retired from his presence, Mr. Burlingame often said a generous word in
their favor, but never an unkind one.

A chivalrous generosity was his most marked characteristic--a large
charity, a noble kindliness that could not comprehend narrowness or
meanness. It is this that shows out in his fervent abolitionism,
manifested at a time when it was neither very creditable nor very safe
to hold such a creed; it was this that prompted him to hurl his famous
Brooks-and-Sumner speech in the face of an astonished South at a time
when all the North was smarting under the sneers and taunts and material
aggressions of admired and applauded Southerners. It was this that made
him so warmly espouse the cause of Italian liberty--an espousal so
pointed and so vigorous as to attract the attention of Austria, which
empire afterward declined to receive him when he was appointed Austrian
envoy by Mr. Lincoln. It was this trait which prompted him to punish
Americans in China when they imposed upon the Chinese. It was this trait
which moved him, in framing treaties, to frame them in the broad
interest of the world, instead of selfishly seeking to acquire
advantages for his own country alone and at the expense of the other
party to the treaty, as had always before been the recognized
“diplomacy.” It was this trait which was and is the soul of the crowning
achievements of his career, the treaties with America and England in
behalf of China. In every labor of this man’s life there was present a
good and noble motive; and in nothing that he ever did or said was there
anything small or base. In real greatness, ability, grandeur of
character, and achievement, he stood head and shoulders above all the
Americans of to-day, save one or two.

Without any noise, or any show, or any flourish, Mr. Burlingame did a
score of things of shining mark during his official residence in China.
They were hardly heard of away here in America. When he first went to
China, he found that with all their kingly powers, American envoys were
still not of much consequence in the eyes of their countrymen of either
civil or official position. But he was a man who was always “posted.” He
knew all about the state of things he would find in China before he
sailed from America. And so he took care to demand and receive
additional powers before he turned his back upon Washington. When the
customary consular irregularities placidly continued and he notified
those officials that such irregularities must instantly cease, and they
inquired with insolent flippancy what the consequence might be in case
they did not cease, he answered blandly that he would _dismiss_ them,
from the highest to the lowest! (He had quietly come armed with absolute
authority over their official lives.) The consular irregularities
ceased. A far healthier condition of American commercial interests
ensued there.

To punish a foreigner in China was an unheard-of thing. There was no way
of accomplishing it. Each Embassy had its own private district or
grounds, forced from the imperial government, and into that sacred
district Chinese law officers could not intrude. All foreigners guilty
of offenses against Chinamen were tried by their own countrymen, in
these holy places, and as no Chinese testimony was admitted, the culprit
almost always went free. One of the very first things Mr. Burlingame did
was to make a Chinaman’s oath as good as a foreigner’s; and in his
ministerial court, through Chinese and American testimony combined, he
very shortly convicted a noted American ruffian of murdering a Chinaman.
And now a community accustomed to light sentences were naturally
startled when, under Mr. Burlingame’s hand, and bearing the broad seal
of the American Embassy, came an order to take him out and hang him!

Mr. Burlingame broke up the “extra-territorial” privileges (as they were
called), as far as our country was concerned, and made justice as free
to all and as untrammeled in the metes and bounds of its jurisdiction,
in China, as ever it was in any land.

Mr. Burlingame was the leading spirit in the co-operative policy. He got
the Imperial College established. He procured permission for an American
to open the coal mines of China. Through his efforts China was the first
country to close her ports against the war vessels of the Southern
Confederacy; and Prince Kung’s order, in this matter, was singularly
energetic, comprehensive, and in earnest. The ports were closed then,
and never opened to a Southern warship afterward.

Mr. Burlingame “construed” the treaties existing between China and the
other nations. For many years the ablest diplomatists had vainly tried
to come to a satisfactory understanding of certain obscure clauses of
these treaties, and more than once powder had been burned in
consequences of failure to come to such understandings. But the clear
and comprehensive intellect of the American envoy reduced the wordy
tangle of diplomatic phrases to a plain and honest handful of
paragraphs, and these were unanimously and thankfully accepted by the
other foreign envoys, and officially declared by them to be a thorough
and satisfactory elucidation of all the uncertain clauses in the
treaties.

Mr. Burlingame did a mighty work, and made official intercourse with
China lucid, simple, and systematic, thenceforth for all time, when he
persuaded that government to adopt and accept the code of international
law by which the civilized nations of the earth are guided and
controlled.

It is not possible to specify all the acts by which Mr. Burlingame made
himself largely useful to the world during his official residence in
China. At least it would not be possible to do it without making this
sketch too lengthy and pretentious for a newspaper article.

Mr. Burlingame’s short history--for he was only forty-seven--reads like
a fairy tale. Its successes, its surprises, its happy situations, occur
all along, and each new episode is always an improvement upon the one
which went before it.

He begins life an assistant in a surveying party away out on the Western
frontier; then enters a branch of a Western college; then passes through
Harvard with the honors; becomes a Boston lawyer and looks back
complacently from his high perch upon the old days when he was a
surveyor nobody in the woods; becomes a state senator, and makes laws;
still advancing, goes to the Constitutional Convention and makes
regulations wherewith to rule the makers of laws; enters Congress and
smiles back upon the Legislature and the Boston lawyer, and from these
smiles still back upon the country surveyor, recognizes that he is known
to fame in Massachusetts; challenges Brooks and is known to the nation;
next, with a long stride upward, he is clothed with ministerial dignity
and journeys to the under side of the world to represent the youngest in
the court of the oldest of the nations; and finally, after years go by,
we see him moving serenely among the crowned heads of the Old World, a
magnate with secretaries and undersecretaries about him, a retinue of
quaint, outlandish Orientals in his wake, and a long following of
servants--and the world is aware that his salary is unbelievably
enormous, not to say imperial, and likewise knows that he is invested
with power to make treaties with all the chief nations of the earth, and
that he bears the stately title of Ambassador, and in his person
represents the mysterious and awful grandeur of that vague colossus, the
Emperor of China, his mighty empire and his four hundred millions of
subjects! Down what a dreamy vista his backward glance must stretch,
now, to reach the insignificant surveyor in the Western woods!

He was a good man, and a very, very great man. America lost a son, and
all the world a servant, when he died.

THE TEMPERANCE CRUSADE AND
WOMAN’S RIGHTS
(1873)

The women’s crusade against the rum sellers continues. It began in an
Ohio village early in the new year, and has now extended itself
eastwardly to the Atlantic seaboard, 600 miles, and westwardly (at a
bound, without stopping by the way,) to San Francisco, about 2,500
miles. It has also scattered itself along down the Ohio and Mississippi
rivers southwardly some ten or twelve hundred miles. Indeed, it promises
to sweep, eventually, the whole United States, with the exception of the
little cluster of commonwealths which we call New England. Puritan New
England is sedate, reflective, conservative, and very hard to inflame.

The method of the crusaders is singular. They contemn the use of force
in the breaking up of the whisky traffic. They only assemble before a
drinking shop, or within it, and sing hymns and pray, hour after
hour--and day after day, if necessary--until the publican’s business is
broken up and he surrenders. This is not force, at least they do not
consider it so. After the surrender the crusaders march back to
headquarters and proclaim the victory, and ascribe it to the powers
above. They rejoice together awhile, and then go forth again in their
strength and conquer another whisky shop with their prayers and hymns
and their staying capacity (pardon the rudeness), and spread _that_
victory upon the battle flag of the powers above. In this generous way
the crusaders have parted with the credit of not less than three
thousand splendid triumphs, which some carping people say they gained
their own selves, without assistance from any quarter. If I am one of
these, I am the humblest. If I seem to doubt that prayer is the agent
that conquers these rum sellers, I do it honestly, and not in a flippant
spirit. If the crusaders were to stay at home and pray for the rum
seller and for his adoption of a better way of life, or if the crusaders
even assembled together in a church and offered up such a prayer with a
united voice, and it accomplished a victory, I would then feel that it
was the praying that moved Heaven to do the miracle; for I believe that
if the prayer is the agent that brings about the desired result, it
cannot be necessary to pray the prayer in any particular place in order
to get the ear, or move the grace, of the Deity. When the crusaders go
and invest a whisky shop and fall to praying, one suspects that they are
praying rather less to the Deity than _at_ the rum man. So I cannot help
feeling (after carefully reading the details of the rum sieges) that as
much as nine tenths of the credit of each of the 3,000 victories
achieved thus far belongs of right to the crusaders themselves, and it
grieves me to see them give it away with such spendthrift generosity.

I will not afflict you with statistics, but I desire to say just a word
or two about the character of this crusade. The crusaders are young
girls and women--not the inferior sort, but the very best in the village
communities. The telegraph keeps the newspapers supplied with the
progress of the war, and thus the praying infection spreads from town to
town, day after day, week after week. When it attacks a community it
seems to seize upon almost everybody in it at once. There is a meeting
in a church, speeches are made, resolutions are passed, a purse for
expenses is made up, a “praying band” is appointed; if it be a large
town, half a dozen praying bands, each numbering as many as a hundred
women, are appointed, and the working district of each band marked out.
Then comes a grand assault in force, all along the line. Every
stronghold of rum is invested; first one and then another champion
ranges up before the proprietor and offers up a special petition for
him; he has to stand meekly there behind his bar, under the eyes of a
great concourse of ladies who are better than he is and are aware of it,
and hear all the secret iniquities of his business divulged to the
angels above, accompanied by the sharp sting of wishes for his
regeneration, which imply an amount of need for it which is in the last
degree uncomfortable to him. If he holds out bravely, the crusaders hold
out more bravely still--or at least more persistently; though I doubt if
the grandeur of the performance would not be considerably heightened if
one solitary crusader were to try praying at a hundred rum sellers in a
body for a while, and see how it felt to have everybody against her
instead of for her. If the man holds out the crusaders camp before his
place and keep up the siege till they wear him out. In one case they
besieged a rum shop two whole weeks. They built a shed before it and
kept up the praying all night and all day long every day of the
fortnight, and this in the bitterest winter weather, too. They
conquered.

You may ask if such an investment and such interference with a man’s
business (in cases where he is “protected” by a license) is lawful? By
no means. But the whole community being with the crusaders, the
authorities have usually been overawed and afraid to execute the laws,
the authorities being, in too many cases, mere little politicians, and
more given to looking to chances of re-election than fearlessly
discharging their duty according to the terms of their official oaths.

Would you consider the conduct of these crusaders justifiable? I
do--thoroughly justifiable. They find themselves voiceless in the making
of laws and the election of officers to execute them. Born with brains,
born in the country, educated, having large interests at stake, they
find their tongues tied and their hands fettered, while every ignorant
whisky-drinking foreign-born savage in the land may hold office, help to
make the laws, degrade the dignity of the former and break the latter at
his own sweet will. They see their fathers, husbands, and brothers sit
inanely at home and allow the scum of the country to assemble at the
“primaries,” name the candidates for office from their own vile ranks,
and, unrebuked, elect them. They live in the midst of a country where
there is no end to the laws and no beginning to the execution of them.
And when the laws intended to protect their sons from destruction by
intemperance lie torpid and without sign of life year after year, they
recognize that here is a matter which interests them personally--a
matter which comes straight home to them. And since they are allowed to
lift no legal voice against the outrageous state of things they suffer
under in this regard, I think it is no wonder that their patience has
broken down at last, and they have contrived to persuade themselves that
they are justifiable in breaking the law of trespass when the laws that
should make the trespass needless are allowed by the voters to lie dead
and inoperative.

I cannot help glorying in the pluck of these women, sad as it is to see
them displaying themselves in these unwomanly ways; sad as it is to see
them carrying their grace and their purity into places which should
never know their presence; and sadder still as it is to see them trying
to save a set of men who, it seems to me, there can be no reasonable
object in saving. It does not become us to scoff at the crusaders,
remembering what it is they have borne all these years, but it does
become us to admire their heroism--a heroism that boldly faces jeers,
curses, ribald language, obloquy of every kind and degree--in a word,
every manner of thing that pure-hearted, pure-minded women such as these
are naturally dread and shrink from, and remains steadfast through it
all, undismayed, patient, hopeful, giving no quarter, asking none,
determined to conquer and succeeding. It is the same old superb spirit
that animated that other devoted, magnificent, mistaken crusade of six
hundred years ago. The sons of such women as these must surely be worth
saving from the destroying power of rum.

The present crusade will doubtless do but little work against
intemperance that will be really permanent, but it will do what is as
much, or even more, to the purpose, I think. I think it will suggest to
more than one man that if women could vote they would vote on the side
of morality, even if they did vote and speak rather frantically and
furiously; and it will also suggest that when the women once made up
their minds that it was not good to leave the all-powerful “primaries”
in the hands of loafers, thieves, and pernicious little politicians,
they would not sit indolently at home as their husbands and brothers do
now, but would hoist their praying banners, take the field in force,
pray the assembled political scum back to the holes and slums where they
belong, and set up some candidates fit for decent human beings to vote
for.

I dearly want the women to be raised to the political altitude of the
negro, the imported savage, and the pardoned thief, and allowed to vote.
It is our last chance, I think. The women will be voting before long,
and then if a B. F. Butler can still continue to lord it in Congress; if
the highest offices in the land can still continue to be occupied by
perjurers and robbers; if another Congress (like the forty-second)
consisting of 15 honest men and 296 of the other kind can once more be
created, it will at last be time, I fear, to give over trying to save
the country by human means, and appeal to Providence. Both the great
parties have failed. I wish we might have a woman’s party now, and see
how that would work. I feel persuaded that in extending the suffrage to
women this country could lose absolutely nothing and might gain a great
deal. For thirty centuries history has been iterating and reiterating
that in a moral fight woman is simply dauntless, and we all know, even
with our eyes shut upon Congress and our voters, that from the day that
Adam ate of the apple and told on Eve down to the present day, man, in a
moral fight, has pretty uniformly shown himself to be an arrant coward.

I will mention casually that while I cannot bring myself to find fault
with the women whom we call the crusaders, since I feel that they, being
politically fettered, have the natural right of the oppressed to rebel,
I have a very different opinion about the clergymen who have in a
multitude of instances attached themselves to the movement, and by voice
and act have countenanced and upheld the women in unlawfully trespassing
upon whisky mills and interrupting the rum sellers’ business. It seems
to me that it would better become clergymen to teach their flocks to
respect the laws of the land, and urge them to refrain from breaking
them. But it is not a new thing for a thoroughly good and well-meaning
preacher’s soft heart to run away with his soft head.

O’SHAH

(A series of news letters describing a visit to England by the
Shah of Persia)

I
THE ARRIVAL IN ENGLAND

LONDON, _June 18, 1873_.

“Would you like to go over to Belgium and help bring the Shah to
England?”

I said I was willing.

“Very well, then; here is an order from the Admiralty which will admit
you on board Her Majesty’s ship _Lively_, now lying at Ostend, and you
can return in her day after to-morrow.”

That was all. That was the end of it. Without stopping to think, I had
in a manner taken upon myself to bring the Shah of Persia to England. I
could not otherwise regard the conversation I had just held with the
London representative of the New York _Herald_. The amount of discomfort
I endured for the next two or three hours cannot be set down in words. I
could not eat, sleep, talk, smoke with any satisfaction. The more I
thought the thing over the more oppressed I felt. What was the Shah to
me, that I should go to all this worry and trouble on his account? Where
was there the least occasion for taking upon myself such a
responsibility? If I got him over all right, well. But if I lost him? if
he died on my hands? if he got drowned? It was depressing, any way I
looked at it. In the end I said to myself, “If I get this Shah over here
safe and sound I never will take charge of another one.” And yet, at the
same time I kept thinking: “This country has treated me well, stranger
as I am, and this foreigner is the country’s guest--that is enough, I
will help him out; I will fetch him over; I will land him in London, and
say to the British people, ‘Here is your Shah; give me a receipt.’”

I felt easy in my mind now, and was about to go to bed, but something
occurred to me. I took a cab and drove downtown and routed out that
_Herald_ representative.

“Where is Belgium?” said I.

“Where is Belgium? I never heard such a question!”

“That doesn’t make any difference to me. If I have got to fetch this
Shah I don’t wish to go to the wrong place. Where is Belgium? Is it a
shilling fare in a cab?”

He explained that it was in foreign parts--the first place I have heard
of lately which a body could not go to in a cab for a shilling.

I said I could not go alone, because I could not speak foreign languages
well, could not get up in time for the early train without help, and
could not find my way. I said it was enough to have the Shah on my
hands; I did not wish to have everything piled on me. Mr. Blank was then
ordered to go with me. I do like to have somebody along to talk to when
I go abroad.

When I got home I sat down and thought the thing all over. I wanted to
go into this enterprise understandingly. What was the main thing? That
was the question. A little reflection informed me. For two weeks the
London papers had sung just one continual song to just one continual
tune, and the idea of it all was “how to impress the Shah.” These papers
had told all about the St. Petersburg splendors, and had said at the end
that splendors would no longer answer; that England could not outdo
Russia in that respect; therefore some other way of impressing the Shah
must be contrived. And these papers had also told all about the Shahstic
reception in Prussia and its attendant military pageantry. England could
not improve on that sort of thing--she could not impress the Shah with
soldiers; something else must be tried. And so on. Column after column,
page after page of agony about how to “impress the Shah.” At last they
had hit upon a happy idea--a grand naval exhibition. That was it! A man
brought up in Oriental seclusion and simplicity, a man who had never
seen anything but camels and such things, could not help being surprised
and delighted with the strange novelty of ships. The distress was at an
end. England heaved a great sigh of relief; she knew at last how to
impress the Shah.

My course was very plain, now, after that bit of reflection. All I had
to do was to go over to Belgium and impress the Shah. I failed to form
any definite plan as to the process, but I made up my mind to manage it
somehow. I said to myself, “I will impress this Shah or there shall be a
funeral that will be worth contemplating.”

I went to bed then, but did not sleep a great deal, for the
responsibilities were weighing pretty heavily upon me. At six o’clock in
the morning Mr. Blank came and turned me out. I was surprised at this,
and not gratified, for I detest early rising. I never like to say severe
things, but I was a good deal tried this time. I said I did not mind
getting up moderately early, but I hated to be called day before
yesterday. However, as I was acting in a national capacity and for a
country that I liked, I stopped grumbling and we set out. A grand naval
review is a good thing to impress a Shah with, but if he would try
getting up at six o’clock in the morning--but no matter; we started.

We took the Dover train and went whistling along over the housetops at
the rate of fifty miles an hour, and just as smoothly and pleasantly,
too, as if we were in a sleigh. One never can have anything but a very
vague idea of what speed is until he travels over an English railway.
Our “lightning” expresses are sleepy and indolent by comparison. We
looked into the back windows of the endless ranks of houses abreast and
below us, and saw many a homelike little family of early birds sitting
at their breakfasts. New views and new aspects of London were about me;
the mighty city seemed to spread farther and wider in the clear morning
air than it had ever done before. There is something awe-inspiring about
the mere look of the figures that express the population of London when
one comes to set them down in a good large hand--4,000,000! It takes a
body’s breath away, almost.

We presently left the city behind. We had started drowsy, but we did not
stay so. How could we, with the brilliant sunshine pouring down, the
balmy wind blowing through the open windows, and the Garden of Eden
spread all abroad? We swept along through rolling expanses of growing
grain--not a stone or a stump to mar their comeliness, not an unsightly
fence or an ill-kept hedge; through broad meadows covered with fresh
green grass as clean swept as if a broom had been at work there--little
brooks wandering up and down them, noble trees here and there, cows in
the shade, groves in the distance and church spires projecting out of
them; and there were the quaintest old-fashioned houses set in the midst
of smooth lawns or partly hiding themselves among fine old forest trees;
and there was one steep-roofed ancient cottage whose walls all around,
and whose roof, and whose chimneys, were clothed in a shining mail of
ivy leaves!--so thoroughly, indeed, that only one little patch of roof
was visible to prove that the house was not a mere house of leaves, with
glass windows in it. Imagine those dainty little homes surrounded by
flowering shrubs and bright green grass and all sorts of old trees--and
then go on and try to imagine something more bewitching.

By and by we passed Rochester, and, sure enough, right there, on the
highest ground in the town and rising imposingly up from among
clustering roofs, was the gray old castle--roofless, ruined, ragged, the
sky beyond showing clear and blue through the glassless windows, the
walls partly clad with ivy--a time-scarred, weather-beaten old pile, but
ever so picturesque and ever so majestic, too. There it was, a whole
book of English history. I had read of Rochester Castle a thousand
times, but I had never really believed there was any such building
before.

Presently we reached the sea and came to a stand far out on a pier; and
here was Dover and more history. The chalk cliffs of England towered up
from the shore and the French coast was visible. On the tallest hill sat
Dover Castle, stately and spacious and superb, looking just as it has
always looked any time these ten or fifteen thousand years--I do not
know its exact age, and it does not matter, anyway.

We stepped aboard the little packet and steamed away. The sea was
perfectly smooth, and painfully brilliant in the sunshine. There were no
curiosities in the vessel except the passengers and a placard in French
setting forth the transportation fares for various kinds of people. The
lithographer probably considered that placard a triumph. It was printed
in green, blue, red, black, and yellow; no individual line in one color,
even the individual letters were separately colored. For instance, the
first letter of a word would be blue, the next red, the next green, and
so on. The placard looked as if it had the smallpox or something. I
inquired the artist’s name and place of business, intending to hunt him
up and kill him when I had time; but no one could tell me. In the list
of prices first-class passengers were set down at fifteen shillings and
four pence, and dead bodies at one pound ten shillings and eight
pence--just double price! That is Belgian morals, I suppose. I never say
a harsh thing unless I am greatly stirred; but in my opinion the man who
would take advantage of a dead person would do almost any odious thing.
I publish this scandalous discrimination against the most helpless class
among us in order that people intending to die abroad may come back by
some other line.

We skimmed over to Ostend in four hours and went ashore. The first
gentleman we saw happened to be the flag lieutenant of the fleet, and he
told me where the _Lively_ lay, and said she would sail about six in the
morning. Heavens and earth. He said he would give my letter to the
proper authority, and so we thanked him and bore away for the hotel.
Bore away is good sailor phraseology, and I have been at sea portions of
two days now. I easily pick up a foreign language.

Ostend is a curious, comfortable-looking, massively built town, where
the people speak both the French and the Flemish with exceeding fluency,
and yet I could not understand them in either tongue. But I will write
the rest about Ostend in to-morrow’s letter.

We idled about this curious Ostend the remainder of the afternoon and
far into the long-lived twilight, apparently to amuse ourselves, but
secretly I had a deeper motive. I wanted to see if there was anything
here that might “impress the Shah.” In the end I was reassured and
content. If Ostend could impress him, England could amaze the head clear
off his shoulders and have marvels left that not even the trunk could be
indifferent to.

These citizens of Flanders--Flounders, I think they call them, though I
feel sure I have eaten a creature of that name or seen it in an aquarium
or a menagerie, or in a picture or somewhere--are a thrifty, industrious
race, and are as commercially wise and farsighted as they were in Edward
the Third’s time, and as enduring and patient under adversity as they
were in Charles the Bold’s. They are prolific in the matter of children;
in some of the narrow streets every house seemed to have had a freshet
of children, which had burst through and overflowed into the roadway.
One could hardly get along for the pack of juveniles, and they were all
soiled and all healthy. They all wore wooden shoes, which clattered
noisily on the stone pavements. All the women were hard at work; there
were no idlers about the houses. The men were away at labor, no doubt.
In nearly every door women sat at needlework or something of that
marketable nature--they were knitting principally. Many groups of women
sat in the street, in the shade of walls, making point lace. The lace
maker holds a sort of pillow on her knees with a strip of cardboard
fastened on it, on which the lace pattern has been punctured. She sticks
bunches of pins in the punctures and about them weaves her web of
threads. The numberless threads diverge from the bunch of pins like the
spokes of a wheel, and the spools from which the threads are being
unwound form the outer circle of the wheel. The woman throws these
spools about her with flying fingers, in and out, over and under one
another, and so fast that you can hardly follow the evolutions with your
eyes. In the chaos and confusion of skipping spools you wonder how she
can possibly pick up the right one every time, and especially how she
can go on gossiping with her friends all the time and yet never seem to
miss a stitch. The laces these ingenious Flounders were making were very
dainty and delicate in texture and very beautiful in design.

Most of the shops in Ostend seemed devoted to the sale of sea shells.
All sorts of figures of men and women were made of shells; one sort was
composed of grotesque and ingenious combinations of lobster claws in the
human form. And they had other figures made of stuffed frogs--some
fencing, some barbering each other, and some were not to be described at
all without indecent language. It must require a barbarian nature to be
able to find humor in such nauseating horrors as these last. These
things were exposed in the public windows where young girls and little
children could see them, and in the shops sat the usual hairy-lipped
young woman waiting to sell them.

There was a contrivance attached to the better class of houses which I
had heard of before, but never seen. It was an arrangement of mirrors
outside the window, so contrived that the people within could see who
was coming either up or down the street--see all that might be going on,
in fact--without opening the window or twisting themselves into
uncomfortable positions in order to look.

A capital thing to watch for unwelcome (or welcome) visitors with, or to
observe pageants in cold or rainy weather. People in second and third
stories had, also, another mirror which showed who was passing
underneath.

The dining room at our hotel was very spacious and rather gorgeous. One
end of it was composed almost entirely of a single pane of plate glass,
some two inches thick--for this is the plate-glass manufacturing region,
you remember. It was very clear and fine. If one were to enter the place
in such a way as not to catch the sheen of the glass, he would suppose
that the end of the house was wide open to the sun and the storms. A
strange boyhood instinct came strongly upon me, and I could not really
enjoy my dinner, I wanted to break that glass so badly. I have no doubt
that every man feels so, and I know that such a glass must be simply
torture to a boy.

This dining room’s walls were almost completely covered with large oil
paintings in frames.

It was an excellent hotel; the utmost care was taken that everything
should go right. I went to bed at ten and was called at eleven to “take
the early train.” I said I was not the one, so the servant stirred up
the next door and he was not the one; then the next door and the
next--no success--and so on till the reverberations of the knocking were
lost in the distance down the hall, and I fell asleep again. They called
me at twelve to take another early train, but I said I was not the one
again, and asked as a favor that they would be particular to call the
rest next time, but never mind me. However, they could not understand my
English; they only said something in reply to signify that, and then
went on banging up the boarders, none of whom desired to take the early
train.

When they called me at one, it made my rest seem very broken, and I said
if they would skip me at two I would call myself--not really intending
to do it, but hoping to beguile the porter and deceive him. He probably
suspected that and was afraid to trust me, because when he made his
rounds at that hour he did not take any chances on me, but routed me out
along with the others. I got some more sleep after that, but when the
porter called me at three I felt depressed and jaded and greatly
discouraged. So I gave it up and dressed myself. The porter got me a cup
of coffee and kept me awake while I drank it. He was a good,
well-meaning sort of Flounder, but really a drawback to the hotel, I
should think.

Poor Mr. Blank came in then, looking worn and old. He had been called
for all the different trains, too, just as I had. He said it was a good
enough hotel, but they took too much pains. While we sat there talking
we fell asleep and were called again at four. Then we went out and dozed
about town till six, and then drifted aboard the _Lively_.

She was trim and bright, and clean and smart; she was as handsome as a
picture. The sailors were in brand-new man-of-war costume, and plenty of
officers were about the decks in the state uniform of the
service--cocked hats, huge epaulettes, claw-hammer coats lined with
white silk--hats and coats and trousers all splendid with gold lace. I
judged that these were all admirals, and so got afraid and went ashore
again. Our vessel was to carry the Shah’s brother, also the Grand
Vizier, several Persian princes, who were uncles to the Shah, and other
dignitaries of more or less consequence. A vessel alongside was to carry
the luggage, and a vessel just ahead (the _Vigilant_) was to carry
nobody but just the Shah and certain Ministers of State and servants and
the Queen’s special ambassador, Sir Henry Rawlinson, who is a Persian
scholar and talks to the Shah in his own tongue.

I was very glad, for several reasons, to find that I was not to go in
the same ship with the Shah. First, with him not immediately under my
eye I would feel less responsibility for him; and, secondly, as I was
anxious to impress him, I wanted to practice on his brother first.

THE SHAH’S QUARTERS

On the afterdeck of the _Vigilant_--very handsome ship--a temporary
cabin had been constructed for the sole and special use of the Shah,
temporary but charmingly substantial and graceful and pretty. It was
about thirty feet long and twelve wide, beautifully gilded, decorated
and painted within and without. Among its colors was a shade of light
green, which reminds me of an anecdote about the Persian party, which I
will speak of in to-morrow’s letter.

It was getting along toward the time for the Shah to arrive from
Brussels, so I ranged up alongside my own ship. I do not know when I
ever felt so ill at ease and undecided. It was a sealed letter which I
had brought from the Admiralty, and I could not guess what the purport
of it might be. I supposed I was intended to command the ship--that is,
I had supposed it at first, but, after seeing all those splendid
officers, I had discarded that idea. I cogitated a good deal, but to no
purpose. Presently a regiment of Belgian troops arrived and formed in
line along the pier. Then a number of people began to spread down
carpets for fifty yards along the pier, by the railway track, and other
carpets were laid from these to the ships. The gangway leading on board
my ship was now carpeted and its railings were draped with
bright-colored signal flags. It began to look as if I was expected; so I
walked on board. A sailor immediately ran and stopped me, and made
another sailor bring a mop for me to wipe my feet on, lest I might soil
the deck, which was wonderfully clean and nice. Evidently I was not the
person expected, after all. I pointed to the group of officers and asked
the sailor what the naval law would do to a man if he were to go and
speak to some of those admirals--for there was an awful air of etiquette
and punctilio about the premises; but just then one of those officers
came forward and said that if his instinct was correct an Admiralty
order had been received giving me a passage in the ship; and he also
said that he was the first lieutenant, and that I was very welcome and
he would take pains to make me feel at home, and furthermore there was
champagne and soda waiting down below; and furthermore still, all the
London correspondents, to the number of six or seven, would arrive from
Brussels with the Shah, and would go in our ship, and if our passage
were not a lively one, and a jolly and enjoyable one, it would be a very
strange thing indeed. I could have jumped for joy if I had not been
afraid of breaking some rule of naval etiquette and getting hanged for
it.

Now the train was signaled, and everybody got ready for the great event.
The Belgian regiment straightened itself up, and some two hundred
Flounders arrived and took conspicuous position on a little mound. I was
a little afraid that this would impress the Shah; but I was soon
occupied with other interests. The train of thirteen cars came tearing
in, and stopped abreast the ships. Music and guns began an uproar.
Odd-looking Persian faces and felt hats (brimless stovepipes) appeared
at the car windows.

Some gorgeous English officials fled down the carpet from the
_Vigilant_. They stopped at a long car with the royal arms upon it,
uncovered their heads, and unlocked the car door. Then the Shah stood up
in it and gave us a good view. He was a handsome, strong-featured man,
with a rather European fairness of complexion; had a mustache, wore
spectacles, seemed of a good height and graceful build and carriage, and
looked about forty or a shade less. He was very simply dressed--brimless
stovepipe and close-buttoned dark-green military suit, without ornament.
No, not wholly without ornament, for he had a band two inches wide worn
over his shoulder and down across his breast, scarf fashion, which band
was one solid glory of fine diamonds.

A Persian official appeared in the Shah’s rear and enveloped him in an
ample quilt--or cloak, if you please--which was lined with fur. The
outside of it was of a whitish color and elaborately needle-worked in
Persian patterns like an India shawl. The Shah stepped out and the
official procession formed about him and marched him down the carpet and
on board the _Vigilant_ to slow music. Not a Flounder raised a cheer.
All the small fry swarmed out of the train now.

The Shah walked back alongside his fine cabin, looking at the assemblage
of silent, solemn Flounders; the correspondent of the London _Telegraph_
was hurrying along the pier and took off his hat and bowed to the “King
of Kings,” and the King of Kings gave a polite military salute in
return. This was the commencement of the excitement. The success of the
breathless _Telegraph_ man made all the other London correspondents mad,
every man of whom flourished his stovepipe recklessly and cheered
lustily, some of the more enthusiastic varying the exercise by lowering
their heads and elevating their coat tails. Seeing all this, and feeling
that if I was to “impress the Shah” at all, now was my time, I ventured
a little squeaky yell, quite distinct from the other shouts, but just as
hearty. His Shahship heard and saw and saluted me in a manner that was,
I considered, an acknowledgment of my superior importance. I do not know
that I ever felt so ostentatious and absurd before. All the
correspondents came aboard, and then the Persian baggage came also, and
was carried across to the ship alongside of ours. When she could hold no
more we took somewhere about a hundred trunks and boxes on board our
vessel. Two boxes fell into the water, and several sailors jumped in and
saved one, but the other was lost. However, it probably contained
nothing but a few hundred pounds of diamonds and things.

At last we got under way and steamed out through a long slip, the piers
on either side being crowded with Flounders; but never a cheer. A
battery of three guns on the starboard pier boomed a royal salute, and
we swept out to sea, the _Vigilant_ in the lead, we right in her wake,
and the baggage ship in ours. Within fifteen minutes everybody was well
acquainted; a general jollification set in, and I was thoroughly glad I
had come over to fetch the Shah.

II
MARK TWAIN EXECUTES HIS CONTRACT AND DELIVERS
THE SHAH IN LONDON

LONDON, _June 19, 1873_.

SOME PERSIAN FINERY

Leaving Ostend, we went out to sea under a clear sky and upon smooth
water--so smooth, indeed, that its surface was scarcely rippled. I say
the sky was clear, and so it was, clear and sunny; but a rich haze lay
upon the water in the distance--a soft, mellow mist, through which a
scattering sail or two loomed vaguely. One may call such a morning
perfect.

The corps of correspondents were well jaded with their railway journey,
but after champagne and soda downstairs with the officers, everybody
came up refreshed and cheery and exceedingly well acquainted all around.
The Persian grandees had meantime taken up a position in a glass house
on the afterdeck, and were sipping coffee in a grave, Oriental way. They
all had much lighter complexions and a more European cast of features
than I was prepared for, and several of them were exceedingly handsome,
fine-looking men.

They all sat in a circle on a sofa (the deckhouse being circular), and
they made a right gaudy spectacle. Their breasts were completely crusted
with gold bullion embroidery of a pattern resembling frayed and
interlacing ferns, and they had large jeweled ornaments on their breasts
also. The Grand Vizier came out to have a look around. In addition to
the sumptuous gold fernery on his breast he wore a jeweled star as large
as the palm of my hand, and about his neck hung the Shah’s miniature,
reposing in a bed of diamonds, that gleamed and flashed in a wonderful
way when touched by the sunlight. It was said that to receive the Shah’s
portrait from the Shah was the highest compliment that could be
conferred upon a Persian subject. I did not care so much about the
diamonds, but I would have liked to have the portrait very much. The
Grand Vizier’s sword hilt and the whole back of the sheath from end to
end were composed of a neat and simple combination of some twelve or
fifteen thousand emeralds and diamonds.

“IMPRESSING” A PERSIAN GENERAL

Several of the Persians talked French and English. One of them, who was
said to be a general, came up on the bridge where some of us were
standing, pointed to a sailor, and asked me if I could tell him what
that sailor was doing?

I said he was communicating with the other ships by means of the optical
telegraph--that by using the three sticks the whole alphabet could be
expressed. I showed him how A, B and C were made, and so forth. Good!
This Persian was “impressed”! He showed it by his eyes, by his gestures,
by his manifest surprise and delight. I said to myself, if the Shah were
only here now, the grand desire of Great Britain could be accomplished.
The general immediately called the other grandees and told them about
this telegraphic wonder. Then he said:

“Now does everyone on board acquire this knowledge?”

“No, only the officers.”

“And this sailor?”

“He is only the signalman. Two or three sailors on board are detailed
for this service, and by order and direction of the officers they
communicate with the other ships.”

“Very good! very fine! Very great indeed!”

These men were unquestionably impressed. I got the sailor to bring the
signal book, and the matter was fully explained, to their high
astonishment; also the flag signals, and likewise the lamp signals for
night telegraphing. Of course, the idea came into my head, in the first
place, to ask one of the officers to conduct this bit of instruction,
but I at once dismissed it. I judged that this would all go to the Shah,
sooner or later. I had come over on purpose to “impress the Shah,” and I
was not going to throw away my opportunity. I wished the Queen had been
there; I would have been knighted, sure. You see, they knight people
here for all sorts of things--knight them, or put them into the peerage
and make great personages of them. Now, for instance, a king comes over
here on a visit; the Lord Mayor and sheriffs do him becoming honors in
the city, and straightway the former is created a baronet and the latter
are knighted. When the Prince of Wales recovered from his illness one of
his chief physicians was made a baronet and the other was knighted.
Charles II made duchesses of one or two female acquaintances of his for
something or other--I have forgotten now what it was. A London
shoe-maker’s apprentice became a great soldier--indeed, a
Wellington--won prodigious victories in many climes and covered the
British arms with glory all through a long life; and when he was 187
years old they knighted him and made him Constable of the Tower. But he
died next year and they buried him in Westminster Abbey. There is no
telling what that man might have become if he had lived. So you see what
a chance I had; for I have no doubt in the world that I have been the
humble instrument, under Providence, of “impressing the Shah.” And I
really believe that if the Queen comes to hear of it I shall be made a
duke.

Friends intending to write will not need to be reminded that a duke is
addressed as “Your Grace”; it is considered a great offense to leave
that off.

A PICTURESQUE NAVAL SPECTACLE

When we were a mile or so out from Ostend conversation ceased, an
expectant look came into all faces, and opera glasses began to stand out
from above all noses. This impressive hush lasted a few minutes, and
then some one said:

“There they are!”

“Where?”

“Away yonder ahead--straight ahead.”

Which was true. Three huge shapes smothered in the haze--the _Vanguard_,
the _Audacious_, and the _Devastation_--all great ironclads. They were
to do escort duty. The officers and correspondents gathered on the
forecastle and waited for the next act. A red spout of fire issued from
the _Vanguard’s_ side, another flashed from the _Audacious_. Beautiful
these red tongues were against the dark haze. Then there was a long
pause--ever so long a pause and not a sound, not the suspicion of a
sound; and now, out of the stillness, came a deep, solemn “boom! boom!”
It had not occurred to me that at so great a distance I would not hear
the report as soon as I saw the flash. The two crimson jets were very
beautiful, but not more so than the rolling volumes of white smoke that
plunged after them, rested a moment over the water, and then went
wreathing and curling up among the webbed rigging and the tall masts,
and left only glimpses of these things visible, high up in the air,
projecting as if from a fog.

Now the flashes came thick and fast from the black sides of both
vessels. The muffled thunders of the guns mingled together in one
continued roll, the two ships were lost to sight, and in their places
two mountains of tumbled smoke rested upon the motionless water, their
bases in the hazy twilight and their summits shining in the sun. It was
good to be there and see so fine a spectacle as that.

THE NAVAL SALUTE

We closed up fast upon the ironclads. They fell apart to let our
flotilla come between, and as the _Vigilant_ ranged up the rigging of
the ironclads was manned to salute the Shah. And, indeed, that was
something to see. The shrouds, from the decks clear to the trucks, away
up toward the sky, were black with men. On the lower rounds of these
rope ladders they stood five abreast, holding each other’s hands, and so
the tapering shrouds formed attenuated pyramids of humanity, six
pyramids of them towering into the upper air, and clear up on the top of
each dizzy mast stood a little creature like a clothes pin--a mere black
peg against the sky--and that mite was a sailor waving a flag like a
postage stamp. All at once the pyramids of men burst into a cheer, and
followed it with two more, given with a will; and if the Shah was not
impressed he must be the offspring of a mummy.

And just at this moment, while we all stood there gazing---

However breakfast was announced and I did not wait to see.

THE THIRTY-FOUR-TON GUNS SPEAK

If there is one thing that is pleasanter than another it is to take
breakfast in the wardroom with a dozen naval officers. Of course, that
awe-inspiring monarch, the captain, is aft, keeping frozen state with
the Grand Viziers when there are any on board, and so there is nobody in
the wardroom to maintain naval etiquette. As a consequence none is
maintained. One officer, in a splendid uniform, snatches a champagne
bottle from a steward and opens it himself; another keeps the servants
moving; another opens soda; everybody eats, drinks, shouts, laughs in
the most unconstrained way, and it does seem a pity that ever the thing
should come to an end. No individual present seemed sorry he was not in
the ship with the Shah. When the festivities had been going on about an
hour, some tremendous booming was heard outside. Now here was a question
between duty and broiled chicken. What might that booming mean? Anguish
sat upon the faces of the correspondents. I watched to see what they
would do, and the precious moments were flying. Somebody cried down a
companionway:

“The _Devastation_ is saluting!”

The correspondents tumbled over one another, over chairs, over
everything in their frenzy to get on deck, and the last gun reverberated
as the last heel disappeared on the stairs. The _Devastation_, the pride
of England, the mightiest war vessel afloat, carrying guns that outweigh
any metal in any service, it is said (thirty-five tons each), and these
boys had missed that spectacle--at least I knew that some of them had. I
did not go. Age has taught me wisdom. If a spectacle is going to be
particularly imposing I prefer to see it through somebody else’s eyes,
because that man will always exaggerate. Then I can exaggerate his
exaggeration, and my account of the thing will be the most impressive.

But I felt that I had missed my figure this time, because I was not sure
which of these gentlemen reached the deck in time for a glimpse and
which didn’t. And this morning I cannot tell by the London papers. They
all have imposing descriptions of that thing, and no one of them
resembles another. Mr. X’s is perhaps the finest, but he was singing a
song about “Spring, Spring, Gentle Spring,” all through the bombardment,
and was overexcited, I fear.

The next best was Mr. Y’s; but he was telling about how he took a
Russian battery, along with another man, during the Crimean War, and he
was not fairly through the story till the salute was over, though I
remember he went up and saw the smoke. I will not frame a description of
the _Devastation’s_ salute, for I have no material that I can feel sure
is reliable.

THE GRAND SPECTACULAR CLIMAX

When we first sailed away from Ostend I found myself in a dilemma; I had
no notebook. But “any port in a storm,” as the sailors say. I found a
fair, full pack of ordinary playing cards in my overcoat pocket--one
always likes to have something along to amuse children with--and really
they proved excellent to take notes on, although bystanders were a bit
inclined to poke fun at them and ask facetious questions. But I was
content; I made all the notes I needed. The aces and low “spot” cards
are very good indeed to write memoranda on, but I will not recommend the
Kings and Jacks.

SPEAKING BY THE CARDS

Referring to the seven of hearts, I find that this naval exhibition and
journey from Ostend to Dover is going to cost the government £500,000.
Got it from a correspondent. It is a round sum.

Referring to the ace of diamonds, I find that along in the afternoon we
sighted a fresh fleet of men-of-war coming to meet us. The rest of the
diamonds, down to the eight spot (nines and tens are no good for notes)
are taken up with details of that spectacle. Most of the clubs and
hearts refer to matters immediately following that, but I really can
hardly do anything with them because I have forgotten what was trumps.

THE SPECTACLE

But never mind. The sea scene grew little by little, until presently it
was very imposing. We drew up into the midst of a waiting host of
vessels. Enormous five-masted men-of-war, great turret ships, steam
packets, pleasure yachts--every sort of craft, indeed--the sea was thick
with them; the yards and riggings of the warships loaded with men, the
packets crowded with people, the pleasure ships rainbowed with brilliant
flags all over and over--some with flags strung thick on lines
stretching from bowsprit to foremast, thence to mainmast, thence to
mizzenmast, and thence to stern. All the ships were in motion--gliding
hither and thither, in and out, mingling and parting--a bewildering
whirl of flash and color. Our leader, the vast, black, ugly, but very
formidable _Devastation_, plowed straight through the gay throng, our
Shah-ships following, the lines of big men-of-war saluting, the booming
of the guns drowning the cheering, stately islands of smoke towering
everywhere. And so, in this condition of unspeakable grandeur, we swept
into the harbor of Dover, and saw the English princes and the long ranks
of red-coated soldiers waiting on the pier, civilian multitudes behind
them, the lofty hill front by the castle swarming with spectators, and
there was the crash of cannon and a general hurrah all through the air.
It was rather a contrast to silent Ostend and the unimpressible
Flanders.

THE SHAH “IMPRESSED” AT LAST

The Duke of Edinburgh and Prince Arthur received the Shah in state, and
then all of us--princes, Shahs, ambassadors, Grand Viziers and newspaper
correspondents--climbed aboard the train and started off to London just
like so many brothers.

From Dover to London it was a sight to see. Seventy miles of human
beings in a jam--the gaps were not worth mentioning--and every man,
woman, and child waving hat or handkerchief and cheering. I
wondered--could not tell--could not be sure--could only wonder--would
this “impress the Shah”? I would have given anything to know. But--well,
it ought--but--still one could not tell.

And by and by we burst into the London Railway station--a very large
station it is--and found it wonderfully decorated and all the
neighboring streets packed with cheering citizens. Would this impress
the Shah? I--I--well, I could not yet feel certain.

The Prince of Wales received the Shah--ah, you should have seen how
gorgeously the Shah was dressed now--he was like the sun in a total
eclipse of rainbows--yes, the Prince received him, put him in a grand
open carriage, got in and made him sit over further and not “crowd,” the
carriage clattered out of the station, all London fell apart on either
side and lifted a perfectly national cheer, and just at that instant the
bottom fell out of the sky and forty deluges came pouring down at once!

The great strain was over, the crushing suspense at an end. I said,
“Thank God, this will impress the Shah.”

Now came the long files of Horse Guards in silver armor. We took the
great Persian to Buckingham Palace. I never stirred till I saw the gates
open and close upon him with my own eyes and knew he was there. Then I
said:

“England, here is your Shah; take him and be happy, but don’t ever ask
me to fetch over another one.”

This contract has been pretty straining on me.

III
THE SHAH AS A SOCIAL STAR

LONDON, _June 21, 1873_.

After delivering the Shah at the gates of that unsightly pile of dreary
grandeur known as Buckingham Palace I cast all responsibility for him
aside for the time being, and experienced a sense of relief and likewise
an honest pride in my success, such as no man can feel who has not had a
Shah at nurse (so to speak) for three days.

It is said by those who ought to know that when Buckingham Palace was
being fitted up as a home for the Shah one of the chief rooms was
adorned with a rich carpet which had been designed and manufactured
especially to charm the eye of His Majesty. The story goes on to say
that a couple of the Persian suite came here a week ago to see that all
things were in readiness and nothing overlooked, and that when they
reached that particular room and glanced at the lovely combination of
green figures and white ones in that carpet they gathered their robes
carefully up about their knees and then went elaborately tiptoeing about
the floor with the aspect and anxiety of a couple of cats hunting for
dry ground in a wet country, and they stepped only on the white figures
and almost fainted whenever they came near touching a green one. It is
said that the explanation is that these visiting Persians are all
Mohammedans, and green being a color sacred to the descendants of the
Prophet, and none of these people being so descended, it would be
dreadful profanation for them to defile the holy color with their feet.
And the general result of it all was that carpet had to be taken up and
is a dead loss.

Man is a singular sort of human being, after all, and his religion does
not always adorn him. Now, our religion is the right one, and has fewer
odd and striking features than any other; and yet my ancestors used to
roast Catholics and witches and warm their hands by the fire; but they
would be blanched with horror at the bare thought of breaking the
Sabbath, and here is a Persian monarch who never sees any impropriety in
chopping a subject’s head off for the mere misdemeanor of calling him
too early for breakfast, and yet would be consumed with pious remorse if
unheeding foot were to chance to step upon anything so green as you or
I, my reader.

Oriental peoples say that women have no souls to save and, almost
without my memory, many American Protestants said the same of babies. I
thought there was a wide gulf between the Persians and ourselves, but I
begin to feel that they are really our brothers after all.

After a day’s rest the Shah went to Windsor Castle and called on the
Queen. What that suggests to the reader’s mind is this:--That the Shah
took a hand satchel and an umbrella, called a cab and said he wanted to
go to the Paddington station; that when he arrived there the driver
charged him sixpence too much, and he paid it rather than have trouble;
that he tried now to buy a ticket, and was answered by a ticket seller
as surly as a hotel clerk that he was not selling tickets for that train
yet; that he finally got his ticket, and was beguiled of his satchel by
a railway porter at once, who put it into a first-class carriage and got
a sixpence, which the company forbids him to receive; that presently
when the guard (or conductor) of the train came along the Shah slipped a
shilling into his hand and said he wanted to smoke, and straightway the
guard signified that it was all right; that when the Shah arrived at
Windsor Castle he rang the bell, and when the girl came to the door
asked her if the Queen was at home, and she left him standing in the
hall and went to see; that by and by she returned and said would he
please sit down in the front room and Mrs. Guelph would be down
directly; that he hung his hat on the hatrack, stood his umbrella up in
the corner, entered the front room and sat down on a haircloth chair;
that he waited and waited and got tired; that he got up and examined the
old piano, the depressing lithographs on the walls and the album of
photographs of faded country relatives on the center table, and was just
about to fall back on the family Bible when the Queen entered briskly
and begged him to sit down and apologized for keeping him waiting, but
she had just got a new girl and everything was upside down, and so forth
and so on; but how are the family, and when did he arrive, and how long
should he stay and why didn’t he bring his wife. I knew that that was
the picture which would spring up in the American reader’s mind when it
was said the Shah went to visit the Queen, because that was the picture
which the announcement suggested to my own mind.

But it was far from the facts, very far. Nothing could be farther. In
truth, these people made as much of a to do over a mere friendly call as
anybody else would over a conflagration. There were special railway
trains for the occasion; there was a general muster of princes and dukes
to go along, each one occupying room 40; there were regiments of cavalry
to clear the way; railway stations were turned into flower gardens,
sheltered with flags and all manner of gaudy splendor; there were
multitudes of people to look on over the heads of interminable ranks of
policemen standing shoulder to shoulder and facing front; there was
braying of music and booming of cannon. All that fuss, in sober truth,
over a mere off-hand friendly call. Imagine what it would have been if
he had brought another shirt and was going to stay a month.

AT THE GUILDHALL

Truly, I am like to suffocate with astonishment at the things that are
going on around me here. It is all odd, it is all queer enough, I can
tell you; but last night’s work transcends anything I ever heard of in
the way of--well, how shall I express it? how can I word it? I find it
awkward to get at it. But to say it in a word--and it is a true one,
too, as hundreds and hundreds of people will testify--last night the
Corporation of the City of London, with a simplicity and ignorance which
almost rise to sublimity, actually gave a ball to a Shah who does not
dance. If I would allow myself to laugh at a cruel mistake, this would
start me. It is the oddest thing that has happened since I have had
charge of the Shah. There is some excuse for it in the fact that the
Aldermen of London are simply great and opulent merchants, and cannot be
expected to know much about the ways of high life--but then they could
have asked some of us who have been with the Shah.

The ball was a marvel in its way. The historical Guildhall was a scene
of great magnificence. There was a high dais at one end, on which were
three state chairs under a sumptuous canopy; upon the middle one sat the
Shah, who was almost a Chicago conflagration of precious stones and gold
bullion lace. Among other gems upon his breast were a number of emeralds
of marvelous size, and from a loop hung an historical diamond of great
size and wonderful beauty. On the right of the Shah sat the Princess of
Wales, and on his left the wife of the Crown Prince of Russia. Grouped
about the three stood a full jury of minor princes, princesses, and
ambassadors hailing from many countries.

THE TWO CORRALS

The immense hall was divided in the middle by a red rope. The Shah’s
division was sacred to blue blood, and there was breathing room there;
but the other corral was but a crush of struggling and perspiring
humanity. The place was brilliant with gas and was a rare spectacle in
the matter of splendid costumes and rich coloring. The lofty
stained-glass windows, pictured with celebrated episodes in the history
of the ancient city, were lighted from the outside, and one may imagine
the beauty of the effect. The great giants, Gog and Magog (whose origin
and history, curiously enough, are unknown even to tradition), looked
down from the lofty gallery, but made no observation. Down the long
sides of the hall, with but brief spaces between, were imposing groups
of marble statuary; and, contrasted with the masses of life and color
about them, they made a picturesque effect. The groups were statues (in
various attitudes) of the Duke of Wellington. I do not say this
knowingly, but only supposingly; but I never have seen a statue in
England yet that represented anybody but the Duke of Wellington, and, as
for the streets and terraces and courts and squares that are named after
him or after selections from his 797 titles, they are simply beyond the
grasp of arithmetic. This reminds me that, having named everything after
Wellington that there was left to name in England (even down to
Wellington boots), our British brothers, still unsatisfied, still
oppressed with adulation, blandly crossed over and named our Californian
big trees Wellington, and put it in Latin at that. They did that, calmly
ignoring the fact that we, the discoverers and owners of the trees, had
long ago named them after a larger man. However, if the ghost of
Wellington enjoys such a proceeding, possibly the ghost of Washington
will not greatly trouble itself about the matter. But what really
disturbs me is that, while Wellington is justly still in the fashion
here, Washington is fading out of the fashion with us. It is not a good
sign. The idols we have raised in his stead are not to our honor.

Some little dancing was done in the sacred corral in front of the Shah
by grandees belonging mainly to “grace-of-God” families, but he himself
never agitated a foot. The several thousand commoner people on the other
side of the rope could not dance any more than sardines in a box.
Chances to view the Guildhall spectacle were so hungered for that people
offered £5 for the privilege of standing three minutes in the musicians’
gallery and were refused. I cannot convey to you an idea of the
inordinate desire which prevails here to see the Shah better than by
remarking that speculators who held four-seat opera boxes at Covent
Garden Theater to-night were able to get $250 for them. Had all the
seats been sold at auction the opera this evening would have produced
not less than one hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars in gold! I am
below the figures rather than above them. The greatest house (for money)
that America ever saw was gathered together upon the occasion of Jenny
Lind’s first concert at Castle Garden. The seats were sold at auction
and produced something over twenty thousand dollars.

I am by no means trying to describe the Guildhall affair of last night.
Such a crush of titled swells; such a bewildering array of jeweled
uniforms and brilliant feminine costumes; such solemn and awful
reception ceremonies in the library; such grim and stately imposing
addresses and Persian replies; such imposing processional pageantry
later on; such depressing dancing before the apathetic Shah; such ornate
tables and imperial good cheer at the banquet--it makes a body tired to
merely think of trying to put all that on paper. Perhaps you, sir, will
be good enough to imagine it, and thus save one who respects you and
honors you five columns of solid writing.

THE LUNATIC ASYLUM IS BLESSED WITH A GLIMPSE

As regards the momentous occasion of the opera, this evening, I found
myself in a grievous predicament, for a republican. The tickets were all
sold long ago, so I must either go as a member of the royal family or
not at all. After a good deal of reflection it seemed best not to mix up
with that class lest a political significance might be put upon it. But
a queer arrangement had been devised whereby I might have a glimpse of
the show, and I took advantage of that. There is an immense barn-like
glass house attached to the rear of the theater, and that was fitted up
with seats, carpets, mirrors, gas, columns, flowers, garlands, and a
meager row of shrubs strung down the sides on brackets--to create an
imposing forest effect, I suppose. The place would seat ten or twelve
hundred people. All but a hundred paid a dollar and a quarter a
seat--for what? To look at the Shah three quarters of a minute, while he
walked through to enter the theater. The remaining hundred paid $11 a
seat for the same privilege, with the added luxury of rushing on the
stage and glancing at the opera audience for one single minute
afterward, while the chorus sung “God Save the Queen!” We are all gone
mad, I do believe. Eleven hundred five-shilling lunatics and a hundred
two-guinea maniacs. The _Herald_ purchased a ticket and created me one
of the latter, along with two or three more of the staff.

Our cab was about No. 17,342 in the string that worked its slow way
through London and past the theater. The Shah was not to come till nine
o’clock, and yet we had to be at the theater by half past six, or we
would not get into the glass house at all, they said. We were there on
time, and seated in a small gallery which overlooked a very brilliantly
dressed throng of people. Every seat was occupied. We sat there two
hours and a half gazing and melting. The wide, red-carpeted central
aisle below offered good display ground for officials in fine uniforms,
and they made good use of it.

ROYALTY ARRIVES

By and by a band in showy uniform came in and stood opposite the
entrance. At the end of a tedious interval of waiting trumpets sounded
outside, there was some shouting, the band played half of “God Save the
Queen,” and then the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge and a dozen gorgeous
Persian officials entered. After a little the young Prince Arthur came,
in a blue uniform, with a whole broadside of gold and silver medals on
his breast--for good behavior, punctuality, accurate spelling,
penmanship, etc., I suppose, but I could not see the inscriptions. The
band gave him some bars of “God Save the Queen,” too, while he stood
under us talking, with altogether unroyal animation, with the
Persians--the crowd of people staring hungrily at him the while--country
cousins, maybe, who will go home and say, “I was as close to him as I am
to that chair this minute.”

Then came the Duke of Teck and the Princess Mary, and the band
God-Save-the-Queen’d them also. Now came the Prince of Wales and the
Russian Tsarina--the royal anthem again, with an extra blast at the end
of it. After them came a young, handsome, mighty giant, in showy
uniform, his breast covered with glittering orders, and a general’s
chapeau, with a flowing white plume, in his hand--the heir to all the
throne of all the Russias. The band greeted him with the Russian
national anthem, and played it clear through. And they did right; for
perhaps it is not risking too much to say that this is the only national
air in existence that is really worthy of a great nation.

And at last came the long-expected millennium himself, His Imperial
Majesty the Shah, with the charming Princess of Wales on his arm. He had
all his jewels on, and his diamond shaving brush in his hat front. He
shone like a window with the westering sun on it.

WHAT THE ASYLUM SAW

The small space below us was full now--it could accommodate no more
royalty. The august procession filed down the aisle in double rank, the
Shah and the Princess of Wales in the lead, and cheers broke forth and a
waving of handkerchiefs as the Princess passed--all said this
demonstration was meant for her. As the procession disappeared through
the farther door, the hundred eleven-dollar maniacs rushed through a
small aperture, then through an anteroom, and gathered in a flock on the
stage, the chorus striking up “God Save the Queen” at the same moment.

We stood in a mighty bandbox, or a Roman coliseum, with a sea of faces
stretching far away over the ground floor, and above them rose five
curving tiers of gaudy humanity, the dizzy upper tier in the far
distance rising sharply up against the roof, like a flower garden trying
to hold an earthquake down and not succeeding. It was a magnificent
spectacle, and what with the roaring of the chorus, the waving of
handkerchiefs, the cheering of the people, the blazing gas, and the
awful splendor of the long file of royalty, standing breast to breast in
the royal box, it was wonderfully exhilarating, not to say exciting.

The chorus sang only three-quarters of a minute--one stanza--and down
came the huge curtain and shut out the fairyland. And then all those
eleven-dollar people hunted their way out again.

A NATION DEMENTED

We are certainly gone mad. We scarcely look at the young colossus who is
to reign over 70,000,000 of people and the mightiest empire in extent
which exists to-day. We have no eyes but for this splendid barbarian,
who is lord over a few deserts and a modest ten million of
ragamuffins--a man who has never done anything to win our gratitude or
excite our admiration, except that he managed to starve a million of his
subjects to death in twelve months. If he had starved the rest I suppose
we would set up a monument to him now.

The London theaters are almost absolutely empty these nights. Nobody
goes, hardly. The managers are being ruined. The streets for miles are
crammed with people waiting whole long hours for a chance glimpse of the
Shah. I never saw any man “draw” like this one.

Is there any truth in the report that your bureaus are trying to get the
Shah to go over there and lecture? He could get $100,000 a night here
and choose his own subject.

I know a showman who has got a pill that belonged to him, and which for
some reason he did not take. That showman will not take any money for
that pill. He is going to travel with it. And let me tell you he will
get more engagements than he can fill in a year.

IV
MARK TWAIN HOOKS THE PERSIAN OUT OF
THE ENGLISH CHANNEL

LONDON, _June 26, 1873_.

I suppose I am the only member of the Shah’s family who is not wholly
broken down and worn out; and, to tell the truth, there is not much of
me left. If you have ever been limited to four days in Paris or Rome or
Jerusalem and been “rushed” by a guide you can form a vague, far-away
sort of conception of what the Shah and the rest of us have endured
during these late momentous days. If this goes on we may as well get
ready for the imperial inquest.

When I was called at five o’clock the other morning to go to Portsmouth,
and remembered that the Shah’s incessant movements had left me only
three hours’ sleep that night, nothing but a sense of duty drove me
forth. A cab could not be found, nor a carriage in all London. I lost an
hour and a half waiting and trying, then started on foot and lost my
way; consequently I missed one train by a good while, another one by
three minutes, and then had more than half an hour to spare before
another would go. Most people had had a similar experience, and there
was comfort in that. We started at last, and were more than three hours
going seventy-two miles. We stopped at no stations, hardly, but we
halted every fifteen minutes out in the woods and fields for no purpose
that we could discover. Never was such an opportunity to look at
scenery. There were five strangers in our car, or carriage, as the
English call it, and by degrees their English reserve thawed out and
they passed around their sherry and sandwiches and grew sociable.

One of them had met the Russian General of Police in St. Petersburg, and
found him a queer old simple-hearted soldier, proud of his past and
devoted to his master, the present Tsar, and to the memory of his
predecessor, Nicholas. The English gentleman gave an instance of the old
man’s simplicity which one would not expect in a chief of police. The
general had been visiting London and been greatly impressed by two
things there--the admirable police discipline and the museum. It
transpired that the museum he referred to was not that mighty collection
of marvels known to all the world as the British Museum, but Mme.
Toussaud’s Waxworks Show; and in this waxwork show he had seen a figure
of the Emperor Nicholas. And did it please him? Yes, as to the likeness;
for it was a good likeness and a commanding figure; but--“_Mon Dieu!_
try to fancy it, m’sieu--dressed in the uniform of a simple colonel of
infantry!--the great Nicholas of Russia, my august late master, dressed
in a colonel’s uniform!”

The old general could not abide that. He went to the proprietor and
remonstrated against this wanton indignity. The proprietor was grieved;
but it was the only Russian uniform he could get, and----

“Say no more!” said the general. “May I get you one?”

The proprietor would be most happy. The general lost not a moment; he
wrote at once to the Emperor Alexander, describing with anguish the
degradation which the late great Nicholas was suffering day by day
through his infamously clothed waxen representative, and imploring His
Majesty to send suitable raiment for the imperial dummy, and also a
letter to authenticate the raiment. And out of regard for the old
servant and respect for his outraged feelings the Emperor of all the
Russias descended from his Alpine altitude to send to the Toussaud
waxwork the general’s uniform worn last by his father, and to write with
his own hand an authenticating letter to go with it. So the
simple-hearted police chief was happy once more, and never once thought
of charging the “museum” $10,000 for these valuable additions to the
show, which he might easily have done, and collected the money, too. How
like our own chiefs of police this good old soul is!

Another of these English gentlemen told an anecdote, which, he said, was
old, but which I had not heard before. He said that one day St. Peter
and the devil chanced to be thrown together, and found it pretty dull
trying to pass the time. Finally they got to throwing dice for a lawyer.
The devil threw sixes. Then St. Peter threw sixes. The devil threw sixes
again. St. Peter threw sixes again. The devil threw sixes once more.
Then St. Peter threw sevens, and the devil said, “Oh, come now, Your
Honor, cheat fair. None of your playing miracles here!” I thought there
was a nice bit of humor in that suggestion to “cheat fair.”

A SMALL PRIVATE NAUTICAL RACE

I am getting to Portsmouth about as fast in this letter as I did in that
train. The Right Honorable the Mayor of Portsmouth had had a steamer
placed at his disposal by the Admiralty, and he had invited the Lord
Mayor of London and other guests to go in her. This was the ship I was
to sail in, and she was to leave her pier at 9 A.M. sharp. I arrived at
that pier at ten minutes to eleven exactly. There was one chance left,
however. The ship had stopped for something and was floating at ease
about a mile away.

A rusty, decayed, little two-oared skiff, the size of a bathtub, came
floating by, with a fisherman and his wife and child in it. I entreated
the man to come in and take me to the ship. Presently he consented and
started toward me. I stood impatient and all ready to jump the moment he
should get within thirty yards of me; he halted at the distance of
thirty-five and said it would be a long pull; did I think I could pay
him two shillings for it, seeing it was a holiday? All this palaver and
I in such a state of mind! I jumped aboard and told him to rush, which
he did; at least he threw his whole heart into his little, useless oars,
and we moved off at the rate of a mile a week. This was solid misery.
When we had gone a hundred and nine feet and were gaining on the tenth a
long, trim, graceful man-of-war’s boat came flying by, bound for the
flagship. Without expecting even the courtesy of a response, I hailed
and asked the coxswain to take me to the mayor’s vessel. He said,
“Certainly, sir!--ease her, boys!” I could not have been more astonished
at anything in the world. I quickly gave my man his two shillings, and
he started to pull me to the boat. Then there was a movement of
discontent among the sailors, and they seemed about to move on. I
thought--well, you are not such generous fellows, after all, as I took
you to be, or so polite, either; but just then the coxswain hailed and
said:

“The boys don’t mind the pull, and they’re perfectly willing to take
you, but they say they ain’t willing to take the fisherman’s job away
from him.”

Now that was genuine manliness and right conduct. I shall always
remember that honorable act. I told them the fisherman was already paid,
and I was in their boat the next moment. Then ensued the real fun of the
day, as far as I was personally concerned. The boys glanced over their
shoulders to measure the distance, and then at the order to “Give way!”
they bent to it and the boat sped through the water like an arrow. We
passed all kinds of craft and steadily shortened the distance that lay
between us and the ship. Presently the coxswain said:

“No use! Her wheels have begun to turn over. Lively now, lively!”

Then we flew. We watched the ship’s movement with a sharp interest and
calculated our chances.

“Can you steer?” said the coxswain.

“Can a duck swim?” said I.

“Good--we’ll make her yet!”

I took the helm and he the stroke oar, and that one oar did appear to
add a deal to that boat’s speed. The ship was turning around to go out
to sea, and she did seem to turn unnecessarily fast, too; but just as
she was pointed right and both her wheels began to go ahead our boat’s
bow touched her companionway and I was aboard. It was a handsome race,
and very exciting. If I could have had that dainty boat and those eight
white-shirted, blue-trousered sailors for the day I would not have gone
in any ship, but would have gone about in vast naval style and
experienced the feelings of an admiral.

OLD HISTORICAL MEN-OF-WAR

Our ship sailed out through a narrow way, bordered by piers that swarmed
with people, and likewise by prodigious men-of-war of the fashion of a
hundred years ago. There were, perhaps, a dozen of the stately veterans,
these relics of an historic past; and not looking aged and seedy,
either, but as bright and fresh as if they had been launched and painted
yesterday. They were the noblest creatures to look upon; hulls of huge
proportion and great length; four long tiers of cannon grinning from
their tall sides; vast sterns that towered into the air like the gable
end of a church; graceful bows and figureheads; masts as trim and lofty
as spires--surely no spectacle could be so imposing as a sea fight in
the old times, when such beautiful and such lordly ships as these ruled
the seas. And how it must have stirred the heart of England when a fleet
of them used to come sailing in from victory, with ruined sides and
tattered spars and sails, while bells and cannon pealed a welcome!

One of the grandest of these veterans was the very one upon whose deck
Nelson himself fell in the moment of triumph. I suppose England would
rather part with ten colonies than with that illustrious old ship. We
passed along within thirty steps of her, and I was just trying to
picture in my mind the tremendous scenes that had transpired upon her
deck upon that day, the proudest in England’s naval history, when the
venerable craft, stirred by the boom of saluting cannon, perhaps, woke
up out of her long sleep and began to vomit smoke and thunder herself,
and then she looked her own natural self again, and no doubt the spirit
of Nelson was near. Still it would have been pleasanter to be on her
decks than in front of her guns; for, as the white volumes of smoke
burst in our faces, one could not help feeling that a ball might by
accident have got mixed up with a blank cartridge, and might chip just
enough off the upper end of a man to disfigure him for life; and,
besides, the powder they use in cannon is in grains as large as billiard
chalks, and it does not all explode--suppose a few should enter one’s
system? The crash and roar of these great guns was as unsettling a sound
as I have ever heard at short range. I took off my hat and acknowledged
the salute, of course, though it seemed to me that it would have been
better manners if they had saluted the Lord Mayor, inasmuch as he was on
board.

THE WORLD’S GREATEST NAVY ON VIEW

We went out to the Spithead and sailed up and down there for four hours
through four long ranks of stately men-of-war--formidable ironclads they
were--the most insignificant of which would make a breakfast of a whole
fleet of Nelson’s prodigious ships and still be hungry. The show was
very fine, for there were forty-nine of the finest ironclads the world
can show, and many gunboats besides. Indeed, here in its full strength
was the finest navy in the world, and this the only time in history that
just such a spectacle has been seen, and none who saw it that day is
likely to live long enough to see its like again. The vessels were all
dressed out with flags, and all about them frolicked a bewildering host
of bannered yachts, steamers, and every imaginable sort of craft. It
would be hard to contrive a gayer scene. One of the royal yachts came
flying along presently and put the Shah on board one of the ironclads,
and then the yards of the whole fleet were manned simultaneously, and
such another booming and bellowing of great guns ensued as I cannot
possibly describe. Within two minutes the huge fleet was swallowed up in
smoke, with angry red tongues of fire darting through it here and there.
It was wonderful to look upon. Every time the _Devastation_ let off one
of her thirty-five-ton guns it seemed as if an entire London fog issued
from her side, and the report was so long coming that if she were to
shoot a man he would be dead before he heard it, and would probably go
around wondering through all eternity what it was that happened to him.
I returned to London in a great hurry by a train that was in no way
excited by it, but failed in the end and object I had in view after all,
which was to go to the grand concert at Albert Hall in honor of the
Shah. I had a strong desire to see that building filled with people
once. Albert Hall is one of the many monuments erected to the memory of
the late Prince Albert. It is a huge and costly edifice, but the
architectural design is old, not to say in some sense a plagiarism; for
there is but little originality in putting a dome on a gasometer. It is
said to seat 13,000 people, and surely that is a thing worth seeing--at
least to a man who was not at the Boston Jubilee. But no tickets were to
be had--every seat was full, they said. It was no particular matter, but
what made me mad was to come so extremely close and then miss. Indeed, I
was madder than I can express, to think that if the architect had only
planned the place to hold 13,001 I could have got in. But, after all, I
was not the only person who had occasion to feel vexed. Colonel X, a
noted man in America, bought a seat some days ago for $10 and a little
afterward met a knowing person who said the Shah would be physically
worn out before that concert night and would not be there, and
consequently nobody else; so the seat was immediately sold for $5. Then
came another knowing one, who said the Shah would unquestionably be at
the concert, so the colonel went straight and bought his ticket back
again. The temporary holder of it only charged him $250 for carrying it
around for him during the interval! The colonel was at the concert, and
took the Shah’s head clerk for the Shah all the evening. Vexation could
go no further than that.

V
MARK TWAIN GIVES THE ROYAL PERSIAN
A “SEND-OFF”

LONDON, _June 30, 1873_.

For the present we are done with the Shah in London. He is gone to the
country to be further “impressed.” After all, it would seem that he was
more moved and more genuinely entertained by the military day at Windsor
than by even the naval show at Portsmouth. It is not to be wondered at,
since he is a good deal of a soldier himself and not much of a sailor.
It has been estimated that there were 300,000 people assembled at
Windsor--some say 500,000. That was a show in itself. The Queen of
England was there; so was Windsor Castle; also an imposing array of
cavalry, artillery, and infantry. And the accessories to these several
shows were the matchless rural charms of England--a vast expanse of
green sward, walled in by venerable forest trees, and beyond them
glimpses of hills clothed in Summer vegetation. Upon such a theater a
bloodless battle was fought and an honorable victory won by trained
soldiers who have not always been carpet knights, but whose banners bear
the names of many historic fights.

England is now practically done with the Shah. True, his engagement is
not yet completed, for he is still billed to perform at one or two
places; but curiosity is becoming sated, and he will hardly draw as good
houses as heretofore. Whenever a star has to go to the provinces it is a
bad sign. The poor man is well nigh worn out with hard work. The other
day he was to have performed before the Duke of Buccleuch and was
obliged to send an excuse. Since then he failed of his engagement at the
Bank of England. He does not take rest even when he might. He has a
telegraphic apparatus in his apartments in Buckingham Palace, and it is
said that he sits up late, talking with his capital of Persia by
telegraph. He is so fascinated with the wonderful contrivance that he
cannot keep away from it. No doubt it is the only homelike thing the
exile finds in the hard, practical West, for it is the next of kin to
the enchanted carpets that figure in the romance and traditions of his
own land, and which carry the wanderer whither he will about the earth,
circumscribing the globe in the twinkling of an eye, propelled by only
the force of an unspoken wish.

GOSSIP ABOUT THE SHAH

This must be a dreary, unsatisfactory country to him, where one’s
desires are thwarted at every turn. Last week he woke up at three in the
morning and demanded of the Vizier on watch by his bedside that the
ballet dancers be summoned to dance before him. The Vizier prostrated
himself upon the floor and said:

“O king of kings, light of the world, source of human peace and
contentment, the glory and admiration of the age, turn away thy sublime
countenance, let not thy fateful frown wither thy slave; for behold the
dancers dwell wide asunder in the desert wastes of London, and not in
many hours could they be gathered together.”

The Shah could not even speak, he was so astounded with the novelty of
giving a command that could not be obeyed. He sat still a moment,
suffering, then wrote in his tablets these words:

“MEM.--Upon arrival in Teheran, let the Vizier have the coffin which has
just been finished for the late general of the household troops--it will
save time.”

He then got up and set his boots outside the door to be blacked and went
back to bed, calm and comfortable, making no more to-do about giving
away that costly coffin than I would about spending a couple of
shillings.

THE LESSON OF HIS JOURNEY

If the mountains of money spent by civilized Europe in entertaining the
Shah shall win him to adopt some of the mild and merciful ways that
prevail in Christian realms it will have been money well and wisely laid
out. If he learns that a throne may rest as firmly upon the affections
of a people as upon their fears; that charity and justice may go hand in
hand without detriment to the authority of the sovereign; that an
enlarged liberty granted to the subject need not impair the power of the
monarch; if he learns these things Persia will be the gainer by his
journey, and the money which Europe has expended in entertaining him
will have been profitably invested. That the Shah needs a hint or two in
these directions is shown by the language of the following petition,
which has just reached him from certain Parsees residing here and in
India:

THE PETITION

1. A heavy and oppressive poll tax, called the Juzia, is imposed upon
the remnant of the ancient Zoroastrian race now residing in Persia. A
hundred years ago, when the Zoroastrian population was 30,000
families, and comparatively well-to-do, the tax was only 250 toomans;
now, when there are scarcely six thousand souls altogether, and
stricken with poverty, they have to pay 800 toomans. In addition to
the crushing effect of this tax, the government officials oppress
these poor people in enforcing the tax.

2. A Parsee desirous of buying landed property is obliged to pay
twenty per cent. on the value of the property as fee to the Kazee and
other authorities.

3. When a Parsee dies any member of his family, no matter however
distant, who may have previously been converted to Mohammedanism,
claims and obtains the whole property of the deceased, to the
exclusion of all the rightful heirs. In enforcing this claim the
convert is backed and supported by government functionaries.

4. When a Parsee returns to Persia from a foreign country he is
harassed with all sorts of exactions at the various places he has to
pass through in Persia.

5. When any dispute arises, whether civil or criminal, between a
Mohammedan and a Parsee, the officials invariably side with the
former, and the testimony of one Mohammedan--no matter how false on
its very face--receives more credit than that of a dozen or any number
of Parsee witnesses. If a Mohammedan kills a Parsee he is only fined
about eight toomans, or four pounds sterling; but on the contrary, if
a Parsee wounds or murders a Mohammedan he is not only cut to pieces
himself, but all his family and children are put to the sword, and
sometimes all the Parsees living in the same street are harassed in a
variety of ways. The Parsees are prevented from dressing themselves
well and from riding a horse or donkey. No matter, even if he were ill
and obliged to ride, he is compelled to dismount in the presence of a
Mohammedan rider, and is forced to walk to the place of his
destination. The Parsees are not allowed to trade in European
articles, nor are they allowed to deal in domestic produce, as
grocers, dyers, or oilmen, tailors, dairymen, &c., on the ground that
their touch would pollute the articles and supplies and make them
unfit for the use of Mohammedans.

6. The Parsees are often insulted and abused in every way by the
Mohammedans, and their children are stolen or forcibly taken away from
them by the Mohammedans. These children are concealed in Mohammedan
houses, their names are changed, and they are forced to become
Mohammedans, and when they refuse to embrace the Mohammedan faith they
are maltreated in various ways. When a man is forcibly converted, his
wife and family are also forced to join him as Mohammedans. The
Mohammedans desecrate the sacred places of worship of the Zoroastrians
and the places for the disposal of their dead.

7. In general the Parsees are heavily taxed in various ways, and are
subjected to great oppression. In consequence of such persecution the
Parsee population of Persia has, during this century, considerably
decreased and is now so small that it consists of a few thousand
families only. It is possible that these persecutions are practiced on
the Zoroastrian inhabitants of Persia without the knowledge of His
Majesty the Shah.

THE INGENIOUS BARON REUTER

It is whispered that the Shah’s European trip was not suggested by the
Shah himself, but by the noted telegraphic newsman, Baron Reuter. People
who pretend to know say that Reuter began life very poor; that he was an
energetic spirit and improved such opportunities as fell in his way;
that he learned several languages, and finally became a European guide,
or courier, and employed himself in conducting all sorts of foreigners
through all sorts of countries and wearing them out with the usual
frantic system of sight-seeing. That was a good education for him; it
also gave him an intimate knowledge of all the routes of travel and
taught him how certain long ones might be shortened. By and by he got
some carrier pigeons and established a news express, which necessarily
prospered, since it furnished journals and commercial people with all
matters of importance considerably in advance of the mails. When
railways came into vogue he obtained concessions which enlarged his
facilities and still enabled him to defy competition. He was ready for
the telegraph and seized that, too; and now for years

“REUTER’S TELEGRAMS”

has stood in brackets at the head of the telegraphic column of all
European journals. He became rich; he bought telegraph lines and built
others, purchased a second-hand German baronetcy, and finally sold out
his telegraphic property to his government for $3,000,000 and was out of
business for once. But he could not stay out.

After building himself a sort of a palace, he looked around for fresh
game, singled out the Shah of Persia and “went for him,” as the
historian Josephus phrases it. He got an enormous “concession” from him
and then conceived the admirable idea of exhibiting a Shah of Persia in
the capitals of Europe and thus advertising his concession before
needful capitalists. It was a sublimer idea than any that any showman’s
brain has ever given birth to. No Shah had ever voluntarily traveled in
Europe before; but then no Shah had ever fallen into the hands of a
European guide before.

THE FAT “CONCESSION”

The baron’s “concession” is a financial curiosity. It allows him the
sole right to build railways in Persia for the next seventy years; also
street railroads; gives all the land necessary, free of charge, for
double tracks and fifty or sixty yards on each side; all importations of
_material_, etc., free of duty; all the baron’s exports free of duty
also. The baron may appropriate and work all mines (except those of the
precious metals) free of charge, the Shah to have 15 per cent of the
profits. Any private mine may be “gobbled” (the Persian word is
_akbamarish_) by the baron if it has not been worked during five years
previously. The baron has the exclusive privilege of making the most of
all government forests, he giving the Shah 15 per cent of the profits
from the wood sold. After a forest is removed, the baron is to be
preferred before all other purchasers if he wants to buy the land. The
baron alone may dig wells and construct canals, and he is to own all the
land made productive by such works. The baron is empowered to raise
$30,000,000 on the capital stock for working purposes, and the Shah
agrees to pay 7 per cent interest on it; and Persia is wholly
unencumbered with debt. The Shah hands over to the baron the management
of his customs for twenty years, and the baron engages to pay for this
privilege $100,000 a year more than the Shah now receives, so the baron
means to wake up that sleepy Persian commerce. After the fifth year the
baron is to pay the Shah an additional 60 per cent of the profits, if
his head is still a portion of his person then. The baron is to have
first preference in the establishment of a bank. The baron has
preference in establishing gas, road, telegraph, mill, manufacturing,
forge, pavement, and all such enterprises. The Shah is to have 20 per
cent of the profits arising from the railways. Finally, the baron may
sell out whenever he wants to.

It is a good “concession” in its way. It seems to make the Shah say:
“Run Persia at my expense and give me a fifth of the profits.”

One’s first impulse is to envy the baron; but, after all, I do not know.
Some day, if things do not go to suit the Shah, he may say, “There is no
head I admire so much as this baron’s; bring it to me on a plate.”

DEPARTURE OF THE IMPERIAL CIRCUS.

We are all sorry to see the Shah leave us, and yet are glad on his
account. We have had all the fun and he all the fatigue. He would not
have lasted much longer here. I am just here reminded that the only way
whereby you may pronounce the Shah’s title correctly is by taking a
pinch of snuff. The result will be “t-Shah!”

A WONDERFUL PAIR OF SLIPPERS

(WITH LETTERS CONCERNING THEM FROM MARK
TWAIN AND ELSIE LESLIE LYDE)

MARK TWAIN’S LETTER

HARTFORD, _Oct. 5, ’89_.

DEAR ELSIE: The way of it was this. Away last spring, Gillette[1] and I
pooled intellects on this proposition: to get up a pleasant surprise of
some kind for you against your next visit--the surprise to take the form
of a tasteful and beautiful testimonial of some sort or other, which
should express somewhat of the love we felt for you. Together we hit
upon just the right thing--a pair of slippers. Either one of us could
have thought of a single slipper, but it took both of us to think of two
slippers. In fact, one of us did think of one slipper, and then, quick
as a flash, the other thought of the other one. It shows how wonderful
the human mind is. It is really paleontological; you give one mind a
bone, and the other one instantly divines the rest of the animal.

Gillette embroidered his slipper with astonishing facility and splendor,
but I have been a long time pulling through with mine. You see, it was
my very first attempt at art, and I couldn’t rightly get the hang of it
along at first. And then I was so busy that I couldn’t get a chance to
work at it at home, and they wouldn’t let me embroider on the cars; they
said it made the other passengers afraid. They didn’t like the light
that flared into my eye when I had an inspiration. And even the most
fair-minded people doubted me when I explained what it was I was
making--especially brakemen. Brakemen always swore at it, and carried
on, the way ignorant people do, about art. They wouldn’t take my word
that it was a slipper; they said they believed it was a snowshoe that
had some kind of a disease.

But I have pulled through, and within twenty-four hours of the time I
told you I would--day before yesterday. There ought to be a key to the
designs, but I haven’t had time to get one up. However, if you will lay
the work before you with the forecastle pointing north, I will begin at
that end and explain the whole thing, layer by layer, so that you can
understand it.

I began with that first red bar, and without ulterior design, or plan of
any sort--just as I would begin a Prince and Pauper, or any other tale.
And mind you it is the easiest and surest way; because if you invent two
or three people and turn them loose in your manuscript, something is
bound to happen to them--you can’t help it; and then it will take you
the rest of the book to get them out of the natural consequences of that
occurrence, and so, first thing you know, there’s your book all finished
up and never cost you an idea. Well, the red stripe, with a bias stitch,
naturally suggested a blue one with a perpendicular stitch, and I
slammed it in, though when it came daylight I saw it was green--which
didn’t make any difference, because green and blue are much the same,
anyway, and in fact from a purely moral point of view are regarded by
the best authorities as identical. Well, if you will notice, a blue
perpendicular stitch always suggests a ropy red involved stitch, like a
family of angle-worms trying to climb in under each other to keep
warm--it would suggest that, every time, without the author of the
slipper ever having to think about it at all.

Now at that point, young Dr. Root came in, and, of course, he was
interested in the slipper right away, because he has always had a
passion for art himself, but has never had a chance to try, because his
folks are opposed to it and superstitious about it, and have done all
they could to keep him back; and so he was eager to take a hand and see
what he could do. And it was beautiful to see him sit there and tell
Mrs. Clemens what had been happening while we were off on summer
vacation, and hold the slipper up toward the end of his nose, and forget
the sordid world, and imagine the canvas was a “subject” with a scalp
wound, and nimbly whirl in that lovely surgical stitch which you see
there--and never hesitating a moment in his talk except to say “Ouch”
when he stuck himself, and then going right on again as smooth and easy
as nothing. Yes, it was a charming spectacle. And it was real art,
too--realistic, just native untaught genius; you can see the very scalp
itself, showing through between the stitches.

Well, next I threw in that sheaf of green rods which the lictors used to
carry before the Roman consuls to lick them with when they didn’t
behave--they turned blue in the morning, but that is the way green
always acts.

The next week, after a good rest, I snowed in that sea of frothy waves,
and set that yellow thing afloat in it and those two things that are
skewered through it. It isn’t a home plate, and it isn’t a papal tiara
with the keys of St. Peter; no, it is a heart--my heart--with two arrows
stuck through it--arrows that go in blue and come out crimson--crimson
with the best drops in that heart, and gladly shed for love of you,
dear.

Now then, as you strike to the south’ard and drift along down the
starboard side, abaft the main-to’-gallant scuppers, you come to that
blue quarter-deck which runs the rest of the way aft to the jumping-off
place. In the midst of that blue you will see some big red letters--M.
T.; and west’ard, over on the port side, you will see some more red
letters--TO E. L. Aggregated, these several groups of letters signify,
Mark Twain to Elsie Leslie. And you will notice that you have a gift for
art yourself, for the southern half of the L, embroidered by yourself,
is as good as anything I can do, after all my experience.

There, now you understand the whole work. From a professional point of
view I consider the Heart and Arrows by all odds the greatest triumph
of the whole thing; in fact, one of the ablest examples of civil
engineering in a beginner I ever saw--for it was all inspiration, just
the lightninglike inspiration of the moment. I couldn’t do it again in
a hundred years--even if I recover this time and get just as well and
strong as I was before. You notice what fire there is in it--what
rapture, enthusiasm, frenzy--what blinding explosions of color. It is
just a “Turner”--that is what it is. It is just like his “Slave Ship,”
that immortal work. What you see in the “Slave Ship” is a terrific
explosion of radiating rags and fragments of flaming crimson flying
from a common center of intense yellow which is in violent
commotion--insomuch that a Boston reporter said it reminded him of a
yellow cat dying in a platter of tomatoes.

Take the slippers and wear them next your heart, Elsie dear; for every
stitch in them is a testimony of the affection which two of your
loyalest friends bear you. Every single stitch cost us blood. I’ve got
twice as many pores in me now as I used to have; and you would never
believe how many places you can stick a needle into yourself until you
go into the embroidery line and devote yourself to art.

Do not wear these slippers in public, dear; it would only excite envy;
and, as like as not, somebody would try to shoot you.

Merely use them to assist you in remembering that among the many, many
people who think all the world of you is your friend,

MARK TWAIN.

ELSIE’S REPLY.

NEW YORK, _October g, 1889_.

MY DEAR MR. CLEMENS: The slipper the long letter and all the rest came
this afternoon, I think they are splendid and shall have them framed and
keep them among my very most prechus things. I have had a great many
nice things given to me and people often say very pleasant things but I
am not quite shure they always mean it or that they are as trustable as
you and “Leo” and I am very shure thay would not spend their prechus
time and shed their blood for me so you see that is one reason why I
will think so much of it and then it was all so funny to think of two
great big men like you and “little Willie” (that is what “Leo” calls
himself to me) imbroidering a pair of slippers for a little girl like me
of corse you have a great many large words in your letter that I do not
quite understand. One word comencing with P. has fifteen letters in it
and I do not know what you mean by pooled unless you mean you and Leo
put your two minds together to make the slippers which was very nice of
you both I think you are just right about the angle worms thay did look
like that this summer when I used to dig them for bate to fish with
please tell Dr. Root I will think of him when I look at the part he did
the Surgicle Stich I mean I hope you will be quite well and strong by
the time you get this letter as you were before you made my slipper it
would make me very sad if you were to be ill. Give my love to Mrs.
Clemens Susie Clara Gene I-know and you-know and Vix and all of my
Hartford friends tell Gene I wish I was with her and we would have a
nice jump in the hay loft. When you come to New York you must call and
see me then we will see about those big words my address is up in the
top left corner of this letter.

To my loyal friend
Mark Twain
From his little friend
ELSIE LESLIE LYDE.

[Not Little Lord Fauntleroy now, but Tom Canty of Offal Court and Little
Edward of Wales.][2]

-----

Footnote 1:

William Gillette, the distinguished actor and playwright.

Footnote 2:

Elsie Leslie, then a little girl, played Little Lord Fauntleroy and
the double part of Tom Canty and the Little Prince, with great
success.

AIX, THE PARADISE OF THE
RHEUMATICS
(Contributed to the New York _Sun_, 1891)

Aix-les-Bains. Certainly this is an enchanting place. It is a strong
word, but I think the facts justify it. True, there is a rabble of
nobilities, big and little, here all the time, and often a king or two;
but as these behave quite nicely and also keep mainly to themselves,
they are little or no annoyance. And then a king makes the best
advertisement there is, and the cheapest. All he costs is a reception at
the station by the mayor and the police in their Sunday uniforms,
shop-front decorations along the route from station to hotel, brass band
at the hotel, fireworks in the evening, free bath in the morning. This
is the whole expense; and in return for it he goes away from here with
the broad of his back metaphorically stenciled over with display ads.,
which shout to all nations of the world, assisted by the telegraph:

Rheumatism routed at Aix-les-Bains!

Gout admonished, Nerves braced up!

All diseases welcomed, and satisfaction given or the money returned at
the door!

We leave nature’s noble cliffs and crags undefiled and uninsulted by the
advertiser’s paint brush. We use the back of a king, which is better and
properer and more effective, too, for the cliffs stay still and few see
it, but the king moves across the fields of the world and is visible
from all points, like a constellation. We are out for kings this week,
but one will be along soon--possibly His Satanic Majesty of Russia.
There’s a colossus for you! A mysterious and terrible form that towers
up into unsearchable space and casts a shadow across the universe like a
planet in eclipse. There will be but one absorbing spectacle in this
world when we stencil him and start him out.

This is an old valley, this of Aix, both in the history of man and in
the geological records of its rocks. Its little lake of Bourget carries
the human history back to the lake dwellers, furnishing seven groups of
their habitations, and Dr. William Wakefield says in his interesting
local guide that the mountains round about furnish “Geographically, a
veritable epitome of the globe.” The stratified chapters of the earth’s
history are clearly and permanently written on the sides of the roaring
bulk of the Dent du Chat, but many of the layers of race, religion, and
government which in turn have flourished and perished here between the
lake dweller of several thousand years ago and the French republican of
to-day, are ill defined and uninforming by comparison. There are several
varieties of pagans. They went their way, one after the other, down into
night and oblivion, leaving no account of themselves, no memorials. The
Romans arrived 2,300 years ago, other parts of France are rich with
remembrances of their eight centuries of occupation, but not many are
here. Other pagans followed the Romans. By and by Christianity arrived,
some 400 years after the time of Christ. The long procession of races,
languages, religions, and dynasties demolished one another’s records--it
is man’s way always.

As a result, nothing is left of the handiwork of the remoter inhabitants
of the region except the constructions of the lake dwellers and some
Roman odds and ends. There is part of a small Roman temple, there is
part of a Roman bath, there is a graceful and battered Roman arch. It
stands on a turfy level over the way from the present great bath house,
is surrounded by magnolia trees, and is both a picturesque and
suggestive object. It has stood there some 1,600 years. Its nearest
neighbor, not twenty steps away, is a Catholic church. They are symbols
of the two chief eras in the history of Aix. Yes, and of the European
world. I judge that the venerable arch is held in reverent esteem by
everybody, and that this esteem is its sufficient protection from
insult, for it is the only public structure I have yet seen in France
which lacks the sign, “It is forbidden to post bills here.” Its neighbor
the church has that sign on more than one of its sides, and other signs,
too, forbidding certain other sorts of desecration.

The arch’s nearest neighbor--just at its elbow, like the church--is the
telegraph office. So there you have the three great eras bunched
together--the era of War, the era of Theology, the era of Business. You
pass under the arch, and the buried Cæsars seem to rise from the dust of
the centuries and flit before you; you pass by that old battered church,
and are in touch with the Middle Ages, and with another step you can put
down ten francs and shake hands with Oshkosh under the Atlantic.

It is curious to think what changes the last of the three symbols stand
for; changes in men’s ways and thoughts, changes in material
civilization, changes in the Deity--or in men’s conception of the Deity,
if that is an exacter way of putting it. The second of the symbols
arrived in the earth at a time when the Deity’s possessions consisted of
a small sky freckled with mustard-seed stars, and under it a patch of
landed estate not so big as the holdings of the Tsar to-day, and all His
time was taken up in trying to keep a handful of Jews in some sort of
order--exactly the same number of them that the Tsar has lately been
dealing with in a more abrupt and far less loving and long-suffering
way. At a later time--a time within all old men’s memories--the Deity
was otherwise engaged. He was dreaming His eternities away on His Great
White Throne, steeped in the soft bliss of hymns of praise wafted aloft
without ceasing from choirs of ransomed souls, Presbyterians and the
rest. This was a Deity proper enough to the size and conditions of
things, no doubt a provincial Deity with provincial tastes. The change
since has been inconceivably vast. His empire has been unimaginably
enlarged. To-day He is a Master of a universe made up of myriads upon
myriads of gigantic suns, and among them, lost in that limitless sea of
light, floats that atom. His earth, which once seemed so good and
satisfactory and cost so many days of patient labor to build, is a mere
cork adrift in the waters of a shoreless Atlantic. This is a business
era, and no doubt he is governing His huge empire now, not by dreaming
the time away in the buzz of hymning choirs, with occasional explosions
of arbitrary power disproportioned to the size of the annoyance, but by
applying laws of a sort proper and necessary to the sane and successful
management of a complex and prodigious establishment, and by seeing to
it that the exact and constant operation of these laws is not interfered
with for the accommodation of any individual or political or religious
faction or nation.

Mighty has been the advance of the nations and the liberalization of
thought. A result of it is a changed Deity, a Deity of a dignity and
sublimity proportioned to the majesty of His office and the magnitude of
His empire, a Deity who has been freed from a hundred fretting chains
and will in time be freed from the rest by the several ecclesiastical
bodies who have these matters in charge. It was, without doubt, a
mistake and a step backward when the Presbyterian Synods of America
lately decided, by vote, to leave Him still embarrassed with the dogma
of infant damnation. Situated as we are, we cannot at present know with
how much of anxiety He watched the balloting, nor with how much of
grieved disappointment He observed the result.

Well, all these eras above spoken of are modern, they are of last week,
they are of yesterday, they are of this morning, so to speak. The
springs, the healing waters that gush up from under this hillside
village, indeed are ancient. They, indeed, are a genuine antiquity; they
antedate all those fresh human matters by processions of centuries; they
were born with the fossils of the Dent du Chat, and they have been
always abundant. They furnished a million gallons a day to wash the lake
dwellers with, the same to wash the Cæsars with, no less to wash Balzac
with, and have not diminished on my account. A million gallons a day for
how many days? Figures cannot set forth the number. The delivery, in the
aggregate, has amounted to an Atlantic. And there is still an Atlantic
down in there. By Doctor Wakefield’s calculation the Atlantic is
three-quarters of a mile down in the earth. The calculation is based
upon the temperature of the water, which is 114 degrees to 117 degrees
Fahrenheit, the natural law being that below a certain depth heat
augments at the rate of one degree for every sixty feet of descent.

Aix is handsome, and is handsomely situated, too, on its hill slope,
with its stately prospect of mountain range and plain spread out before
it and about it. The streets are mainly narrow, and steep and crooked
and interesting, and offer considerable variety in the way of names; on
the corner of one of them you read this: “Rue du Puits d’Enfer” (“Pit of
Hell Street”). Some of the sidewalks are only eighteen inches wide; they
are for the cats, probably. There is a pleasant park, and there are
spacious and beautiful grounds connected with the two great pleasure
resorts, the Cercle and the Villa des Fleurs. The town consists of big
hotels, little hotels, and _pensions_. The season lasts about six
months, beginning with May. When it is at its height there are thousands
of visitors here, and in the course of the season as many as 20,000 in
the aggregate come and go.

These are not all here for the baths; some come for the gambling
facilities and some for the climate. It is a climate where the field
strawberry flourishes through the spring, summer, and fall. It is hot in
the summer, and hot in earnest; but this is only in the daytime; it is
not hot at night. The English season is May and June; they get a good
deal of rain then, and they like that. The Americans take July, and the
French take August. By the 1st of July the open-air music and the
evening concerts and operas and plays are fairly under way, and from
that time onward the rush of pleasure has a steadily increasing boom. It
is said that in August the great grounds and the gambling rooms are
crowded all the time and no end of ostensible fun going on.

It is a good place for rest and sleep and general recuperation of
forces. The book of Doctor Wakefield says there is something about this
atmosphere which is the deadly enemy of insomnia, and I think this must
be true, for if I am any judge, this town is at times the noisiest one
in Europe, and yet a body gets more sleep here than he would at home, I
don’t care where his home is. Now, we are living at a most comfortable
and satisfactory _pension_, with a garden of shade trees and flowers and
shrubs, and a convincing air of quiet and repose. But just across the
narrow street is the little market square, and at the corner of that is
the church that is neighbor to the Roman arch, and that narrow street,
and that billiard table of a market place, and that church are able, on
a bet, to turn out more noise to a cubic yard at the wrong time than any
other similar combination in the earth or out of it. In the street you
have the skull-bursting thunder of the passing hack, a volume of sound
not producible by six hacks anywhere else; on the hack is a lunatic with
a whip which he cracks to notify the public to get out of his way. This
crack is as keen and sharp and penetrating and ear-splitting as a pistol
shot at close range, and the lunatic delivers it in volleys, not single
shots. You think you will not be able to live till he gets by, and when
he does get by he leaves only a vacancy for the bandit who sells _Le
Petit Journal_ to fill with his strange and awful yell. He arrives with
the early morning and the market people, and there is a dog that arrives
at about the same time and barks steadily at nothing till he dies, and
they fetch another dog just like him. The bark of this breed is the twin
of the whip volley, and stabs like a knife. By and by, what is left of
you the church bell gets. There are many bells, and apparently six or
seven thousand town clocks, and as they are all five minutes
apart--probably by law--there are no intervals. Some of them are
striking all the time--at least, after you go to bed they are. There is
one clock that strikes the hour and then strikes it over again to see if
it was right. Then for evenings and Sundays there is a chime--a chime
that starts in pleasantly and musically, then suddenly breaks into a
frantic roar, and boom, and crash of warring sounds that makes you think
Paris is up and the Revolution come again. And yet, as I have said, one
sleeps here--sleeps like the dead. Once he gets his grip on his sleep,
neither hack, nor whip, nor news fiend, nor dog, nor bell cyclone, nor
all of them together, can wrench it loose or mar its deep and tranquil
continuity. Yes, there is indeed something in this air that is death to
insomnia.

The buildings of the Cercle and the Villa des Fleurs are huge in size,
and each has a theater in it, and a great restaurant, also conveniences
for gambling and general and variegated entertainment. They stand in
ornamental grounds of great extent and beauty. The multitudes of
fashionable folk sit at refreshment tables in the open air, afternoons,
and listen to the music, and it is there that they mainly go to break
the Sabbath.

To get the privilege of entering these grounds and buildings you buy a
ticket for a few francs, which is good for the whole season. You are
then free to go and come at all hours, attend the plays and concerts
free, except on special occasions, gamble, buy refreshments, and make
yourself symmetrically comfortable.

Nothing could be handier than those two little theaters. The curtain
doesn’t rise until 8.30; then between the acts one can idle for half an
hour in the other departments of the building, damaging his appetite in
the restaurants or his pocketbook in the baccarat room. The singers and
actors are from Paris, and their performance is beyond praise.

I was never in a fashionable gambling hell until I came here. I had read
several millions of descriptions of such places, but the reality was new
to me. I very much wanted to see this animal, especially the new
historic game of baccarat, and this was a good place, for Aix ranks next
to Monte Carlo for high play and plenty of it. But the result was what I
might have expected--the interest of the looker-on perishes with the
novelty of the spectacle; that is to say, in a few minutes. A permanent
and intense interest is acquirable in baccarat, or in any other game,
but you have to buy it. You don’t get it by standing around and looking
on.

The baccarat table is covered with green cloth and is marked off in
divisions with chalk or something. The banker sits in the middle, the
croupier opposite. The customers fill all the chairs at the table, and
the rest of the crowd are massed at their back and leaning over them to
deposit chips or gold coins. Constantly money and chips are flung upon
the table, and the game seems to consist in the croupier’s reaching for
these things with a flexible sculling oar, and raking them home. It
appeared to be a rational enough game for him, and if I could have
borrowed his oar I would have stayed, but I didn’t see where the
entertainment of the others came in. This was because I saw without
perceiving, and observed without understanding. For the widow and the
orphan and the others do win money there. Once an old gray mother in
Israel or elsewhere pulled out, and I heard her say to her daughter or
her granddaughter as they passed me, “There, I’ve won six louis, and I’m
going to quit while I’m ahead.” Also there was this statistic. A friend
pointed to a young man with the dead stub of a cigar in his mouth, which
he kept munching nervously all the time and pitching hundred-dollar
chips on the board while two sweet young girls reached down over his
shoulders to deposit modest little gold pieces, and said: “He’s only
funning, now; wasting a few hundred to pass the time--waiting for the
gold room to open, you know, which won’t be till after midnight--then
you’ll see him bet! He won £14,000 there last night. They don’t bet
anything there but big money.”

The thing I chiefly missed was the haggard people with the intense eye,
the hunted look, the desperate mien, candidates for suicide and the
pauper’s grave. They are in the description, as a rule, but they were
off duty that night. All the gamblers, male and female, old and young,
looked abnormally cheerful and prosperous.

However, all the nations were there, clothed richly and speaking all the
languages. Some of the women were painted, and were evidently shaky as
to character. These items tallied with the descriptions well enough.

The etiquette of the place was difficult to master. In the brilliant and
populous halls and corridors you don’t smoke, and you wear your hat, no
matter how many ladies are in the thick throng of drifting humanity, but
the moment you cross the sacred threshold and enter the gambling hell,
off the hat must come, and everybody lights his cigar and goes to
suffocating the ladies.

But what I came here for five weeks ago was the baths. My right arm was
disabled with rheumatism. To sit at home in America and guess out the
European bath best fitted for a particular ailment or combination of
ailments, it is not possible, and it would not be a good idea to
experiment in that way, anyhow. There are a great many curative baths on
the Continent, and some are good for one disease and bad for another. So
it is necessary to let your physician name a bath for you. As a rule,
Americans go to Europe to get this advice, and South Americans go to
Paris for it. Now and then an economist chooses his bath himself and
does a thousand miles of railroading to get to it, and then the local
physicians tell him he has come to the wrong place. He sees that he has
lost time and money and strength, and almost the minute he realizes this
he loses his temper. I had the rheumatism and was advised to go to Aix,
not so much because I had that disease as because I had the promise of
certain others. What they were was not explained to me, but they are
either in the following menu or I have been sent to the wrong place.
Doctor Wakefield’s book says:

We know that the class of maladies benefited by the water and baths at
Aix are those due to defect of nourishment, debility of the nervous
system, or to a gouty, rheumatic, herpetic, or scrofulous
diathesis--all diseases extremely debilitating, and requiring a tonic,
and not depressing action of the remedy. This it seems to find here,
as recorded experience and daily action can testify. According to the
line of treatment followed particularly with due regard to the
temperature, the action of the Aix waters can be made sedative,
exciting, derivative, or alterative and tonic.

The “Establishment” is the property of France, and all the officers and
servants are employees of the French government. The bathhouse is a huge
and massive pile of white marble masonry, and looks more like a temple
than anything else. It has several floors and each is full of bath
cabinets. There is every kind of bath--for the nose, the ears, the
throat, vapor baths, swimming baths, and all people’s favorite, the
douche. It is a good building to get lost in, when you are not familiar
with it. From early morning until nearly noon people are streaming in
and streaming out without halt. The majority come afoot, but great
numbers are brought in sedan chairs, a sufficiently ugly contrivance
whose cover is a steep little tent made of striped canvas. You see
nothing of the patient in this diving bell as the bearers tramp along,
except a glimpse of his ankles bound together and swathed around with
blankets or towels to that generous degree that the result suggests a
sore piano leg. By attention and practice the pallbearers have got so
that they can keep out of step all the time--and they do it. As a
consequence their veiled churn goes rocking, tilting, swaying along like
a bell buoy in a ground swell. It makes the oldest sailor homesick to
look at that spectacle.

The “course” is usually fifteen douche baths and five tub baths. You
take the douche three days in succession, then knock off and take a tub.
You keep up this distribution through the course. If one course does not
cure you, you take another one after an interval. You seek a local
physician and he examines your case and prescribes the kind of bath
required for it, with various other particulars; then you buy your
course tickets and pay for them in advance--nine dollars. With the
tickets you get a memorandum book with your dates and hours all set down
on it. The doctor takes you into the bath the first morning and gives
some instructions to the two _doucheurs_ who are to handle you through
the course. The _pourboires_ are about ten cents to each of the men for
each bath, payable at the end of the course. Also at the end of the
course you pay three or four francs to the superintendent of your
department of the bathhouse. These are useful particulars to know, and
are not to be found in the books. A servant of your hotel carries your
towels and sheet to the bath daily and brings them away again. They are
the property of the hotel; the French government doesn’t furnish these
things.

You meet all kinds of people at a place like this, and if you give them
a chance they will submerge you under their circumstances, for they are
either very glad or very sorry they came, and they want to spread their
feelings out and enjoy them. One of these said to me:

“It’s great, these baths. I didn’t come here for my health; I only came
to find out if there was anything the matter with me. The doctor told me
if there was the symptoms would soon appear. After the first douche I
had sharp pains in all my muscles. The doctor said it was different
varieties of rheumatism, and the best varieties there were, too. After
my second bath I had aches in my bones, and skull and around. The doctor
said it was different varieties of neuralgia, and the best in the
market, anybody would tell me so. I got many new kinds of pains out of
my third douche. These were in my joints. The doctor said it was gout,
complicated with heart disease, and encouraged me to go on. Then we had
the fourth douche, and I came out on a stretcher that time, and fetched
with me one vast, diversified undulating continental kind of pain, with
horizons to it, and zones, and parallels of latitude, and meridians of
longitude, and isothermal belts, and variations of the compass--oh,
everything tidy, and right up to the latest developments, you know. The
doctor said it was inflammation of the soul, and just the very thing.
Well, I went right on gathering them in, toothache, liver complaint,
softening of the brain, nostalgia, bronchitis, osteology, fits,
Coleoptera, hydrangea, Cyclopædia Britannica, delirium tremens, and a
lot of other things that I’ve got down on my list that I’ll show you,
and you can keep it if you like and tally off the bric-à-brac as you lay
it in.

The doctor said I was a grand proof of what these baths could do; said I
had come here as innocent of disease as a grindstone, and inside of
three weeks these baths had sluiced out of me every important ailment
known to medical science, along with considerable more that were
entirely new and patentable. Why, he wanted to exhibit me in his bay
window!”

There seem to be a good many liars this year. I began to take the baths
and found them most enjoyable; so enjoyable that if I hadn’t had a
disease I would have borrowed one, just to have a pretext for going on.
They took me into a stone-floored basin about fourteen feet square,
which had enough strange-looking pipes and things in it to make it look
like a torture chamber. The two half-naked men seated me on a pine stool
and kept a couple of warm-water jets as thick as one’s wrist playing
upon me while they kneaded me, stroked me, twisted me, and applied all
the other details of the scientific massage to me for seven or eight
minutes. Then they stood me up and played a powerful jet upon me all
around for another minute. The cool shower bath came next, and the thing
was over. I came out of the bathhouse a few minutes later feeling
younger and fresher and finer than I have felt since I was a boy. The
spring and cheer and delight of this exaltation lasted three hours, and
the same uplifting effect has followed the twenty douches which I have
taken since.

After my first douche I went to the chemist’s on the corner, as per
instructions, and asked for half a glass of Challe water. It comes from
a spring sixteen miles from here. It was furnished to me, but,
perceiving that there was something the matter with it, I offered to
wait till they could get some that was fresh, but they said it always
smelled that way. They said that the reason that this was so much ranker
than the sulphur water of the bath was that this contained thirty-two
times as much sulphur as that. It is true, but in my opinion that water
comes from a cemetery, and not a fresh cemetery, either. History says
that one of the early Roman generals lost an army down there somewhere.
If he could come back now I think this water would help him find it
again. However, I drank the Challe, and have drunk it once or twice
every day since. I suppose it is all right, but I wish I knew what was
the matter with those Romans.

My first baths developed plenty of pain, but the subsequent ones removed
almost all of it. I have got back the use of my arm these last few days,
and I am going away now.

There are many beautiful drives about Aix, many interesting places to
visit, and much pleasure to be found in paddling around the little Lake
Bourget on the small steamers, but the excursion which satisfied me best
was a trip to Annecy and its neighborhood. You go to Annecy in an hour
by rail, through a garden land that has not had its equal for beauty
perhaps since Eden; and certainly not Eden was cultivated as this garden
is. The charm and loveliness of the whole region are bewildering.
Picturesque rocks, forest-clothed hills, slopes richly bright in the
cleanest and greenest grass, fields of grain without freck or flaw,
dainty of color and as shiny and shimmery as silk, old gray mansions and
towers, half buried in foliage and sunny eminences, deep chasms with
precipitous walls, and a swift stream of pale-blue water between, with
now and then a tumbling cascade, and always noble mountains in view,
with vagrant white clouds curling about their summits.

Then at the end of an hour you come to Annecy and rattle through its old
crooked lanes, built solidly up with curious old houses that are a dream
of the Middle Ages, and presently you come to the main object of your
trip--Lake Annecy. It is a revelation; it is a miracle. It brings the
tears to a body’s eyes, it affects you just as all things that you
instantly recognize as perfect affect you--perfect music, perfect
eloquence, perfect art, perfect joy, perfect grief. It stretches itself
out there in a caressing sunlight, and away toward its border of
majestic mountains, a crisped and radiant plain of water of the divinest
blue that can be imagined. All the blues are there, from the faintest
shoal-water suggestion of the color, detectable only in the shadow of
some overhanging object, all the way through, a little blue and a little
bluer still, and again a shade bluer, till you strike the deep, rich
Mediterranean splendor which breaks the heart in your bosom, it is so
beautiful.

And the mountains, as you skim along on the steamboat, how stately their
forms, how noble their proportions, how green their velvet slopes, how
soft the mottlings of the sun and shadow that play about the rocky
ramparts that crown them, how opaline the vast upheavals of snow banked
against the sky in the remotenesses beyond--Mont Blanc and the
others--how shall anybody describe? Why, not even the painter can quite
do it, and the most the pen can do is to suggest.

Up the lake there is an old abbey--Tallories--relic of the Middle Ages.
We stopped there; stepped from the sparkling water and the rush and boom
and fret and fever of the nineteenth century into the solemnity and the
silence and the soft gloom and the brooding mystery of a remote
antiquity. The stone step at the water’s edge had the traces of a
worn-out inscription on it; the wide flight of stone steps that led up
to the front door was polished smooth by the passing feet of forgotten
centuries, and there was not an unbroken stone among them all. Within
the pile was the old square cloister with covered arcade all around it
where the monks of the ancient times used to sit and meditate, and now
and then welcome to their hospitalities the wandering knight with his
tin breeches on, and in the middle of the square court (open to the sky)
was a stone well curb, cracked and slick with age and use, and all about
it were weeds, and among the weeds moldy brickbats that the Crusaders
used to throw at one another. A passage at the further side of the
cloister led to another weedy and roofless little inclosure beyond where
there was a ruined wall clothed to the top with masses of ivy, and
flanking it was a battered and picturesque arch. All over the building
there were comfortable rooms and comfortable beds and clean plank floors
with no carpets on them. In one room upstairs were half a dozen
portraits, dimming relics of the vanished centuries--portraits of abbots
who used to be as grand as princes in their old day, and very rich, and
much worshiped and very bold; and in the next room there were a howling
chromo and an electric bell. Downstairs there was an ancient wood
carving with a Latin word commanding silence, and there was a spang-new
piano close by. Two elderly French women, with the kindest and honestest
and sincerest faces, have the abbey now, and they board and lodge people
who are tired of the roar of cities and want to be where the dead
silence and serenity and peace of this old nest will heal their
blistered spirits and patch up their ragged minds. They fed us well,
they slept us well, and I wish I could have stayed there a few years and
got a solid rest.

MARIENBAD--A HEALTH FACTORY

-------

THE SIMPLE BUT SUFFICIENT REGIMEN IMPOSED ON PATIENTS IN AN AUSTRIAN
RESORT--OBSERVATIONS ON DIGESTION.

-------

(Contributed to the New York _Sun_, 1891)

This place is the village of Marienbad, Bohemia. It seems no very great
distance from Annecy, in Haute-Savoie, to this place--you make it in
less than thirty hours by these continental express trains--but the
changes in the scenery are great; they are quite out of proportion to
the distance covered. From Annecy by Aix to Geneva, you have blue lakes,
with bold mountains springing from their borders, and far glimpses of
snowy wastes lifted against the horizon beyond, while all about you is a
garden cultivated to the last possibility of grace and beauty--a
cultivation which doesn’t stop with the handy lower levels, but is
carried right up the sheer steeps and propped there with ribs of
masonry, and made to stay there in spite of Newton’s law. Beyond
Geneva--beyond Lausanne, at any rate--you have for a while a country
which noticeably resembles New England, and seems out of place and like
an intruder--an intruder who is wearing his every-day clothes at a
fancy-dress ball. But presently on your right, huge green mountain
ramparts rise up, and after that for hours you are absorbed in watching
the rich shadow effects which they furnish, and are only dully aware
that New England is gone and that you are flying past quaint and
unspeakable old towns and towers. Next day you have the lake of Zurich,
and presently the Rhine is swinging by you. How clean it is! How clear
it is! How blue it is! How green it is! How swift and rollicking and
insolent are its gait and style! How vivid and splendid its
colors--beautiful wreck and chaos of all the soap bubbles in the
universe! A person born on the Rhine must worship it.

I saw the blue Rhine sweep along; I heard, or seemed to hear,
The German songs we used to sing in chorus sweet and clear.

Yes, that is where his heart would be, that is where his last thoughts
would be, the “soldier of the legion” who “lay dying in Algiers.”

And by and by you are in a German region, which you discover to be quite
different from the recent Swiss lands behind you. You have a sea before
you, that is to say; the green land goes rolling away, in ocean swells,
to the horizon. And there is another new feature. Here and there at wide
intervals you have islands, hills two hundred and three hundred feet
high, of a haystack form, that rise abruptly out of the green plain, and
are wooded solidly to the top. On the top there is just room for a
ruined castle, and there it is, every time; above the summit you see the
crumbling arches and broken towers projecting.

Beyond Stuttgart, next day, you find other changes still. By and by,
approaching and leaving Nuremberg and down by Newhaus, your landscape is
humped everywhere with scattered knobs of rock, unsociable crags of a
rude, towerlike look, and thatched with grass and vines and bushes. And
now and then you have gorges, too, of a modest pattern as to size, with
precipice walls curiously carved and honeycombed by--I don’t know
what--but water, no doubt.

The changes are not done yet, for the instant the country finds it is
out of Württemberg and into Bavaria it discards one more thickness of
soil to go with previous disrobings, and then nothing remains over the
bones but the shift. There may be a poorer soil somewhere, but it is not
likely.

A couple of hours from Bayreuth you cross into Bohemia, and before long
you reach this Marienbad, and recognize another sharp change, the change
from the long ago to to-day; that is to say from the very old to the
spick and span new; from an architecture totally without shapeliness or
ornament to an architecture attractively equipped with both; from
universal dismalness as to color to universal brightness and beauty as
to tint; from a town which seems made up of prisons to a town which is
made up of gracious and graceful mansions proper to the light of heart
and crimeless. It is like jumping out of Jerusalem into Chicago.

The more I think of these many changes, the more surprising the thing
seems. I have never made so picturesque a journey before, and there
cannot be another trip of like length in the world that can furnish so
much variety and of so charming and interesting a sort.

There are only two or three streets here in this snug pocket in the
hemlock hills, but they are handsome. When you stand at the foot of a
street and look up at the slant of it you see only block fronts of
graceful pattern, with happily broken lines and the pleasant accent of
bay projections and balconies in orderly disorder and harmonious
confusion, and always the color is fresh and cheery, various shades of
cream, with softly contrasting trimmings of white, and now and then a
touch of dim red. These blocks are all thick walled, solid, massive,
tall for this Europe; but it is the brightest and newest looking town on
the Continent, and as pretty as anybody could require. The steep hills
spring high aloft from their very back doors and are clothed densely to
their tops with hemlocks.

In Bavaria everybody is in uniform, and you wonder where the private
citizens are, but here in Bohemia the uniforms are very rare.
Occasionally one catches a glimpse of an Austrian officer, but it is
only occasionally. Uniforms are so scarce that we seem to be in a
republic. Almost the only striking figure is the Polish Jew. He is very
frequent. He is tall and of grave countenance and wears a coat that
reaches to his ankle bones, and he has a little wee curl or two in front
of each ear. He has a prosperous look, and seems to be as much respected
as anybody.

The crowds that drift along the promenade at music time twice a day are
fashionably dressed after the Parisian pattern, and they look a good
deal alike, but they speak a lot of languages which you have not
encountered before, and no ignorant person can spell their names, and
they can’t pronounce them themselves.

Marienbad--Mary’s Bath. The Mary is the Virgin. She is the patroness of
these curative springs. They try to cure everything--gout, rheumatism,
leanness, fatness, dyspepsia, and all the rest. The whole thing is the
property of a convent, and has been for six or seven hundred years.
However, there was never a boom here until a quarter of a century ago.

If a person has the gout, this is what they do with him: they have him
out at 5.30 in the morning, and give him an egg and let him look at a
cup of tea. At six he must be at his particular spring, with his tumbler
hanging at his belt--and he will have plenty of company there. At the
first note of the orchestra he must lift his tumbler and begin to sip
his dreadful water with the rest. He must sip slowly and be a long time
at it. Then he must tramp about the hills for an hour or so, and get all
the exercise and fresh air possible. Then he takes his tub or wallows in
his mud, if mud baths are his sort. By noon he has a fine appetite, and
the rules allow him to turn himself loose and satisfy it, so long as he
is careful and eats only such things as he doesn’t want. He puts in the
afternoon walking the hills and filling up with fresh air. At night he
is allowed to take three ounces of any kind of food he doesn’t like and
drink one glass of any kind of liquor that he has a prejudice against;
he may also smoke one pipe if he isn’t used to it. At half past nine
sharp he must be in bed and his candle out. Repeat the whole thing the
next day. I don’t see any advantage in this over having the gout.

In the case of most diseases that is about what one is required to
undergo, and if you have any pleasant habit that you value, they want
that. They want that the first thing. They make you drop everything that
gives an interest to life. Their idea is to reverse your whole system of
existence and make a regenerating revolution. If you are a Republican,
they make you talk free trade. If you are a Democrat they make you talk
protection; if you are a Prohibitionist, you have got to go to bed drunk
every night till you get well. They spare nothing, they spare nobody.
Reform, reform, that is the whole song. If a person is an orator, they
gag him; if he likes to read, they won’t let him; if he wants to sing,
they make him whistle. They say they can cure any ailment, and they do
seem to do it; but why should a patient come all the way here? Why
shouldn’t he do these things at home and save the money? No disease
would stay with a person who treated it like that.

I didn’t come here to take baths, I only came to look around. But first
one person, then another began to throw out hints, and pretty soon I was
a good deal concerned about myself. One of these goutees here said I had
a gouty look about the eye; next a person who has catarrh of the
intestines asked me if I didn’t notice a dim sort of stomach ache when I
sneezed. I hadn’t before, but I did seem to notice it then. A man that’s
here for heart disease said he wouldn’t come downstairs so fast if he
had my build and aspect. A person with an old-gold complexion said a man
died here in the mud bath last week that had a petrified liver--good
deal such a looking man as I am, and the same initials, and so on, and
so on.

Of course, there was nothing to be uneasy about, and I wasn’t what you
may call really uneasy; but I was not feeling very well--that is, not
brisk--and I went to bed. I suppose that that was not a good idea,
because then they had me. I started in at the supper end of the mill and
went through. I am said to be all right now, and free from disease, but
this does not surprise me. What I have been through in these two weeks
would free a person of pretty much everything in him that wasn’t nailed
there--any loose thing, any unattached fragment of bone, or meat or
morals, or disease, or propensities or accomplishments, or what not. And
I don’t say but that I feel well enough, I feel better than I would if I
was dead, I reckon. And, besides, they say I am going to build up now
and come right along and be all right. I am not saying anything, but I
wish I had enough of my diseases back to make me aware of myself, and
enough of my habits to make it worth while to live. To have nothing the
matter with you and no habits is pretty tame, pretty colorless. It is
just the way a saint feels, I reckon; it is at least the way he looks. I
never could stand a saint. That reminds me that you see very few priests
around here, and yet, as I have already said, this whole big enterprise
is owned and managed by a convent. The few priests one does see here are
dressed like human beings, and so there may be more of them than I
imagine. Fifteen priests dressed like these could not attract as much of
your attention as would one priest at Aix-les-Bains. You cannot pull
your eye loose from the French priest as long as he is in sight, his
dress is so fascinatingly ugly. I seem to be wandering from the subject,
but I am not. This is about the coldest place I ever saw, and the
wettest, too. This August seems like an English November to me. Rain?
Why, it seems to like to rain here. It seems to rain every time there is
a chance. You are strictly required to be out airing and exercising
whenever the sun is shining, so I hate to see the sun shining because I
hate air and exercise--duty air and duty exercise taken for medicine. It
seems ungenuine, out of season, degraded to sordid utilities, a subtle
spiritual something gone from it which one can’t describe in words,
but--don’t you understand? With that gone what is left but canned air,
canned exercise, and you don’t want it.

When the sun does shine for a few moments or a few hours these people
swarm out and flock through the streets and over the hills and through
the pine woods, and make the most of the chance, and I have flocked out,
too, on some of these occasions, but as a rule I stay in and try to get
warm.

And what is there for means, besides heavy clothing and rugs, and the
polished white tomb that stands lofty and heartless in the corner and
thinks it is a stove? Of all the creations of human insanity this thing
is the most forbidding. Whether it is heating the room or isn’t, the
impression is the same--cold indifference. You can’t tell which it is
doing without going and putting your hand on it. They burn little
handfuls of kindlings in it, no substantial wood, and no coal.

The fire burns out every fifteen minutes, and there is no way to tell
when this has happened. On these dismal days, with the rain steadily
falling, it is no better company than a corpse. A roaring hickory fire,
with the cordial flames leaping up the chimney--But I must not think of
such things, they make a person homesick. This is a most strange place
to come to get rid of disease.

That is what you think most of the time. But in the intervals, when the
sun shines and you are tramping the hills and are comparatively warm,
you get to be neutral, maybe even friendly. I went up to the
Aussichtthurm the other day. This is a tower which stands on the summit
of a steep hemlock mountain here; a tower which there isn’t the least
use for, because the view is as good at the base of it as it is at the
top of it. But Germanic people are just mad for views--they never get
enough of a view--if they owned Mount Blanc, they would build a tower on
top of it.

The roads up that mountain through that hemlock forest are hard packed
and smooth, and the grades are easy and comfortable. They are for
walkers, not for carriages. You move through steep silence and twilight,
and you seem to be in a million-columned temple; whether you look up the
hill or down it you catch glimpses of distant figures flitting without
sound, appearing and disappearing in the dim distances, among the stems
of the trees, and it is all very spectral, and solemn and impressive.
Now and then the gloom is accented and sized up to your comprehension in
a striking way; a ray of sunshine finds its way down through and
suddenly calls your attention, for where it falls, far up the hillslope
in the brown duskiness, it lays a stripe that has a glare like
lightning. The utter stillness of the forest depths, the soundless hush,
the total absence of stir or motion of any kind in leaf or branch, are
things which we have no experience of at home, and consequently no name
for in our language. At home there would be the plaint of insects and
the twittering of birds and vagrant breezes would quiver the foliage.
Here it is the stillness of death. This is what the Germans are forever
talking about, dreaming about, and despairingly trying to catch and
imprison in a poem, or a picture, or a song--they adored Waldeinsamkeit,
loneliness of the woods. But how catch it? It has not a body; it is a
spirit. We don’t talk about it in America, or dream of it, or sing about
it, because we haven’t it. Certainly there is something wonderfully
alluring about it, beguiling, dreamy, unworldly. Where the gloom is
softest and richest, and the peace and stillness deepest, far up on the
side of that hemlock mountain, a spot where Goethe used to sit and
dream, is marked by a granite obelisk, and on its side is carved this
famous poem, which is the master’s idea of Waldeinsamkeit:

Ueber allen Wipfeln ist Ruh,
In allen Wipfeln spürest du
Kaum einen Hauch:
Die Vogel in schweigen in Walde.
Warte nur--Balde
Ruhest du auch.

It is raining again now. However, it was doing that before. I have been
over to the establishment and had a tub bath with two kinds of pine
juice in it. These fill the room with a pungent and most pleasant
perfume; they also turn the water to a color of ink and cover it with a
snowy suds, two or three inches deep. The bath is cool--about 75° or 80°
F., and there is a cooler shower bath after it. While waiting in the
reception room all by myself two men came in and began to talk.
Politics, literature, religion? No, their ailments. There is no other
subject here, apparently. Wherever two or three of these people are
gathered together, there you have it, every time. The first that can get
his mouth open contributes his disease and the condition of it, and the
others follow with theirs. The two men just referred to were
acquaintances, and they followed the custom. One of them was built like
a gasometer and is here to reduce his girth; the other was built like a
derrick and is here to fat up, as they express it, at this resort. They
were well satisfied with the progress they were making. The gasometer
had lost a quarter of a ton in ten days, and showed the record on his
belt with pride, and he walked briskly across the room, smiling in a
vast and luminous way, like a harvest moon, and said he couldn’t have
done that when he arrived here. He buttoned his coat around his equator
and showed how loose it was. It was pretty to see his happiness, it was
so childlike and honest. He set his feet together and leaned out over
his person and proved that he could see them. He said he hadn’t seen
them from that point before for fifteen years. He had a hand like a
boxing glove. And on one of his fingers he had just found a diamond ring
which he had missed eleven years ago.

The minute the derrick got a chance he broke in and began to tell how he
was piling on blubber right along--three-quarters of an ounce every four
days; and he was still piping away when I was sent for. I left the fat
man standing there panting and blowing, and swelling and collapsing like
a balloon, his next speech all ready and urgent for delivery.

The patients are always at that sort of thing, trying to talk one
another to death. The fat ones and the lean ones are nearly the worse at
it, but not quite; the dyspeptics are the worst. They are at it all day
and all night, and all along. They have more symptoms than all the
others put together and so there is more variety of experience, more
change of condition, more adventure, and consequently more play for the
imagination, more scope for lying, and in every way a bigger field to
talk. Go where you will, hide where you may, you cannot escape that word
liver; you overhear it constantly--in the street, in the shop, in the
theater, in the music grounds. Wherever you see two or a dozen people of
ordinary bulk talking together, you know they are talking about their
livers. When you first arrive here your new acquaintances seem sad and
hard to talk to, but pretty soon you get the lay of the land and the
hand of things, and after that you haven’t any more trouble. You look
into the dreary dull eye and softly say:

“Well, how’s your liver?”

You will see that dim eye flash up with a grateful flame, and you will
see that jaw begin to work, and you will recognize that nothing is
required of you from this out but to listen as long as you remain
conscious. After a few days you will begin to notice that out of these
people’s talk a gospel is framing itself and next you will find yourself
believing it. It is this--that a man is not what his rearing, his
schooling, his beliefs, his principles make him, he is what his liver
makes him; that with a healthy liver he will have the clear-seeing eye,
the honest heart, the sincere mind, the loving spirit, the loyal soul,
the truth and trust and faith that are based as Gibraltar is based, and
that with an unhealthy liver he must and will have the opposite of all
these, he will see nothing as it really is, he cannot trust anybody, or
believe in anything, his moral foundations are gone from under him. Now,
isn’t that interesting? I think it is.

One of the most curious things in these countries is the street manners
of the men and women. In meeting you they come straight on without
swerving a hair’s breadth from the direct line and wholly ignoring your
right to any part of the road. At the last moment you must yield up your
share of it and step aside, or there will be a collision. I noticed this
strange barbarism first in Geneva twelve years ago.

In Aix-les-Bains, where sidewalks are scarce and everybody walks in the
streets, there is plenty of room, but that is no matter; you are always
escaping collisions by mere quarter inches. A man or woman who is headed
in such a way as to cross your course presently without a collision will
actually alter his direction shade by shade and compel a collision
unless at the last instant you jump out of the way. Those folks are not
dressed as ladies and gentlemen. And they do not seem to be consciously
crowding you out of the road; they seem to be innocently and stupidly
unaware that they are doing it. But not so in Geneva. There this class,
especially the men, crowd out men, women, and girls of all rank and
raiment consciously and intentionally--crowd them off the sidewalk and
into the gutter.

There was nothing of this sort in Bayreuth. But here--well, here the
thing is astonishing. Collisions are unavoidable unless you do all the
yielding yourself. Another odd thing--here this savagery is confined to
the folk who wear the fine clothes; the others are courteous and
considerate. A big burly Comanche, with all the signs about him of
wealth and education, will tranquilly force young ladies to step off
into the gutter to avoid being run down by him. It is a mistake that
there is no bath that will cure people’s manners. But drowning would
help.

However, perhaps one can’t look for any real showy amount of delicacy of
feeling in a country where a person is brought up to contemplate without
a shudder the spectacle of women harnessed up with dogs and hauling
carts. The woman is on one side of the pole, the dog on the other, and
they bend to the work and tug and pant and strain--and the man tramps
leisurely alongside and smokes his pipe. Often the woman is old and
gray, and the man is her grandson. The Austrian national ornithological
device ought to be replaced by a grandmother harnessed to a slush cart
with a dog. This merely in the interest of fact. Heraldic fancy has been
a little too much overworked in these countries, anyway.

Lately one of those curious things happened here which justify the
felicitous extravagances of the stage and help us to accept them. A
despondent man, bankrupt, friendless, and desperate, dropped a dose of
strychnia into a bottle of whisky and went out in the dusk to find a
handy place for his purpose, which was suicide. In a lonely spot he was
stopped by a tramp, who said he would kill him if he didn’t give up his
money. Instead of jumping at the chance of getting himself killed and
thus saving himself the impropriety and annoyance of suicide, he forgot
all about his late project and attacked the tramp in a most sturdy and
valiant fashion. He made a good fight, but failed to win. The night
passed, the morning came, and he woke out of unconsciousness to find
that he had been clubbed half to death and left to perish at his
leisure. Then he reached for his bottle to add the finishing touch, but
it was gone. He pulled himself together and went limping away, and
presently came upon the tramp stretched out stone dead with the empty
bottle beside him. He had drunk the whisky and committed suicide
innocently. Now, while the man who had been cheated out of his suicide
stood there bemoaning his hard luck and wondering how he might manage to
raise money enough to buy some more whisky and poison, some people of
the neighborhood came by and he told them about his curious adventure.
They said that this tramp had been the scourge of the neighborhood and
the dread of the constabulary. The inquest passed off quietly and to
everybody’s satisfaction, and then the people, to testify their
gratitude to the hero of the occasion, put him on the police, on a
good-enough salary, and he is all right now and is not meditating
suicide any more. Here are all the elements of the naïvest Arabian tale;
a man who resists robbery when he hasn’t anything to be robbed of does
the very best to save his life when he has come out purposely to throw
it away; and finally is victorious in defeat, killing his adversary in
an effectual and poetic fashion after being already hors du combat
himself. Now if you let him rise in the service and marry the chief of
police’s daughter it has the requisite elements of the Oriental romance,
lacking not a detail so far as I can see.

DOWN THE RHÔNE
(1891)

In old times a summer sail down the Rhône was a favorite trip with
travelers. But that day is long gone by. The conveniences for the sail
disappeared many years ago--driven out of existence by the railway.

In August, 1891, I made this long-neglected voyage with a boatman and a
courier. The following account of it is part diary and part comment. The
main idea of the voyage was, not to see sights, but to rest up from
sight-seeing. There was little or nothing on the Rhône to examine or
study or write didactically about; consequently, to glide down the
stream in an open boat, moved by the current only, would afford many
days of lazy repose, with opportunity to smoke, read, doze, talk,
accumulate comfort, get fat, and all the while be out of reach of the
news and remote from the world and its concerns.

Our point of departure was to be the Castle of Châtillon on Lake
Bourget, not very far from Aix-les-Bains. I went down from Geneva by
rail on a Saturday afternoon, and reached the station nearest the castle
during the evening. I found the courier waiting for me. He had been down
in the lake region several days, hunting for a boat, engaging the
boatman, etc.

_From my log._--The luggage was given to the porters--a couple of
peasant girls of seventeen or eighteen years, and a couple of younger
ones--children, one might say, of twelve or thirteen. It consisted of
heavy satchels and holdalls, but they gathered it up and trudged away,
not seeming to mind the weight. The road was through woods and
uphill--dark and steep and long. I tried to take the heavy valise from
the smallest one, telling her I would carry it myself. She did not
understand, of course, and resisted. I tried, then, to take the bag by
gentle force. This alarmed her. The courier came and explained that she
was afraid she was going to lose the trifle of money she was earning.

The courier told her this was not the case, but she looked doubtful and
concluded to hang on to a sure thing.

“How much is it she’s going to get?”

“She will charge about half a franc.”

“Then pay her _now_, and she’ll give up the bag.”

But that scheme failed, too. The child hung to the bag and seemed
distressed. No explanation could be got out of her, but one of the other
girls said the child was afraid that if she gave it up, the fact would
be used against her with tourists as proof that she was not strong
enough to carry their luggage for them, and so she would lose chances to
get work.

By and by the winding road carried us by an open space where we could
see very well--see the ruins of a burned-out little hamlet of the
humblest sort--stone walls with empty window holes, narrow alleys
cluttered with wreckage and fallen thatch, etc. Our girls were eager to
have us stop and view this wonder, the result of the only conflagration
they had ever seen, the only large event that had ever accented their
monotonous lives. It had happened a couple of months before, and the
villagers had lost everything, even to their stockings of savings, and
were too poor to rebuild their houses. A young woman, an old one, and
all the horses had been burned to death; the young girls said they could
take us among the ruins and show us the very spot.

We finally came out on the top of the hill, and there stood the castle,
a rather picturesque old stack of masonry with a walled yard about it
and an odd old stumpy tower in a corner of the yard handsomely clothed
in vines. The castle is a private residence, whose owner leaves it in
charge of his housekeeper and some menservants, and lives in Lyons
except when he wants to fish or shoot.

The courier had engaged rooms, but the fact had probably been forgotten,
for we had trouble in rousing the garrison. It was getting late and they
were asleep. Eventually a man unlocked and unbarred the door and led us
up a winding stair of heavy and very plain stonework. My bed was higher
from the floor than necessary. This is apparently the rule in old French
houses of the interior. But there is a stepladder.

In the morning I looked out of my window and saw the tops of trees below
me, thick and beautiful foliage, and below the trees was the bright blue
water of the lake shining in the sun. The window seemed to be about two
hundred feet above the water. An airy and inspiring situation, indeed. A
pope was born in that room a couple of centuries ago. I forget his name.

In that old day they built for utility, this was evident.
Everything--floors, sashes, shutters, beams, joists--were cheap, coarse,
ornamentless, but everlastingly solid and substantial. On the wall hung
an indication of the politics of the present owner. This was a small
photograph with “Philippe Comte de Paris” written under it.

The castle was ancient, in its way, but over the door of one of its
rooms there was a picture set in a frame whose profound antiquity made
all its surroundings seem modern and fresh. This frame was of good firm
oak, as black as a coal, and had once been part of a lake-dweller’s
house. It was already a thing of antiquity when the Romans were planting
colonies in France before the time of Christ. The remains of a number of
lake villages have been dug out of the mud of Lake Bourget.

Breakfast was served in the open air on a precipice in a little arbor
sheltered by vines, with glimpses through the tree tops of the blue
water far below, and with also a wide prospect of mountain scenery. The
coffee was the best I ever drank in Europe.

Presently there was a bugle blast from somewhere about the
battlements--a fine Middle Age effect--and after a moment it was
answered from the further shore of the lake, and we saw a boat put out
from that shore. It was ours. We were soon on board and away.

It was a roomy, long flatboat, very light and easy to manage--easy to
manage because its sides tapered a little toward both ends, and both
ends curved up free from the water and made the steering prompt and
easy. The rear half was sheltered from sun and rain by a temporary (and
removable) canopy stretched over hoop-pole arches, after the fashion of
the old-time wagon covers of the emigrants to California. We at once
rolled the sides of the canopy high up, so that we might have the breeze
and a free view on every hand.

On the other side of the lake we entered a narrow canal, and here we had
our last glimpse of that picturesque Châtillon perched on its high
promontory. The sides of the canal were walled with vines heavily laden
with black grapes. The vine leaves were white with the stuff which is
squirted on them from a thing like a fire extinguisher to kill the
calamitous phylloxera. We saw only one living creature for the first
lonely mile--a man with his extinguisher strapped on his back and hard
at his deadly work. I asked our admiral, Joseph Rougier, of the village
of Chanaz, if it would be a good idea to offer to sell this Sabbath
breaker a few choice samples of foreign phylloxera, and he said yes, if
one wanted to play the star part in an inquest.

At last two women and a man strolling churchward in their Sunday best
gave us a courteous hail and walked briskly along abreast of us, plying
the courier and the sailor with eager questions about our curious and
unaccountable project, and by the time they had got their fill and
dropped astern to digest the matter and finish wondering over it, we
were serene again and busy discussing the scenery; for now there was
really some scenery to look at, of a mild but pleasant type--low
precipices, a country road shaded by large trees, a few cozy thatched
cabins scattered along, and now and then an irruption of joyous children
who flocked to inspect us and admire, followed by friendly dogs who
stood and barked at us, but wagged their tails to say no offense was
intended.

Soon the precipice grew bolder, and presently Chanaz came in sight and
the canal bore us along its front--along its street, for it had only
one. We stepped ashore. There was a roll of distant drums, and soon a
company or two of French infantry came marching by. All the citizens
were out, and every male took off his hat politely as the soldiers moved
past him, and this salute was always returned by the officers.

I wanted envelopes, wine, grapes, and postage stamps, and was directed
to a stone stairway and told to go up one flight. Up there I found a
small well-smoked kitchen paved with worn-out bricks, with pots and pans
hanging about the walls, and a bent and humped woman of seventy cooking
a very frugal dinner. The tiredest dog I have seen this year lay asleep
under the stove, in a roasting heat, an incredible heat, a heat that
would have pulled a remark of the Hebrew children; but the dog slept
along with perfect serenity and did not seem to know that there was
anything the matter with the weather. The old woman set off her coffee
pot. Next she removed her pork chop to the table; it seemed to me that
this was premature--the dog was better done.

We asked for the envelopes and things; she motioned us to the left with
her ladle. We passed through a door and found ourselves in the smallest
wholesale and retail commercial house in the world, I suppose. The place
was not more than nine feet square. The proprietor was polite and
cheerful enough for a place five or six times as large. He was weighing
out two ounces of parched coffee for a little girl, and when the
balances came level at last he took off a light bean and put on a
heavier one in the handsomest way and then tied up the purchase in a
piece of paper and handed it to the child with as nice a bow as one
would see anywhere. In that shop he had a couple of bushels of wooden
shoes--a dollar’s worth, altogether, perhaps--but he had no other
articles in such lavish profusion. Yet he had a pound or so or a
dipperful of any kind of thing a person might want. You couldn’t buy two
things of a kind there, but you could buy one of any and every kind. It
was a useful shop, and a sufficient one, no doubt, yet its contents
could not have cost more than ten dollars. Here was home on a small
scale, but everything comfortable, no haggard looks visible, no
financial distress apparent. I got all the things I came for except
double-postage stamps for foreign service; I had to take domestic stamps
instead. The merchant said he kept a double-stamp in stock a couple of
years, but there was no market for it, so he sent it back to Paris,
because it was eating up its insurance. A careful man and thrifty; and
of such is the commonwealth of France.

We got some hot fried fish in Chanaz and took them aboard and cleared
out. With grapes and claret and bread they made a satisfactory luncheon.
We paddled a hundred yards, turned a rock corner, and here was the
furious gray current of the Rhône just a-whistling by! We crept into it
from the narrow canal, and laid in the oars. The floating was begun. One
needs no oar-help in a current like that. The shore seemed to fairly
spin past. Where the current assaults the heavy stone barriers thrown
out from the shores to protect the banks, it makes a break like the
break of a steamboat, and you can hear the roar a couple of hundred
yards off.

The river where we entered it was about a hundred yards wide, and very
deep. The water was at medium stage. The Rhône is not a very long
river--six hundred miles--but it carries a bigger mass of water to the
sea than any other French stream.

For the first few miles we had lonely shores--hardly ever a house. On
the left bank we had high precipices and domed hills; right bank low and
wooded.

At one point in the face of a precipice we saw a great cross (carved out
of the living rock, the Admiral said) forty feet above the carriage
road, where a doctor has had his tomb scooped in the rock and lies in
there safe from his surviving patients--if any.

At 1.25 P.M. we passed the slumbrous village of Massigneux de Rive on
the right and the ditto village of Huissier on the left (in Savoie). We
had to take all names by sound from the Admiral; he said nobody could
spell them. There was a ferry at the former village. A wire is stretched
across the river high overhead; along this runs a wheel which has ropes
leading down and made fast to the ferryboat in such a way that the
boat’s head is held farther upstream than its stern. This angle enables
the current to drive the boat across, and no other motive force is
needed. This would be a good thing on minor rivers in America.

2.10 P.M.--It is delightfully cool, breezy, shady (under the canopy),
and still. Much smoking and lazy reflecting. There is no sound but the
rippling of the current and the moaning of far-off breaks, except that
now and then the Admiral dips a screechy oar to change the course half a
point. In the distance one catches the faint singing and laughter of
playing children or the softened note of a church bell or town clock.
But the reposeful stillness--that is the charm--and the smooth swift
gliding--and the fresh, clear, lively, gray-green water. There was such
a rush, and boom, and life, and confusion, and activity in Geneva
yesterday--how remote all that seems now, how wholly vanished away and
gone out of this world!

2.15.--Village of Yenne. Iron suspension bridge. On the heights back of
the town a chapel with a tower like a thimble, and a very tall white
Virgin standing on it.

2.25.--Precipices on both sides now. River narrow--sixty yards.

2.30.--Immense precipice on right bank, with groups of buildings (Pierre
Châtel) planted on the very edge of it. In its near neighborhood a
massive and picturesque fortification.

All this narrow gut from the bridge down to the next bridge--a mile or
two--is picturesque with its frowning high walls of rock.

In the face of the precipice above the second bridge sits a painted
house on a rock bench--a chapel, we think, but the Admiral says it is
for the storage of wine.

More fortifications at the corner where the river turns--no cannon, but
narrow slits for musketry commanding the river. Also narrow slits in the
solid (hollowed-out) precipice. Perhaps there is no need of cannon here
where you can throw a biscuit across from precipice to precipice.

2.45.--Below that second bridge. On top of the bluffs more
fortifications. Low banks on both sides here.

2.50.--Now both sets of fortifications show up, look huge and
formidable, and are finely grouped. Through the glass they seem deserted
and falling to ruin. Out of date, perhaps.

One will observe, by these paragraphs, that the Rhône is swift enough to
keep one’s view changing with a very pleasant alacrity.

At midafternoon we passed a steep and lofty bluff--right bank--which was
crowned with the moldering ruins of a castle overgrown with trees. A
relic of Roman times, the Admiral said. Name? No, he didn’t know any
name for it. Had it a history? Perhaps; he didn’t know. Wasn’t there
even a legend connected with it? He didn’t know of any.

Not even a legend. One’s first impulse was to be irritated; whereas one
should be merely thankful; for if there is one sort of invention in this
world that is flatter than another, it is the average folklore legend.
It could probably be proven that even the adventures of the saints in
the Roman calendar are not of a lower grade as works of the inventor’s
art.

The dreamy repose, the infinite peace of these tranquil shores, this
Sabbath stillness, this noiseless motion, this strange absence of the
sense of sin, and the stranger absence of the desire to commit it--this
was the perfectest day the year had brought! Now and then we slipped
past low shores with grassy banks. A solitary thatched cottage close to
the edge, one or two big trees with dense foliage sheltering the
cottage, and the family in their Sunday, clothes grouped in the deep
shade, chatting, smoking, knitting, the dogs asleep about their feet,
the kittens helping with the knitting, and all hands content and
praising God without knowing it. We always got a friendly word of
greeting and returned it. One of these families contained eighteen sons,
and all were present. The Admiral was acquainted with everybody along
the banks, and with all the domestic histories, notwithstanding he was
so ineffectual on old Roman matters.

4.20.--Bronze statue of the Virgin on a sterile hill slope.

4.45.--Ruined Roman tower on a bluff. Belongs to the no-name series.

5.--Some more Roman ruins in the distance.

At 6 o’clock we rounded to. We stepped ashore in a woodsy and lonely
place and walked a short mile through a country lane to the sizable and
rather modern-looking village of St.-Genix. Part of the way we followed
another pleasure party--six or eight little children riding aloft on a
mountain of fragrant hay. This is the earliest form of the human
pleasure excursion, and for utter joy and perfect contentment it stands
alone in a man’s threescore years and ten; all that come after it have
flaws, but this has none.

We put up at the Hôtel Labully, in the little square where the church
stands. Satisfactory dinner. Later I took a twilight tramp along the
high banks of a moist ditch called the Guires River. If it was my river
I wouldn’t leave it outdoors nights, in this careless way, where any dog
can come along and lap it up. It is a tributary of the Rhône when it is
in better health.

It became dark while we were on our way back, and then the bicyclers
gave us many a sudden chill. They never furnished us an early warning,
but delivered the paralyzing shock of their rubber-horn hoot right at
our shoulder blades and then flashed spectrally by on their soundless
wheels and floated into the depths of the darkness and vanished from
sight before a body could collect his remark and get it out. Sometimes
they get shot. This is right.

I went to my room, No. 16. The floor was bare, which is the rule down
the Rhône. Its planks were light colored, and had been smoothed by use
rather than art; they had conspicuous black knots in them. The usual
high and narrow bed was there, with the usual little marble-topped
commode by the head of it and the usual strip of foot carpet alongside,
where you climb in. The wall paper was dark--which is usual on the
Continent; even in the northern regions of Germany, where the daylight
in winter is of such poor quality that they don’t even tax it now.

When I woke in the morning it was eight o’clock and raining hard, so I
stayed in bed and had my breakfast and a ripe old Paris paper of last
week brought up. It was a good breakfast--one often gets that; and a
liberal one--one seldom gets that. There was a big bowl for the coffee
instead of a stingy cup which has to be refilled just as you are getting
interested in it; there was a quart of coffee in the pot instead of a
scant half pint; instead of the usual hollow curl of brittle butter
which evades you when you try to scoop it on to the knife and crumbles
when you try to carve it, there was a solid cream-colored lump as big as
a brick; there was abundance of hot milk, and there was also the usual
ostensible cream of Europe. There _must_ be cream in Europe somewhere,
but it is not in the cows; they have been examined.

The rain continued to pour until noon, then the sun burst out and we
were soon up and filing through the village. By the time we had tramped
our mile and pushed out into the stream, the watches marked 1.10 and the
day was brilliant and perfect.

Over on the right were ruins of two castles, one of them of some size.

We passed under a suspension bridge; alongside of it was an iron bridge
of a later pattern. Near by was a little steamer lying at the bank with
no signs of life about her--the first boat, except ferryboats,
encountered since we had entered the Rhône. A lonely river, truly.

We drifted past lofty highlands, but there was nothing inspiring about
them. In Switzerland the velvet heights are sprinkled with homes clear
to the clouds, but these hills were sterile, desolate, gray, melancholy,
and so thin was the skin on them that the rocky bones showed through in
places.

1.30.--We seem lost in the intricate channels of an archipelago of flat
islands covered with bushes.

1.50.--We whirl around a corner into open river again, and observe that
a vast bank of leaden clouds is piling itself up on the horizon; the
tint thrown upon the distant stretches of water is rich and fine.

The river is wide now--a hundred and fifty yards--and without islands.
Suddenly it has become nearly currentless and is like a lake. The
Admiral explains that from this point for nine miles it is called L’Eau
Morte--Dead Water.

The region is not entirely barren of life, it seems--solitary woman
paddling a punt across the wide still pool.

The boat moved, but that is about all one could say. It was indolent
progress; still, it was comfortable. There were flaming sunshine behind
and that rich thunder gloom ahead, and now and then the fitful fanning
of a pleasant breeze.

A woman paddled across--a rather young woman with a face like the “Mona
Lisa.” I had seen the “Mona Lisa” only a little while before, and stood
two hours in front of that painting, repeating to myself: “People come
from around the globe to stand here and worship. What is it they find in
it?” To me it was merely a serene and subdued face, and there an end.
There might be more in it, but I could not find it. The complexion was
bad; in fact, it was not even human; there are no people of that color.
I finally concluded that maybe others still saw in the picture faded and
vanished marvels which _had_ been there once and were now forever
vanished.

Then I remembered something told me once by Noel Flagg,[3] the artist.
There was a time, he said, when he wasn’t yet an artist but thought he
was. His pictures sold, and gave satisfaction, and that seemed a
good-enough verdict. One day he was daubing away in his studio and
feeling good and inspired, when Dr. Horace Bushnell, that noble old
Roman, straggled in there without an invitation and fastened that deep
eye of his on the canvas. The youth was proud enough of such a call, and
glad there was something on the easel that was worthy of it. After a
long look the great divine said:

“You have talent, boy.” (That sounded good.) “What you want is
teaching.”

Teaching--he, an accepted and competent artist! He didn’t like that.
After another long look:

“Do you know the higher mathematics?”

“I? No, sir.”

“You must acquire them.”

“As a proper part of an artist’s training?” This with veiled irony.

“As an _essential_ part of it. Do you know anatomy?”

“No, sir.”

“You must learn how to dissect a body. What are you studying,
now--principally?”

“Nothing, I believe.”

“And the time flying, the time flying! Where are your books? What do you
read?”

“There they are, on the shelves.”

“I see. Poetry and romance. They must wait. Get to your mathematics and
your anatomy right away. Another point: you must train your eye--you
must teach yourself to see.”

“Teach myself to see? I believe I was born with that ability.”

“But nobody is born with a _trained_ ability--nobody. A cow sees--she
sees all the outsides of things, no doubt, but it is only the trained
eye that sees deeper, sees the soul of them, the meaning of them, the
spiritual essence. Are you sure that you see more than the cow sees? You
must go to Paris. You will never learn to see here. There they’ll teach
you; there they’ll train you; there they’ll work you like a slave; there
they’ll bring out the talent that’s in you. Be off! Don’t twaddle here
any longer!”

Flagg thought it over and resolved that the advice was worth taking. He
and his brother cleared for Paris. They put in their first afternoon
there scoffing at the works of the old masters in the Louvre. They
laughed at themselves for crossing a wide ocean to learn what masterly
painting might be by staring at these odious things. As for the “Mona
Lisa,” they exhausted their treasure of wit in making fun of it.

Next day they put themselves into the hands of the Beaux Arts people,
and that was the end of play. They had to start at the very bottom of
their trade and learn it over again, detail by detail, and learn it
_right_, this time. They slaved away, night and day for three months,
and wore themselves to shadows. Then they had a day off, and drifted
into the Louvre. Neither said a word for some time; each disliked to
begin; but at last, in front of the “Mona Lisa,” after standing mute
awhile one of them said:

“Speak out. Say it.”

“Say it yourself.”

“Well, then, we _were_ cows before!”

“Yes--it’s the right name for it. That is what we were. It is
unbelievable, the change that has come over these pictures in three
months. It is the difference between a landscape in the twilight and the
same landscape in the daytime.” Then they fell into each other’s arms.

This all came back to me, now, as I saw this living “Mona Lisa” punting
across L’Eau Morte.

2.40 P.M.--Made for a village on the right bank with all speed--Port de
Groslee. Remains of Roman aqueduct on hilltop back of village.
Rain!--Deluges of it. Took refuge in an inn on the bank--Hôtel des
Voyageurs. The public room was full of voyageurs and tobacco smoke. The
voyageurs may have been river folk in the old times when the inn was
built, but this present crowd was made up of teamsters. They sat at bare
tables, under their feet was the bare floor, about them were the four
bare walls--a dreary place at any time, a heart-breaking place now in
the dark of the downpour. However, it was manifestly not dreary to the
teamsters. They were sipping red wine and smoking; they all talked at
once, and with great energy and spirit, and every now and then they gave
their thighs a sounding slap and burst into a general horse laugh. The
courier said that this was in response to rude wit and coarse anecdotes.
The brace of modest-looking girls who were waiting on the teamsters did
not seem troubled. The courier said that they were used to all kinds of
language and were not defiled by it; that they had probably seldom heard
a spade called anything but a spade, therefore the foulest words came
innocent to their ears.

This inn was built of stone--of course; everybody’s house on the
Continent, from palace to hovel, is built of that dismal material, and
as a rule it is as square as a box and odiously plain and destitute of
ornament; it is formal, forbidding, and breeds melancholy thoughts in
people used to friendlier and more perishable materials of construction.
The frame house and the log house molder and pass away, even in the
builder’s time, and this makes a proper bond of sympathy and fellowship
between the man and his home; but the stone house remains always the
same to the person born in it; in his old age it is still as hard, and
indifferent, and unaffected by time as it was in the long-vanished days
of his childhood. The other kind of house shows by many touching signs
that it has noted his griefs and misfortunes and has felt for them, but
the stone house doesn’t--it is not of his evanescent race, it has no
kinship with him, nor any interest in him.

A professional letter writer happened along presently, and one of the
young girls got him to write a letter for her. It seemed strange that
she could not write it herself. The courier said that the peasant women
of the Rhône do not care for education, but only for religion; that they
are all good Catholics, and that their main ambition in life is to see
the Rhône’s long procession of stone and bronze Virgins added to, until
the river shall be staked out with them from end to end; and that their
main pleasure in life is to contribute from their scant centimes to this
gracious and elevating work. He says it is a quite new caprice; that ten
years ago there was not a Virgin in this part of France at all, and
never had been. This may be true, and, of course, there is nothing
unreasonable about it, but I have already found out that the courier’s
statements are not always exact.

I had a hot fried fish and coffee in a garden shed roofed with a mat of
vines, but the rain came through in streams and I got drenched in spite
of our umbrellas, for one cannot manage table implements and umbrellas
all at the same time with anything like good success.

_Mem._--Last evening, for economy’s sake, proposed to be a Frenchman
because Americans and English are always overcharged. Courier said it
wouldn’t deceive unless I played myself for a deaf-and-dumb
Frenchman--which I did, and so the rooms were only a franc and a half
each. But the Admiral must have let it out that I was only deaf and dumb
in French, for prices were raised in the bill this morning.

4.10 P.M.--Left Port de Groslee.

4.50 P.M.--Château of the Count Cassiloa--or something like that--the
Admiral’s pronunciation is elusive. Courier guesses the spelling at
“Quintionat.” I don’t quite see the resemblance. This courier’s
confidence in himself is a valuable talent. He must be descended from
the idiot who taught our forefathers to spell tizzik with a _ph_ and a
_th_.

The river here is as still and smooth and nearly as dead as a lake. The
water is swirly, though, and consequently makes uneasy steering.

River seems to draw together and greatly narrow itself below the count’s
house. No doubt the current will smarten up there.

Three new quarries along here. Dear me! how little there is in the way
of sight-seeing, when a quarry is an event! Remarked upon with
contentment.

Swept through the narrow canallike place with a good current.

On the left-hand point below, bush-grown ruins of an ancient convent
(St. Alban’s), picturesquely situated on a low bluff. There is a higher
and handsomer bluff a trifle lower down. How did they overlook it? Those
people generally went for the best, not second best. Shapely hole in
latter bluff one hundred feet above the water--anchorite’s nest?
Interesting-looking hole, and would have cost but little time and
trouble to examine it, but it was not done. It is no matter; one can
find other holes.

At last, below bluffs, we find some greensward--not extensive, but a
pleasant novelty.

5.30.--Lovely sunset. Mottled clouds richly painted by sinking sun, and
fleecy shreds of clouds drifting along the fronts of neighboring blue
mountains. Harrow in a field. Apparently harrow, but was distant and
could not tell; could have been a horse.

5.35.--Very large gray broken-arched and unusually picturesque ruin
crowning a hilltop on right. Name unknown. This is a liberal mile above
village of Briord (my spelling--the Admiral’s pronunciation), on same
side. Passed the village swiftly, and left it behind. The villagers came
out and made fun of our strange tub. The dogs chased us and were more
noisy than necessary.

6 P.M.--Another suspension bridge--this is the sixth one. They have
ceased to interest. There was nothing exciting about them, from the
start. Presently landed on left bank and shored the boat for the night.
Hôtel du Rhône Moine. Isolated. Situated right on the bank. Sort of a
village--villagette, to be exact--a little back. Hôtel is two stories
high and not pretentious--family dwelling and cow stable all under one
roof.

I had been longing to have personal experience of peasant life--be “on
the inside” and see it for myself, instead of at second hand in books.
This was an opportunity and I was excited about it and glad. The kitchen
was not clean, but it was a sociable place, and the family were kind and
full of good will. There were three little children, a young girl,
father, mother, grandparents, some dogs, and a plurality of cats. There
was no discord; perfect harmony prevailed.

Our table was placed on the lawn on the river bank. One had no right to
expect any finer style here than he would find in the cheapest and
shabbiest little tavern in America, for the Hôtel du Rhône Moine was for
foot wanderers and laborers on the flatboats that convey stone and sand
and wood to Lyons, yet the style _was_ superior--very much so. The
tablecloth was white, and it and the table furniture were perfectly
clean. We had a fish of a pretty coarse grain, but it was fresh from the
river and hot from the pan; the bread was good, there was abundance of
excellent butter, the milk was rich and pure, the sugar was white, the
coffee was considerably better than that which is furnished by the
choice hotels of the capitals of the Continent. Thus far, peasant life
was a disappointment, it was so much better than anything we were used
to at home in some respects. Two of the dogs came out, presently, and
sat down by the table and rested their chins on it, and so remained. It
was not to beg, for they showed no interest in the supper; they were
merely there to be friendly, it was the only idea they had. A squadron
of cats came out by and by and sat down in the neighborhood and looked
me over languidly, then wandered away without passion, in fact with what
looked like studied indifference. Even the cats and the dogs are well
and sufficiently fed at the Hôtel du Rhône Moine--their dumb testimony
was as good as speech.

I went to bed early. It is inside the house, not outside, that one
really finds the peasant life. Our rooms were over the stable, and this
was not an advantage. The cows and horses were not very quiet, the smell
was extraordinary, the fleas were a disorderly lot, and these things
helped the coffee to keep one awake. The family went to bed at nine and
got up at two. The beds were very high; one could not climb into them
without the help of a chair; and as they were narrow and arched, there
was danger of rolling out in case one drifted into dreams of an
imprudent sort. These lofty bedsteads were not high from caprice, but
for a purpose--they contained chests of drawers, and the drawers were
full of clothing and other family property. On the table in my room were
some bright-colored, even gorgeous little waxen saints and a Virgin
under bell-glasses; also the treasures of the house--jewelry and a
silver watch. It was not costly jewelry, but it was jewelry, at any
rate, and without doubt the family valued it. I judged that this
household were accustomed to having honest guests and neighbors or they
would have removed these things from the room when I entered it, for I
do not look honester than others.

Not that I have always thought in this way about myself, for I haven’t.
I thought the reverse until the time I lost my overcoat, once, when I
was going down to New York to see the Water Color exhibition, and had a
sort of adventure in consequence. The house had been robbed in the
night, and when I came downstairs to rush for the early train there was
no overcoat. It was a raw day, and when I got to New York at noon I grew
colder and colder as I walked along down the Avenue. When I reached East
Thirty-fourth street I stopped on the corner and began to consider. It
seemed to me that it must have been just about there that Smith,[4] the
artist, took me one winter’s night, with others, five years before, and
caroused us with roasted oysters and Southern stories and hilarity in
his fourth story until three or four in the morning; and now if I could
only call to mind which of those houses over the way was his, I could
borrow an overcoat. All the time that I was thinking and standing there
and trying to recollect, I was dimly conscious of a figure near me, but
only dimly, very dimly; but now as I came out of my reverie and found
myself gazing, rapt but totally unconscious, at one of the houses over
there, that figure solidified itself and became at once the most
conspicuous thing in the landscape. It was a policeman. He was standing
not six feet away, and was gazing as intently at my face as I had been
gazing at the house. I was embarrassed--it is always embarrassing to
come to yourself and find a stranger staring at you. You blush, even
when you have not been doing any harm. So I blushed--a thing that does
not commend a person to a policeman; also I tried to smile a placating
smile, but it did not get any response, so then I tried to make it a
kind of friendly smile, which was a mistake, because that only hardens a
policeman, and I saw at once that this smile had hardened this one and
made my situation more difficult than ever; and so, naturally, my
judgment being greatly impaired by now, I spoke--which was an error,
because in these circumstances one cannot arrange without reflection a
remark which will not seem to have a kind of suspicious something about
it to a policeman, and that was what happened this time; for I had
fanned up that haggard smile again, which had been dying out when I
wasn’t noticing, and said:

“Could you tell me, please, if there’s a Mr. Smith lives over there
in----”

“_What_ Smith?”

That rude abruptness drove his other name out of my mind; and as I saw I
never should be able to think of it with the policeman standing there
cowing me with his eye, that way, it seemed to me best to get out a name
of some kind, so as to avert further suspicion, therefore I brought out
the first one which came into my mind, which was John--another error.
The policeman turned purple--apparently with a sense of injury and
insult--and said there were a million John Smiths in New York, and
_which_ one was this? Also what did I want with Smith? I could not
remember--the overcoat was gone out of my mind. So I told him he was a
pupil of mine and that I was giving him lessons in morals; moral
culture--a new system.

That was a lucky hit, anyway. I was merely despicable, now, to the
policeman, but harmless--I could see it in his eye. He looked me over a
moment then said:

“You give him lessons, do you?”

“Yes, sir.”

“How long have you been giving him lessons?”

“Two years, next month.” I was getting my wind again, and confidence.

“Which house does he live in?”

“That one--the middle one in the block.”

“Then what did you ask _me_ for, a minute ago?”

I did not see my way out. He waited for an answer, but got tired before
I could think of one that would fit the case and said:

“How is it that you haven’t an overcoat on, such a day as this?”

“I--well, I never wear them. It doesn’t seem cold to me.”

He thought awhile, with his eye on me, then said, with a sort of sigh:

“Well, maybe you are all right--I don’t know--but you want to walk
pretty straight while you are on my beat; for, morals or no morals,
blamed if I take much stock in you. Move on, now.”

Then he turned away, swinging his club by its string. But his eye was
over his shoulder, my way; so I had to cross to that house, though I
didn’t want to, any more. I did not expect it to be Smith’s house, now
that I was so out of luck, but I thought I would ring and ask, and if it
proved to be some one else’s house, then I would explain that I had come
to examine the gas meter and thus get out the back way and be all right
again. The door was opened by a middle-aged matron with a gentle and
friendly face, and she had a sweet serenity about her that was a notable
contrast to my nervous flurry. I asked after Smith and if he lived
there, and to my surprise and gratitude she said that this was his home.

“Can I see him? Can I see him right away--immediately?”

No; he was gone downtown. My rising hopes fell to ruin.

“Then can I see Mrs. Smith?”

But alas and alas! she was gone downtown with him. In my distress I was
suddenly smitten by one of those ghastly hysterical inspirations, you
know, when you want to do an insane thing just to astonish and petrify
somebody; so I said, with a rather overdone pretense of playful ease and
assurance:

“Ah, this is a very handsome overcoat on the hat rack--be so good as to
lend it to me for a day or two!”

“With pleasure,” she said--and she had the coat on me before I knew what
had happened. It had been my idea to astonish and petrify her, but I was
the person astonished and petrified, myself. So astonished and so
petrified, in fact, that I was out of the house and gone, without a
thank-you or a question, before I came to my senses again. Then I
drifted slowly along, reflecting--reflecting pleasantly. I said to
myself, “She simply divined my character by my face--what a far clearer
intuition she had than that policeman.” The thought sent a glow of
self-satisfaction through me.

Then a hand was laid on my shoulder and I shrank together with a crash.
It was the policeman. He scanned me austerely and said:

“Where did you get that overcoat?”

Although I had not been doing any harm, I had all the sense of being
caught--caught in something disreputable. The officer’s accusing eye and
unbelieving aspect heightened this effect. I told what had befallen me
at the house in as straightforward a way as I could, but I was ashamed
of the tale, and looked it, without doubt, for I knew and felt how
improbable it must necessarily sound to anybody, particularly a
policeman. Manifestly he did not believe me. He made me tell it all over
again, then he questioned me:

“You don’t know the woman?”

“No, I don’t know her.”

“Haven’t the least idea who she is?”

“Not the least.”

“You didn’t tell her your name?”

“No.”

“She didn’t ask for it?”

“No.”

“You just asked her to lend you the overcoat, and she let you take it?”

“She put it on me herself.”

“And didn’t look frightened?”

“Frightened? Of course not.”

“Not even surprised?”

“Not in the slightest degree.”

He paused. Presently he said:

“My friend, I don’t believe a word of it. Don’t you see, yourself, it’s
a tale that won’t wash? Do _you_ believe it?”

“Yes. I know it’s true.”

“Weren’t you surprised?”

“Clear through to the marrow!”

He had been edging me along back to the house. He had a deep design; he
sprung it on me now. Said he:

“Stop where you are. I’ll mighty soon find out!”

He walked to the door and up the steps, keeping a furtive eye out toward
me and ready to jump for me if I ran. Then he pretended to pull the
bell, and instantly faced about to observe the effect on me. But there
wasn’t any; I walked toward him instead of running away. That unsettled
him. He came down the steps, evidently perplexed, and said:

“Well, I can’t make it out. It may be all right, but it’s too many for
me. I don’t like your looks and I won’t have such characters around. Go
along, now, and look sharp. If I catch you prowling around here again
I’ll run you _in_.”

I found Smith at the Water Color dinner that night, and asked him if it
were merely my face that had enabled me to borrow the overcoat from a
stranger, but he was surprised and said:

“No! What an idea--and what intolerable conceit! She is my housekeeper,
and remembered your drawling voice from overhearing it a moment that
night four or five years ago in my house; so she knew where to send the
police if you didn’t bring the coat back!”

After all those years I was sitting here, now, at midnight in the
peasant hotel, in my night clothes, and honoring womankind in my
thoughts; for here was another woman, with the noble and delicate
intuitions of her sex, trusting me, a total stranger, with all her
modest wealth. She entered the room, just then, and stood beaming upon
me a moment with her sweet matronly eyes--then took away the jewelry.

_Tuesday, September 22d._--Breakfast in open air. Extra canvas was now
to be added to the boat’s hood to keep the passengers and valises better
protected during rainstorms. I passed through the villagette and started
to walk over the wooded hill, the boat to find us on the river bank
somewhere below, by and by. I soon got lost among the high bushes and
turnip gardens. Plenty of paths, but none went to river. Reflection.
Decision--that the path most traveled was the one leading in the right
direction. It was a poor conclusion. I got lost again; this time worse
than before. But a peasant of above eighty (as she said, and certainly
she was very old and wrinkled and gray and bent) found me presently and
undertook to guide me safely. She was vigorous, physically, prompt and
decided of movement, and altogether soldierlike; and she had a hawk’s
eye and beak, and a gypsy’s complexion. She said that from her girlhood
up to not so very many years ago she had done a man’s work on a woman’s
pay on the big keel boats that carry stone down the river, and was as
good a man as the best, in the matter of handling stone. Said she had
seen the great Napoleon when she was a little child. Her face was so
wrinkled and dark and so eaglelike that she reminded me of old Indians
one sees out on the Great Plains--the outside signs of age, but in the
eye an indestructible spirit. She had a couple of laden baskets with her
which I had found heavy after three minutes’ carrying, when she was
finding the way for me, but they seemed nothing to her. She impressed
one rather as a man than as a woman; and so, when she spoke of her child
that was drowned, and her voice broke a little and her lip quivered, it
surprised me; I was not expecting it. “Grandchild?” No--it was her own
child. “Indeed? When?” So then it came out that it was sixty years ago.
It seemed strange that she should mind it so long. But that was the
woman of it, no doubt. She had a fragment of newspaper--religious--with
rude holy woodcuts in it and doubtful episodes in the lives of mediæval
saints and anchorites--and she could read these instructive matters in
fine print without glasses; also, her eyes were as good at long
distances. She led hither and thither among the paths and finally
brought me out overlooking the river. There was a steep sandy frontage
there, where there had recently been a small landslide, and the faint
new path ran straight across it for forty feet, like a slight snow track
along the slant of a very steep roof. I halted and declined. I had no
mind to try the crumbly path and creep and quake along it with the
boiling river--and maybe some rocks--under my elbow thirty feet below.
Such places turn my stomach. The old woman took note of me, understood,
and said what sounded like, “_Lass’ ma allez au premier_”--then she
tramped briskly and confidently across with her baskets, sending
miniature avalanches of sand and gravel down into the river with each
step. One of her feet plowed from under her, about midway, but she
snatched it back and marched on, not seeming to mind it. My pride urged
me to move along, and put me to shame. After a time the old woman came
back and coaxed me to try, and did at last get me started in her wake
and I got as far as midway all right; but then to hearten me still more
and show me how easy and safe it was, she began to prance and dance her
way along, with her knuckles in her hips, kicking a landslide loose with
every skip. The exhibition struck a cold panic through me and made my
brain swim. I leaned against the slope and said I would stay there until
the boat came and testified as to whether there were rocks under me or
not. For the third time in my life I was in that kind of a fix--in a
place where I could not go backward or forward, and mustn’t stay where I
was. The boat was a good while coming, but it seemed longer than that.
Where I was, the slope was like a roof; where the slope ended the wall
was perpendicular thence to the water, and one could not see over and
tell what the state of things might be down there. When the boat came
along, the courier said there was nothing down there but deep water--no
rocks. I did not mind the water; so my fears disappeared, now, and I
finished my march without discomfort. I gave the old woman some money,
which pleased her very much and she tried her grateful best to give us a
partridge, newly killed, which she rummaged out of one of her baskets,
and seemed disappointed when I would not take it. But I couldn’t; it
would have been a shabby act. Then she went her way with her heavy
baskets and I got aboard and afloat once more, feeling a great respect
for her and very friendly toward her. She waved a good-by every now and
then till her figure faded out in the plain, joining that interminable
procession of friends made and lost in an hour that drifts past a man’s
life from cradle to grave and returns on its course no more. The courier
said she was probably a poacher and stole the partridge.

The courier was not able to understand why I had not nerve enough to
walk along a crumbling slope with a precipice only thirty feet high
below me; but I had no difficulty in understanding it. It is
constitutional with me to get nervous and incapable under the
probability of getting myself dropped thirty feet on to a pile of rocks;
it does not come from culture. Some people are made in one way, and some
in another--and the above is my way. Some people who can skirt
precipices without a tremor have a strong dread of the dentist’s chair,
whereas I was born without any prejudices against the dentist’s chair;
when in it I am interested, am not in a hurry, and do not greatly mind
the pain. Taken by and large, my style of make has advantages over the
other, I think. Few of us are obliged to circumnavigate precipices, but
we all have to take a chance at the dental chair.

People who early learn the right way to choose a dentist have their
reward. Professional superiority is not everything; it is only part. All
dentists talk while they work. They have inherited this from their
professional ancestors, the barbers. The dentist who talks well--other
things being equal--is the one to choose. He tells anecdotes all the
while and keeps his man so interested and entertained that he hardly
notices the flight of time. For he not only tells anecdotes that are
good in themselves, but he adds nice shadings to them with his
instruments as he goes along, and now and then brings out effects which
could not be produced with any other kind of tools at all. All the time
that such a dentist as this is plowing down into a cavity with that
spinning gouge which he works with a treadle, it is observable that he
has found out where he has uncovered a nerve down in there, and that he
only visits it at intervals, according to the needs of his anecdote,
touching it lightly, very lightly and swiftly, now and then, to brighten
up some happy conceit in his tale and call a delicate electric attention
to it; and all the while he is working gradually and steadily up toward
his climax with veiled and consummate art--then at last the spindle
stops whirling and thundering in the cavity, and you know that the grand
surprise is imminent, now--is hanging in the very air. You can hear your
heart beat as the dentist bends over you with his grip on the spindle
and his voice diminished to a murmur. The suspense grows
bigger--bigger--bigger--your breath stops--then your heart. Then with
lightning suddenness the “nub” is sprung and the spindle drives into the
raw nerve! The most brilliant surprises of the stage are pale and
artificial compared with this.

It is believed by people generally--or at least by many--that the
exquisitely sharp sensation which results from plunging the steel point
into the raw nerve is pain, but I think that this is doubtful. It is so
vivid and sudden that one has no time to examine properly into its
character. It is probably impossible, with our human limitations, to
determine with certainty whether a sensation of so high and perfect an
order as that is pain or whether it is pleasure. Its location brings it
under the disadvantage of a common prejudice; and so men mistake it for
pain when they might perceive that it is the opposite of that if it were
anywhere but in a tooth. I may be in error, but I have experimented with
it a great deal and I am satisfied in my own mind that it is not pain.
It is true that it always feels like pain, but that proves nothing--ice
against a naked back always passes for fire. I have every confidence
that I can eventually prove to everyone’s satisfaction that a nerve-stab
produces pleasure; and not only that, but the most exquisite pleasure,
the most perfect felicity which we are capable of feeling. I would not
ask more than to be remembered hereafter as the man who conferred this
priceless benefaction upon his race.

11.30.--Approaching the Falls of the Rhône. Canal to the left, walled
with compact and beautiful masonry. It is a cut-off. We could pass
through it and avoid the Falls--are advised by the Admiral to do it, but
all decline, preferring to have a dangerous adventure to talk about.

However....

The truth is, the current began to grow ominously swift--and presently
pretty lumpy and perturbed; soon we seemed to be simply flying past the
shores. Then all of a sudden three hundred yards of boiling and tossing
river burst upon our sight through the veiling tempest of rain! I did
not see how our flimsy ark could live through such a place. If we were
wrecked, swimming could not save us; the packed multitude of tall humps
of water meant a bristling chaos of big rocks underneath, and the first
rock we hit would break our bones. If I had been fortified with
ignorance I might have wanted to stay in the boat and see the fun; but I
have had much professional familiarity with water, and I doubted if
there was going to be any fun there. So I said I would get out and walk,
and I did. I need not tell anybody at home; I could leave out the Falls
of the Rhône; they are not on the map, anyhow. If an adventure worth
recording resulted, the Admiral and the courier would have it, and that
would answer. I could see it from the bank--nothing could be better; it
seemed even providential.

I ran along the bank in the driving rain, and enjoyed the sight to the
full. I never saw a finer show than the passage of that boat was,
through the fierce turmoil of water. Alternately she rose high and
plunged deep, throwing up sheets of foaming spray and shaking them off
like a mane. Several times she seemed to fairly bury herself, and I
thought she was gone for good, but always she sprang high aloft the next
moment, a gallant and stirring spectacle to see. The Admiral’s steering
was great. I had not seen the equal of it before.

The boat waited for me down at the Villebois bridge, and I presently
caught up and went aboard. There was a stretch of a hundred yards of
offensively rough water below the bridge, but it had no dangerous
features about it. Still, I was obliged to claim that it had, and that
these perils were much greater than the others.

Noon.--A mile of perpendicular precipices--very handsome. On the left,
at the termination of this stately wall, a darling little old tree-grown
ruin abreast a wooded islet with a large white mansion on it. Near that
ruin nature has gotten up a clever counterfeit of one, tree-grown and
all that, and, as its most telling feature, has furnished it a battered
monolith that stands up out of the underbrush by itself and looks as if
men had shaped it and put it there and time had gnawed it and worn it.

This is the prettiest piece of river we have found. All its aspects are
dainty and gracious and alluring.

1 P.M.--Château de la Salette. This is the port of the Grotte de la
Balme, “one of the seven wonders of Dauphiny.” It is across a plain in
the face of a bluff a mile from the river. A grotto is out of the common
order, and I should have liked to see this one, but the rains have made
the mud very deep and it did not seem well to venture so long a trip
through it.

2.15 P.M.--St.-Etienne. On a distant ridge inland a tall openwork
structure commandingly situated, with a statue of the Virgin standing on
it.

Immense empty freight barges being towed upstream by teams of two and
four big horses--not on the bank, but under it; not on the land, but
always in the water--sometimes breast deep--and around the big flat
bars.

We reached a not very promising-looking village about four o’clock, and
concluded to land; munching fruit and filling the hood with pipe smoke
had grown monotonous. We could not have the hood furled, because the
floods of rain fell unceasingly. The tavern was on the river bank, as is
the custom. It was dull there, and melancholy--nothing to do but look
out of the window into the drenching rain and shiver; one could do that,
for it was bleak and cold and windy, and there was no fire. Winter
overcoats were not sufficient; they had to be supplemented with rugs.
The raindrops were so large and struck the river with such force that
they knocked up the water like pebble splashes.

With the exception of a very occasional wooden-shod peasant, nobody was
abroad in this bitter weather--I mean of our sex. But all weathers are
alike to the women in these continental countries. To them and the other
animals life is serious; nothing interrupts their slavery. Three of them
were washing clothes in the river under the window when we arrived, and
they continued at it as long as there was light to work by. One was
apparently thirty; another--the mother?--above fifty; the
third--grandmother?--so old and worn and gray she could have passed for
eighty. They had no waterproofs or rubbers, of course; over their heads
and shoulders they wore gunny sacks--simply conductors for rivers of
water; some of the volume reached ground, the rest soaked in on the way.

At last a vigorous fellow of thirty-five arrived, dry and comfortable,
smoking his pipe under his big umbrella in an open donkey cart--husband,
son, and grandson of those women? He stood up in the cart, sheltering
himself, and began to superintend, issuing his orders in a masterly tone
of command, and showing temper when they were not obeyed swiftly enough.
Without complaint or murmur the drowned women patiently carried out the
orders, lifting the immense baskets of soaked clothing into the cart and
stowing them to the man’s satisfaction. The cart being full now, he
descended, with his umbrella, entered the tavern, and the women went
drooping homeward in the wake of the cart, and soon were blended with
the deluge and lost to sight. We would tar and feather that fellow in
America, and ride him on a rail.

When we came down into the public room he had his bottle of wine and
plate of food on a bare table black with grease, and was chomping like a
horse. He had the little religious paper which is in everybody’s hands
on the Rhône borders, and was enlightening himself with the histories of
French saints who used to flee to the desert in the Middle Ages to
escape the contamination of women.

Wednesday.--After breakfast, got under way. Still storming as hard as
ever. The whole land looks defeated and discouraged. And very lonely;
here and there a woman in the fields. They merely accent the loneliness.

NOTE.--The record ends here. Luxurious enjoyment of the excursion
rendered the traveler indifferent to his notes. The drift continued to
Arles, whence Mark Twain returned to Geneva and Ouchy by rail. Ten
years later he set down another picture of this happy journey--“The
Lost Napoleon”--which follows.--A. B. P.

-----

Footnote 3:

Of Hartford, Connecticut.

Footnote 4:

_Note, 1904._ Hopkinson Smith, now a distinguished man in literature,
art, and architecture. S. L. C.

THE LOST NAPOLEON

The lost Napoleon is a part of a mountain range. Several miles of
it--say six. When you stand at the right viewpoint and look across the
plain, there, miles away, stretched out on his back under the sky, you
see the great Napoleon, sleeping, with his arm folded upon his breast.
You recognize him at once and you catch your breath and a thrill goes
through you from head to foot--a most natural thing to happen, for you
have never been so superbly astonished in your life before, and you
realize, if you live a century, it is not likely that you will ever
encounter the like of that tremendous surprise again. You see, it is
unique. You have seen mountain ridges before that looked like men lying
down, but there was always some one to pilot you to the right viewpoint,
and prepare you for the show, and then tell you which is the head and
which the feet and which the stomach, and at last you get the idea and
say, “Yes, now I see it, now I make it out--it is a man, and wonderful,
too.” But all this has damaged the surprise and there is not much
thrill; moreover, the man is only a third-rate celebrity or no celebrity
at all--he is no Napoleon the Great. But I discovered this stupendous
Napoleon myself and was caught wholly by surprise, hence the splendid
emotion, the uplifting astonishment.

We have all seen mountains that looked like whales, elephants, recumbent
lions--correctly figured, too, and a pleasure to look upon--but we did
not discover them, somebody pointed them out to us, and in the same
circumstances we have seen and enjoyed stately crags and summits known
to the people thereabouts as “The Old Man’s Head,” “The Elephant’s
Head,” “Anthony’s Nose,” “The Lady’s Head,” etc., and we have seen
others that were named “Shakespeare’s Head,” and “Satan’s Head,” but
still the fine element of surprise was in almost all cases wanting.

The Lost Napoleon is easily the most colossal and impressive statue in
the world. It is several miles long; in form and proportions it is
perfect. It represents Napoleon himself and not another; and there is
something about the dignity and repose of the great figure that stirs
the imagination and half persuades it that this is not an unsentient
artifice of nature, but the master of the world sentient and
dreaming--dreaming of battle, conquest, empire. I call it the Lost
Napoleon because I cannot remember just where I was when I saw it. My
hope, in writing this, is that I may move some wandering tourist or
artist to go over my track and seek for it--seek for it, find it, locate
it exactly, describe it, paint it, and so preserve it against loss
again.

My track was down the Rhône; I made the excursion ten or eleven years
ago in the pleasantest season of the year. I took a courier with me and
went from Geneva a couple of hours by rail to the blue little Lake
Bourget, and spent the night in a mediæval castle on an island in that
little lake. In the early morning our boat came for us. It was a roomy
open boat fifteen or twenty feet long, with a single pair of long oars,
and with it came its former owner, a sturdy big boatman. The boat was
mine now; I think I paid five dollars for it. I was to pay the boatman a
trifling daily wage and his keep, and he was to take us all the way down
the Rhône to Marseilles. It was warm weather and very sunny, but we
built a canvas arch, like a wagon cover, over the aftermost third of the
boat, with a curtain at its rear which could be rolled up to let the
breeze blow through, and I occupied that tent and was always
comfortable. The sailor sat amidships and manned the oars, and the
courier had the front third of the boat to himself. We crossed the lake
and went winding down a narrow canal bordered by peasant houses and
vineyards, and after about a league of this navigation we came in sight
of the Rhône, a troubled gray stream which went tearing past the mouth
of the peaceful canal at a racing gait. We emerged into it and laid in
the oars. We could go fast enough in that current without artificial
aid. During the first days we slipped along down the curving bends at a
speed of about five miles an hour, but it slackened later.

Our days were all about alike. About four in the afternoon we tied up at
a village and I dined on the greensward in front of the inn by the
water’s edge, on the choicest chickens, vegetables, fruit, butter, and
bread, prepared in French perfection and served upon the whitest linen;
and as a rule I had the friendly house cat and dog for guests and
company and willing and able helpers. I slept in the inn; often in clean
and satisfactory quarters, sometimes in the same room with the cows and
the fleas. I breakfasted on the lawn in the morning with cat and dog
again; then laid in a stock of grapes and other fruits gathered fresh
from the garden and some bottles of red wine made on the premises, and
at eight or nine we went floating down the river again. At noon we went
ashore at a village, bought a freshly caught fish or two, had them
broiled, got some bread and vegetables, and set sail again at once. We
always lunched on board as we floated along. I spent my days reading
books, making notes, smoking, and in other lazy and enchanting ways, and
had the delightfulest ten-day voyage I have ever experienced.

It took us ten days to float to Arles. There the current gave out and I
closed the excursion and returned to Geneva by rail. It was twenty-eight
miles to Marseilles, and we should have been obliged to row. That would
not have been pleasure; it would have meant work for the sailor, and I
do not like work even when another person does it.

I think it was about the eighth day that I discovered Napoleon. My notes
cover four or five days; there they stop; the charm of the trip had
taken possession of me, and I had no energy left. It was getting toward
four in the afternoon--time to tie up for the day. Down ahead on the
right bank I saw a compact jumble of yellowy-browny cubes stacked
together, some on top of the others, and no visible cracks in the mass,
and knew it for a village--a village common to that region down there; a
village jammed together without streets or alleys, substantially--where
your progress is mainly _through_ the houses, not _by_ them, and where
privacy is a thing practically unknown; a village which probably hadn’t
had a house added to the jumble for five hundred years. We were anywhere
from half a mile to a mile above the village when I gave the order to
proceed to that place and tie up. Just then I glanced to my left toward
the distant mountain range, and got that soul-stirring shock which I
have said so much about. I pointed out the grand figure to the courier,
and said:

“Name it. Who is it?”

“Napoleon!”

“Yes, it is Napoleon. Show it to the sailor and ask him to name it.”

The sailor said, “Napoleon.” We watched the figure all the time then
until we reached the village. We walked up the river bank in the morning
to see how far one might have to go before the shape would materially
change, but I do not now remember the result. We watched it afterward as
we floated away from the village, but I cannot remember at what point
the shape began to be marred. However, the mountains being some miles
away, I think that the figure would be recognizable as Napoleon along a
stretch of as much as a mile above and a mile below the village, though
I think that the likeness would be strongest at the point where I first
saw it--that is, half a mile or more above the village.

We talked the grand apparition over at great length and with a strong
interest. I said I believed that if its presence were known to the world
such shoals of tourists would come flocking there to see it that all the
spare ground would soon be covered with hotels; and I think so yet. I
think it would soon be the most celebrated natural curiosity on the
planet, that it would be more visited than Niagara or the Alps, and that
all the other famous natural curiosities of the globe would fall to a
rank away below it. I think so still.

There is a line of lumbering and thundering great freight steamers on
the Rhône, and I think that if some man will board one of them at Arles
and make a trip of some hours upstream--say from three to six--and keep
an eye out to the right and watch that mountain range he will be certain
to find the Lost Napoleon and have no difficulty in rediscovering the
mighty statue when he comes to the right point. It will cost nothing to
make the experiment, and I hope it will be done.

NOTE.--Mark Twain’s biographer rediscovered it in 1913. It is some
miles below Valence, opposite the village of Beauchastel.

SOME NATIONAL STUPIDITIES
(1891-1892)

The slowness of one section of the world about adopting the valuable
ideas of another section of it is a curious thing and unaccountable.
This form of stupidity is confined to no community, to no nation; it is
universal. The fact is the human race is not only slow about borrowing
valuable ideas--it sometimes persists in not borrowing them at all.

Take the German stove, for instance--the huge white porcelain monument
that towers toward the ceiling in the corner of the room, solemn,
unsympathetic, and suggestive of death and the grave--where can you find
it outside of the German countries? I am sure I have never seen it where
German was not the language of the region. Yet it is by long odds the
best stove and the most convenient and economical that has yet been
invented.[5]

To the uninstructed stranger it promises nothing; but he will soon find
that it is a masterly performer, for all that. It has a little bit of a
door which you couldn’t get your head into--a door which seems foolishly
out of proportion to the rest of the edifice; yet the door is right, for
it is not necessary that bulky fuel shall enter it. Small-sized fuel is
used, and marvelously little of that. The door opens into a tiny cavern
which would not hold more fuel than a baby could fetch in its arms. The
process of firing is quick and simple. At half past seven on a cold
morning the servant brings a small basketful of slender pine sticks--say
a modified armful--and puts half of these in, lights them with a match,
and closes the door. They burn out in ten or twelve minutes. He then
puts in the rest and _locks_ the door, and carries off the key. The work
is done. He will not come again until next morning. All day long and
until past midnight all parts of the room will be delightfully warm and
comfortable, and there will be no headaches and no sense of closeness or
oppression. In an American room, whether heated by steam, hot water, or
open fires, the neighborhood of the register or the fireplace is
warmest--the heat is not equally diffused through the room; but in a
German room one is as comfortable in one part of it as in another.
Nothing is gained or lost by being near the stove. Its surface is not
hot; you can put your hand on it anywhere and not get burnt. Consider
these things. One firing is enough for the day; the cost is next to
nothing; the heat produced is the same all day, instead of too hot and
too cold by turns; one may absorb himself in his business in peace; he
does not need to feel any anxieties or solicitudes about his fire; his
whole day is a realized dream of bodily comfort.

The German stove is not restricted to wood; peat is used in it, and coal
bricks also. These coal bricks are made of waste coal dust pressed in a
mold. In effect they are dirt and in fact are dirt cheap. The brick is
about as big as your two fists; the stove will burn up twenty of them in
half an hour, then it will need no more fuel for that day.

This noble stove is at its very best when its front has a big square
opening in it for a _visible_ wood fire. The real heating is done in the
hidden regions of the great structure, of course--the open fire is
merely to rejoice your eye and gladden your heart.

America could adopt this stove, but does America do it? No, she sticks
placidly to her own fearful and wonderful inventions in the stove line.
She has fifty kinds, and not a rational one in the lot. The American
wood stove, of whatsoever breed, is a terror. There can be no
tranquillity of mind where it is. It requires more attention than a
baby. It has to be fed every little while, it has to be watched all the
time; and for all reward you are roasted half your time and frozen the
other half. It warms no part of the room but its own part; it breeds
headaches and suffocation, and makes one’s skin feel dry and feverish;
and when your wood bill comes in you think you have been supporting a
volcano.

We have in America many and many a breed of coal stoves, also--fiendish
things, everyone of them. The base-burner sort are handy and require but
little attention; but none of them, of whatsoever kind, distributes its
heat uniformly through the room, or keeps it at an unvarying
temperature, or fails to take the life out of the atmosphere and leave
it stuffy and smothery and stupefying.

It seems to me that the ideal of comfort would be a German stove to heat
one’s room, and an open wood fire to make it cheerful; then have
furnace-heat in the halls. We could easily find some way to make the
German stove beautiful, and that is all it needs at present. Still, even
as it is to-day, it is lovely, it is a darling, compared with any
“radiator” that has yet been intruded upon the world. That odious gilded
skeleton! It makes all places ugly that it inhabits--just by contagion.

It is certainly strange that useful customs and devices do not spread
from country to country with more facility and promptness than they do.
You step across the German border almost anywhere, and suddenly the
German stove has disappeared. In Italy you find a foolish and
ineffectual modification of it, in Paris you find an unprepossessing
“adaptation” of our base-burner on a reduced pattern.

Fifteen years ago Paris had a cheap and cunning little fire kindler
consisting of a pine shaving, curled as it came from the carpenter’s
plane, and gummed over with an inflammable substance which would burn
several minutes and set fire to the most obdurate wood. It was cheap and
handy, but no stranger carried the idea home with him. Paris has another
swift and victorious kindler, now, in the form of a small black cake
made of I don’t know what; but you shove it under the wood and touch a
match to it and your fire is made. No one will think to carry that
device to America, or elsewhere. In America we prefer to kindle the fire
with the kerosene can and chance the inquest. I have been in a multitude
of places where pine cones were abundant, but only in the French Riviera
and in one place in Italy have I seen them in the wood box to kindle the
fires with.

For perfect adaptation to the service required, look at the American gum
shoe and the American arctic. Their virtues ought to have carried them
to all wet and snowy lands; but they haven’t done anything of the kind.
There are few places on the continent of Europe where one can buy them.

And observe how slowly our typewriting machine makes its way. In the
great city of Florence I was able to find only one place where I could
get typewriting done; and then it was not done by a native, but by an
American girl. In the great city of Munich I found one typewriting
establishment, but the operator was sick and that suspended the
business. I was told that there was no opposition house. In the
prodigious city of Berlin I was not able to find a typewriter at all.
There was not even one in our Embassy or its branches. Our
representative there sent to London for the best one to be had in that
capital, and got an incapable, who would have been tarred and feathered
in Mud Springs, Arizona. Four years ago a typewritten page was a seldom
sight in Europe, and when you saw it it made you heartsick, it was so
inartistic, and so blurred and shabby and slovenly. It was because the
Europeans made the machines themselves, and the making of nice machinery
is not one of their gifts. England imports ours, now. This is wise; she
will have her reward.

In all these years the American fountain pen has hardly got a start in
Europe. There is no market for it. It is too handy, too inspiring, too
capable, too much of a time saver. The dismal steel pen and the
compass-jawed quill are preferred. And semi-liquid mud is preferred to
ink, apparently, everywhere in Europe. This in face of the fact that
there is ink to be had in America--and at club rates, too.

Then there is the elevator, lift, _ascenseur_. America has had the
benefit of this invaluable contrivance for a generation and a half, and
it is now used in all our cities and villages, in all hotels, in all
lofty business buildings and factories, and in many private dwellings.
But we can’t spread it, we can’t beguile Europe with it. In Europe an
elevator is even to this day a rarity and a curiosity. Especially a
curiosity. As a rule it seats but three or four persons--often only
two--and it travels so slowly and cautiously and timorously and piously
and solemnly that it makes a person feel creepy and crawly and scary and
dismal and repentant. Anybody with sound legs can give the continental
elevator two flights the start and beat it to the sixth floor. Every
time these nations merely import an American idea, instead of importing
the concreted thing itself, the result is a failure. They tried to make
the sewing machine, and couldn’t; they are trying to make fountain pens
and typewriters and can’t; they are making these dreary elevators,
now--and patenting them! Satire can no further go.

I think that as a rule we develop a borrowed European idea forward, and
that Europe develops a borrowed American idea backward. We borrowed gas
lighting and the railroad from England, and the arc light from France,
and these things have improved under our culture. We have lent Europe
our tramway, telegraph, sewing machine, phonograph, telephone, and
kodak, and while we may not claim that in these particular instances she
has developed them backward, we are justified in claiming that she has
added no notable improvements to them. We have added the improvements
ourselves and she has accepted them. Why she has not accepted and
universally adopted the improved elevator is a surprising and puzzling
thing. Its rightful place is among the great ideas of our great age. It
is an epoch maker. It is a concentrator of population, and economizer of
room. It is going to build our cities skyward instead of out toward the
horizons.[6] It is going to enable five millions of people to live
comfortably on the same ground space that one million uncomfortably
lives on now. It is going to make cheap quarters for Tom, Dick, and
Harry near their work, in place of three miles from it, as is the rule
to-day. It is going to save them the necessity of adding a six-flight
climb to the already sufficient fatigue of their day’s labor.

We imitate some of the good things which we find in Europe, and we ought
to imitate more of them. At the same time Europe ought to imitate us
somewhat more than she does. The crusty, ill-mannered and in every way
detestable Parisian cabman ought to imitate our courteous and friendly
Boston cabman--and stop there. He can’t learn anything from the guild in
New York. And it would morally help the Parisian shopkeeper if he would
imitate the fair dealing of his American cousin. With us it is not
necessary to ask the price of small articles before we buy them, but in
Paris the person who fails to take that precaution will get scorched. In
business we are prompt, fair, and trustworthy in all our small trade
matters. It is the rule. In the friendliest spirit I would recommend
France to imitate these humble virtues. Particularly in the kodak
business. Pray get no kodak pictures developed in France--and especially
in Nice. They will send you your bill to Rome or Jericho, or
whithersoever you have gone, but that is all you will get. You will
never see your negatives again, or the developed pictures, either. And
by and by the head house in Paris will demand payment once more, and
constructively threaten you with “proceedings.” If you inquire if they
mailed your package across the frontier without registering it, they are
coldly silent. If you inquire how they expected to trace and recover a
lost package without a post-office receipt, they are dumb again. A
little intelligence inserted into the kodak business in those regions
would be helpful, if it could be done without shock.

But the worst of all is, that Europe cannot be persuaded to imitate our
railway methods. Two or three years ago I liked the European methods,
but experience has dislodged that superstition. All over the Continent
the system--to call it by an extravagant term--is sufficiently poor and
slow and clumsy, or unintelligent; but in these regards Italy and France
are entitled to the chromo. In Italy it takes more than half an hour to
buy a through ticket to Paris at Cook & Sons’ offices, there is such a
formidable amount of red tape and recording connected with the vast
transaction. Every little detail of the matter must be written down in a
set of books--your name, condition, nationality, religion, date, hour,
number of the train, and all that; and at last you get your ticket and
think you are done, but you are not; it must be carried to the station
and stamped; and even that is not the end, for if you stop over at any
point it must be stamped again or it is forfeited. And yet you save time
and trouble by going to Cook instead of to the station. Buying your
ticket does not finish your job. Your trunks must be weighed, and paid
for at about human-being rates. This takes another quarter of an hour of
your time--perhaps half an hour if you are at the tail of the
procession. You get paper checks, which are twice as easy to lose as
brass ones. You cannot secure a seat beforehand, but must take your
chances with the general rush to the train. If you have your family with
you, you may have to distribute them among several cars. There is one
annoying feature which is common all over the Continent, and that is,
that if you want to make a short journey you cannot buy your ticket
whenever you find the ticket office open, but must wait until it is
doing business for your particular train; and that only begins, as a
rule, a quarter of an hour before the train’s time of starting. The cars
are most ingeniously inconvenient, cramped, and uncomfortable, and in
Italy they are phenomenally dirty. The European “system” was devised
either by a maniac or by a person whose idea was to hamper, bother, and
exasperate the traveler in all conceivable ways and sedulously and
painstakingly discourage custom. In Italy, as far as my experience goes,
it is the custom to use the sleeping cars on the day trains and take
them off when the sun goes down. One thing is sure, anyway: if that is
not the case, it will be, presently, when they think of it. They can be
depended upon to snap up as darling an idea as that with joy.

No, we are bad enough about not importing valuable European ideas, but
Europe is still slower about introducing ours. Europe has always--from
away back--been neglectful in this regard. Take our admirable postal and
express system, for instance. We had it perfectly developed and running
smoothly and beautifully more than three hundred years ago; and Europe
came over and admired it and eloquently praised it--but didn’t adopt it.
We Americans.... But let Prescott tell about it. I quote from the
_Conquest of Peru_, chapter 2, vol. 1:

As the distance each courier had to perform was small, they ran over
the ground with great swiftness, and messages were carried through the
whole extent of the long routes at the rate of a hundred and fifty
miles a day. Their office was not limited to carrying dispatches. They
brought various articles. Fish from the distant ocean, fruits, game,
and different commodities from the hot regions of the coast were taken
to the capital in good condition. It is remarkable that this important
institution should have been found among two barbarian nations of the
New World long before it was introduced among the civilized nations of
Europe. By these wise contrivances of the Incas, the most distant
parts of the long-extended empire of Peru were brought into intimate
relations with each other. And while the capitals of Christendom, but
a few hundred miles apart, remained as far asunder as if seas had
rolled between them, the great capitals Cuzco and Quito were placed in
immediate correspondence. Intelligence from the numerous provinces was
transmitted on the wings of the wind to the Peruvian metropolis, the
great focus to which all the lines of communication converged.

There--that is what we had, three hundred and twenty-five years before
Europe had anything that could be called a businesslike and effective
postal and express service. We are a great people. We have always been a
great people, from the start: always alive, alert, up early in the
morning, and ready to teach. But Europe has been a slow and discouraging
pupil from the start; always, from the very start. It seems to me that
something ought to be done about this.

-----

Footnote 5:

Compare with his remarks on the same subject, in “Marienbad--A Health
Factory,” written about a year earlier.

Footnote 6:

This was good prophecy. There were no skyscrapers in New York City
when it was written.

THE CHOLERA EPIDEMIC IN HAMBURG
(1892)

I believe I have never been so badly situated before as I have been
during these last four weeks. To begin with, the time-hallowed and
business-worn thunderbolt out of the clear sky fell about the 18th of
August--people in Hamburg dying like flies of something resembling
cholera! A normal death rate of forty a day suddenly transformed into a
terrific daily slaughter without notice to anybody to prepare for such a
surprise! Certainly that was recognizable as that kind of a thunderbolt.

It was at this point that the oddity of the situation above referred to
began. For you will grant that it is odd to live four weeks a
twelve-hour journey from a devastating plague nest and remain baffled
and defeated all that time in all your efforts to get at the state of
the case there. Naturally one flies to the newspapers when a pestilence
breaks out in his neighborhood. He feels sure of one thing, at any rate:
that the paper will cast all other interests into the background and
devote itself to the one supreme interest of the day; that it will throw
wide its columns and cram them with information, valuable and otherwise,
concerning that great event; and that it will even leave out the idle
jaunts of little dukes and kinglets to make room for the latest plague
item. I sought the newspapers, and was disappointed. I know now that
nothing that can happen in this world can stir the German daily journal
out of its eternal lethargy. When the Last Day comes it will note the
destruction of the world in a three-line paragraph and turn over and go
to sleep again.

This sort of journalism furnishes plenty of wonders. I have seen
ostensible telegrams from Hamburg four days old, gravely put forth as
news, and no apology offered. I have tracked a news item from one paper
to another day after day until it died of old age and fatigue--and yet
everybody treated it with respect, nobody laughed. Is it believable that
these antiquities are forwarded by telegraph? It would be more rational
to send them by slow freight, because less expensive and more speedy.

Then, the meagerness of the news meal is another marvel. That department
of the paper is not headed “Poverty Column,” nobody knows why. We know
that multitudes of people are being swept away daily in Hamburg, yet the
daily telegrams from there could be copied on a half page of note paper,
as a rule. If any newspaper has sent a special reporter thither he has
not arrived yet.

The final miracle of all is the character of this daily dribble of
so-called news. The wisest man in the world can get no information out
of it. It is an Irish stew made up of unrelated odds and ends, a mere
chaotic confusion and worthless. What can one make out of statistics
like these:

Up to noon, 655 cases, 333 deaths. Of these 189 were previously
reported.

The report that 650 bodies are lying unburied is not true. There are
only 340, and the most of these will be buried to-night.

There are 2,062 cases in the hospitals, 215 deaths.

The figures are never given in such a way as to afford one an
opportunity to compare the death list of one day with that of another;
consequently there is no way of finding out whether the pest abates or
increases. Sometimes a report uses the expression “to-day” and does not
say when the day began or ended; sometimes the deaths for several days
are bunched together in a divisionless lump; sometimes the figures make
you think the deaths are five or six hundred a day, while other figures
in the same paragraph seem to indicate that the rate is below two
hundred.

A day or two ago the word cholera was not discoverable at all in that
day’s issue of one of our principal dailies; in to-day’s issue of the
same paper there is no cholera report from Hamburg. Yet a private letter
from there says the raging pestilence is actually increasing.

One might imagine that the papers are forbidden to publish cholera news.
I had that impression myself. It seemed the only explanation of the
absence of special Hamburg correspondence. But it appears now, that the
Hamburg papers are crammed with matter pertaining to the cholera,
therefore that idea was an error. How does one find this out? In this
amazing way: that a daily newspaper located ten or twelve hours from
Hamburg describes with owl-eyed wonder the stirring contents of a
Hamburg daily journal _six days old_, and yet gets from it the only
informing matter, the only matter worth reading, which it has yet
published from that smitten city concerning the pestilence.

You see, it did not even occur to that petrified editor to bail his
columns dry of their customary chloroform and copy that Hamburg journal
entire. He is so used to shoveling gravel that he doesn’t know a diamond
when he sees it. I would trust that man with untold bushels of precious
news, and nobody to watch him. Among other things which he notes in the
Hamburg paper is the fact that its supplements contained one hundred of
the customary elaborate and formal German death notices. That
means--what nobody has had reason to suppose before--that the slaughter
is not confined to the poor and friendless. I think so, because that
sort of death notice occupies a formidable amount of space in an
advertising page, and must cost a good deal of money.

I wander from my proper subject to observe that one hundred of these
notices in a single journal must make that journal a sorrow to the eye
and a shock to the taste, even among the Germans themselves, who are
bred to endure and perhaps enjoy a style of “display ads” which far
surpasses even the vilest American attempts, for insane and outrageous
ugliness. Sometimes a death notice is as large as a foolscap page, has
big black display lines, and is bordered all around with a coarse
mourning border as thick as your finger. The notices are of all sizes
from foolscap down to a humble two-inch square, and they suggest
lamentation of all degrees, from the hundred-dollar hurricane of grief
to the two-shilling sigh of a composed and modest regret. A newspaper
page blocked out with mourning compartments of fifty different sizes
flung together without regard to order or system or size must be a
spectacle to see.

+--------------------------------------------------------+
| |
| Todes-Anzeige. |
| ------------- |
| |
| Theilnehmenden Freunden und Bekannten hierdurch |
| die schmerzliche Nachricht, daß mein lieber Freund |
| und langjähriger, treuer Mitarbeiter |
| |
| Rudolf Beck |
| |
|gestern Abend an einem Herzschlag plötzlich verschieden |
|ist. |
| |
| =Langen=, den 5. September 1892. |
| |
| Otto Steingoetter |
| |
| Firma =Beck & Steingoetter=. |
| |
| Die Beerdigung findet Dienstag, den 6. Sept., |
| Nachmittags 3½ Uhr, statt. |
| 25958 |
+--------------------------------------------------------+

The notice copied above is modest and straightforward. The advertiser
informs sympathizing friends and acquaintances that his dear friend and
old and faithful fellow laborer has been suddenly smitten with death;
then signs his name and adds “of the firm of Beck & Steingoetter,” which
is perhaps another way of saying that the business will be continued as
usual at the old stand. The average notice is often refreshed with a
whiff of business at the end.

The 100 formal notices in the Hamburg paper did not mean merely 100
deaths; each told of one death, but many of them told of more--in some
cases they told of four and five. In the same issue there were 132
one-line death notices. If the dates of these deaths were all stated,
the 232 notices together could be made the basis of a better guess at
the current mortality in Hamburg than the “official” reports furnished,
perhaps. You would know that a certain number died on a certain day who
left behind them people able to publish the fact and pay for it. Then
you could correctly assume that the vast bulk of that day’s harvest were
people who were penniless and left penniless friends behind. You could
add your facts to your assumption and get _some_ sort of idea of the
death rate, and this would be strikingly better than the official
reports, since they give you no idea at all.

To-day a physician was speaking of a private letter received here
yesterday from a physician in Hamburg which stated that every day
numbers of poor people are snatched from their homes to the pest houses,
and that that is the last that is heard of a good many of them. No
intelligible record is kept; they die unknown and are buried so. That no
intelligible record is kept seems proven by the fact that the public
cannot get hold of a burial list for one day that is not made impossible
by the record of the day preceding and the one following it.

What I am trying to make the reader understand is, the strangeness of
the situation here--a mighty tragedy being played upon a stage that is
close to us, and yet we are as ignorant of its details as we should be
if the stage were in China. We sit “in front,” and the audience is in
fact the world; but the curtain is down and from behind it we hear only
an inarticulate murmur. The Hamburg disaster must go into history as the
disaster without a history. And yet a well-trained newspaper staff would
find a way to secure an accurate list of the new hospital cases and the
burials daily, and would do it, and not take it out in complaining of
the foolishness and futility of the official reports. Every day we know
exactly what is going on in the two cholera-stricken ships in the harbor
of New York. That is all the cholera news we get that is worth printing
or believing.

All along we have heard rumors that the force of workers at Hamburg was
too small to cope with the pestilence; that more help was impossible to
get; and we have seen statements which confirmed these sorrowful facts;
statements which furnished the pitiful spectacle of brave workers dying
at their posts from exhaustion; of corpses lying in the halls of the
hospitals, waiting there because there was no worker idle; and now comes
another confirmatory item; it is in the physician’s letter above
referred to--an item which shows you how hard pressed the authorities
are by their colossal burden--an item which gives you a sudden and
terrific sense of the situation there; for in a line it flashes before
you this ghastly picture, a thing seen by the physician: a wagon going
along the street with five sick people in it, and with them four
corpses!

QUEEN VICTORIA’S JUBILEE
(1897)

So far as I can see, a procession has value in but two ways--as a show
and as a symbol; its minor function being to delight the eye, its major
one to compel thought, exalt the spirit, stir the heart, and inflame the
imagination. As a mere show, and meaningless--like a Mardi-Gras march--a
magnificent procession is a sight worth a long journey to see; as a
symbol, the most colorless and unpicturesque procession, if it have a
moving history back of it, is worth a thousand of it.

After the Civil War ten regiments of bronzed New York veterans marched
up Broadway in faded uniforms and bearing faded battle flags that were
mere shot-riddled rags--and in each battalion as it swung by, one noted
a great gap, an eloquent vacancy where had marched the comrades who had
fallen and would march no more! Always, as this procession advanced
between the massed multitudes, its approach was welcomed by each block
of people with a burst of proud and grateful enthusiasm--then the head
of it passed, and suddenly revealed those pathetic gaps, and silence
fell upon that block; for every man in it had choked up, and could not
get command of his voice and add it to the storm again for many minutes.
That was the most moving and tremendous effect that I have ever
witnessed--those affecting silences falling between those hurricanes of
worshiping enthusiasm.

There was no costumery in that procession, no color, no tinsel, no
brilliancy, yet it was the greatest spectacle and the most gracious and
exalting and beautiful that has come within my experience. It was
because it had history back of it, and because it was a symbol, and
stood for something, and because one viewed it with the spiritual
vision, not the physical. There was not much for the physical eye to
see, but it revealed continental areas, limitless horizons, to the eye
of the imagination and the spirit.

A procession, to be valuable, must do one thing or the other--clothe
itself in splendors and charm the eye, or symbolize something sublime
and uplifting, and so appeal to the imagination. As a mere spectacle to
look at, I suppose that the Queen’s procession will not be as showy as
the Tsar’s late pageant; it will probably fall much short of the one in
Tannhäuser in the matter of rich and adorable costumery; in the number
of renowned personages on view in it, it will probably fall short of
some that have been seen in England before this. And yet in its major
function, its symbolic function, I think that if all the people in it
wore their everyday clothes and marched without flags or music, it would
still be incomparably the most memorable and most important procession
that ever moved through the streets of London.

For it will stand for English history, English growth, English
achievement, the accumulated power and renown and dignity of twenty
centuries of strenuous effort. Many things about it will set one to
reflecting upon what a large feature of this world England is to-day,
and this will in turn move one, even the least imaginative, to cast a
glance down her long perspective and note the steps of her progress and
the insignificance of her first estate. In this matter London is itself
a suggestive object lesson.

I suppose that London has always existed. One cannot easily imagine an
England that had no London. No doubt there was a village here 5,000
years ago. It was on the river somewhere west of where the Tower is now;
it was built of thatched mud huts close to a couple of limpid brooks,
and on every hand for miles and miles stretched rolling plains of fresh
green grass, and here and there were groups and groves of trees. The
tribes wore skins--sometimes merely their own, sometimes those of other
animals. The chief was monarch, and helped out his complexion with blue
paint. His industry was the chase; his relaxation was war. Some of the
Englishmen who will view the procession to-day are carrying his ancient
blood in their veins.

It may be that that village remained about as it began, away down to the
Roman occupation, a couple of thousand years ago. It was still not much
of a town when Alfred burned the cakes. Even when the Conqueror first
saw it, it did not amount to much. I think it must have been short of
distinguished architecture or he would not have traveled down into the
country to the village of Westminster to get crowned. If you skip down
350 years further you will find a London of some little consequence, but
I believe that that is as much as you can say for it. Still, I am
interested in that London, for it saw the first two processions which
will live longer than any other in English history, I think; the date of
the one is 1415, that of the other is 1897.

The compactly built part of the London of 1415 was a narrow strip not a
mile long, which stretched east and west through the middle of what is
now called “the City.” The houses were densest in the region of
Cheapside. South of the strip were scattering residences which stood in
turfy lawns which sloped to the river. North of the strip, fields and
country homes extended to the walls. Let us represent that London by
three checker-board squares placed in a row; then open out a New York
newspaper like a book, and the space which it covers will properly
represent the London of to-day by comparison. It is the difference
between your hand and a blanket. It is possible that that ancient London
had 100,000 inhabitants, and that 100,000 outsiders came to town to see
the procession. The present London contains five or six million
inhabitants, and it has been calculated that the population has jumped
to 10,000,000 to-day.

The pageant of 1415 was to celebrate the gigantic victory of Agincourt,
then and still the most colossal in England’s history.

From that day to this there has been nothing that even approached it but
Plassey. It was the third and greatest in the series of monster
victories won by the English over the French in the Hundred Years’
War--Crecy, Poitiers, Agincourt. At Agincourt, according to history,
15,000 English, under Henry V, defeated and routed an army of 100,000
French. Sometimes history makes it 8,000 English and 60,000 French; but
no matter, in both cases the proportions are preserved. Eight thousand
of the French nobility were slain and the rest of the order taken
prisoners--1,500 in number--among them the Dukes of Orléans and Bourbon
and Marshal Boucicaut; and the victory left the whole northern half of
France an English possession. This wholesale depletion of the
aristocracy made such a stringent scarcity in its ranks that when the
young peasant girl, Joan of Arc, came to undo Henry’s mighty work
fourteen years later she could hardly gather together nobles enough to
man her staff.

The battle of Agincourt was fought on the 25th of October, and a few
days later the tremendous news was percolating through England.
Presently it was sweeping the country like a tidal wave, like a cyclone,
like a conflagration. Choose your own figure, there is no metaphor known
to the language that can exaggerate the tempest of joy and pride and
exultation that burst everywhere along the progress of that great news.

The king came home and brought his soldiers with him--he and they the
idols of the nation, now. He brought his 1,500 captive knights and
nobles, too--we shall not see any such output of blue blood as that
to-day, bond or free. The king rested three weeks in his palace, the
Tower of London, while the people made preparations and prepared the
welcome due him. On the 22d of December all was ready.

There were no cables, no correspondents, no newspapers then--a
regrettable defect, but not irremediable. A young man who would have
been a correspondent if he had been born 500 years later was in London
at the time, and he remembers the details. He has communicated them to
me through a competent spirit medium, phrased in a troublesome mixture
of obsolete English and moldy French, and I have thoroughly modernized
his story and put it into straight English, and will here record it. I
will explain that his Sir John Oldcastle is a person whom we do not know
very well by that name, nor much care for; but we know him well and
adore him, too, under his other name--Sir John Falstaff. Also, I will
remark that two miles of the Queen’s progress to-day will be over ground
traversed by the procession of Henry V; all solid bricks and mortar,
now, but open country in Henry’s day, and clothed in that unapproachable
beauty which has been the monopoly of sylvan England since the creation.
Ah, where now are those long-vanished forms, those unreturning feet! Let
us not inquire too closely. Translated, this is the narrative of the
spirit-correspondent, who is looking down upon me at this moment from
his high home, and admiring to see how the art and mystery of spelling
has improved since his time!

NARRATIVE OF THE SPIRIT CORRESPONDENT

I was commanded by my lord the Lord Mayor to make a report for the
archives, and was furnished with a fleet horse, and with a paper
permitting me to go anywhere at my will, without let or hindrance, even
up and down the processional route, though no other person not of the
procession itself was allowed this unique privilege during the whole of
the 21st and the 22d.

On the morning of the 22d, toward noon, I rode from the Tower into the
city, and through it as far as St. Paul’s. All the way, on both sides,
all the windows, balconies, and roofs were crowded with people, and
wherever there was a vacancy it had been built up in high tiers of seats
covered with red cloth, and these seats were also filled with people--in
all cases in bright holiday attire--the woman of fashion barring the
view from all in the rear with those tiresome extinguisher hats, which
of late have grown to be a cloth-yard high. From every balcony depended
silken stuffs of splendid and various colors, and figured and pictured
rich tapestries. It was brisk, sharp weather, but a rare one for sun,
and when one looked down this swinging double wall of beautiful fabrics,
glowing and flashing and changing color like prisms in the flooding
light, it was a most fair sight to see. And there were frequent May
poles, garlanded to their tops, and from the tops swung sheaves of
silken long ribbons of all bright colors, which in the light breeze
writhed and twisted and prettily mingled themselves together.

I rode solitary--in state, as it might be--and was envied, as I could
see, and did not escape comment, but had a plenty of it; for the
conduits were running gratis wine, and the results were accumulating. I
got many ribald compliments on my riding, on my clothes, on my office.
Everybody was happy, so it was best to seem so myself, which I did--for
those people’s aim was better than their eggs.

A place had been reserved for me on a fine and fanciful erection in St.
Paul’s Churchyard, and there I waited for the procession. It seemed a
long time, but at last a dull booming sound arose in the distance, and
after a while we saw the banners and the head of the procession come
into view, and heard the muffled roar of voices that welcomed it. The
roar moved continuously toward us, growing steadily louder and louder,
and stronger and stronger, and with it the bray and crash of music; and
presently it was right with us, and seemed to roll over us and submerge
us, and stun us, and deafen us--and behold, there was the hero of
Agincourt passing by!

All the multitude was standing up, red-faced, frantic, bellowing,
shouting, the tears running down their faces; and through the storm of
waving hats and handkerchiefs one glimpsed the battle banners and the
drifting host of marching men as through a dimming flurry of snow.

The king, tall, slender, handsome, rode with his visor up, that all
might see his face. He was clad in his silver armor from head to heel,
and had his great two-handed sword at his side, his battle-ax at his
pommel, his shield upon his arm, and about his helmet waved and tossed a
white mass of fluffy plumes. On either side of him rode the captive
dukes, plumed like himself, but wearing long crimson satin gowns over
their armor; after these came the French marshal similarly habited;
after him followed the fifteen hundred French knights, with robes of
various colors over their armor, and with each two rode two English
knights, sometimes robed in various colors, sometimes in white with a
red cross on the shoulder, these white-clad ones being Knights Templars.
Every man of the three thousand bore his shield upon his left arm, newly
polished and burnished, and on it was his device.

As the king passed the church he bowed his head and lifted his shield,
and by one impulse all the knights did the same; and so as far down the
line as the eye could reach one saw the lifted shields simultaneously
catch the sun, and it was like a sudden mile-long shaft of flashing
light; and, Lord! it lit up that dappled sea of color with a glory like
“the golden vortex in the west over the foundered sun”! (The
introduction of this quotation is very interesting, for it shows that
our literature of to-day has a circulation in heaven--pirated editions,
no doubt.--M.T.)

The knights were a long time in passing; then came 5,000 Agincourt
men-at-arms, and they were a long time; and at the very end, last of
all, came that intolerable old tun of sack and godless ruffler, Sir John
Oldcastle (now risen from the dead for the third time), fat-faced,
purple with the spirit of bygone and lamented drink, smiling his
hospitable, wide smile upon all the world, leering at the women,
wallowing about in his saddle, proclaiming his valorous deeds as fast as
he could lie, taking the whole glory of Agincourt to his single self,
measuring off the miles of his slain and then multiplying them by 5, 7,
10, 15, as inspiration after inspiration came to his help--the most
inhuman spectacle in England, a living, breathing outrage, a slander
upon the human race; and after him came, mumming and blethering, his
infamous lieutenants; and after them his “paladins,” as he calls them,
the mangiest lot of starvelings and cowards that was ever littered, the
disgrace of the noblest pageant that England has ever seen. God rest
their souls in the place appointed for all such!

There was a moment of prayer at the Temple, the procession moved down
the country road, its way walled on both sides by welcoming multitudes,
and so, by Charing Cross, and at last to the Abbey for the great
ceremonies. It was a grand day, and will remain in men’s memories.

That was as much of it as the spirit correspondent could let me have; he
was obliged to stop there because he had an engagement to sing in the
choir, and was already late.

The contrast between that old England and the present England is one of
the things which will make the pageant of the present day impressive and
thought-breeding. The contrast between the England of the Queen’s reign
and the England of any previous British reign is also an impressive
thing. British history is two thousand years old, and yet in a good many
ways the world has moved further ahead since the Queen was born than it
moved in all the rest of the two thousand put together. A large part of
this progress has been moral, but naturally the material part of it is
the most striking and the easiest to measure. Since the Queen first saw
the light she has seen invented and brought into use (with the exception
of the cotton gin, the spinning frames, and the steamboat) every one of
the myriad of strictly modern inventions which, by their united powers,
have created the bulk of the modern civilization and made life under it
easy and difficult, convenient and awkward, happy and horrible, soothing
and irritating, grand and trivial, an indispensable blessing and an
unimaginable curse--she has seen all these miracles, these wonders,
these marvels piled up in her time, and yet she is but seventy-eight
years old. That is to say, she has seen more things invented than any
other monarch that ever lived; and more than the oldest old-time English
commoner that ever lived, including Old Parr; and more than Methuselah
himself--five times over.

Some of the details of the moral advancement which she has seen are also
very striking and easily graspable.

She has seen the English criminal laws prodigiously modified, and 200
capital crimes swept from the statute book.

She has seen English liberty greatly broadened--the governing and
lawmaking powers, formerly the possession of the few, extended to the
body of the people, and purchase in the army abolished.

She has seen the public educator--the newspaper--created, and its
teachings placed within the reach of the leanest purse. There was
nothing properly describable as a newspaper until long after she was
born.

She has seen the world’s literature set free, through the institution of
international copyright.

She has seen America invent arbitration, the eventual substitute for
that enslaver of nations, the standing army; and she has seen England
pay the first bill under it, and America shirk the second--but only
temporarily; of this we may be sure.

She has seen a Hartford American (Doctor Wells) apply anæsthetics in
surgery for the first time in history, and for all time banish the
terrors of the surgeon’s knife; and she has seen the rest of the world
ignore the discoverer and a Boston doctor steal the credit of his work.

She has seen medical science and scientific sanitation cut down the
death rate of civilized cities by more than half, and she has seen these
agencies set bounds to the European march of the cholera and imprison
the Black Death in its own home.

She has seen woman freed from the oppression of many burdensome and
unjust laws; colleges established for her; privileged to earn degrees in
men’s colleges--but not get them; in some regions rights accorded to her
which lifted her near to political equality with man, and a hundred
bread-winning occupations found for her where hardly one existed
before--among them medicine, the law, and professional nursing. The
Queen has herself recognized merit in her sex; of the 501 lordships
which she has conferred in sixty years, one was upon a woman.

The Queen has seen the right to organize trade unions extended to the
workman, after that right had been the monopoly of guilds of masters for
six hundred years.

She has seen the workman rise into political notice, then into political
force, then (in some parts of the world) into the chief and commanding
political force; she has seen the day’s labor of twelve, fourteen, and
eighteen hours reduced to eight, a reform which has made labor a means
of extending life instead of a means of committing salaried suicide.

But it is useless to continue the list--it has no end.

There will be complexions in the procession to-day which will suggest
the vast distances to which the British dominion has extended itself
around the fat rotundity of the globe since Britain was a remote unknown
back settlement of savages with tin for sale, two or three thousand
years ago; and also how great a part of this extension is comparatively
recent; also, how surprisingly speakers of the English tongue have
increased within the Queen’s time.

When the Queen was born there were not more than 25,000,000
English-speaking people in the world; there are about 120,000,000 now.
The other long-reign queen, Elizabeth, ruled over a short 100,000 square
miles of territory and perhaps 5,000,000 subjects; Victoria reigns over
more territory than any other sovereign in the world’s history ever
reigned over; her estate covers a fourth part of the habitable area of
the globe, and her subjects number about 400,000,000.

It is indeed a mighty estate, and I perceive now that the English are
mentioned in the Bible:

“Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.”

The Long-Reign Pageant will be a memorable thing to see, for it stands
for the grandeur of England, and is full of suggestion as to how it had
its beginning and what have been the forces that have built it up.

I got to my seat in the Strand just in time--five minutes past ten--for
a glance around before the show began. The houses opposite, as far as
the eye could reach in both directions, suggested boxes in a theater
snugly packed. The gentleman next to me likened the groups to beds of
flowers, and said he had never seen such a massed and multitudinous
array of bright colors and fine clothes.

These displays rose up and up, story by story, all balconies and windows
being packed, and also the battlements stretching along the roofs. The
sidewalks were filled with standing people, but were not uncomfortably
crowded. They were fenced from the roadway by red-coated soldiers, a
double stripe of vivid color which extended throughout the six miles
which the procession would traverse.

Five minutes later the head of the column came into view and was
presently filing by, led by Captain Ames, the tallest man in the British
army. And then the cheering began. It took me but a little while to
determine that this procession could not be described. There was going
to be too much of it, and too much variety in it, so I gave up the idea.
It was to be a spectacle for the kodak, not the pen.

Presently the procession was without visible beginning or end, but
stretched to the limit of sight in both directions--bodies of soldiery
in blue, followed by a block of soldiers in buff, then a block of red, a
block of buff, a block of yellow, and so on, an interminable drift of
swaying and swinging splotches of strong color sparkling and flashing
with shifty light reflected from bayonets, lance heads, brazen helmets,
and burnished breastplates. For varied and beautiful uniforms and
unceasing surprises in the way of new and unexpected splendors, it much
surpassed any pageant that I have ever seen.

I was not dreaming of so stunning a show. All the nations seemed to be
filing by. They all seemed to be represented. It was a sort of
allegorical suggestion of the Last Day, and some who live to see that
day will probably recall this one if they are not too much disturbed in
mind at the time.

There were five bodies of Oriental soldiers of five different
nationalities, with complexions differentiated by five distinct shades
of yellow. There were about a dozen bodies of black soldiers from
various parts of Africa, whose complexions covered as many shades of
black, and some of these were the very blackest people I have ever seen
yet.

Then there was an exhaustive exhibition of the hundred separate brown
races of India, the most beautiful and satisfying of all the complexions
that have been vouchsafed to man, and the one which best sets off
colored clothes and best harmonizes with all tints.

The Chinese, the Japanese, the Koreans, the Africans, the Indians, the
Pacific Islanders--they were all there, and with them samples of all the
whites that inhabit the wide reach of the Queen’s dominions.

The procession was the human race on exhibition, a spectacle curious and
interesting and worth traveling far to see. The most splendid of the
costumes were those worn by the Indian princes, and they were also the
most beautiful and richest. They were men of stately build and princely
carriage, and wherever they passed the applause burst forth.

Soldiers, soldiers, soldiers, and still more and more soldiers and
cannon and muskets and lances--there seemed to be no end to this
feature. There are 50,000 soldiers in London, and they all seemed to be
on hand. I have not seen so many except in the theater, when thirty-five
privates and a general march across the stage and behind the scenes and
across the front again and keep it up till they have represented
300,000.

In the early part of the procession the colonial premiers drove by, and
by and by after a long time there was a grand output of foreign princes,
thirty-one in the invoice.

The feature of high romance was not wanting, for among them rode Prince
Rupert of Bavaria, who would be Prince of Wales now and future king of
England and emperor of India if his Stuart ancestors had conducted their
royal affairs more wisely than they did. He came as a peaceful guest to
represent his mother, Princess Ludwig, heiress of the house of Stuart,
to whom English Jacobites still pay unavailing homage as the rightful
queen of England.

The house of Stuart was formally and officially shelved nearly two
centuries ago, but the microbe of Jacobite loyalty is a thing which is
not exterminable by time, force, or argument.

At last, when the procession had been on view an hour and a half,
carriages began to appear. In the first came a detachment of two-horse
ones containing ambassadors extraordinary, in one of them Whitelaw Reid,
representing the United States; then six containing minor foreign and
domestic princes and princesses; then five four-horse carriages
freighted with offshoots of the family.

The excitement was growing now; interest was rising toward the boiling
point. Finally a landau driven by eight cream-colored horses, most
lavishly upholstered in gold stuffs, with postilions and no drivers, and
preceded by Lord Wolseley, came bowling along, followed by the Prince of
Wales, and all the world rose to its feet and uncovered.

The Queen Empress was come. She was received with great enthusiasm. It
was realizable that she was the procession herself; that all the rest of
it was mere embroidery; that in her the public saw the British Empire
itself. She was a symbol, an allegory of England’s grandeur and the
might of the British name.

It is over now; the British Empire has marched past under review and
inspection. The procession stood for sixty years of progress and
accumulation, moral, material, and political. It was made up rather of
the beneficiaries of these prosperities than of the creators of them.

As far as mere glory goes, the foreign trade of Great Britain has grown
in a wonderful way since the Queen ascended the throne. Last year it
reached the enormous figure of £620,000,000, but the capitalist, the
manufacturer, the merchant, and the workingmen were not officially in
the procession to get their large share of the resulting glory.

Great Britain has added to her real estate an average of 165 miles of
territory per day for the past sixty years, which is to say she has
added more than the bulk of an England proper per year, or an aggregate
of seventy Englands in the sixty years.

But Cecil Rhodes was not in the procession; the Chartered Company was
absent from it. Nobody was there to collect his share of the glory due
for his formidable contributions to the imperial estate. Even Doctor
Jameson was out, and yet he had tried so hard to accumulate territory.

Eleven colonial premiers were in the procession, but the dean of the
order, the imperial Premier, was not, nor the Lord Chief Justice of
England, nor the Speaker of the House. The bulk of the religious
strength of England dissent was not officially represented in the
religious ceremonials. At the Cathedral that immense new industry,
speculative expansion, was not represented unless the pathetic shade of
Barnato rode invisible in the pageant.

It was a memorable display and must live in history. It suggested the
material glories of the reign finely and adequately. The absence of the
chief creators of them was perhaps not a serious disadvantage. One could
supply the vacancies by imagination, and thus fill out the procession
very effectively. One can enjoy a rainbow without necessarily forgetting
the forces that made it.

LETTERS TO SATAN
(1897)

SWISS GLIMPSES

If Your Grace would prepay your postage it would be a pleasant change. I
am not meaning to speak harshly, but only sorrowfully. My remark applies
to all my outland correspondents, and to everybody’s. None of them puts
on the full postage, and that is just the same as putting on none at
all: the foreign governments ignore the half postage, and we who are
abroad have to pay full postage on those half-paid letters. And as for
writing on thin paper, none of my friends ever think of it; they all use
pasteboard, or sole leather, or things like that. But enough of that
subject; it is painful.

I believe you have set me a hard task; for if it is true that you have
not been in the world for three hundred years, and have not received
into your establishment an educated person in all that time, I shall be
obliged to talk to you as if you had just been born and knew nothing at
all about the things I speak of. However, I will do the best I can, and
will faithfully try to put in all the particulars, trivial ones as well
as the other sorts. If my report shall induce Your Grace to come out of
your age-long seclusion and make a pleasure tour through the world in
person, instead of doing it by proxy through me, I shall feel that I
have labored to good purpose. You have many friends in the world; more
than you think. You would have a vast welcome in Paris, London, New
York, Chicago, Washington, and the other capitals of the world; if you
would go on the lecture platform you could charge what you pleased. You
would be the most formidable attraction on the planet. The curiosity to
see you would be so great that no place of amusement would contain the
multitude that would come. In London many devoted people who have seen
the Prince of Wales only fifteen hundred or two thousand times would be
willing to miss one chance of seeing him again for the sake of seeing
you. In Paris, even with the Tsar on view, you could do a fairly good
business; and in Chicago--Oh, but you ought to go to Chicago, you know.
But further of this anon. I will to my report, now, and tell you about
Lucerne, and how I journeyed hither; for doubtless you will travel by
the same route when you come.

I kept house a few months in London, with my family, while I arranged
the matters which you were good enough to intrust me with. There were no
adventures, except that we saw the Jubilee. Afterward I was invited to
one of the Queen’s functions, which was a royal garden party. A garden
is a green and bloomy countrified stretch of land which--But you
remember the Garden of Eden; well, it is like that. The invitation
prescribed the costume that must be worn: “Morning dress with trousers.”
I was intending to wear mine, for I always wear something at garden
parties where ladies are to be present; but I was hurt by this arbitrary
note of compulsion, and did not go. All the European courts are
particular about dress, and you are not allowed to choose for yourself
in any case; you are always told exactly what you must wear; and whether
it is going to become you or not, you are not allowed to make any
changes. Yet the court taste is often bad, and sometimes even
indelicate. I was once invited to dine with an emperor when I was living
awhile in Germany, and the invitation card named the dress I must wear:
“Frock coat and black cravat.” To put it in English, that meant
swallow-tail and black cravat. It was cold weather, too, the middle of
winter; and not only that, but ladies were to be present. That was five
years ago. By this time the coat has gone out, I suppose, and you would
feel at home there if you still remember the old Eden styles.

As soon as the Jubilee was fairly over we broke up housekeeping and went
for a few days to what is called in England “an hotel.” If we could have
afforded an horse and an hackney cab we could have had an heavenly good
time flitting around on our preparation errands, and could have finished
them up briskly; but the buses are slow and they wasted many precious
hours for us. A bus is a sort of great cage on four wheels, and is six
times as strong and eleven times as heavy as the service required of it
demands--but that is the English of it. The bus aptly symbolizes the
national character. The Englishman requires that everything about him
shall be stable, strong, and permanent, except the house which he builds
to rent. His own private house is as strong as a fort. The rod which
holds up the lace curtains could hold up an hippopotamus. The three-foot
flagstaff on his bus, which supports a Union Jack the size of a
handkerchief, would still support it if it were one of the gates of
Gaza. Everything he constructs is a deal heavier and stronger than it
needs to be. He built ten miles of terraced benches to view the Jubilee
procession from, and put timber enough in them to make them a permanent
contribution to the solidities of the world--yet they were intended for
only two days’ service.

When they were being removed an American said, “Don’t do it--save them
for the Resurrection.” If anything gets in the way of the Englishman’s
bus it must get out of it or be bowled down--and that is English. It is
the serene self-sufficient spirit which has carried his flag so far. He
ought to put his aggressive bus in his coat of arms, and take the gentle
unicorn out.

We made our preparations for Switzerland as fast as we could; then
bought the tickets. Bought them of Thomas Cook & Sons, of
course--nowadays shortened to “Cook’s,” to save time and words. Things
have changed in thirty years. I can remember when to be a “Cook’s
tourist” was a thing to be ashamed of, and when everybody felt
privileged to make fun of Cook’s “personally conducted” gangs of
economical provincials. But that has all gone by, now. All sorts and
conditions of men fly to Cook in our days. In the bygone times travel in
Europe was made hateful and humiliating by the wanton difficulties,
hindrances, annoyances, and vexations put upon it by ignorant, stupid,
and disobliging transportation officials, and one had to travel with a
courier or risk going mad. You could not buy a railway ticket on one day
which you purposed to use next day--it was not permitted. You could not
buy a ticket for _any_ train until fifteen minutes before that train was
due to leave. Though you had twenty trunks, you must manage somehow to
get them weighed and the extra weight paid for within that fifteen
minutes; if the time was not sufficient you would have to leave behind
such trunks as failed to pass the scales. If you missed your train, your
ticket was no longer good. As a rule, you could make neither head nor
tail of the railway guide, and if your intended journey was a long one
you would find that the officials could tell you little about which way
to go; consequently you often bought the wrong ticket and got yourself
lost. But Cook has remedied all these things and made travel simple,
easy, and a pleasure. He will sell you a ticket to any place on the
globe, or all the places, and give you all the time you need, and as
much more besides; and it is good for all trains of its class, and its
baggage is weighable at all hours. It provides hotels for you
everywhere, if you so desire; and you cannot be overcharged, for the
coupons show just how much you must pay. Cook’s servants at the great
stations will attend to your baggage, get you a cab, tell you how much
to pay cabmen and porters, procure guides for you, or horses, donkeys,
camels, bicycles, or anything else you want, and make life a comfort and
a satisfaction to you. And if you get tired of traveling and want to
stop, Cook will take back the remains of your ticket, with 10 per cent
off. Cook is your banker everywhere, and his establishment your shelter
when you get caught out in the rain. His clerks will answer all the
questions you ask, and do it courteously. I recommend Your Grace to
travel on Cook’s tickets when you come; and I do this without
embarrassment, for I get no commission. I do not know Cook. (But if you
would rather travel with a courier, let me recommend Joseph Very. I
employed him twenty years ago, and spoke of him very highly in a book,
for he was an excellent courier--then. I employed him again, six or
seven years ago--for a while. Try him. And when you go home, take him
with you.)

That London hotel was a disappointment. It was up a back alley, and we
supposed it would be cheap. But, no, it was built for the moneyed races.
It was all costliness and show. It had a brass band for dinner--and
little else--and it even had a telephone and a lift. A telephone is a
wire stretched on poles or underground, and has a thing at each end of
it. These things are to speak into and to listen at. The wire carries
the words; it can carry them several hundred miles. It is a time-saving,
profanity-breeding, useful invention, and in America is to be found in
all houses except parsonages. It is dear in America, but cheap in
England; yet in England telephones are as rare as are icebergs in your
place. I know of no way to account for this; I only know that it is
extraordinary. The English take kindly to the other modern conveniences,
but for some puzzling reason or other they will not use the telephone.
There are 44,000,000 people there who have never even seen one.

The lift is an elevator. Like the telephone, it also is an American
invention. Its office is to hoist people to the upper stories and save
them the fatigue and delay of climbing. That London hotel could
accommodate several hundred people, and it had just one lift--a lift
which would hold four persons. In America such an hotel would have from
two to six lifts. When I was last in Paris, three years ago, they were
using there what they thought was a lift. It held two persons, and
traveled at such a slow gait that a spectator could not tell which way
it was going. If the passengers were going to the sixth floor, they took
along something to eat; and at night, bedding. Old people did not use
it; except such as were on their way to the good place, anyhow. Often
people that had been lost for days were found in those lifts, jogging
along, jogging along, frequently still alive. The French took great
pride in their ostensible lift, and called it by a grand
name--_ascenseur_. An hotel that had a lift did not keep it secret, but
advertised it in immense letters, _“Il y a une ascenseur,”_ with three
exclamation points after it.

In that London hotel--But never mind that hotel; it was a cruelly
expensive and tawdry and ill-conditioned place, and I wish I could do it
a damage. I will think up a way some time. We went to Queenboro by the
railroad. A railroad is a--well, a railroad is a railroad. I will
describe it more explicitly another time.

Then we went by steamer to Flushing--eight hours. If you sit at home you
can make the trip in less time, because then you can travel by the
steamer company’s advertisement, and that will take you across the
Channel five hours quicker than their boats can do it. Almost everywhere
in Europe the advertisements can give the facts several hours’ odd in
the twenty-four and get in first.

We tarried overnight at a summer hotel on the seashore near
Flushing--the Grand Hôtel des Bains. The word Grand means nothing in
this connection; it has no descriptive value. On the Continent, all
hotels, inns, taverns, hash houses and slop troughs employ it. It is
tiresome. This one was a good-enough hotel, and comfortable, but there
was nothing grand about it but the bill, and even that was not
extravagant enough to make the title entirely justifiable. Except in the
case of one item--Scotch whisky. I ordered a sup of that, for I always
take it at night as a preventive of toothache. I have never had the
toothache; and what is more, I never intend to have it. They charged me
a dollar and a half for it. A dollar and a half for half a pint; a
dollar and a half for that wee little mite--really hardly enough to
break a pledge with. It will be a kindness to me if Your Grace will show
the landlord some special attentions when he arrives. Not merely on
account of that piece of extortion, but because he got us back to town
and the station next day, more than an hour before train time.

There were no books or newspapers for sale there, and nothing to look at
but a map. Fortunately it was an interesting one. It was a railway map
of the Low Countries, and was of a new sort to me, for it was made of
tiles--the ground white, the lines black. It could be washed if it got
soiled, and if no accident happens to it it will last ten thousand years
and still be as bright and fine and new and beautiful then as it is
to-day. It occupied a great area of the wall, and one could study it in
comfort halfway across the house. It would be a valuable thing if our
own railway companies would adorn their waiting rooms with maps like
that.

We left at five in the afternoon. The Dutch road was admirably rough; we
went bumping and bouncing and swaying and sprawling along in a most
vindictive and disorderly way; then passed the frontier into Germany,
and straightway quieted down and went gliding as smoothly through the
landscape as if we had been on runners. We reached Cologne after
midnight.

But this letter is already too long. I will close it by saying that I
was charmed with England and sorry to leave it. It is easy to do
business there. I carried out all of Your Grace’s instructions, and did
it without difficulty. I doubted if it was needful to grease Mr. Cecil
Rhodes’s palm any further, for I think he would serve you just for the
love of it; still, I obeyed your orders in the matter. I made him
Permanent General Agent for South Africa, got him and his South Africa
Company whitewashed by the Committee of Inquiry, and promised him a
dukedom. I also continued the European Concert in office, without making
any change in its material. In my opinion this is the best material for
the purpose that exists outside of Your Grace’s own personal Cabinet. It
coddles the Sultan, it has defiled and degraded Greece, it has massacred
a hundred thousand Christians in Armenia and a splendid multitude of
them in Turkey, and has covered civilization and the Christian name with
imperishable shame. If Your Grace would instruct me to add the Concert
to the list of your publicly acknowledged servants, I think it would
have a good effect. The Foreign Offices of the whole European world are
now under your sovereignty, and little attentions like this would keep
them so.

A WORD OF ENCOURAGEMENT FOR OUR

BLUSHING EXILES | (1898)

... Well, what do you think of our country _now_? And what do you
think of the figure she is cutting before the eyes of the world? For
one, I am ashamed--(Extract from a long and heated letter from a
Voluntary Exile, Member of the American Colony, Paris.)

And so you are ashamed. I am trying to think out what it can have been
that has produced this large attitude of mind and this fine flow of
sarcasm. Apparently you are ashamed to look Europe in the face; ashamed
of the American name; temporarily ashamed of your nationality. By the
light of remarks made to me by an American here in Vienna, I judge that
you are ashamed because:

1. We are meddling where we have no business and no right; meddling with
the private family matters of a sister nation; intruding upon her sacred
right to do as she pleases with her own, unquestioned by anybody.

2. We are doing this under a sham humanitarian pretext.

3. Doing it in order to filch Cuba, the formal and distinct disclaimer
in the ultimatum being very, very thin humbug, and easily detectable as
such by you and virtuous Europe.

4. And finally you are ashamed of all this because it is new, and base,
and brutal, and dishonest; and because Europe, having had no previous
experience of such things, is horrified by it and can never respect us
nor associate with us any more.

Brutal, base, dishonest? We? Land thieves? Shedders of innocent blood?
We? Traitors to our official word? We? Are we going to lose Europe’s
respect because of this new and dreadful conduct? Russia’s, for
instance? Is she lying stretched out on her back in Manchuria, with her
head among her Siberian prisons and her feet in Port Arthur, trying to
read over the fairy tales she told Lord Salisbury, and not able to do it
for crying because we are maneuvering to treacherously smouch Cuba from
feeble Spain, and because we are ungently shedding innocent Spanish
blood?

Is it France’s respect that we are going to lose? Is our unchivalric
conduct troubling a nation which exists to-day because a brave young
girl saved it when its poltroons had lost it--a nation which deserted
her as one man when her day of peril came? Is our treacherous assault
upon a weak people distressing a nation which contributed Bartholomew’s
Day to human history? Is our ruthless spirit offending the sensibilities
of the nation which gave us the Reign of Terror to read about? Is our
unmanly intrusion into the private affairs of a sister nation shocking
the feelings of the people who sent Maximilian to Mexico? Are our shabby
and pusillanimous ways outraging the fastidious people who have sent an
innocent man (Dreyfus) to a living hell, taken to their embraces the
slimy guilty one, and submitted to a thousand indignities Emile
Zola--the manliest man in France?

Is it Spain’s respect that we are going to lose? Is she sitting sadly
conning her great history and contrasting it with our meddling, cruel,
perfidious one--our shameful history of foreign robberies, humanitarian
shams, and annihilations of weak and unoffending nations? Is she
remembering with pride how she sent Columbus home in chains; how she
sent half of the harmless West Indians into slavery and the rest to the
grave, leaving not one alive; how she robbed and slaughtered the Inca’s
gentle race, then beguiled the Inca into her power with fair promises
and burned him at the stake; how she drenched the New World in blood,
and earned and got the name of The Nation with the Bloody Footprint; how
she drove all the Jews out of Spain in a day, allowing them to sell
their property, but forbidding them to carry any money out of the
country; how she roasted heretics by the thousands and thousands in her
public squares, generation after generation, her kings and her priests
looking on as at a holiday show; how her Holy Inquisition imported hell
into the earth; how she was the first to institute it and the last to
give it up--and then only under compulsion; how, with a spirit
unmodified by time, she still tortures her prisoners to-day; how, with
her ancient passion for pain and blood unchanged, she still crowds the
arena with ladies and gentlemen and priests to see with delight a bull
harried and persecuted and a gored horse dragging his entrails on the
ground; and how, with this incredible character surviving all attempts
to civilize it, her Duke of Alva rises again in the person of General
Weyler--to-day the most idolized personage in Spain--and we see a
hundred thousand women and children shut up in pens and pitilessly
starved to death?

Are we indeed going to lose Spain’s respect? Is there no way to avoid
this calamity--or this compliment? Are we going to lose her respect
because we have made a promise in our ultimatum which she thinks we
shall break? And meantime is she trying to recall some promise of her
own which she has kept?

Is the Professional Official Fibber of Europe really troubled with our
morals? Dear Parisian friend, are you taking seriously the daily remark
of the newspaper and the orator about “this noble nation with an
illustrious history”? That is mere kindness, mere charity for a people
in temporary hard luck. The newspaper and the orator do not mean it.
They wink when they say it.

And so you are ashamed. Do not be ashamed; there is no occasion for it.

DUELING
(Vienna, Austria, 1898)

This pastime is as common in Austria to-day as it is in France. But with
this difference--that here in the Austrian states the duel is dangerous,
while in France it is not. Here it is tragedy, in France it is comedy;
here it is a solemnity, there it is monkeyshines; here the duelist risks
his life, there he does not even risk his shirt. Here he fights with
pistol or saber, in France with a hairpin--a blunt one. Here the
desperately wounded man tries to walk to the hospital; there they paint
the scratch so that they can find it again, lay the sufferer on a
stretcher, and conduct him off the field with a band of music.

At the end of a French duel the pair hug and kiss and cry, and praise
each other’s valor; then the surgeons make an examination and pick out
the scratched one, and the other one helps him on to the litter and pays
his fare; and in return the scratched one treats to champagne and
oysters in the evening, and then “the incident is closed,” as the French
say. It is all polite, and gracious, and pretty, and impressive. At the
end of an Austrian duel the antagonist that is alive gravely offers his
hand to the other man, utters some phrases of courteous regret, then
bids him good-by and goes his way, and that incident also is closed. The
French duelist is painstakingly protected from danger, by the rules of
the game. His antagonist’s weapon cannot reach so far as his body; if he
gets a scratch it will not be above his elbow. But in Austria the rules
of the game do not provide against danger, they carefully provide _for_
it, usually. Commonly the combat must be kept up until one of the men is
disabled; a nondisabling slash or stab does not retire him.

For a matter of three months I watched the Viennese journals, and
whenever a duel was reported in their telegraphic columns I scrap-booked
it. By this record I find that dueling in Austria is not confined to
journalists and old maids, as in France, but is indulged in by military
men, journalists, students, physicians, lawyers, members of the
legislature, and even the Cabinet, the bench, and the police. Dueling is
forbidden by law; and so it seems odd to see the makers and
administrators of the laws dancing on their work in this way. Some
months ago Count Badeni, at that time chief of the government, fought a
pistol duel here in the capital city of the Empire with Representative
Wolf, and both of those distinguished Christians came near getting
turned out of the Church--for the Church as well as the state forbids
dueling.

In one case, lately, in Hungary, the police interfered and stopped a
duel after the first innings. This was a saber duel between the chief of
police and the city attorney. Unkind things were said about it by the
newspapers. They said the police remembered their duty uncommonly well
when their own officials were the parties concerned in duels. But I
think the underlings showed bread-and-butter judgment. If their
superiors had carved each other well, the public would have asked,
“Where were the police?” and their place would have been endangered; but
custom does not require them to be around where mere unofficial citizens
are explaining a thing with sabers.

There was another duel--a double duel--going on in the immediate
neighborhood at the time, and in this case the police obeyed custom and
did not disturb it. Their bread and butter was not at stake there. In
this duel a physician fought a couple of surgeons, and wounded both--one
of them lightly, the other seriously. An undertaker wanted to keep
people from interfering, but that was quite natural again.

Selecting at random from my record, I next find a duel at Tranopol
between military men. An officer of the Tenth Dragoons charged an
officer of the Ninth Dragoons with an offense against the laws of the
card table. There was a defect or a doubt somewhere in the matter, and
this had to be examined and passed upon by a court of honor. So the case
was sent up to Lemberg for this purpose. One would like to know what the
defect was, but the newspaper does not say. A man here who has fought
many duels and has a graveyard says that probably the matter in question
was as to whether the accusation was true or not; that if the charge was
a very grave one--cheating, for instance--proof of its truth would rule
the guilty officer out of the field of honor; the court would not allow
a gentleman to fight with such a person. You see what a solemn thing it
is; you see how particular they are; any little careless speech can lose
you your privilege of getting yourself shot, here. The court seems to
have gone into the matter in a searching and careful fashion, for
several months elapsed before it reached a decision. It then sanctioned
a duel and the accused killed his accuser.

Next I find a duel between a prince and a major; first with pistols--no
result satisfactory to either party; then with sabers, and the major
badly hurt.

Next, a saber duel between journalists--the one a strong man, the other
feeble and in poor health. It was brief; the strong one drove his sword
through the weak one, and death was immediate.

Next, a duel between a lieutenant and a student of medicine. According
to the newspaper report, these are the details: The student was in a
restaurant one evening; passing along, he halted at a table to speak
with some friends; near by sat a dozen military men; the student
conceived that one of these was “staring” at him; he asked the officer
to step outside and explain. This officer and another one gathered up
their capes and sabers and went out with the student. Outside--this is
the student’s account--the student introduced himself to the offending
officer and said, “You seemed to stare at me”; for answer, the officer
struck the student with his fist; the student parried the blow; both
officers drew their sabers and attacked the young fellow, and one of
them gave him a wound on the left arm; then they withdrew. This was
Saturday night. The duel followed on Monday, in the military riding
school--the customary dueling ground all over Austria, apparently. The
weapons were pistols. The dueling terms were somewhat beyond custom in
the matter of severity, if I may gather that from the statement that the
combat was fought “unter sehr schweren Bedingungen”--to wit, “distance,
15 steps--with 3 steps advance.” There was but one exchange of shots.
The student was hit. “He put his hand on his breast, his body began to
bend slowly forward, then collapsed in death and sank to the ground.”

It is pathetic. There are other duels in my list, but I find in each and
all of them one and the same ever-recurring defect--the _principals_ are
never present, but only by their sham representatives. The _real_
principals in any duel are not the duelists themselves, but their
_families_. They do the mourning, the suffering; theirs is the loss and
theirs the misery. They stake all that, the duelist stakes nothing but
his life, and that is a trivial thing compared with what his death must
cost those whom he leaves behind him. Challenges should not mention the
duelist; he has nothing much at stake, and the real vengeance cannot
reach him. The challenge should summon the offender’s old gray mother
and his young wife and his little children--these, or any of whom he is
a dear and worshiped possession--and should say, “You have done me no
harm, but I am the meek slave of a custom which requires me to crush the
happiness out of your hearts and condemn you to years of pain and grief,
in order that I may wash clean with your tears a stain which has been
put upon me by another person.”

The logic of it is admirable; a person has robbed me of a penny; I must
beggar ten innocent persons to make good my loss. Surely nobody’s
“honor” is worth all that.

Since the duelist’s family are the real principals in a duel, the state
ought to compel them to be present at it. Custom, also, ought to be so
amended as to require it; and without it no duel ought to be allowed to
go on. If that student’s unoffending mother had been present and
watching the officer through her tears as he raised his pistol, he--why,
he would have fired in the air! We know that. For we know how we are all
made. Laws ought to be based upon the ascertained facts of our nature.
It would be a simple thing to make a dueling law which would stop
dueling.

As things are now, the mother is never invited. She submits to this; and
without outward complaint, for she, too, is the vassal of custom, and
custom requires her to conceal her pain when she learns the disastrous
news that her son must go to the dueling field, and by the powerful
force that is lodged in habit and custom she is enabled to obey this
trying requirement--a requirement which exacts a miracle of her, and
gets it. In January a neighbor of ours who has a young son in the army
was awakened by this youth at three o’clock one morning, and she sat up
in bed and listened to his message:

“I have come to tell you something, mother, which will distress you, but
you must be good and brave and bear it. I have been affronted by a
fellow officer and we fight at three this afternoon. Lie down and sleep,
now, and think no more about it.”

She kissed him good night and lay down paralyzed with grief and fear,
but said nothing. But she did not sleep; she prayed and mourned till the
first streak of dawn, then fled to the nearest church and implored the
Virgin for help; and from that church she went to another and another;
church after church, and still church after church, and so spent all the
day until three o’clock on her knees in agony and tears; then dragged
herself home and sat down, comfortless and desolate, to count the
minutes, and wait, with an outward show of calm, for what had been
ordained for her--happiness, or endless misery. Presently she heard the
clank of a saber--she had not known before what music was in that
sound--and her son put his head in and said:

“X was in the wrong and he apologized.”

So that incident was closed; and for the rest of her life the mother
will always find something pleasant about the clank of a saber, no
doubt.

In one of my listed duels--However, let it go, there is nothing
particularly striking about it except that the seconds interfered. And
prematurely, too, for neither man was dead. This was certainly
irregular. Neither of the men liked it. It was a duel with cavalry
sabers, between an editor and a lieutenant. The editor walked to the
hospital; the lieutenant was carried. In Austria an editor who can write
well is valuable, but he is not likely to remain so unless he can handle
a saber with charm.

The following very recent telegram shows that also in France duels are
humanely stopped as soon as they approach the (French) danger point:

(Reuter’s Telegram)

PARIS, _March 5th_.

The duel between Colonels Henry and Picquart took place this morning
in the riding school of the École Militaire, the doors of which were
strictly guarded in order to prevent intrusion. The combatants, who
fought with swords, were in position at ten o’clock.

At the first re-engagement Lieut.-Col. Henry was slightly scratched in
the forearm, and just at the same moment his own blade appeared to
touch his adversary’s neck. Senator Ranc, who was Colonel Picquart’s
second, stopped the fight, but as it was found that his principal had
not been touched, the combat continued. A very sharp encounter ensued,
in which Colonel Henry was wounded in the elbow, and the duel then
terminated.

After which the stretcher and the band. In lurid contrast with this
delicate flirtation, we have an account of a deadly duel of day before
yesterday in Italy, where the earnest Austrian duel is in vogue. I knew
one of the principals, Cavalotti, slightly, and this gives me a sort of
personal interest in his duel. I first saw him in Rome several years
ago. He was sitting on a block of stone in the Forum, and was writing
something in his notebook--a poem or a challenge, or something like
that--and the friend who pointed him out to me said, “That is
Cavalotti--he has fought thirty duels; do not disturb him.” I did not
disturb him.

SKELETON PLAN OF A PROPOSED
CASTING VOTE PARTY
(1901)

NOTE.--Mark Twain’s effort was always for clean politics. In 1901 he
formulated what to him seemed a feasible plan to obtain this boon. It
is here first published.--A. B. P.

ITS MAIN OBJECT

To compel the two Great Parties to nominate their _best man_ always.

FOUNDATION PRINCIPLES

With the offices all filled by the best men of either of the two Great
Parties, we shall have good government. We hold that this is beyond
dispute, and does not need to be argued.

DETAILS

1. The C. V. Party should be _organized_. This, in order to secure its
continuance and permanency.

2. Any of the following acts must sever the connection of a member with
the Casting Vote party:

The seeking of any office, appointive or elective.
The acceptance of a nomination to any such office.
The acceptance of such an office.

3. The organization should never vote for _any but a nominee of one or
the other of the two Great Parties_, and should then cast their _entire
vote_ for that nominee.

4. They should have no dealings with minor parties.

5. There should be ward organizations, township, town, city,
congressional district, state and national organizations. The party
should work wherever there is an elective office, from the lowest up to
the Presidency.

6. As a rule, none of the organizations will need to be large. In most
cases they will be able to control the action of the two Great Parties
without that. In the matter of membership, quality will be the main
thing, rather than quantity.

In small constituencies, where a town constable or a justice of the
peace is to be elected it will often be the case that a Casting Vote
lodge of fifty members can elect the nominee it prefers. In every such
community the material for the fifty is present. It will be found among
the men who are disgusted with the prevailing political methods, the low
ambitions and ideals, of the politicians; dishonesty in office;
corruption; the frank distribution of appointments among characterless
and incompetent men as pay for party service; the evasion and sometimes
straight-out violation of the civil-service laws. The fifty will be
found among the men who are ashamed of this condition of things and who
have despaired of seeing it bettered; _who stay away from the polls and
do not vote;_ who do not attend primaries, and would be insulted there
if they did.

The fifty exist in every little community; they are not seen, not heard,
not regarded--but they are there. There, and deeply and sincerely
desirous of good and sound government, and ready to give the best help
they can if any will place before them a competent way. They are
reserved and quiet merchants and shopkeepers, middle-aged; they are
young men making their way in the offices of doctors and lawyers and
behind counters; they are journeyman high-class mechanics; they are
organizers of, and workers for, the community’s charities, art and other
social-improvement clubs, university settlements, Young Men’s Christian
Association, circulating libraries; they are readers of books,
frequenters of the library. They have never seen a primary, and they
have an aversion for the polls.

7. Men proposing to create a Casting Vote lodge should not advertise
their purpose; conspiracies for good, like conspiracies for evil, are
best conducted privately until success is sure. The poll of the two
Great Parties should be examined, and the winning party’s majority
noted. _It is this majority which the Casting Vote must overcome and
nullify._ If the total vote cast was 1,000 and the majority vote fifty,
the proposers of a lodge should canvass privately until they have
secured 75 or 100 names; they can organize then, without solicitude; the
balance of power is in their hands, and this fact by itself will add
names to its membership. If the total vote is 10,000 and the majority
vote 1,000, the procedure should be as before: the thousand-and-upward
should be secured by private canvass before public organization is
instituted. Where a total vote is 1,000,000 the majority vote is not
likely to exceed 30,000. Five or six canvassers can begin the listing;
each man secured becomes a canvasser, ten know three apiece who will
join; the thirty know three apiece who will join; the ninety know three
hundred, the three hundred know a thousand, the thousand know three
thousand--and so on; the required thirty or forty thousand can be
secured in ten days, the lodge organized, and its casting vote be ready
and self-pledged and competent to elect the best of the nominees the two
Great Parties may put up at that date or later.

8. In every ward of every city there is enough of this material to hold
the balance of power over the two Great Parties in a ward election; in
every city there is enough of it to determine which of the two nominees
shall be mayor; in every congressional district there is enough of it to
elect the Governor; also to elect the legislature and choose the U. S.
Senators; and in the United States there is enough of it to throw the
Casting Vote for its choice between the nominees of the two Great
Parties and seat him in the presidential chair.

9. From constable up to President there is no office for which the two
Great Parties cannot furnish able, clean, and acceptable men. Whenever
the balance of power shall be lodged in a permanent third party with no
candidates of its own and no function but to cast its _whole vote_ for
the best man put forward by the Republicans and Democrats, these two
parties _will select the best men they have in their ranks_. Good and
clean government will follow, let its party complexion be what it may;
and the country will be quite content.

THE LODGES

The primal lodge--call it A--should consist of 10 men only. It is enough
and can meet in a dwelling house or a shop, and get well acquainted at
once. It has before it the names of the nominees of the two Great
Parties--Jones (Republican), Smith (Democrat). It fails of
unanimity--both candidates perchance being good men and about equally
acceptable--and casts seven votes, say, for Jones and three for Smith.

It elects one of its ten to meet similar delegates from any number of
local A lodges and hand in its vote. This body--call it a B
lodge--examines the aggregate vote; this time the majority may be with
Smith. The members carry the result to the A lodges; and these, by the
conditions of their membership, must vote for Smith.

In the case of a state election, bodies each consisting of a number of B
lodges would elect a delegate to a state council, and the state council
would examine the aggregate vote and give its decision in favor of the
Republican or Democratic candidate receiving the majority of the Casting
Vote’s suffrages.

In the case of a presidential contest, the state council would appoint
delegates to a national convention, and these would examine the
aggregate Casting Vote vote and determine and announce the choice of the
Casting Vote organizations of the whole country. At the presidential
election the A lodges throughout the land would vote for presidential
electors of the Party indicated.

If the reader thinks well of the project, let him begin a private
canvass among his friends and give it a practical test, without waiting
for other people to begin. If in the hands of men who regard their
citizenship as a high trust this scheme shall fail upon trial, a better
must be sought, a better must be invented; for it cannot be well or safe
to let the present political conditions continue indefinitely. They can
be improved, and American citizenship should rouse up from its
disheartenment and see that it is done.

THE UNITED STATES OF LYNCHERDOM
(1901)

law, and when in 1901 a particularly barbarous incident occurred in
his native state he was moved to express himself in print. The article
was not offered for publication, perhaps because the moment of
timeliness had passed. Its general timeliness, however, is perennial
and a word from “America’s foremost private citizen” on the subject is
worthy of preservation.--A. B. P.

And so Missouri has fallen, that great state! Certain of her children
have joined the lynchers, and the smirch is upon the rest of us. That
handful of her children have given us a character and labeled us with a
name, and to the dwellers in the four quarters of the earth we are
“lynchers,” now, and ever shall be. For the world will not stop and
think--it never does, it is not its way; its way is to generalize from a
single sample. It will not say, “Those Missourians have been busy eighty
years in building an honorable good name for themselves; these hundred
lynchers down in the corner of the state are not real Missourians, they
are renegades.” No, that truth will not enter its mind; it will
generalize from the one or two misleading samples and say, “The
Missourians are lynchers.” It has no reflection, no logic, no sense of
proportion. With it, figures go for nothing; to it, figures reveal
nothing, it cannot reason upon them rationally; it would say, for
instance, that China is being swiftly and surely Christianized, since
nine Chinese Christians are being made every day; and it would fail,
with him, to notice that the fact that 33,000 pagans are _born_ there
every day, damages the argument. It would say, “There are a hundred
lynchers there, therefore the Missourians are lynchers”; the
considerable fact that there are two and a half million Missourians who
are _not_ lynchers would not affect their verdict.

Oh, Missouri!

The tragedy occurred near Pierce City, down in the southwestern corner
of the state. On a Sunday afternoon a young white woman who had started
alone from church was found murdered. For there are churches there; in
my time religion was more general, more pervasive, in the South than it
was in the North, and more virile and earnest, too, I think; I have some
reason to believe that this is still the case. The young woman was found
murdered. Although it was a region of churches and schools the people
rose, lynched three negroes--two of them very aged ones--burned out five
negro households, and drove thirty negro families into the woods.

I do not dwell upon the provocation which moved the people to these
crimes, for that has nothing to do with the matter; the only question
is, does the assassin _take the law into his own hands_? It is very
simple, and very just. If the assassin be proved to have usurped the
law’s prerogative in righting his wrongs, that ends the matter; a
thousand provocations are no defense. The Pierce City people had bitter
provocation--indeed, as revealed by certain of the particulars, the
bitterest of all provocations--but no matter, they took the law into
their own hands, when by the terms of their statutes their victim would
certainly hang if the law had been allowed to take its course, for there
are but few negroes in that region and they are without authority and
without influence in overawing juries.

Why has lynching, with various barbaric accompaniments, become a
favorite regulator in cases of “the usual crime” in several parts of the
country? Is it because men think a lurid and terrible punishment a more
forcible object lesson and a more effective deterrent than a sober and
colorless hanging done privately in a jail would be? Surely sane men do
not think that. Even the average child should know better. It should
know that any strange and much-talked-of event is always followed by
imitations, the world being so well supplied with excitable people who
only need a little stirring up to make them lose what is left of their
heads and do mad things which they would not have thought of ordinarily.
It should know that if a man jump off Brooklyn Bridge another will
imitate him; that if a person venture down Niagara Whirlpool in a barrel
another will imitate him; that if a Jack the Ripper make notoriety by
slaughtering women in dark alleys he will be imitated; that if a man
attempt a king’s life and the newspapers carry the noise of it around
the globe, regicides will crop up all around. The child should know that
one much-talked-of outrage and murder committed by a negro will upset
the disturbed intellects of several other negroes and produce a series
of the very tragedies the community would so strenuously wish to
prevent; that each of these crimes will produce another series, and year
by year steadily increase the tale of these disasters instead of
diminishing it; that, in a word, the lynchers are themselves the worst
enemies of their women. The child should also know that by a law of our
make, communities, as well as individuals, are imitators; and that a
much-talked-of lynching will infallibly produce other lynchings here and
there and yonder, and that in time these will breed a mania, a fashion;
a fashion which will spread wide and wider, year by year, covering state
after state, as with an advancing disease. Lynching has reached
Colorado, it has reached California, it has reached Indiana--and now
Missouri! I may live to see a negro burned in Union Square, New York,
with fifty thousand people present, and not a sheriff visible, not a
governor, not a constable, not a colonel, not a clergyman, not a
law-and-order representative of any sort.

_Increase in Lynching._--In 1900 there were eight more cases than in
1899, and probably this year there will be more than there were last
year. The year is little more than half gone, and yet there are
eighty-eight cases as compared with one hundred and fifteen for all of
last year. The four Southern states, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and
Mississippi are the worst offenders. Last year there were eight cases
in Alabama, sixteen in Georgia, twenty in Louisiana, and twenty in
Mississippi--over one-half the total. This year to date there have
been nine in Alabama, twelve in Georgia, eleven in Louisiana, and
thirteen in Mississippi--again more than one-half the total number in
the whole United States.--Chicago _Tribune_.

It must be that the increase comes of the inborn human instinct to
imitate--that and man’s commonest weakness, his aversion to being
unpleasantly conspicuous, pointed at, shunned, as being on the unpopular
side. Its other name is Moral Cowardice, and is the commanding feature
of the make-up of 9,999 men in the 10,000. I am not offering this as a
discovery; privately the dullest of us knows it to be true. History will
not allow us to forget or ignore this supreme trait of our character. It
persistently and sardonically reminds us that from the beginning of the
world no revolt against a public infamy or oppression has ever been
begun but by the one daring man in the 10,000, the rest timidly waiting,
and slowly and reluctantly joining, under the influence of that man and
his fellows from the other ten thousands. The abolitionists remember.
Privately the public feeling was with them early, but each man was
afraid to speak out until he got some hint that his neighbor was
privately feeling as he privately felt himself. Then the boom followed.
It always does. It will occur in New York, some day; and even in
Pennsylvania.

It has been supposed--and said--that the people at a lynching enjoy the
spectacle and are glad of a chance to see it. It cannot be true; all
experience is against it. The people in the South are made like the
people in the North--the vast majority of whom are right-hearted and
compassionate, and would be cruelly pained by such a spectacle--and
_would attend it_, and let on to be pleased with it, if the public
approval seemed to require it. We are made like that, and we cannot help
it. The other animals are not so, but we cannot help that, either. They
lack the Moral Sense; we have no way of trading ours off, for a nickel
or some other thing above its value. The Moral Sense teaches us what is
right, and how to avoid it--when unpopular.

It is thought, as I have said, that a lynching crowd enjoys a lynching.
It certainly is not true; it is impossible of belief. It is freely
asserted--you have seen it in print many times of late--that the
lynching impulse has been misinterpreted; that it is _not_ the outcome
of a spirit of revenge, but of a “mere atrocious hunger _to look upon
human suffering_.” If that were so, the crowds that saw the Windsor
Hotel burn down would have enjoyed the horrors that fell under their
eyes. Did they? No one will think that of them, no one will make that
charge. Many risked their lives to save the men and women who were in
peril. Why did they do that? Because _none would disapprove_. There was
no restraint; they could follow their natural impulse. Why does a crowd
of the same kind of people in Texas, Colorado, Indiana, stand by,
smitten to the heart and miserable, and by ostentatious outward signs
pretend to enjoy a lynching? Why does it lift no hand or voice in
protest? Only because it would be unpopular to do it, I think; each man
is afraid of his neighbor’s disapproval--a thing which, to the general
run of the race, is more dreaded than wounds and death. When there is to
be a lynching the people hitch up and come miles to see it, bringing
their wives and children. Really to see it? No--they come only because
they are afraid to stay at home, lest it be noticed and offensively
commented upon. We may believe this, for we all know how _we_ feel about
such spectacles--also, how we would act under the like pressure. We are
not any better nor any braver than anybody else, and we must not try to
creep out of it.

A Savonarola can quell and scatter a mob of lynchers with a mere glance
of his eye: so can a Merrill[7] or a Beloat.[8] For no mob has any sand
in the presence of a man known to be splendidly brave. Besides, a
lynching mob would _like_ to be scattered, for of a certainty there are
never ten men in it who would not prefer to be somewhere else--and would
be, if they but had the courage to go. When I was a boy I saw a brave
gentleman deride and insult a mob and drive it away; and afterward, in
Nevada, I saw a noted desperado make two hundred men sit still, with the
house burning under them, until he gave them permission to retire. A
plucky man can rob a whole passenger train by himself; and the half of a
brave man can hold up a stagecoach and strip its occupants.

Then perhaps the remedy for lynchings comes to this: station a brave man
in each affected community to encourage, support, and bring to light the
deep disapproval of lynching hidden in the secret places of its
heart--for it is there, beyond question. Then those communities will
find something better to imitate--of course, being human, they must
imitate something. Where shall these brave men be found? That is indeed
a difficulty; there are not three hundred of them in the earth. If
merely _physically_ brave men would do, then it were easy; they could be
furnished by the cargo. When Hobson called for seven volunteers to go
with him to what promised to be certain death, four thousand men
responded--the whole fleet, in fact. Because _all the world would
approve_. They knew that; but if Hobson’s project had been charged with
the scoffs and jeers of the friends and associates, whose good opinion
and approval the sailors valued, he could not have got his seven.

No, upon reflection, the scheme will not work. There are not enough
morally brave men in stock. We are out of moral-courage material; we are
in a condition of profound poverty. We have those two sheriffs down
South who--but never mind, it is not enough to go around; they have to
stay and take care of their own communities.

But if we only _could_ have three or four more sheriffs of that great
breed! Would it help? I think so. For we are all imitators: other brave
sheriffs would follow; to be a dauntless sheriff would come to be
recognized as the correct and only thing, and the dreaded disapproval
would fall to the share of the other kind; courage in this office would
become custom, the absence of it a dishonor, just as courage presently
replaces the timidity of the new soldier; then the mobs and the
lynchings would disappear, and----

However. It can never be done without some starters, and where are we to
get the starters? Advertise? Very well, then, let us advertise.

In the meantime, there is another plan. Let us import American
missionaries from China, and send them into the lynching field. With
1,511 of them out there converting two Chinamen apiece per annum against
an uphill birth rate of 33,000 pagans per day,[9] it will take upward of
a million years to make the conversions balance the output and bring the
Christianizing of the country in sight to the naked eye; therefore, if
we can offer our missionaries as rich a field at home at lighter expense
and quite satisfactory in the matter of danger, why shouldn’t they find
it fair and right to come back and give us a trial? The Chinese are
universally conceded to be excellent people, honest, honorable,
industrious, trustworthy, kind-hearted, and all that--leave them alone,
they are plenty good enough just as they are; and besides, almost every
convert runs a risk of catching our civilization. We ought to be
careful. We ought to think twice before we encourage a risk like that;
for, _once civilized, China can never be uncivilized again_. We have not
been thinking of that. Very well, we ought to think of it now. Our
missionaries will find that we have a field for them--and not only for
the 1,511, but for 15,011. Let them look at the following telegram and
see if they have anything in China that is more appetizing. It is from
Texas:

The negro was taken to a tree and swung in the air. Wood and fodder
were piled beneath his body and a hot fire was made. _Then it was
suggested that the man ought not to die too quickly, and he was let
down to the ground while a party went to Dexter, about two miles
distant, to procure coal oil._ This was thrown on the flames and the
work completed.

We implore them to come back and help us in our need. Patriotism imposes
this duty on them. Our country is worse off than China; they are our
countrymen, their motherland supplicates their aid in this her hour of
deep distress. They are competent; our people are not. They are used to
scoffs, sneers, revilings, danger; our people are not. They have the
martyr spirit; nothing but the martyr spirit can brave a lynching mob,
and cow it and scatter it. They can save their country, we beseech them
to come home and do it. We ask them to read that telegram again, and yet
again, and picture the scene in their minds, and soberly ponder it; then
multiply it by 115, add 88; place the 203 in a row, allowing 600 feet of
space for each human torch, so that there may be viewing room around it
for 5,000 Christian American men, women, and children, youths and
maidens; make it night, for grim effect; have the show in a gradually
rising plain, and let the course of the stakes be uphill; the eye can
then take in the whole line of twenty-four miles of blood-and-flesh
bonfires unbroken, whereas if it occupied level ground the ends of the
line would bend down and be hidden from view by the curvature of the
earth. All being ready, now, and the darkness opaque, the stillness
impressive--for there should be no sound but the soft moaning of the
night wind and the muffled sobbing of the sacrifices--let all the far
stretch of kerosened pyres be touched off simultaneously and the glare
and the shrieks and the agonies burst heavenward to the Throne.

There are more than a million persons present; the light from the fires
flushes into vague outline against the night the spires of five thousand
churches. O kind missionary, O compassionate missionary, leave China!
come home and convert these Christians!

I believe that if anything can stop this epidemic of bloody insanities
it is martial personalities that can face mobs without flinching; and as
such personalities are developed only by familiarity with danger and by
the training and seasoning which come of resisting it, the likeliest
place to find them must be among the missionaries who have been under
tuition in China during the past year or two. We have abundance of work
for them, and for hundreds and thousands more, and the field is daily
growing and spreading. Shall we find them? We can try. In 75,000,000
there must be other Merrills and Beloats; and it is the law of our make
that each example shall wake up drowsing chevaliers of the same great
knighthood and bring them to the front.

-----

Footnote 7:

Sheriff of Carroll County, Georgia.

Footnote 8:

Sheriff, Princeton, Indiana. By that formidable power which lies in an
established reputation for cold pluck they faced lynching mobs and
securely held the field against them.

Footnote 9:

These figures are not fanciful; all of them are genuine and authentic.
They are from official missionary records in China. See Doctor
Morrison’s book on his pedestrian journey across China; he quotes them
and gives his authorities. For several years he has been the London
_Times’s_ representative in Peking, and was there through the siege.

TO THE PERSON SITTING IN DARKNESS
(_North American Review_, 1901)

See introduction to this volume for some account of this and the
following article.

Christmas will dawn in the United States over a people full of hope
and aspiration and good cheer. Such a condition means contentment and
happiness. The carping grumbler who may here and there go forth will
find few to listen to him. The majority will wonder what is the matter
with him and pass on.--New York _Tribune_, on Christmas Eve.

From the _Sun_, of New York:

The purpose of this article is not to describe the terrible offenses
against humanity committed in the name of Politics in some of the most
notorious East Side districts. _They could not be described, even
verbally._ But it is the intention to let the great mass of more or
less careless citizens of this beautiful metropolis of the New World
get some conception of the havoc and ruin wrought to man, woman, and
child in the most densely populated and least-known section of the
city. Name, date, and place can be supplied to those of little
faith--or to any man who feels himself aggrieved. It is a plain
statement of record and observation, written without license and
without garnish.

Imagine, if you can, a section of the city territory completely
dominated by one man, without whose permission neither legitimate nor
illegitimate business can be conducted; _where illegitimate business
is encouraged and legitimate business discouraged_; where the
respectable residents have to fasten their doors and windows summer
nights and sit in their rooms with asphyxiating air and 100-degree
temperature, rather than try to catch the faint whiff of breeze in
their natural breathing places, the stoops of their homes; _where
naked women dance by night in the streets, and unsexed men prowl like
vultures through the darkness on “business”_ not only permitted but
encouraged by the police; _where the education of infants begins with
the knowledge of prostitution_ and the training of little girls is
training in the arts of Phryne; where _American_ girls brought up with
the refinements of _American_ homes are imported from small towns
up-state, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and New Jersey, and kept as
virtually prisoners as if they were locked up behind jail bars until
they have lost all semblance of womanhood; _where small boys are
taught to solicit for the women of disorderly houses_; where there is
an organized society of young men _whose sole business in life is to
corrupt young girls and turn them over to bawdy houses_; where men
walking with their wives along the street are openly insulted; _where
children that have adult diseases are the chief patrons of the
hospitals and dispensaries_; where it is the rule, rather than the
exception, that _murder, rape, robbery, and theft go unpunished_--in
short where the Premium of the most awful forms of Vice is the Profit
of the politicians.

The following news from China appeared in the _Sun_, of New York, on
Christmas Eve. The italics are mine:

The Rev. Mr. Ament, of the American Board of Foreign Missions, has
returned from a trip which he made for the purpose of collecting
indemnities for damages done by Boxers. _Everywhere he went he
compelled the Chinese to pay._ He says that all his native Christians
are now provided for. He had 700 of them under his charge, and 300
were killed. He has _collected 300 taels for each_ of these murders,
and has _compelled full payment for all the property belonging to
Christians_ that was destroyed. He also assessed _fines_ amounting to
THIRTEEN TIMES the amount of the indemnity. _This money will be used
for the propagation of the Gospel._

Mr. Ament declares that the compensation he has collected is
_moderate_ when compared with the amount secured by the Catholics, who
demand, in addition to money, _head for head_. They collect 500 taels
for each murder of a Catholic. In the Wenchiu country, 680 Catholics
were killed, and for this the European Catholics here demand 750,000
strings of cash and 680 _heads_.

In the course of a conversation, Mr. Ament referred to the attitude of
the missionaries toward the Chinese. He said:

“I deny emphatically that the missionaries are _vindictive_, that they
_generally_ looted, or that they have done anything _since_ the siege
that _the circumstances did not demand_. I criticize the Americans.
_The soft hand of the Americans is not as good as the mailed fist of
the Germans._ If you deal with the Chinese with a soft hand they will
take advantage of it.

“The statement that the French government will return the loot taken
by the French soldiers is the source of the greatest amusement here.
The French soldiers were more systematic looters than the Germans, and
it is a fact that to-day _Catholic Christians_, carrying French flags
and armed with modern guns, _are looting villages_ in the Province of
Chili.”

By happy luck, we get all these glad tidings on Christmas Eve--just in
time enable us to celebrate the day with proper gayety and enthusiasm.
Our spirits soar, and we find we can even make jokes: Taels, I win,
Heads you lose.

Our Reverend Ament is the right man in the right place. What we want of
our missionaries out there is, not that they shall merely represent in
their acts and persons the grace and gentleness and charity and
loving-kindness of our religion, but that they shall also represent the
American spirit. The oldest Americans are the Pawnees. Macallum’s
History says:

When a white Boxer kills a Pawnee and destroys his property, the other
Pawnees do not trouble to seek _him_ out, they kill any white person
that comes along; also, they make some white village pay deceased’s
heirs the full cash value of deceased, together with full cash value
of the property destroyed; they also make the village pay, in
addition, _thirteen times_ the value of that property into a fund for
the dissemination of the Pawnee religion, which they regard as the
best of all religions for the softening and humanizing of the heart of
man. It is their idea that it is only fair and right that the innocent
should be made to suffer for the guilty, and that it is better that
ninety and nine innocent should suffer than that one guilty person
should escape.

Our Reverend Ament is justifiably jealous of those enterprising
Catholics, who not only get big money for each lost convert, but get
“head for head” besides. But he should soothe himself with the
reflections that the entirety of their exactions are for their own
pockets, whereas he, less selfishly, devotes only 300 taels per head to
that service, and gives the whole vast thirteen repetitions of the
property-indemnity to the service of propagating the Gospel. His
magnanimity has won him the approval of his nation, and will get him a
monument. Let him be content with these rewards. We all hold him dear
for manfully defending his fellow missionaries from exaggerated charges
which were beginning to distress us, but which his testimony has so
considerably modified that we can now contemplate them without
noticeable pain. For now we know that, even before the siege, the
missionaries were not “generally” out looting, and that, “since the
siege,” they have acted quite handsomely, except when “circumstances”
crowded them. I am arranging for the monument. Subscriptions for it can
be sent to the American Board; designs for it can be sent to me. Designs
must allegorically set forth the Thirteen Reduplications of the
Indemnity, and the Object for which they were exacted; as Ornaments, the
designs must exhibit 680 Heads, so disposed as to give a pleasing and
pretty effect; for the Catholics have done nicely, and are entitled to
notice in the monument. Mottoes may be suggested, if any shall be
discovered that will satisfactorily cover the ground.

Mr. Ament’s financial feat of squeezing a thirteenfold indemnity out of
the pauper peasants to square other people’s offenses, thus condemning
them and their women and innocent little children to inevitable
starvation and lingering death, in order that the blood money so
acquired might be “_used for the propagation of the Gospel_,” does not
flutter my serenity; although the act and the words, taken together,
concrete a blasphemy so hideous and so colossal that, without doubt, its
mate is not findable in the history of this or of any other age. Yet, if
a layman had done that thing and justified it with those words, I should
have shuddered, I know. Or, if I had done the thing and said the words
myself--However, the thought is unthinkable, irreverent as some
imperfectly informed people think me. Sometimes an ordained minister
sets out to be blasphemous. When this happens, the layman is out of the
running; he stands no chance.

We have Mr. Ament’s impassioned assurance that the missionaries are not
“vindictive.” Let us hope and pray that they will never become so, but
will remain in the almost morbidly fair and just and gentle temper which
is affording so much satisfaction to their brother and champion to-day.

The following is from the New York _Tribune_ of Christmas Eve. It comes
from that journal’s Tokyo correspondent. It has a strange and impudent
sound, but the Japanese are but partially civilized as yet. When they
become wholly civilized they will not talk so:

The missionary question, of course, occupies a foremost place in the
discussion. It is now felt as essential that the Western Powers take
cognizance of the sentiment here, that religious invasions of Oriental
countries by powerful Western organizations are tantamount to
filibustering expeditions, and should not only be discountenanced, but
that stern measures should be adopted for their suppression. The
feeling here is that the missionary organizations constitute a
constant menace to peaceful international relations.

_Shall we?_ That is, shall we go on conferring our Civilization upon the
peoples that sit in darkness, or shall we give those poor things a rest?
Shall we bang right ahead in our old-time, loud, pious way, and commit
the new century to the game; or shall we sober up and sit down and think
it over first? Would it not be prudent to get our Civilization tools
together, and see how much stock is left on hand in the way of Glass
Beads and Theology, and Maxim Guns and Hymn Books, and Trade Gin and
Torches of Progress and Enlightenment (patent adjustable ones, good to
fire villages with, upon occasion), and balance the books, and arrive at
the profit and loss, so that we may intelligently decide whether to
continue the business or sell out the property and start a new
Civilization Scheme on the proceeds?

Extending the Blessings of Civilization to our Brother who Sits in
Darkness has been a good trade and has paid well, on the whole; and
there is money in it yet, if carefully worked--but not enough, in my
judgment, to make any considerable risk advisable. The People that Sit
in Darkness are getting to be too scarce--too scarce and too shy. And
such darkness as is now left is really of but an indifferent quality,
and not dark enough for the game. The most of those People that Sit in
Darkness have been furnished with more light than was good for them or
profitable for us. We have been injudicious.

The Blessings-of-Civilization Trust, wisely and cautiously administered,
is a Daisy. There is more money in it, more territory, more sovereignty,
and other kinds of emolument, than there is in any other game that is
played. But Christendom has been playing it badly of late years, and
must certainly suffer by it, in my opinion. She has been so eager to get
every stake that appeared on the green cloth, that the People who Sit in
Darkness have noticed it--they have noticed it, and have begun to show
alarm. They have become suspicious of the Blessings of Civilization.
More--they have begun to examine them. This is not well. The Blessings
of Civilization are all right, and a good commercial property; there
could not be a better, in a dim light. In the right kind of a light, and
at a proper distance, with the goods a little out of focus, they furnish
this desirable exhibit to the Gentlemen who Sit in Darkness:

LOVE, LAW AND ORDER,
JUSTICE, LIBERTY,
GENTLENESS, EQUALITY,
CHRISTIANITY, HONORABLE DEALING,
PROTECTION TO THE WEAK, MERCY,
TEMPERANCE, EDUCATION,
--and so on.

There. Is it good? Sir, it is pie. It will bring into camp any idiot
that sits in darkness anywhere. But not if we adulterate it. It is
proper to be emphatic upon that point. This brand is strictly for
Export--apparently. _Apparently._ Privately and confidentially, it is
nothing of the kind. Privately and confidentially, it is merely an
outside cover, gay and pretty and attractive, displaying the special
patterns of our Civilization which we reserve for Home Consumption,
while _inside_ the bale is the Actual Thing that the Customer Sitting in
Darkness buys with his blood and tears and land and liberty. That Actual
Thing is, indeed, Civilization, but it is only for Export. Is there a
difference between the two brands? In some of the details, yes.

We all know that the Business is being ruined. The reason is not far to
seek. It is because our Mr. McKinley, and Mr. Chamberlain, and the
Kaiser, and the Tsar and the French have been exporting the Actual Thing
_with the outside cover left off_. This is bad for the Game. It shows
that these new players of it are not sufficiently acquainted with it.

It is a distress to look on and note the mismoves, they are so strange
and so awkward. Mr. Chamberlain manufactures a war out of materials so
inadequate and so fanciful that they make the boxes grieve and the
gallery laugh, and he tries hard to persuade himself that it isn’t
purely a private raid for cash, but has a sort of dim, vague
respectability about it somewhere, if he could only find the spot; and
that, by and by, he can scour the flag clean again after he has finished
dragging it through the mud, and make it shine and flash in the vault of
heaven once more as it had shone and flashed there a thousand years in
the world’s respect until he laid his unfaithful hand upon it. It is bad
play--bad. For it exposes the Actual Thing to Them that Sit in Darkness,
and they say: “What! Christian against Christian? And only for money? Is
_this_ a case of magnanimity, forbearance, love, gentleness, mercy,
protection of the weak--this strange and overshowy onslaught of an
elephant upon a nest of field mice, on the pretext that the mice had
squeaked an insolence at him--conduct which “no self-respecting
government could allow to pass unavenged”? as Mr. Chamberlain said. Was
that a good pretext in a small case, when it had not been a good pretext
in a large one?--for only recently Russia had affronted the elephant
three times and survived alive and unsmitten. Is this Civilization and
Progress? Is it something better than we already possess? These
harryings and burnings and desert-makings in the Transvaal--is this an
improvement on our darkness? Is it, perhaps, possible that there are two
kinds of Civilization--one for home consumption and one for the heathen
market?”

Then They that Sit in Darkness are troubled, and shake their heads; and
they read this extract from a letter of a British private, recounting
his exploits in one of Methuen’s victories, some days before the affair
of Magersfontein, and they are troubled again:

We tore up the hill and into the intrenchments, and the Boers saw we
had them; so they dropped their guns and went down on their knees and
put up their hands clasped, and begged for mercy. And we gave it
them--_with the long spoon_.

The long spoon is the bayonet. See _Lloyd’s Weekly_, London, of those
days. The same number--and the same column--contained some quite
unconscious satire in the form of shocked and bitter upbraidings of the
Boers for their brutalities and inhumanities!

Next, to our heavy damage, the Kaiser went to playing the game without
first mastering it. He lost a couple of missionaries in a riot in
Shantung, and in his account he made an overcharge for them. China had
to pay a hundred thousand dollars apiece for them, in money; twelve
miles of territory, containing several millions of inhabitants and worth
twenty million dollars; and to build a monument, and also a Christian
church; whereas the people of China could have been depended upon to
remember the missionaries without the help of these expensive memorials.
This was all bad play. Bad, because it would not, and could not, and
will not now or ever, deceive the Person Sitting in Darkness. He knows
that it was an overcharge. He knows that a missionary is like any other
man: he is worth merely what you can supply his place for, and no more.
He is useful, but so is a doctor, so is a sheriff, so is an editor; but
a just Emperor does not charge war prices for such. A diligent,
intelligent, but obscure missionary, and a diligent, intelligent country
editor are worth much, and we know it; but they are not worth the earth.
We esteem such an editor, and we are sorry to see him go; but, when he
goes, we should consider twelve miles of territory, and a church, and a
fortune, overcompensation for his loss. I mean, if he was a Chinese
editor, and we had to settle for him. It is no proper figure for an
editor or a missionary; one can get shop-worn kings for less. It was bad
play on the Kaiser’s part. It got this property, true; but it _produced
the Chinese revolt_, the indignant uprising of China’s traduced
patriots, the Boxers. The results have been expensive to Germany, and to
the other Disseminators of Progress and the Blessings of Civilization.

The Kaiser’s claim was paid, yet it was bad play, for it could not fail
to have an evil effect upon Persons Sitting in Darkness in China. They
would muse upon the event, and be likely to say: “Civilization is
gracious and beautiful, for such is its reputation; but can we afford
it? There are rich Chinamen, perhaps they can afford it; but this tax is
not laid upon them, it is laid upon the peasants of Shantung; it is they
that must pay this mighty sum, and their wages are but four cents a day.
Is this a better civilization than ours, and holier and higher and
nobler? Is not this rapacity? Is not this extortion? Would Germany
charge America two hundred thousand dollars for two missionaries, and
shake the mailed fist in her face, and send warships, and send soldiers,
and say: ‘Seize twelve miles of territory, worth twenty millions of
dollars, as additional pay for the missionaries; and make those peasants
build a monument to the missionaries, and a costly Christian church to
remember them by?’ And later would Germany say to her soldiers: ‘March
through America and slay, _giving no quarter_; make the German face
there, as has been our Hun-face here, a terror for a thousand years;
march through the Great Republic and slay, slay, slay, carving a road
for our offended religion through its heart and bowels?’ Would Germany
do like this to America, to England, to France, to Russia? Or only to
China, the helpless--imitating the elephant’s assault upon the field
mice? Had we better invest in this Civilization--this Civilization which
called Napoleon a buccaneer for carrying off Venice’s bronze horses, but
which steals our ancient astronomical instruments from our walls, and
goes looting like common bandits--that is, all the alien soldiers except
America’s; and (Americans again excepted) storms frightened villages and
cables the result to glad journals at home every day: ‘Chinese losses,
450 killed; ours, _one officer and two men wounded_. Shall proceed
against neighboring village to-morrow, where a _massacre_ is reported.’
Can we afford Civilization?”

And next Russia must go and play the game injudiciously. She affronts
England once or twice--with the Person Sitting in Darkness observing and
noting; by moral assistance of France and Germany, she robs Japan of her
hard-earned spoil, all swimming in Chinese blood--Port Arthur--with the
Person again observing and noting; then she seizes Manchuria, raids its
villages, and chokes its great river with the swollen corpses of
countless massacred peasants--that astonished Person still observing and
noting. And perhaps he is saying to himself: “It is yet _another_
Civilized Power, with its banner of the Prince of Peace in one hand and
its loot basket and its butcher knife in the other. Is there no
salvation for us but to adopt Civilization and lift ourselves down to
its level?”

And by and by comes America, and our Master of the Game plays it
badly--plays it as Mr. Chamberlain was playing it in South Africa. It
was a mistake to do that; also, it was one which was quite unlooked for
in a Master who was playing it so well in Cuba. In Cuba, he was playing
the usual and regular _American_ game, and it was winning, for there is
no way to beat it. The Master, contemplating Cuba, said: “Here is an
oppressed and friendless little nation which is willing to fight to be
free; we go partners, and put up the strength of seventy million
sympathizers and the resources of the United States: play!” Nothing but
Europe combined could call that hand: and Europe cannot combine on
anything. There, in Cuba, he was following our great traditions in a way
which made us very proud of him, and proud of the deep dissatisfaction
which his play was provoking in continental Europe. Moved by a high
inspiration, he threw out those stirring words which proclaimed that
forcible annexation would be “criminal aggression”; and in that
utterance fired another “shot heard round the world.” The memory of that
fine saying will be outlived by the remembrance of no act of his but
one--that he forgot it within the twelvemonth, and its honorable gospel
along with it.

For, presently, came the Philippine temptation. It was strong; it was
too strong, and he made that bad mistake: he played the European game,
the Chamberlain game. It was a pity; it was a great pity, that error;
that one grievous error, that irrevocable error. For it was the very
place and time to play the American game again. And at no cost. Rich
winnings to be gathered in, too; rich and permanent; indestructible; a
fortune transmissible forever to the children of the flag. Not land, not
money, not dominion--no, something worth many times more than that
dross: our share, the spectacle of a nation of long harassed and
persecuted slaves set free through our influence; our posterity’s share,
the golden memory of that fair deed. The game was in our hands. If it
had been played according to the American rules, Dewey would have sailed
away from Manila as soon as he had destroyed the Spanish fleet--after
putting up a sign on shore guaranteeing foreign property and life
against damage by the Filipinos, and warning the Powers that
interference with the emancipated patriots would be regarded as an act
unfriendly to the United States. The Powers cannot combine, in even a
bad cause, and the sign would not have been molested.

Dewey could have gone about his affairs elsewhere, and left the
competent Filipino army to starve out the little Spanish garrison and
send it home, and the Filipino citizens to set up the form of government
they might prefer, and deal with the friars and their doubtful
acquisitions according to Filipino ideas of fairness and justice--ideas
which have since been tested and found to be of as high an order as any
that prevail in Europe or America.

But we played the Chamberlain game, and lost the chance to add another
Cuba and another honorable deed to our good record.

The more we examine the mistake, the more clearly we perceive that it is
going to be bad for the Business. The Person Sitting in Darkness is
almost sure to say: “There is something curious about this--curious and
unaccountable. There must be two Americas: one that sets the captive
free, and one that takes a once-captive’s new freedom away from him, and
picks a quarrel with him with nothing to found it on; then kills him to
get his land.”

The truth is, the Person Sitting in Darkness _is_ saying things like
that; and for the sake of the Business we must persuade him to look at
the Philippine matter in another and healthier way. We must arrange his
opinions for him. I believe it can be done; for Mr. Chamberlain has
arranged England’s opinion of the South African matter, and done it most
cleverly and successfully. He presented the facts--some of the
facts--and showed those confiding people what the facts meant. He did it
statistically, which is a good way. He used the formula: “Twice 2 are
14, and 2 from 9 leaves 35.” Figures are effective; figures will
convince the elect.

Now, my plan is a still bolder one than Mr. Chamberlain’s, though
apparently a copy of it. Let us be franker than Mr. Chamberlain; let us
audaciously present the whole of the facts, shirking none, then explain
them according to Mr. Chamberlain’s formula. This daring truthfulness
will astonish and dazzle the Person Sitting in Darkness, and he will
take the Explanation down before his mental vision has had time to get
back into focus. Let us say to him:

“Our case is simple. On the 1st of May, Dewey destroyed the Spanish
fleet. This left the Archipelago in the hands of its proper and rightful
owners, the Filipino nation. Their army numbered 30,000 men, and they
were competent to whip out or starve out the little Spanish garrison;
then the people could set up a government of their own devising. Our
traditions required that Dewey should now set up his warning sign, and
go away. But the Master of the Game happened to think of another
plan--the European plan. He acted upon it. This was, to send out an
army--ostensibly to help the native patriots put the finishing touch
upon their long and plucky struggle for independence, but really to take
their land away from them and keep it. That is, in the interest of
Progress and Civilization. The plan developed, stage by stage, and quite
satisfactorily. We entered into a military alliance with the trusting
Filipinos, and they hemmed in Manila on the land side, and by their
valuable help the place, with its garrison of 8,000 or 10,000 Spaniards,
was captured--a thing which we could not have accomplished unaided at
that time. We got their help by--by ingenuity. We knew they were
fighting for their independence, and that they had been at it for two
years. We knew they supposed that we also were fighting in their worthy
cause--just as we had helped the Cubans fight for Cuban
independence--and we allowed them to go on thinking so. _Until Manila
was ours and we could get along without them._ Then we showed our hand.
Of course, they were surprised--that was natural; surprised and
disappointed; disappointed and grieved. To them it looked un-American;
uncharacteristic; foreign to our established traditions. And this was
natural, too; for we were only playing the American Game in public--in
private it was the European. It was neatly done, very neatly, and it
bewildered them. They could not understand it; for we had been so
friendly--so affectionate, even--with those simple-minded patriots! We,
our own selves, had brought back out of exile their leader, their hero,
their hope, their Washington--Aguinaldo; brought him in a warship, in
high honor, under the sacred shelter and hospitality of the flag;
brought him back and restored him to his people, and got their moving
and eloquent gratitude for it. Yes, we had been so friendly to them, and
had heartened them up in so many ways! We had lent them guns and
ammunition; advised with them; exchanged pleasant courtesies with them;
placed our sick and wounded in their kindly care; intrusted our Spanish
prisoners to their humane and honest hands; fought shoulder to shoulder
with them against “the common enemy” (our own phrase); praised their
courage, praised their gallantry, praised their mercifulness, praised
their fine and honorable conduct; borrowed their trenches, borrowed
strong positions which they had previously captured from the Spaniards;
petted them, lied to them--officially proclaiming that our land and
naval forces came to give them their freedom and displace the bad
Spanish Government--fooled them, used them until we needed them no
longer; then derided the sucked orange and threw it away. We kept the
positions which we had beguiled them of; by and by, we moved a force
forward and overlapped patriot ground--a clever thought, for we needed
trouble, and this would produce it. A Filipino soldier, crossing the
ground, where no one had a right to forbid him, was shot by our sentry.
The badgered patriots resented this with arms, without waiting to know
whether Aguinaldo, who was absent, would approve or not. Aguinaldo did
not approve; but that availed nothing. What we wanted, in the interest
of Progress and Civilization, was the Archipelago, unencumbered by
patriots struggling for independence; and War was what we needed. We
clinched our opportunity. It is Mr. Chamberlain’s case over again--at
least in its motive and intention; and we played the game as adroitly as
he played it himself.”

At this point in our frank statement of fact to the Person Sitting in
Darkness, we should throw in a little trade taffy about the Blessings of
Civilization--for a change, and for the refreshment of his spirit--then
go on with our tale:

“We and the patriots having captured Manila, Spain’s ownership
of the Archipelago and her sovereignty over it were at an
end--obliterated--annihilated--not a rag or shred of either remaining
behind. It was then that we conceived the divinely humorous idea of
_buying_ both of these specters from Spain! [It is quite safe to confess
this to the Person Sitting in Darkness, since neither he nor any other
sane person will believe it.] In buying those ghosts for twenty
millions, we also contracted to take care of the friars and their
accumulations. I think we also agreed to propagate leprosy and smallpox,
but as to this there is doubt. But it is not important; persons
afflicted with the friars do not mind other diseases.

“With our Treaty ratified, Manila subdued, and our Ghosts secured, we
had no further use for Aguinaldo and the owners of the Archipelago. We
forced a war, and we have been hunting America’s guest and ally through
the woods and swamps ever since.”

At this point in the tale, it will be well to boast a little of our war
work and our heroisms in the field, so as to make our performance look
as fine as England’s in South Africa; but I believe it will not be best
to emphasize this too much. We must be cautious. Of course, we must read
the war telegrams to the Person, in order to keep up our frankness; but
we can throw an air of humorousness over them, and that will modify
their grim eloquence a little, and their rather indiscret exhibitions of
gory exultation. Before reading to him the following display heads of
the dispatches of November 18, 1900, it will be well to practice on them
in private first, so as to get the right tang of lightness and gayety
into them:

“ADMINISTRATION WEARY OF
PROTRACTED HOSTILITIES!”

“REAL WAR AHEAD FOR FILIPINO
REBELS!”[10]

“WILL SHOW NO MERCY!”
“KITCHENER’S PLAN ADOPTED!”

Kitchener knows how to handle disagreeable people who are fighting for
their homes and their liberties, and we must let on that we are merely
imitating Kitchener, and have no national interest in the matter,
further than to get ourselves admired by the Great Family of Nations, in
which august company our Master of the Game has bought a place for us in
the back row.

Of course, we must not venture to ignore our General MacArthur’s
reports--oh, why do they keep on printing those embarrassing things?--we
must drop them trippingly from the tongue and take the chances:

During the last ten months our losses have been 268 killed and 750
wounded; Filipino loss, _three thousand two hundred and twenty-seven
killed_, and 694 wounded.

We must stand ready to grab the Person Sitting in Darkness, for he will
swoon away at this confession, saying: “Good God! those ‘niggers’ spare
their wounded, and the Americans massacre theirs!”

We must bring him to, and coax him and coddle him, and assure him that
the ways of Providence are best, and that it would not become us to find
fault with them; and then, to show him that we are only imitators, not
originators, we must read the following passage from the letter of an
American soldier lad in the Philippines to his mother, published in
_Public Opinion_, of Decorah, Iowa, describing the finish of a
victorious battle:

“WE NEVER LEFT ONE ALIVE. IF ONE WAS WOUNDED, WE WOULD RUN OUR BAYONETS
THROUGH HIM.”

Having now laid all the historical facts before the Person Sitting in
Darkness, we should bring him to again, and explain them to him. We
should say to him:

“They look doubtful, but in reality they are not. There have been lies;
yes, but they were told in a good cause. We have been treacherous; but
that was only in order that real good might come out of apparent evil.
True, we have crushed a deceived and confiding people; we have turned
against the weak and the friendless who trusted us; we have stamped out
a just and intelligent and well-ordered republic; we have stabbed an
ally in the back and slapped the face of a guest; we have bought a
Shadow from an enemy that hadn’t it to sell; we have robbed a trusting
friend of his land and his liberty; we have invited our clean young men
to shoulder a discredited musket and do bandits’ work under a flag which
bandits have been accustomed to fear, not to follow; we have debauched
America’s honor and blackened her face before the world; but each detail
was for the best. We know this. The Head of every State and Sovereignty
in Christendom and 90 per cent of every legislative body in Christendom,
including our Congress and our fifty state legislatures, are members not
only of the church, but also of the Blessings-of-Civilization Trust.
This world-girdling accumulation of trained morals, high principles, and
justice cannot do an unright thing, an unfair thing, an ungenerous
thing, an unclean thing. It knows what it is about. Give yourself no
uneasiness; it is all right.”

Now then, that will convince the Person. You will see. It will restore
the Business. Also, it will elect the Master of the Game to the vacant
place in the Trinity of our national gods; and there on their high
thrones the Three will sit, age after age, in the people’s sight, each
bearing the Emblem of his service: Washington, the Sword of the
Liberator; Lincoln, the Slave’s Broken Chains; the Master, the Chains
Repaired.

It will give the Business a splendid new start. You will see.

Everything is prosperous, now; everything is just as we should wish it.
We have got the Archipelago, and we shall never give it up. Also, we
have every reason to hope that we shall have an opportunity before very
long to slip out of our congressional contract with Cuba and give her
something better in the place of it. It is a rich country, and many of
us are already beginning to see that the contract was a sentimental
mistake. But now--right now--is the best time to do some profitable
rehabilitating work--work that will set us up and make us comfortable,
and discourage gossip. We cannot conceal from ourselves that, privately,
we are a little troubled about our uniform. It is one of our prides; it
is acquainted with honor; it is familiar with great deeds and noble; we
love it, we revere it; and so this errand it is on makes us uneasy. And
our flag--another pride of ours, our chiefest! We have worshiped it so;
and when we have seen it in far lands--glimpsing it unexpectedly in that
strange sky, waving its welcome and benediction to us--we have caught
our breaths, and uncovered our heads, and couldn’t speak, for a moment,
for the thought of what it was to us and the great ideals it stood for.
Indeed, we _must_ do something about these things; it is easily managed.
We can have a special one--our states do it: we can have just our usual
flag, with the white stripes painted black and the stars replaced by the
skull and crossbones.

And we do not need that Civil Commission out there. Having no powers, it
has to invent them, and that kind of work cannot be effectively done by
just anybody; an expert is required. Mr. Croker can be spared. We do not
want the United States represented there, but only the Game.

By help of these suggested amendments, Progress and Civilization in that
country can have a boom, and it will take in the Persons who are Sitting
in Darkness, and we can resume Business at the old stand.

-----

Footnote 10:

“Rebels!” Mumble that funny word--don’t let the Person catch it
distinctly.

TO MY MISSIONARY CRITICS
(_North American Review_, 1901)

I have received many newspaper cuttings; also letters from several
clergymen; also a note from the Rev. Dr. Judson Smith, Corresponding
Secretary of the American Board of Foreign Missions--all of a like
tenor; all saying, substantially, what is said in the cutting here
copied:

AN APOLOGY DUE FROM MR. CLEMENS

The evidence of the past day or two should induce Mark Twain to make
for the amen corner and formulate a prompt apology for his scathing
attack on the Rev. Dr. Ament, the veteran Chinese missionary. The
assault was based on a Peking dispatch to the New York _Sun_, which
said that Dr. Ament had collected from the Chinese in various places
damages thirteen times in excess of actual losses. So Mark Twain
charged Mr. Ament with bullyragging, extortion, and things. A Peking
dispatch to the _Sun_ yesterday, however, explains that the amount
collected was not thirteen times the damage sustained, but _one-third
in excess of the indemnities_, and that the blunder was due to a cable
error in transmission. The 1-3d got converted into 13. Yesterday the
Rev. Judson Smith, Secretary of the American Board, received a
dispatch from Dr. Ament, calling attention to the cable blunder, and
declaring that all the collections which he made were _approved by the
Chinese officials_. The fractional amount that was collected in excess
of actual losses, he explains, is being _used for the support of
widows and orphans_.

So collapses completely--and convulsively--Mark Twain’s sensational
and ugly bombardment of a missionary whose character and services
should have exempted him from such an assault.

From the charge the underpinning has been knocked out. To Dr. Ament
Mr. Clemens has done an injustice which is gross but unintentional. If
Mark Twain is the man we take him to be he won’t be long in filing a
retraction, plus an apology.

I have no prejudice against apologies. I trust I shall never withhold
one when it is due; I trust I shall never even have a disposition to do
so. These letters and newspaper paragraphs are entitled to my best
attention; respect for their writers and for the humane feeling which
has prompted their utterances requires this of me. It may be barely
possible that, if these requests for an apology had reached me before
the 20th of February, I might have had a sort of qualified chance to
apologize; but on that day appeared the two little cablegrams referred
to in the newspaper cutting copied above--one from the Rev. Dr. Smith to
the Rev. Dr. Ament, the other from Dr. Ament to Dr. Smith--and my small
chance died then. In my opinion, these cablegrams ought to have been
suppressed, for it seems clear that they give Dr. Ament’s case entirely
away. Still, that is only an opinion, and may be a mistake. It will be
best to examine the case from the beginning, by the light of the
documents connected with it.

EXHIBIT A

This is a dispatch from Mr. Chamberlain,[11] chief of the _Sun’s_
correspondence staff in Peking. It appeared in the _Sun_ last Christmas
Eve, and in referring to it hereafter I will call it the “C. E.
dispatch” for short:

The Rev. Mr. Ament, of the American Board of Foreign Missions, has
returned from a trip which he made for the purpose of collecting
indemnities for damages done by Boxers. Everywhere he went he
compelled the Chinese to pay. He says that all his native Christians
are now provided for. He had seven hundred of them under his charge,
and three hundred were killed. He has collected 300 taels for each of
these murders, and has compelled full payment for all the property
belonging to Christians that was destroyed. He also assessed fines
amounting to thirteen times[12] the amount of the indemnity. This
money will be used for the propagation of the Gospel.

Mr. Ament declares that the compensation he has collected is moderate
when compared with the amount secured by the Catholics, who demand, in
addition to money, head for head. They collect 500 taels for each
murder of a Catholic. In the Wen-Chiu country 680 Catholics were
killed, and for this the European Catholics here demand 750,000
strings of cash and 680 heads.

In the course of a conversation Mr. Ament referred to the attitude of
the missionaries toward the Chinese. He said:

“I deny emphatically that the missionaries are vindictive, that they
generally looted, or that they have done anything since the siege that
the circumstances did not demand. I criticize the Americans. The soft
hand of the Americans is not as good as the mailed fist of the
Germans. If you deal with the Chinese with a soft hand they will take
advantage of it.”

In an article addressed “To the Person Sitting in Darkness,” published
in the _North American Review_ for February, I made some comments upon
this C. E. dispatch.

In an Open Letter to me, from the Rev. Dr. Smith, published in the
_Tribune_ of February 15th, doubt is cast upon the authenticity of the
dispatch.

Up to the 20th of February, this doubt was an important factor in the
case: Dr. Ament’s brief cablegram, published on that date, took the
importance all out of it.

In the Open Letter, Dr. Smith quotes this passage from a letter from Dr.
Ament, dated November 13th. The italics are mine:

_This_ time I proposed to settle affairs _without the aid of soldiers
or_ legations.

This cannot mean two things, but only one: that, previously, he _had_
collected by armed force.

Also, in the Open Letter, Dr. Smith quotes some praises of Dr. Ament and
the Rev. Mr. Tewksbury, furnished by the Rev. Dr. Sheffield, and says:

Dr. Sheffield is not accustomed to speak thus of _thieves_, or
_extortioners_, or _braggarts_.

What can he mean by those vigorous expressions? Can he mean that the
first two would be applicable to a missionary who should collect from B,
with the “aid of soldiers,” indemnities possibly due by A, and upon
occasion go out looting?

EXHIBIT B

Testimony of George Lynch (indorsed as entirely trustworthy by the
_Tribune_ and the _Herald_), war correspondent in the Cuban and South
African wars, and in the march upon Peking for the rescue of the
legations. The italics are mine:

When the _soldiers_ were prohibited from looting, no such prohibitions
seemed to operate with the _missionaries_. For instance, the _Rev. Mr.
Tewksbury held a great sale of looted goods, which lasted several
days_.

A day or two after the relief, when looking for a place to sleep in, I
met the Rev. Mr. Ament, of the American Board of Foreign Missions. _He
told me_ he was going to take possession of the house of a wealthy
Chinaman who was an old enemy of his, as he had interfered much in the
past with his missionary labors in Peking. A couple of days afterwards
_he did so_, and held a _great sale of his enemy’s effects_. I bought
a sable cloak at it for $125, and a couple of statues of Buddha. As
the stock became depleted _it was replenished by the efforts of his
converts, who were ransacking the houses in the neighborhood_.--New
York _Herald_, February 18th.

It is Dr. Smith, not I, who has suggested that persons who act in this
way are “thieves and extortioners.”

EXHIBIT C

Sir Robert Hart, in the _Fortnightly Review_ for January, 1901. This
witness has been for many years the most prominent and important
Englishman in China, and bears an irreproachable reputation for
moderation, fairness, and truth-speaking. In closing a description of
the revolting scenes which followed the occupation of Peking, when the
Christian armies (with the proud exception of the American soldiery, let
us be thankful for that) gave themselves up to a ruthless orgy of
robbery and spoliation, he says (the italics are mine):

And even some _missionaries_ took such a _leading_ part in “spoiling
the Egyptians” for the greater glory of God that a bystander was heard
to say: “_For a century to come Chinese converts will consider looting
and vengeance Christian virtues._”

It is Dr. Smith, not I, who has suggested that persons who act in this
way are “thieves and extortioners.” According to Mr. Lynch and Mr.
Martin (another war correspondent), Dr. Ament helped to spoil several of
those Egyptians. Mr. Martin took a photograph of the scene. It was
reproduced in the _Herald_. I have it.

EXHIBIT D

In a brief reply to Dr. Smith’s Open Letter to me, I said this in the
_Tribune_. I am italicizing several words--for a purpose:

Whenever he (Dr. Smith) can produce from the Rev. Mr. Ament an
assertion that the _Sun’s_ character-blasting dispatch was not
authorized _by him_, and whenever Dr. Smith can buttress Mr. Ament’s
disclaimer with a confession from _Mr. Chamberlain_, the head of the
Laffan News Service in China, that that dispatch was a false invention
_and unauthorized_, the case against Mr. Ament will fall at once to
the ground.

EXHIBIT E

Brief cablegrams, referred to above, which passed between Dr. Smith and
Dr. Ament, and were published on February 20th:

Ament, Peking: Reported December 24 your collecting thirteen times
actual losses; using for propagating the Gospel. Are these statements
true? Cable specific answer.

SMITH.

Statement untrue. Collected 1-3 for church expenses, additional actual
damages; now supporting widows and orphans. Publication thirteen times
blunder cable. All collections received approval Chinese officials,
who are urging further settlements same line.

AMENT.

Only two questions are asked; “specific” answers required; no perilous
wanderings among the other details of the unhappy dispatch desired.

EXHIBIT F

Letter from Dr. Smith to me, dated March 8th. The italics are mine; they
tag inaccuracies of statement:

Permit me to call your attention to the marked paragraphs in the
inclosed papers, and to ask you to note their relation to the two
conditions named in your letter to the New York _Tribune_ of February
15th.

The first is _Dr. Ament’s denial of the truth of the dispatch in the
New York “Sun,”_ of December 24th, on which your criticisms of him in
the _North American Review_ of February were founded. The second is a
correction by the _“Sun’s”_ _special correspondent_ in Peking of the
dispatch printed in the _Sun_ of December 24th.

Since, as you state in your letter to the _Tribune_, “the case against
Mr. Ament would fall to the ground” _if Mr. Ament denied the truth_ of
the _Sun’s_ first dispatch, and _if the ‘Sun’s’ news agency_ in Peking
also _declared that dispatch false_, and these two conditions _have
thus been fulfilled_, I am sure that upon having these _facts_ brought
to your attention you will gladly withdraw the criticisms that were
_founded on a “cable blunder.”_

I think Dr. Smith ought to read me more carefully; then he would not
make so many mistakes. Within the narrow space of two paragraphs,
totaling eleven lines, he has scored nine departures from fact out of a
possible 9½. Now, is that parliamentary? I do not treat him like that.
Whenever I quote him, I am particular not to do him the least wrong, or
make him say anything he did not say.

(1) Mr. Ament doesn’t “deny the truth of the C. E. dispatch”; he merely
changes one of its phrases, without materially changing the meaning, and
(immaterially) corrects a cable blunder (which correction I accept). He
was asked no question about the other four fifths of the C. E. dispatch.
(2) I said nothing about “special” correspondents; I named the right and
responsible man--Mr. Chamberlain. The “correction” referred to is a
repetition of the one I have just accepted, which (immaterially) changes
“thirteen times” to “one third” extra tax. (3) I did not say anything
about “the _Sun’s_ news agency”; I said “Chamberlain.” I have every
confidence in Mr. Chamberlain, but I am not personally acquainted with
the others. (4) Once more--Mr. Ament didn’t “deny the truth” of the C.
E. dispatch, but merely made unimportant emendations of a couple of its
many details. (5) I did not say “if Mr. Ament denied the truth” of the
C. E. dispatch: I said, if he would assert that the dispatch was not
“authorized” _by him_. For example, I did not suppose that the charge
that the Catholic missionaries wanted 680 Chinamen beheaded was true;
but I did want to know if Dr. Ament personally authorized that statement
and the others, as coming from his lips. Another detail: one of my
conditions was that Mr. Chamberlain must not stop with confessing that
the C. E. was a “false invention,” he must also confess that it was
“_unauthorized_.” Dr. Smith has left out that large detail. (6) The
_Sun’s_ news agency did not “declare the C. E. dispatch false,” but
confined itself to correcting one unimportant detail of its long
list--the change of “13 times” to “one third” extra. (7) The “two
conditions” have not “been fulfilled”--far from it. (8) Those details
labeled “facts” are only fancies. (9) Finally, my criticisms were by no
means confined to that detail of the C. E. dispatch which we now accept
as having been a “cable blunder.”

Setting to one side these nine departures from fact, I find that what is
left of the eleven lines is straight and true. I am not blaming Dr.
Smith for these discrepancies--it would not be right, it would not be
fair. I make the proper allowances. He has not been a journalist, as I
have been--a trade wherein a person is brought to book by the rest of
the press so often for divergencies that, by and by, he gets to be
almost morbidly afraid to indulge in them. It is so with me. I always
have the disposition to tell what is not so; I was born with it; we all
have it. But I try not to do it now, because I have found out that it is
unsafe. But with the Doctor of course it is different.

EXHIBIT G

I wanted to get at the whole of the facts as regards the C. E. dispatch,
and so I wrote to China for them, when I found that the Board was not
going to do it. But I am not allowed to wait. It seemed quite within the
possibilities that a full detail of the facts might furnish me a chance
to make an apology to Mr. Ament--a chance which, I give you my word, I
would have honestly used, and not abused. But it is no matter. If the
Board is not troubled about the bulk of that lurid dispatch, why should
I be? I answered the apology-urging letters of several clergymen with
the information that I had written to China for the details, and said I
thought it was the only sure way of getting into a position to do fair
and full justice to all concerned; but a couple of them replied that it
was not a matter that could wait. That is to say, groping your way out
of a jungle in the dark with guesses and conjectures is better than a
straight march out in the sunlight of fact. It seems a curious idea.

However, those two clergymen were in a large measure right--from their
point of view and the Board’s; which is, putting it in the form of a
couple of questions:

1. _Did Dr. Ament collect the assessed damages and thirteen times over?_
The answer is: He did _not_. He collected only a _third_ over.

2. _Did he apply the third to the “propagation of the Gospel?”_ The
answer is this correction: He applied it to “church expenses.” Part or
all of the outlay, it appears, goes to “supporting widows and orphans.”
It may be that church expenses and supporting widows and orphans are not
part of the machinery for propagating the Gospel. I supposed they were,
but it isn’t any matter; I prefer this phrasing; it is not so blunt as
the other.

In the opinion of the two clergymen and of the Board, these two points
are _the only important ones_ in the whole C. E. dispatch.

I accept that. Therefore let us throw out the rest of the dispatch as
being no longer a part of Dr. Ament’s case.

EXHIBIT H

The two clergymen and the Board are quite content with Dr. Ament’s
answers upon the two points.

Upon the first point of the two, my own viewpoint may be indicated by a
question:

_Did Dr. Ament collect from B (whether by compulsion or simple demand)
even so much as a penny in payment for murders or depredations, without
knowing, beyond question, that B, and not another, committed the murders
or the depredations?_

Or, in other words:

_Did Dr. Ament ever, by chance or through ignorance, make the innocent
pay the debts of the guilty?_

In the article entitled “To the Person Sitting in Darkness,” I put
forward that point in a paragraph taken from Macallum’s (imaginary)
“History”:

EXHIBIT I

When a white Boxer kills a Pawnee and destroys his property the other
Pawnees do not trouble to seek _him_ out; they kill any white person
that comes along; also, they make some white village pay deceased’s
heirs the full cash value of deceased, together with full cash value
of the property destroyed; they also make the village pay, in
addition, _thirteen times_[13] the value of that property into a fund
for the dissemination of the Pawnee religion, which they regard as the
best of all religions for the softening and humanizing of the heart of
man. It is their idea that it is only fair and right _that the
innocent should be made to suffer for the guilty_, and that it is
better that 90 and 9 innocent should suffer than that one guilty
person should escape.

We all know that Dr. Ament did not bring suspected persons into a duly
organized court and try them by just and fair Christian and civilized
methods, but proclaimed his “conditions,” and collected damages from the
innocent and the guilty alike, without any court proceedings at all.[14]
That he himself, and not the villagers, made the “conditions,” we learn
from his letter of November 13th, already quoted from--the one in which
he remarked that, upon _that_ occasion he brought no soldiers with him.
The italics are mine:

After our _conditions_ were known many villagers came of their own
accord and brought their money with them.

Not all, but “many.” The Board really believes that those hunted and
harried paupers out there were not only willing to strip themselves to
pay Boxer damages, whether they owed them or not, but were sentimentally
eager to do it. Mr. Ament says, in his letter: “The villagers were
extremely grateful because I brought no foreign soldiers, and were glad
to settle on the terms proposed.” Some of those people know more about
theology than they do about human nature. I do not remember encountering
even a Christian who was “glad” to pay money he did not owe; and as for
a Chinaman doing it, why, dear me, the thing is unthinkable. We have all
seen Chinamen, many Chinamen, but not that kind. It is a new kind: an
invention of the Board--and “soldiers.”

CONCERNING THE COLLECTIONS

What was the “one third extra”? Money due? No. Was it a theft, then?
Putting aside the “one third extra,” what was the _remainder_ of the
exacted indemnity, if collected from persons not _known_ to owe it, and
without Christian and civilized forms of procedure? Was _it_ theft, was
it robbery? In America it would be that; in Christian Europe it would be
that. I have great confidence in Dr. Smith’s judgment concerning this
detail, and he calls it “theft and extortion”--even in China; for he was
talking about the “thirteen times” at the time that he gave it that
strong name.[15] It is his idea that, when you make guilty and innocent
villagers pay the appraised damages, and then make them pay thirteen
times that, besides, the _thirteen_ stand for “theft and extortion.”

Then what does _one third_ extra stand for? Will he give that one third
a name? Is it Modified Theft and Extortion? Is that it? The girl who was
rebuked for having borne an illegitimate child excused herself by
saying, “But it is such a _little_ one.”

When the “thirteen-times-extra” was alleged, it stood for theft and
extortion, in Dr. Smith’s eyes, and he was shocked. But when Dr. Ament
showed that he had taken only a _third_ extra, instead of thirteenfold,
Dr. Smith was relieved, content, happy. I declare I cannot imagine why.
That editor--quoted at the head of this article--was happy about it,
too. I cannot think why. He thought I ought to “make for the amen corner
and formulate a prompt apology.” To whom, and for what? It is too deep
for me.

To Dr. Smith, the “thirteenfold extra” clearly stood for “theft and
extortion,” and he was right, distinctly right, indisputably right. He
manifestly thinks that when it got scaled away down to a mere “one
third,” a little thing like that was something other than “theft and
extortion.” Why? Only the Board knows! I will try to explain this
difficult problem, so that the Board can get an idea of it. If a pauper
owes me a dollar, and I catch him unprotected and make him pay me
fourteen dollars, thirteen of it is “theft and extortion”; if I make him
pay only a dollar and thirty-three and a third cents the thirty-three
and a third cents are “theft and extortion” just the same. I will put it
in another way, still simpler. If a man owes me one dog--any kind of a
dog, the breed is of no consequence--and I----But let it go; the Board
would never understand it. It _can’t_ understand these involved and
difficult things.

But _if_ the Board could understand, then I could furnish some more
instruction--which is this. The one third, obtained by “theft and
extortion,” is _tainted money_, and cannot be purified even by defraying
“church expenses” and “supporting widows and orphans” with it. It has to
be restored to the people it was taken from.

Also, there is another view of these things. By our Christian code of
morals and law, the _whole_ $1.33 1-3, if taken from a man not formally
_proven_ to have committed the damage the dollar represents, is “theft
and extortion.” It cannot be honestly used for any purpose at all. It
must be handed back to the man it was taken from.

Is there no way, then, to justify these thefts and extortions and make
them clean and fair and honorable? Yes, there is. It can be done; it has
been done; it continues to be done--by revising the Ten Commandments and
bringing them down to date: for use in pagan lands. For example:

_Thou shalt not steal_--except when it is the custom of the country.

This way out is recognized and _approved_ by all the best authorities,
including the Board. I will cite witnesses.

_The newspaper cutting, above_: “Dr. Ament declares that all the
collections which he made were approved by the _Chinese_ officials.” The
editor is satisfied.

_Dr. Ament’s cable to Dr. Smith_: “All collections received approval
_Chinese_ officials.” Dr. Ament is satisfied.

_Letters from eight clergymen_--all to the same effect: Dr. Ament merely
did as the _Chinese_ do. So they are satisfied.

_Mr. Ward, of the “Independent.”_

_The Rev. Dr. Washington Gladden._

I have mislaid the letters of these gentlemen and cannot quote their
words, but they are of the satisfied.

_The Rev. Dr. Smith_, in his Open Letter, published in the _Tribune:_
“The whole procedure [Dr. Ament’s] is in accordance with a custom among
the _Chinese_, of holding a village responsible for wrongs suffered in
that village, and especially making the head man of the village
accountable for wrongs committed there.” Dr. Smith is satisfied. Which
means that the Board is satisfied.

The “head man”! Why, then, this poor rascal, innocent or guilty, must
pay the whole bill, if he cannot squeeze it out of his poor-devil
neighbors. But, indeed, he can be depended upon to try, even to the
skinning them of their last brass farthing, their last rag of clothing,
their last ounce of food. He can be depended upon to get the indemnity
out of them, though it cost stripes and blows, blood-tears, and flesh.

THE TALE OF THE KING AND HIS TREASURER

How strange and remote and romantic and Oriental and Arabian-Nighty it
all seems--and is. It brings back the old forgotten tales, and we hear
the King say to his Treasurer:

“Bring me 30,000 gold tomauns.”

“Allah preserve us, Sire! the treasury is empty.”

“Do you hear? Bring the money--in ten days. Else, send me your head in a
basket.”

“I hear and obey.”

The Treasurer summons the head men of a hundred villages, and says to
one:

“Bring me a hundred gold tomauns.” To another, “Bring me five hundred.”
To another, “Bring a thousand. In ten days. Your head is the forfeit.”

“Your slaves kiss your feet! Ah, high and mighty lord, be merciful to
our hard-pressed villagers; they are poor, they are naked, they starve;
oh, these impossible sums! even the half----”

“Go! Grind it out of them, crush it out of them, turn the blood of the
fathers, the tears of the mothers, the milk of the babes to money--or
take the consequences. Have you heard?”

“His will be done, Who is the Fount of love and mercy and compassion,
Who layeth this heavy burden upon us by the hand of His anointed
servants--blessed be His holy Name! The father shall bleed, the mother
shall faint for hunger, the babe shall perish at the dry breast. The
chosen of God have commanded: it shall be as they say.”

I am not meaning to object to the substitution of pagan customs for
Christian, here and there and now and then, when the Christian ones are
inconvenient. No; I like it and admire it. I do it myself. And I admire
the alertness of the Board in watching out for chances to trade Board
morals for Chinese morals, and get the best of the swap; for I cannot
endure those people, they are yellow, and I have never considered yellow
becoming. I have always been like the Board--perfectly well-meaning, but
destitute of the Moral Sense. Now, one of the main reasons why it is so
hard to make the Board understand that there is no moral difference
between a big filch and a little filch, but only a legal one, is that
vacancy in its make-up. Morally, there are no degrees in stealing. The
Commandment merely says, “Thou shalt not _steal_,” and stops there. It
doesn’t recognize any difference between stealing a third and stealing
thirteenfold. If I could think of a way to put it before the Board in
such a plain and--

THE WATERMELONS

I have it, now. Many years ago, when I was studying for the gallows, I
had a dear comrade, a youth who was not in my line, but still a
thoroughly good fellow, though devious. He was preparing to qualify for
a place on the Board, for there was going to be a vacancy by
superannuation in about five years. This was down South, in the slavery
days. It was the nature of the negro then, as now, to steal watermelons.
They stole three of the melons of an adoptive brother of mine, the only
good ones he had. I suspected three of a neighbor’s negroes, but there
was no proof: and, besides, the watermelons in those negroes’ private
patches were all green and small, and not up to indemnity standard. But
in the private patches of three other negroes there were a number of
competent melons. I consulted with my comrade, the understudy of the
Board. He said that if I would approve his arrangements, he would
arrange. I said, “Consider me the Board; I approve: arrange.” So he took
a gun, and went and collected three large melons for my
brother-on-the-half-shell, and one over. I was greatly pleased, and
asked:

“Who gets the extra one?”

“Widows and orphans.”

“A good idea, too. Why didn’t you take thirteen?”

“It would have been wrong; a crime, in fact--Theft and Extortion.”

“What is the one third extra--the odd melon--the same?”

It caused him to reflect. But there was no result.

The justice of the peace was a stern man. On the trial, he found fault
with the scheme, and required us to explain upon what we based our
strange conduct--as he called it. The understudy said:

“On the custom of the niggers. They all do it.”

The justice forgot his dignity, and descended to sarcasm:

“Custom of the niggers! Are our morals so inadequate that we have to
borrow of niggers?” Then he said to the jury: “Three melons were owing;
they were collected from persons not proven to owe them; this is theft.
They were collected by compulsion; this is extortion. A melon was
added--for the widows and orphans. It was owed by no one. It is another
theft, another extortion. Return it whence it came, with the others. It
is not permissible, here, to apply to any object goods dishonestly
obtained--not even to the feeding of widows and orphans, for that would
be to put a shame upon charity and dishonor it.”

He said it in open court, before everybody, and to me it did not seem
very kind.

A clergyman, in a letter to me, reminds me, with a touch of reproach,
that “many of the missionaries are good men, kind-hearted, earnest,
devoted to their work.” Certainly they are. No one is disputing it.
Instead of “many,” he could have said “almost all,” and still said the
truth, no doubt. I know many missionaries; I have met them all about the
globe, and have known only one or two who could not fill that bill and
answer to that description. “Almost all” comes near to being a
proportion and a description applicable also to lawyers, authors,
editors, merchants, manufacturers--in fact, to most guilds and
vocations. Without a doubt, Dr. Ament did what he believed to be right,
and I concede that when a man is doing what he believes to be right,
there is argument on his side. I differ with Dr. Ament, but that is only
because he got his training from the Board and I got mine outside.
Neither of us is responsible, altogether.

RECAPITULATION

But there is no need to sum up. Mr. Ament has acknowledged the “one
third extra”--no other witness is necessary. The Rev. Dr. Smith has
carefully considered the act and labeled it with a stern name, and his
verdict seems to have no flaw in it. The morals of the act are Chinese,
but are approved by the Board, and by some of the clergy and some of the
newspapers, as being a valuable improvement upon Christian ones--which
leaves me with a closed mouth, though with a pain in my heart.

IS THE AMERICAN BOARD ON TRIAL?

Do I think that Dr. Ament and certain of his fellow missionaries are as
bad as their conduct? No, I do not. They are the product of their
training; and now that I understand the whole case, and where they got
their ideals, and that they are merely subordinates and subject to
authority, I comprehend that they are rather accessories than
principals, and that their acts only show faulty heads curiously
trained, not bad hearts. Mainly, as it seems to me, it is the American
Board that is on trial. And again, it is a case of the head, not of the
heart. That it has a heart which has never harbored an evil intention,
no one will deny, no one will question; the Board’s history can silence
any challenge on that score. The Board’s heart is not in court: it is
its head that is on trial.

It is a sufficiently strange head. Its ways baffle comprehension; its
ideas are like no one else’s; its methods are novelties to the practical
world; its judgments are surprises. When one thinks it is going to speak
and must speak, it is silent; when one thinks it ought to be silent and
must be silent, it speaks. Put your finger where you think it ought to
be, it is not there; put it where you think it ought not to be, there
you find it.

When its servant in China seemed to be charging himself with amazing
things, in a reputable journal--in a dispatch which was copied into many
other papers--the Board was as silent about it as any dead man could
have been who was informed that his house was burning over his head. An
exchange of cablegrams could have enabled it, within two days, to prove
to the world--possibly--that the damaging dispatch had not proceeded
from the mouth of its servant; yet it sat silent and asked no questions
about the matter.

It was silent during thirty-eight days. Then the dispatch came into
prominence again. It chanced that I was the occasion of it. A break in
the stillness followed. In what form? An exchange of cablegrams,
resulting in proof that the damaging dispatch had not been authorized?
No, in the form of an Open Letter by the Corresponding Secretary of the
American Board, the Rev. Dr. Smith, in which it was _argued_ that Dr.
Ament could not have said and done the things set forth in the dispatch.

Surely, this was bad politics. A repudiating telegram would have been
worth more than a library of argument.

An extension of the silence would have been better than the Open Letter,
I think. I thought so at the time. It seemed to me that mistakes enough
had been made and harm enough done. I thought it questionable policy to
publish the Letter, for I “did not think it likely that Dr. Ament would
disown the dispatch,” and I telegraphed that to the Rev. Dr. Smith.
Personally, I had nothing against Dr. Ament, and that is my attitude
yet.

Once more it was a good time for an extension of the silence. But no;
the Board has its own ways, and one of them is to do the unwise thing,
when occasion offers. After having waited fifty-six days, it cabled to
Dr. Ament. No one can divine why it did so then, instead of fifty-six
days earlier.[16] It got a fatal reply--and was not aware of it. That
was that curious confession about the “one third extra”; its
application, not to the “propagation of the Gospel,” but only to “church
expenses,” support of widows and orphans; and, on top of this
confession, that other strange one revealing the dizzying fact that our
missionaries, who went to China to teach Christian morals and justice,
had adopted pagan morals and justice in their place. _That cablegram was
dynamite._

It seems odd that the Board did not see that that revelation made the
case far worse than it was before; for there was a saving doubt,
before--a doubt which was a Gibraltar for strength, and should have been
carefully left undisturbed. Why did the Board allow that revelation to
get into print? Why did the Board not suppress it and keep still? But
no; in the Board’s opinion, this was once more the time for speech.
Hence Dr. Smith’s latest letter to me, suggesting that I speak also--a
letter which is a good enough letter, barring its nine defects, but is
another evidence that the Board’s head is not as good as its heart.

A missionary is a man who is pretty nearly all heart, else he would not
be in a calling which requires of him such large sacrifices of one kind
and another. He is made up of faith, zeal, courage, sentiment, emotion,
enthusiasm; and so he is a mixture of poet, devotee, and knight errant.
He exiles himself from home and friends and the scenes and associations
that are dearest to him; patiently endures discomforts, privations,
discouragements; goes with good pluck into dangers which he knows may
cost him his life; and when he must suffer death, willingly makes that
supreme sacrifice for his cause.

Sometimes the headpiece of that kind of a man can be of an inferior
sort, and error of judgment can result--as we have seen. Then, for his
protection, as it seems to me, he ought to have at his back a Board able
to know a blunder when it sees one, and prompt to bring him back upon
his right course when he strays from it. That is to say, I think the
captain of a ship ought to understand navigation. Whether he does or
not, he will have to take a captain’s share of the blame, if the crew
bring the vessel to grief.

-----

Footnote 11:

Testimony of the manager of the _Sun_.

Footnote 12:

Cable error. For “thirteen times” read “one third.” This correction
was made by Dr. Ament in his brief cablegram published February
20th, previously referred to.

Footnote 13:

For “thirteen times” read “one third.”--M. T.

Footnote 14:

In civilized countries, if a mob destroy property in a town, the
damage is paid out of the town treasury, and no taxpayer suffers a
disproportionate share of the burden; the mayor is not privileged to
distribute the burden according to his private notions, sparing
himself and his friends, and fleecing persons he holds a spite
against--as in the Orient--and the citizen who is too poor to be a
taxpayer pays no part of the fine at all.

Footnote 15:

In his Open Letter, Dr. Smith cites Dr. Ament’s letter of November
13th, which contains an account of Dr. Ament’s collecting tour; then
Dr. Smith makes this comment: “Nothing is said of securing ‘thirteen
times’ the amount of the losses.” Farther down, Dr. Smith quotes
praises of Dr. Ament and his work (from a letter of the Rev. Dr.
Sheffield), and adds this comment: “Dr. Sheffield is not accustomed to
speak thus in praise of thieves, or extortioners, or braggarts.” The
reference is to the “thirteen-times” extra tax.

Footnote 16:

The cablegram went on the day (February 18th) that Mr. George Lynch’s
account of the looting was published. See “Exhibit B.” It seems a pity
it did not inquire about the looting and get it denied.

THOMAS BRACKETT REED

He wore no shell. His ways were frank and open, and the road to his
large sympathies was straight and unobstructed. His was a nature which
invited affection--compelled it, in fact--and met it halfway. Hence he
was “Tom” to the most of his friends, and to half of the nation. The
abbreviating of such a man’s name is a patent of nobility, and is
conferred from the heart. Mr. Reed had a very strong and decided
character, and he may have had enemies; I do not know; if he had
them--outside of politics--they did not know the man. He was
transparently honest and honorable, there were no furtivenesses about
him, and whoever came to know him trusted him and was not disappointed.
He was wise, he was shrewd and alert, he was a clear and capable
thinker, a logical reasoner, and a strong and convincing speaker. His
manner was easy and engaging, his speeches sparkled with felicities of
phrasing thrown off without apparent effort, and when he needed the
happy help of humor he had a mine of it as deep and rich as Kimberly to
draw from. His services to his country were great, and they were
gratefully acknowledged.

I cannot remember back to a time when he was not “Tom” Reed to me, nor
to a time when he would have been offended at being so addressed by me.
I cannot remember back to a time when I could let him alone in an
after-dinner speech if he was present, nor to a time when he did not
take my extravagances concerning him and misstatements about him in good
part, nor yet to a time when he did not pay them back with usury when
his turn came. The last speech he made was at my birthday dinner at the
end of November, when naturally I was his text; my last word to him was
in a letter the next day; a day later I was illustrating a fantastic
article on Art with his portrait among others--a portrait now to be laid
reverently away among the jests that begin in humor and end in pathos.
These things happened only eight days ago, and now he is gone from us,
and the nation is speaking of him as one who _was_. It seems incredible,
impossible. Such a man, such a friend, seems to us a permanent
possession; his vanishing from our midst is unthinkable; as unthinkable
as was the vanishing of the Campanile, that had stood for a thousand
years, and was turned to dust in a moment.

I have no wish, at this time, to enter upon light and humorous
reminiscences connected with yachting voyages with Mr. Reed in northern
and southern seas, nor with other recreations in his company in other
places--they do not belong in this paper, they do not invite me, they
would jar upon me. I have only wished to say how fine and beautiful was
his life and character, and to take him by the hand and say good-by, as
to a fortunate friend who has done well his work and goes a pleasant
journey.

THE FINISHED BOOK
(On Finishing _Joan of Arc_)

PARIS, 1895.

Do you know that shock? I mean, when you come, at your regular hour,
into the sick room where you have watched for months, and find the
medicine bottles all gone, the night table removed, the bed stripped,
the furniture set stiffly to rights, the windows up, the room cold,
stark, vacant--and you catch your breath. Do you know that shock?

The man who has written a long book has that experience the morning
after he has revised it for the last time, seen the bearers convey it
from the house, and sent it away to the printer. He steps into his study
at the hour established by the habit of months--and he gets that little
shock. All the litter and the confusion are gone. The piles of dusty
reference books are gone from the chairs, the maps from the floor; the
chaos of letters, manuscripts, notebooks, paper knives, pipes, matches,
photographs, tobacco jars, and cigar boxes is gone from the writing
table. The furniture is back where it use to be in the long ago. The
housemaid, forbidden the place for five months, has been there, and
tidied it up, and scoured it clean, and made it repellent and awful.

I stand here this morning, contemplating this desolation, and I realize
that if I would bring back the spirit that made this hospital homelike
and pleasant to me, I must restore the aids to lingering dissolution to
their wonted places, and nurse another patient through and send it forth
for the last rites, with many or few to assist there, as may happen; and
that I will do.

AS REGARDS PATRIOTISM
(About 1900)

It is agreed, in this country, that if a man can arrange his religion so
that it perfectly satisfies his conscience, it is not incumbent upon him
to care whether the arrangement is satisfactory to anyone else or not.

In Austria and some other countries this is not the case. There the
state arranges a man’s religion for him, he has no voice in it himself.

Patriotism is merely a religion--love of country, worship of country,
devotion to the country’s flag and honor and welfare.

In absolute monarchies it is furnished from the throne, cut and dried,
to the subject; in England and America it is furnished, cut and dried,
to the citizen by the politician and the newspaper.

The newspaper-and-politician-manufactured Patriot often gags in private
over his dose; but he takes it, and keeps it on his stomach the best he
can. Blessed are the meek.

Sometimes, in the beginning of an insane shabby political upheaval, he
is strongly moved to revolt, but he doesn’t do it--he knows better. He
knows that his maker would find it out--the maker of his Patriotism, the
windy and incoherent six-dollar subeditor of his village newspaper--and
would bray out in print and call him a Traitor. And how dreadful that
would be. It makes him tuck his tail between his legs and shiver. We all
know--the reader knows it quite well--that two or three years ago nine
tenths of the human tails in England and America performed just that
act. Which is to say, nine tenths of the Patriots in England and America
turned traitor to keep from being called traitor. Isn’t it true? You
know it to be true. Isn’t it curious?

Yet it was not a thing to be very seriously ashamed of. A man can
seldom--very, very seldom--fight a winning fight against his training;
the odds are too heavy. For many a year--perhaps always--the training of
the two nations had been dead against independence in political thought,
persistently inhospitable toward patriotism manufactured on a man’s own
premises, Patriotism reasoned out in the man’s own head and fire-assayed
and tested and proved in his own conscience. The resulting Patriotism
was a shop-worn product procured at second hand. The Patriot did not
know just how or when or where he got his opinions, neither did he care,
so long as he was with what seemed the majority--which was the main
thing, the safe thing, the comfortable thing. Does the reader believe he
knows three men who have actual reasons for their pattern of
Patriotism--and can furnish them? Let him not examine, unless he wants
to be disappointed. He will be likely to find that his men got their
Patriotism at the public trough, and had no hand in its preparation
themselves.

Training does wonderful things. It moved the people of this country to
oppose the Mexican War; then moved them to fall in with what they
supposed was the opinion of the majority--majority Patriotism is the
customary Patriotism--and go down there and fight. Before the Civil War
it made the North indifferent to slavery and friendly to the slave
interest; in that interest it made Massachusetts hostile to the American
flag, and she would not allow it to be hoisted on her State House--in
her eyes it was the flag of a faction. Then by and by, training swung
Massachusetts the other way, and she went raging South to fight under
that very flag and against that aforetime protected interest of hers.

There is nothing that training cannot do. Nothing is above its reach or
below it. It can turn bad morals to good, good morals to bad; it can
destroy principles, it can recreate them; it can debase angels to men
and lift men to angelship. And it can do any one of these miracles in a
year--even in six months.

Then men can be trained to manufacture their own Patriotism. They can be
trained to labor it out in their own heads and hearts and in the privacy
and independence of their own premises. It can train them to stop taking
it by command, as the Austrian takes his religion.

DR. LOEB’S INCREDIBLE DISCOVERY

Experts in biology will be apt to receive with some skepticism the
announcement of Dr. Jacques Loeb of the University of California as to
the creation of life by chemical agencies.... Doctor Loeb is a very
bright and ingenious experimenter, but _a consensus of opinion among
biologists_ would show that he is voted rather as a man of lively
imagination than an inerrant investigator of natural phenomena.--New
York _Times_, March 2d.

I wish I could be as young as that again. Although I seem so old, now, I
was once as young as that. I remember, as if it were but thirty or forty
years ago, how a paralyzing Consensus of Opinion accumulated from
Experts a-setting around, about brother experts who had patiently and
laboriously cold-chiseled their way into one or another of nature’s
safe-deposit vaults and were reporting that they had found something
valuable was a plenty for me. It settled it.

But it isn’t so now--no. Because, in the drift of the years I by and by
found out that a Consensus examines a new thing with its feelings rather
oftener than with its mind. You know, yourself, that that is so. Do
those people examine with feelings that are friendly to evidence? You
know they don’t. It is the other way about. They do the examining by the
light of their prejudices--now isn’t that true?

With curious results, yes. So curious that you wonder the Consensuses do
not go out of the business. Do you know of a case where a Consensus won
a game? You can go back as far as you want to and you will find history
furnishing you this (until now) unwritten maxim for your guidance and
profit: Whatever new thing a Consensus coppers (colloquial for “bets
against”), bet your money on that very card and do not be afraid.

There was that primitive steam engine--ages back, in Greek times: a
Consensus made fun of it. There was the Marquis of Worcester’s steam
engine, 250 years ago: a Consensus made fun of it. There was Fulton’s
steamboat of a century ago: a French Consensus, including the Great
Napoleon, made fun of it. There was Priestly, with his oxygen: a
Consensus scoffed at him, mobbed him, burned him out, banished him.
While a Consensus was proving, by statistics and things, that a
steamship could not cross the Atlantic, a steamship did it. A Consensus
consisting of all the medical experts in Great Britain made fun of
Jenner and inoculation. A Consensus consisting of all the medical
experts in France made fun of the stethoscope. A Consensus of all the
medical experts in Germany made fun of that young doctor (his name?
forgotten by all but doctors, now, revered now by doctors alone) who
discovered and abolished the cause of that awful disease, puerperal
fever; made fun of him, reviled him, hunted him, persecuted him, broke
his heart, killed him. Electric telegraph, Atlantic cable, telephone,
all “toys,” and of no practical value--verdict of the Consensuses.
Geology, palæontology, evolution--all brushed into space by a Consensus
of theological experts, comprising all the preachers in Christendom,
assisted by the Duke of Argyle and (at first) the other scientists. And
do look at Pasteur and his majestic honor roll of prodigious
benefactions! Damned--each and every one of them in its turn--by
frenzied and ferocious Consensuses of medical and chemical Experts
comprising, for years, every member of the tribe in Europe; damned
without even a casual _look_ at what he was doing--and he pathetically
imploring them to come and take at least one little look before making
the damnation eternal. They shortened his life by their malignities and
persecutions; and thus robbed the world of the further and priceless
services of a man who--along certain lines and within certain
limits--had done more for the human race than any other one man in all
its long history: a man whom it had taken the Expert brotherhood ten
thousand years to produce, and whose mate and match the brotherhood may
possibly not be able to bring forth and assassinate in another ten
thousand. The preacher has an old and tough reputation for bull-headed
and unreasoning hostility to new light; why, he is not “in it” with the
doctor! Nor, perhaps, with some of the other breeds of Experts that sit
around and get up the Consensuses and squelch the new things as fast as
they come from the hands of the plodders, the searchers, the inspired
dreamers, the Pasteurs that come bearing pearls to scatter in the
Consensus sty.

This is warm work! It puts my temperature up to 106 and raises my pulse
to the limit. It always works just so when the red rag of a Consensus
jumps my fence and starts across my pasture. I have been a Consensus
more than once myself, and I know the business--and its vicissitudes. I
am a compositor-expert, of old and seasoned experience; nineteen years
ago I delivered the final-and-for-good verdict that the linotype would
never be able to earn its own living nor anyone else’s: it takes
fourteen acres of ground, now, to accommodate its factories in England.
Thirty-five years ago I was an expert precious-metal quartz-miner. There
was an outcrop in my neighborhood that assayed $600 a ton--gold. But
every fleck of gold in it was shut up tight and fast in an intractable
and impersuadable base-metal shell. Acting as a Consensus, I delivered
the finality verdict that no human ingenuity would ever be able to set
free two dollars’ worth of gold out of a ton of that rock. The fact is,
I did not foresee the cyanide process. Indeed, I have been a Consensus
ever so many times since I reached maturity and approached the age of
discretion, but I call to mind no instance in which I won out.

These sorrows have made me suspicious of Consensuses. Do you know, I
tremble and the goose flesh rises on my skin every time I encounter one,
now. I sheer warily off and get behind something, saying to myself, “It
looks innocent and all right, but no matter, ten to one there’s a
cyanide process under that thing somewhere.”

Now as concerns this “creation of life by chemical agencies.” Reader,
take my advice: don’t you copper it. I don’t say bet on it; no, I only
say, don’t you copper it. As you see, there is a Consensus out against
it. If you find that you can’t control your passions; if you feel that
you have _got_ to copper something and can’t help it, copper the
Consensus. It is the safest way--all history confirms it. If you are
young, you will, of course, have to put up, on one side or the other,
for you will not be able to restrain yourself; but as for me, I am old,
and I am going to wait for a new deal.

_P.S._--In the same number of the _Times_ Doctor Funk says: “Man may be
as badly fooled by believing too little as by believing too much; the
hard-headed skeptic Thomas was the only disciple who was cheated.” Is
that the right and rational way to look at it? I will not be sure, for
my memory is faulty, but it has always been my impression that Thomas
was the only one who made an examination and proved a fact, while the
others were accepting, or discounting, the fact on trust--like any other
Consensus. If that is so, Doubting Thomas removed a doubt which must
otherwise have confused and troubled the world until now. Including
Doctor Funk. It seems to me that we owe that hard-headed--or
sound-headed--witness something more than a slur. Why does Doctor Funk
_examine_ into spiritism, and then throw stones at Thomas. Why doesn’t
he take it on trust? Has inconsistency become a jewel in Lafayette
Place?

OLD-MAN-AFRAID-OF-THE-CONSENSUS.

_Extract from Adam’s Diary._--Then there was a Consensus about it. It
was the very first one. It sat six days and nights. It was then
delivered of the verdict that a world could not be made out of nothing;
that such small things as sun and moon and stars might, maybe, but it
would take years and years, if there was considerable many of them. Then
the Consensus got up and looked out of the window, and there was the
whole outfit spinning and sparkling in space! You never saw such a
disappointed lot.

his
ADAM--i--
mark

THE DERVISH AND THE OFFENSIVE
STRANGER

_The Dervish_: I will say again, and yet again, and still again,
that a good deed----

_The Offensive Stranger_: Peace, and, O man of narrow vision! There
is no such thing as a good _deed_----

_The Dervish_: O shameless blasphe----

_The Offensive Stranger_: And no such thing as an evil deed. There
are good _impulses_, there are evil impulses, and that is all. Half
of the results of a good intention are evil; half the results of an
evil intention are good. No man can command the results, nor allot
them.

_The Dervish_: And so----

_The Offensive Stranger_: And so you shall praise men for their good
intentions, and not blame them for the evils resulting; you shall
blame men for their evil intentions, and not praise them for the
good resulting.

_The Dervish_: O maniac! will you say----

_The Offensive Stranger_: Listen to the law: From _every_ impulse,
whether good or evil, flow two streams; the one carries health, the
other carries poison. From the beginning of time this law has not
changed, to the end of time it will not change.

_The Dervish_: If I should strike thee dead in anger----

_The Offensive Stranger_: Or kill me with a drug which you hoped
would give me new life and strength----

_The Dervish_: Very well. Go on.

_The Offensive Stranger_: In either case the results would be the
same. Age-long misery of mind for you--an evil result; peace,
repose, the end of sorrow for me--a good result. Three hearts that
hold me dear would break; three pauper cousins of the third removed
would get my riches and rejoice; you would go to prison and your
friends would grieve, but your humble apprentice-priest would step
into your shoes and your fat sleek life and be happy. And are these
all the goods and all the evils that would flow from the
well-intended or ill-intended act that cut short my life, O
thoughtless one, O purblind creature? The good and evil results that
flow from _any_ act, even the smallest, breed on and on, century
after century, forever and ever and ever, creeping by inches around
the globe, affecting all its coming and going populations until the
end of time, until the final cataclysm!

_The Dervish_: Then, there being no such thing as a good deed----

_The Offensive Stranger_: Don’t I tell you there are good
_intentions_, and evil ones, and there an end? The _results_ are not
foreseeable. They are of both kinds, in all cases. It is the law.
Listen: this is far-Western history:

VOICES OUT OF UTAH

_The White Chief_ (_to his people_): This wide plain was a desert.
By our Heaven-blest industry we have damned the river and utilized
its waters and turned the desert into smiling fields whose fruitage
makes prosperous and happy a thousand homes where poverty and hunger
dwelt before. How noble, how beneficent, is Civilization!

_Indian Chief_ (_to his people_): This wide plain, which the Spanish
priests taught our fathers to irrigate, was a smiling field, whose
fruitage made our homes prosperous and happy. The white American has
damned our river, taken away our water for his own valley, and
turned our field into a desert; wherefore we starve.

_The Dervish_: I perceive that the good intention did really bring
both good and evil results in equal measure. But a single case
cannot prove the rule. Try again.

_The Offensive Stranger_: Pardon me, _all_ cases prove it. Columbus
discovered a new world and gave to the plodding poor and the
landless of Europe farms and breathing space and plenty and
happiness----

_The Dervish_: A good result.

_The Offensive Stranger_: And they hunted and harried the original
owners of the soil, and robbed them, beggared them, drove them from
their homes, and exterminated them, root and branch.

_The Dervish_: An evil result, yes.

_The Offensive Stranger_: The French Revolution brought desolation
to the hearts and homes of five million families and drenched the
country with blood and turned its wealth to poverty.

_The Dervish_: An evil result.

_The Offensive Stranger_: But every great and precious liberty
enjoyed by the nations of continental Europe to-day are the gift of
that Revolution.

_The Dervish_: A good result, I concede it.

_The Offensive Stranger_: In our well-meant effort to lift up the
Filipino to our own moral altitude with a musket, we have slipped on
the ice and fallen down to his.

_The Dervish_: A large evil result.

_The Offensive Stranger_: But as an offset we are a World Power.

_The Dervish_: Give me time. I must think this one over. Pass on.

_The Offensive Stranger_: By help of three hundred thousand soldiers
and eight hundred million dollars England has succeeded in her good
purpose of lifting up the unwilling Boers and making them better and
purer and happier than they could ever have become by their own
devices.

_The Dervish_: Certainly that is a good result.

_The Offensive Stranger_: But there are only eleven Boers left now.

_The Dervish_: It has the appearance of an evil result. But I will
think it over before I decide.

_The Offensive Stranger_: Take yet one more instance. With the best
intentions the missionary has been laboring in China for eighty
years.

_The Dervish_: The evil result is----

_The Offensive Stranger_: That nearly a hundred thousand Chinamen
have acquired our Civilization.

_The Dervish_: And the good result is----

_The Offensive Stranger_: That by the compassion of God four hundred
millions have escaped it.

INSTRUCTIONS IN ART
(With Illustrations by the Author)

The great trouble about painting a whole gallery of portraits at the
same time is, that the housemaid comes and dusts, and does not put
them back the way they were before, and so when the public flock to
the studio and wish to know which is Howells and which is Depew and
so on, you have to dissemble, and it is very embarrassing at first.
Still, you know they are there, and this knowledge presently gives
you more or less confidence, and you say sternly, “_This_ is
Howells,” and watch the visitor’s eye. If you see doubt there, you
correct yourself and try another. In time you find one that will
satisfy, and then you feel relief and joy, but you have suffered
much in the meantime; and you know that this joy is only temporary,
for the next inquirer will settle on another Howells of a quite
different aspect, and one which you suspect is Edward VII or
Cromwell, though you keep that to yourself, of course. It is much
better to label a portrait when you first paint it, then there is no
uncertainty in your mind and you can get bets out of the visitor and
win them.

I believe I have had the most trouble with a portrait which I
painted in installments--the head on one canvas and the bust on
another.

[Illustration: THE HEAD ON ONE CANVAS]

The housemaid stood the bust up sideways, and now I don’t know which
way it goes. Some authorities think it belongs with the breastpin at
the top, under the man’s chin; others think it belongs the reverse
way, on account of the collar, one of these saying, “A person can
wear a breastpin on his stomach if he wants to, but he can’t wear
his collar anywhere he dern pleases.” There is a certain amount of
sense in that view of it. Still, there is no way to determine the
matter for certain; when you join the installments, with the pin
under the chin, that seems to be right; then when you reverse it and
bring the collar under the chin it seems as right as ever; whichever
way you fix it the lines come together snug and convincing, and
either way you do it the portrait’s face looks equally surprised and
rejoiced, and as if it wouldn’t be satisfied to have it any way but
just that one; in fact, even if you take the bust away altogether
the face seems surprised and happy just the same--I have never seen
an expression before, which no vicissitudes could alter. I wish I
could remember who it is. It looks a little like Washington, but I
do not think it can be Washington, because he had as many ears on
one side as the other. You can always tell Washington by that; he
was very particular about his ears, and about having them arranged
the same old way all the time.

[Illustration: AND THE BUST ON ANOTHER]

By and by I shall get out of these confusions, and then it will be
plain sailing; but first-off the confusions were natural and not to
be avoided. My reputation came very suddenly and tumultuously when I
published my own portrait, and it turned my head a little, for
indeed there was never anything like it. In a single day I got
orders from sixty-two people not to paint their portraits, some of
them the most distinguished persons in the country--the President,
the Cabinet, authors, governors, admirals, candidates for office on
the weak side--almost everybody that was anybody, and it would
really have turned the head of nearly any beginner to get so much
notice and have it come with such a frenzy of cordiality. But I am
growing calm and settling down to business, now; and pretty soon I
shall cease to be flurried, and then when I do a portrait I shall be
quite at myself and able on the instant to tell it from the others
and pick it out when wanted.

I am living a new and exalted life of late. It steeps me in a sacred
rapture to see a portrait develop and take soul under my hand.
First, I throw off a study--just a mere study, a few apparently
random lines--and to look at it you would hardly ever suspect who it
was going to be; even I cannot tell, myself. Take this picture, for
instance:

[Illustration:

FIRST YOU THINK IT’S DANTE; NEXT YOU THINK IT’S EMERSON; THEN YOU
THINK IT’S WAYNE MAC VEAGH. YET IT ISN’T ANY OF THEM; IT’S THE
BEGINNINGS OF DEPEW
]

First you think it’s Dante; next you think it’s Emerson; then you
think it’s Wayne Mac Veagh. Yet it isn’t any of them; it’s the
beginnings of Depew. Now you wouldn’t believe Depew could be
devolved out of that; yet the minute it is finished here you have
him to the life, and you say, yourself, “If that isn’t Depew it
isn’t anybody.”

Some would have painted him speaking, but he isn’t always speaking,
he has to stop and think sometimes.

That is a _genre_ picture, as we say in the trade, and differs from
the encaustic and other schools in various ways, mainly technical,
which you wouldn’t understand if I should explain them to you. But
you will get the idea as I go along, and little by little you will
learn all that is valuable about Art without knowing how it
happened, and without any sense of strain or effort, and then you
will know what school a picture belongs to, just at a glance, and
whether it is an animal picture or a landscape. It is then that the
joy of life will begin for you.

When you come to examine my portraits of Mr. Joe Jefferson and the
rest, your eye will have become measurably educated by that time,
and you will recognize at once that no two of them are alike. I will
close the present chapter with an example of the nude, for your
instruction.

This creation is different from any of the other works. The others
are from real life, but this is an example of still-life; so called
because it is a portrayal of a fancy only, a thing which has no
actual and active existence. The purpose of a still-life picture is
to concrete to the eye the spiritual, the intangible, a something
which we feel, but cannot see with the fleshy vision--such as joy,
sorrow, resentment, and so on. This is best achieved by the
employment of that treatment which we call the impressionist, in the
trade. The present example is an impressionist picture, done in
distemper, with a chiaroscuro motif modified by monochromatic
technique, so as to secure tenderness of feeling and spirituality of
expression. At a first glance it would seem to be a Botticelli, but
it is not that; it is only a humble imitation of that great master
of longness and slimness and limbfulness.

[Illustration: THAT THING IN THE RIGHT HAND IS NOT A SKILLET; IT IS
A TAMBOURINE]

The work is imagined from Greek story, and represents Proserpine or
Persepolis, or one of those other Bacchantes doing the solemnities
of welcome before the altar of Isis upon the arrival of the annual
shipload of Athenian youths in the island of Minos to be sacrificed
in appeasement of the Dordonian Cyclops.

[Illustration: THE PORTRAIT REPRODUCES MR. JOSEPH JEFFERSON, THE
COMMON FRIEND OF THE HUMAN RACE]

The figure symbolizes solemn joy. It is severely Greek, therefore
does not call details of drapery or other factitious helps to its
aid, but depends wholly upon grace of action and symmetry of contour
for its effects. It is intended to be viewed from the south or
southeast, and I think that that is best; for while it expresses
more and larger joy when viewed from the east or the north, the
features of the face are too much foreshortened and wormy when
viewed from that point. That thing in the right hand is not a
skillet; it is a tambourine.

[Illustration: EITHER MR. HOWELLS OR MR. LAFFAN. I CANNOT TELL WHICH
BECAUSE THE LABEL IS LOST]

This creation will be exhibited at the Paris Salon in June, and will
compete for the _Prix de Rome_.

The above is a marine picture, and is intended to educate the eye in
the important matters of perspective and foreshortening. The
mountainous and bounding waves in the foreground, contrasted with
the tranquil ship fading away as in a dream the other side of the
fishing-pole, convey to us the idea of space and distance as no
words could do. Such is the miracle wrought by that wondrous device,
perspective.

The portrait reproduces Mr. Joseph Jefferson, the common friend of
the human race. He is fishing, and is not catching anything. This is
finely expressed by the moisture in the eye and the anguish of the
mouth. The mouth is holding back words. The pole is bamboo, the line
is foreshortened. This foreshortening, together with the smoothness
of the water away out there where the cork is, gives a powerful
impression of distance, and is another way of achieving a
perspective effect.

We now come to the next portrait, which is either Mr. Howells or Mr.
Laffan. I cannot tell which, because the label is lost. But it will
do for both, because the features are Mr. Howells’s, while the
expression is Mr. Laffan’s. This work will bear critical
examination.

The next picture is part of an animal, but I do not know the name of
it. It is not finished. The front end of it went around a corner
before I could get to it.

[Illustration: THE FRONT END OF IT WENT AROUND A CORNER BEFORE I
COULD GET TO IT]

[Illustration: THE BEST AND MOST WINNING AND ELOQUENT PORTRAIT MY
BRUSH HAS EVER PRODUCED]

We will conclude with the portrait of a lady in the style of
Raphael. Originally I started it out for Queen Elizabeth, but was
not able to do the lace hopper her head projects out of, therefore I
tried to turn it into Pocahontas, but was again baffled, and was
compelled to make further modifications, this time achieving
success. By spiritualizing it and turning it into the noble mother
of our race and throwing into the countenance the sacred joy which
her first tailor-made outfit infuses into her spirit, I was enabled
to add to my gallery the best and most winning and eloquent portrait
my brush has ever produced.

The most effective encouragement a beginner can have is the
encouragement which he gets from noting his own progress with an
alert and persistent eye. Save up your works and date them; as the
years go by, run your eye over them from time to time, and measure
your advancing stride. This will thrill you, this will nerve you,
this will inspire you as nothing else can.

It has been my own course, and to it I owe the most that I am to-day
in Art. When I look back and examine my first effort and then
compare it with my latest, it seems unbelievable that I have climbed
so high in thirty-one years. Yet so it is. Practice--that is the
secret. From three to seven hours a day. It is all that is required.
The results are sure; whereas indolence achieves nothing great.

[Illustration:

IT SEEMS UNBELIEVABLE THAT I HAVE CLIMBED SO HIGH IN THIRTY-ONE
YEARS
]

SOLD TO SATAN
(1904)

It was at this time that I concluded to sell my soul to Satan. Steel
was away down, so was St. Paul; it was the same with all the
desirable stocks, in fact, and so, if I did not turn out to be away
down myself, now was my time to raise a stake and make my fortune.
Without further consideration I sent word to the local agent, Mr.
Blank, with description and present condition of the property, and
an interview with Satan was promptly arranged, on a basis of 2½ per
cent, this commission payable only in case a trade should be
consummated.

I sat in the dark, waiting and thinking. How still it was! Then came
the deep voice of a far-off bell proclaiming midnight--Boom-m-m!
Boom-m-m! Boom-m-m!--and I rose to receive my guest, and braced
myself for the thunder crash and the brimstone stench which should
announce his arrival. But there was no crash, no stench. Through the
closed door, and noiseless, came the modern Satan, just as we see
him on the stage--tall, slender, graceful, in tights and trunks, a
short cape mantling his shoulders, a rapier at his side, a single
drooping feather in his jaunty cap, and on his intellectual face the
well-known and high-bred Mephistophelian smile.

But he was not a fire coal; he was not red, no! On the contrary. He
was a softly glowing, richly smoldering torch, column, statue of
pallid light, faintly tinted with a spiritual green, and out from
him a lunar splendor flowed such as one sees glinting from the
crinkled waves of tropic seas when the moon rides high in cloudless
skies.

He made his customary stage obeisance, resting his left hand upon
his sword hilt and removing his cap with his right and making that
handsome sweep with it which we know so well; then we sat down. Ah,
he was an incandescent glory, a nebular dream, and so much improved
by his change of color. He must have seen the admiration in my
illuminated face, but he took no notice of it, being long ago used
to it in faces of other Christians with whom he had had trade
relations.

... A half hour of hot toddy and weather chat, mixed with occasional
tentative feelers on my part and rejoinders of, “Well, I could
hardly pay _that_ for it, you know,” on his, had much modified my
shyness and put me so much at my ease that I was emboldened to feed
my curiosity a little. So I chanced the remark that he was
surprisingly different from the traditions, and I wished I knew what
it was he was made of. He was not offended, but answered with frank
simplicity:

“Radium!”

“That accounts for it!” I exclaimed. “It is the loveliest
effulgence I have ever seen. The hard and heartless glare of the
electric doesn’t compare with it. I suppose Your Majesty weighs
about--about----”

“I stand six feet one; fleshed and blooded I would weigh two hundred
and fifteen; but radium, like other metals, is heavy. I weigh nine
hundred-odd.”

I gazed hungrily upon him, saying to myself:

“What riches! what a mine! Nine hundred pounds at, say, $3,500,000 a
pound, would be--would be----” Then a treacherous thought burst into
my mind!

He laughed a good hearty laugh, and said:

“I perceive your thought; and what a handsomely original idea it
is!--to kidnap Satan, and stock him, and incorporate him, and water
the stock up to ten billions--just three times its actual value--and
blanket the world with it!” My blush had turned the moonlight to a
crimson mist, such as veils and spectralizes the domes and towers of
Florence at sunset and makes the spectator drunk with joy to see,
and he pitied me, and dropped his tone of irony, and assumed a grave
and reflective one which had a pleasanter sound for me, and under
its kindly influence my pains were presently healed, and I thanked
him for his courtesy. Then he said:

“One good turn deserves another, and I will pay you a compliment. Do
you know I have been trading with your poor pathetic race for ages,
and you are the first person who has ever been intelligent enough to
divine the large commercial value of my make-up.”

I purred to myself and looked as modest as I could.

“Yes, you are the first,” he continued. “All through the Middle Ages
I used to buy Christian souls at fancy rates, building bridges and
cathedrals in a single night in return, and getting swindled out of
my Christian nearly every time that I dealt with a priest--as
history will concede--but making it up on the lay square-dealer now
and then, as _I_ admit; but none of those people ever guessed where
the _real_ big money lay. You are the first.”

I refilled his glass and gave him another Cavour. But he was
experienced, by this time. He inspected the cigar pensively awhile;
then:

“What do you pay for these?” he asked.

“Two cents--but they come cheaper when you take a barrel.”

He went on inspecting; also mumbling comments, apparently to
himself:

“Black--rough-skinned--rumpled, irregular, wrinkled, barky, with
crispy curled-up places on it--burnt-leather aspect, like the shoes
of the damned that sit in pairs before the room doors at home of a
Sunday morning.” He sighed at thought of his home, and was silent a
moment; then he said, gently, “Tell me about this projectile.”

“It is the discovery of a great Italian statesman,” I said. “Cavour.
One day he lit his cigar, then laid it down and went on writing and
forgot it. It lay in a pool of ink and got soaked. By and by he
noticed it and laid it on the stove to dry. When it was dry he lit
it and at once noticed that it didn’t taste the same as it did
before. And so----”

“Did he say what it tasted like before?”

“No, I think not. But he called the government chemist and told him
to find out the source of that new taste, and report. The chemist
applied the tests, and reported that the source was the presence of
sulphate of iron, touched up and spiritualized with vinegar--the
combination out of which one makes ink. Cavour told him to introduce
the brand in the interest of the finances. So, ever since then this
brand passes through the ink factory, with the great result that
both the ink and the cigar suffer a sea change into something new
and strange. This is history, Sire, not a work of the imagination.”

So then he took up his present again, and touched it to the
forefinger of his other hand for an instant, which made it break
into flame and fragrance--but he changed his mind at that point and
laid the torpedo down, saying, courteously:

“With permission I will save it for Voltaire.”

I was greatly pleased and flattered to be connected in even this
little way with that great man and be mentioned to him, as no doubt
would be the case, so I hastened to fetch a bundle of fifty for
distribution among others of the renowned and lamented--Goethe, and
Homer, and Socrates, and Confucius, and so on--but Satan said he had
nothing against those. Then he dropped back into reminiscences of
the old times once more, and presently said:

“They knew nothing about radium, and it would have had no value for
them if they had known about it. In twenty million years it has had
no value for your race until the revolutionizing steam-and-machinery
age was born--which was only a few years before you were born
yourself. It was a stunning little century, for sure, that
nineteenth! But it’s a poor thing compared to what the twentieth is
going to be.”

By request, he explained why he thought so.

“Because power was so costly, then, and everything goes by
power--the steamship, the locomotive, and everything else. Coal, you
see! You have to have it; no steam and no electricity without it;
and it’s such a waste--for you burn it up, and it’s gone! But
radium--that’s another matter! With my nine hundred pounds you could
light the world, and heat it, and run all its ships and machines and
railways a hundred million years, and not use up five pounds of it
in the whole time! And then----”

“Quick--my soul is yours, dear Ancestor; take it--we’ll start a
company!”

But he asked my age, which is sixty-eight, then politely sidetracked
the proposition, probably not wishing to take advantage of himself.
Then he went on talking admiringly of radium, and how with its own
natural and inherent heat it could go on melting its own weight of
ice twenty-four times in twenty-four hours, and keep it up forever
without losing bulk or weight; and how a pound of it, if exposed in
this room, would blast the place like a breath from hell, and burn
me to a crisp in a quarter of a minute--and was going on like that,
but I interrupted and said:

“But _you_ are here, Majesty--nine hundred pounds--and the
temperature is balmy and pleasant. I don’t understand.”

“Well,” he said, hesitatingly, “it is a secret, but I may as well
reveal it, for these prying and impertinent chemists are going to
find it out sometime or other, anyway. Perhaps you have read what
Madame Curie says about radium; how she goes searching among its
splendid secrets and seizes upon one after another of them and
italicizes its specialty; how she says ‘the compounds of radium are
_spontaneously luminous_’--require no coal in the production of
light, you see; how she says, ‘a glass vessel containing radium
_spontaneously charges itself with electricity_’--no coal or water
power required to generate it, you see; how she says ‘radium
possesses the remarkable property of _liberating heat spontaneously
and continuously_’--no coal required to fire-up on the world’s
machinery, you see. She ransacks the pitch-blende for its
radioactive substances, and captures three and labels them; one,
which is embodied with bismuth, she names polonium; one, which is
embodied with barium, she names radium; the name given to the third
was actinium. Now listen; she says ‘_the question now was to
separate the polonium from the bismuth_ ... this is the task that
has occupied us for years and has been a most difficult one.’ For
years, you see--for _years_. That is their way, those plagues, those
scientists--peg, peg, peg--dig, dig, dig--plod, plod, plod. I wish I
could catch a cargo of them for my place; it would be an economy.
Yes, for years, you see. They never give up. Patience, hope, faith,
perseverance; it is the way of all the breed. Columbus and the rest.
In radium this lady has added a new world to the planet’s
possessions, and matched--Columbus--and his peer. She has set
herself the task of divorcing polonium and bismuth; when she
succeeds she will have done--what, should you say?”

“Pray name it, Majesty.”

“It’s another new world added--a gigantic one. I will explain; for
you would never divine the size of it, and she herself does not
suspect it.”

“Do, Majesty, I beg of you.”

“Polonium, freed from bismuth and made independent, is the one and
only power that can control radium, restrain its destructive forces,
tame them, reduce them to obedience, and make them do useful and
profitable work for your race. Examine my skin. What do you think of
it?”

“It is delicate, silky, transparent, thin as a gelatine
film--exquisite, beautiful, Majesty!”

“It is made of polonium. All the rest of me is radium. If I should
strip off my skin the world would vanish away in a flash of flame
and a puff of smoke, and the remnants of the extinguished moon would
sift down through space a mere snow-shower of gray ashes!”

I made no comment, I only trembled.

“You understand, now,” he continued. “I burn, I suffer within, my
pains are measureless and eternal, but my skin protects you and the
globe from harm. Heat is power, energy, but is only useful to man
when he can control it and graduate its application to his needs.
You cannot do that with radium, now; it will not be prodigiously
useful to you until polonium shall put the slave whip in your hand.
I can release from my body the radium force in any measure I please,
great or small; at my will I can set in motion the works of a lady’s
watch or destroy a world. You saw me light that unholy cigar with my
finger?”

I remembered it.

“Try to imagine how minute was the fraction of energy released to do
that small thing! You are aware that everything is made up of
restless and revolving molecules?--everything--furniture, rocks,
water, iron, horses, men--everything that exists.”

“Yes.”

“Molecules of scores of different sizes and weights, but none of
them big enough to be seen by help of any microscope?”

“Yes.”

“And that each molecule is made up of thousands of separate and
never-resting little particles called atoms?”

“Yes.”

“And that up to recent times the smallest atom known to science was
the hydrogen atom, which was a thousand times smaller than the atom
that went to the building of any other molecule?”

“Yes.”

“Well, the radium atom from the positive pole is 5,000 times smaller
than _that_ atom! This unspeakably minute atom is called an
_electron_. Now then, out of my long affection for you and for your
lineage, I will reveal to you a secret--a secret known to no
scientist as yet--the secret of the firefly’s light and the
glowworm’s; it is produced by a single electron imprisoned in a
polonium atom.”

“Sire, it is a wonderful thing, and the scientific world would be
grateful to know this secret, which has baffled and defeated all its
searchings for more than two centuries. To think!--a single
electron, 5,000 times smaller than the invisible hydrogen atom, to
produce that explosion of vivid light which makes the summer night
so beautiful!”

“And consider,” said Satan; “it is the only instance in all nature
where radium exists in a pure state unencumbered by fettering
alliances; where polonium enjoys the like emancipation; and where
the pair are enabled to labor together in a gracious and beneficent
and effective partnership. Suppose the protecting polonium envelope
were removed; the radium spark would flash but once and the firefly
would be consumed to vapor! Do you value this old iron letterpress?”

“No, Majesty, for it is not mine.”

“Then I will destroy it and let you see. I lit the ostensible cigar
with the heat energy of a single electron, the equipment of a single
lightning bug. I will turn on twenty thousand electrons now.”

He touched the massive thing and it exploded with a cannon crash,
leaving nothing but vacancy where it had stood. For three minutes
the air was a dense pink fog of sparks, through which Satan loomed
dim and vague, then the place cleared and his soft rich moonlight
pervaded it again. He said:

“You see? The radium in 20,000 lightning bugs would run a
racing-mobile forever. There’s no waste, no diminution of it.” Then
he remarked in a quite casual way, “We use nothing but radium at
home.”

I was astonished. And interested, too, for I have friends there, and
relatives. I had always believed--in accordance with my early
teachings--that the fuel was soft coal and brimstone. He noticed the
thought, and answered it.

“Soft coal and brimstone is the tradition, yes, but it is an error.
We could use it; at least we could make out with it after a fashion,
but it has several defects: it is not cleanly, it ordinarily makes
but a temperate fire, and it would be exceedingly difficult, if even
possible, to heat it up to standard, Sundays; and as for the supply,
all the worlds and systems could not furnish enough to keep us going
halfway through eternity. Without radium there could be no hell;
certainly not a satisfactory one.”

“Why?”

“Because if we hadn’t radium we should have to dress the souls in
some other material; then, of course, they would burn up and get out
of trouble. They would not last an hour. You know that?”

“Why--yes, now that you mention it. But I supposed they were dressed
in their natural flesh; they look so in the pictures--in the Sistine
Chapel and in the illustrated books, you know.”

“Yes, our damned look as they looked in the world, but it isn’t
flesh; flesh could not survive any longer than that copying press
survived--it would explode and turn to a fog of sparks, and the
result desired in sending it there would be defeated. Believe me,
radium is the only wear.”

“I see it now,” I said, with prophetic discomfort, “I know that you
are right, Majesty.”

“I am. I speak from experience. You shall see, when you get there.”

He said this as if he thought I was eaten up with curiosity, but it
was because he did not know me. He sat reflecting a minute, then he
said:

“I will make your fortune.”

It cheered me up and I felt better. I thanked him and was all
eagerness and attention.

“Do you know,” he continued, “where they find the bones of the
extinct moa, in New Zealand? All in a pile--thousands and thousands
of them banked together in a mass twenty feet deep. And do you know
where they find the tusks of the extinct mastodon of the
Pleistocene? Banked together in acres off the mouth of the Lena--an
ivory mine which has furnished freight for Chinese caravans for five
hundred years. Do you know the phosphate beds of our South? They are
miles in extent, a limitless mass and jumble of bones of vast
animals whose like exists no longer in the earth--a cemetery, a
mighty cemetery, that is what it is. All over the earth there are
such cemeteries. Whence came the instinct that made those families
of creatures go to a chosen and particular spot to die when sickness
came upon them and they perceived that their end was near? It is a
mystery; not even science has been able to uncover the secret of it.
But there stands the fact. Listen, then. For a million years there
has been a firefly cemetery.”

Hopefully, appealingly, I opened my mouth--he motioned me to close
it, and went on:

“It is in a scooped-out bowl half as big as this room on the top of
a snow summit of the Cordilleras. That bowl is level full--of what?
Pure firefly radium and the glow and heat of hell? For countless
ages myriads of fireflies have daily flown thither and died in that
bowl and been burned to vapor in an instant, each fly leaving as its
contribution its only indestructible particle, its single electron
of pure radium. There is energy enough there to light the whole
world, heat the whole world’s machinery, supply the whole world’s
transportation power from now till the end of eternity. The massed
riches of the planet could not furnish its value in money. You are
mine, it is yours; when Madame Curie isolates polonium, clothe
yourself in a skin of it and go and take possession!”

Then he vanished and left me in the dark when I was just in the act
of thanking him. I can find the bowl by the light it will cast upon
the sky; I can get the polonium presently, when that illustrious
lady in France isolates it from the bismuth. Stock is for sale.
Apply to Mark Twain.

THAT DAY IN EDEN
(Passage from Satan’s Diary)

Long ago I was in the bushes near the Tree of Knowledge when the Man
and the Woman came there and had a conversation. I was present, now,
when they came again after all these years. They were as
before--mere boy and girl--trim, rounded, slender, flexible, snow
images lightly flushed with the pink of the skies, innocently
unconscious of their nakedness, lovely to look upon, beautiful
beyond words.

I listened again. Again as in that former time they puzzled over
those words, Good, Evil, Death, and tried to reason out their
meaning; but, of course, they were not able to do it. Adam said:

“Come, maybe we can find Satan. He might know these things.”

Then I came forth, still gazing upon Eve and admiring, and said to
her:

“You have not seen me before, sweet creature, but I have seen you. I
have seen all the animals, but in beauty none of them equals you.
Your hair, your eyes, your face, your flesh tints, your form, the
tapering grace of your white limbs--all are beautiful, adorable,
perfect.”

It gave her pleasure, and she looked herself over, putting out a
foot and a hand and admiring them; then she naïvely said:

“It is a joy to be so beautiful. And Adam--he is the same.”

She turned him about, this way and that, to show him off, with such
guileless pride in her blue eyes, and he--he took it all as just
matter of course, and was innocently happy in it, and said, “When I
have flowers on my head it is better still.”

Eve said, “It is true--you shall see,” and she flitted hither and
thither like a butterfly and plucked flowers, and in a moment laced
their stems together in a glowing wreath and set it upon his head;
then tiptoed and gave it a pat here and there with her nimble
fingers, with each pat enhancing its grace and shape, none knows
how, nor why it should so result, but in it there is a law
somewhere, though the delicate art and mystery of it is her secret
alone, and not learnable by another; and when at last it was to her
mind she clapped her hands for pleasure, then reached up and kissed
him--as pretty a sight, taken altogether, as in my experience I have
seen.

Presently, to the matter in hand. The meaning of those words--would
I tell her?

Certainly none could be more willing, but how was I to do it? I
could think of no way to make her understand, and I said so. I said:

“I will try, but it is hardly of use. For instance--what is pain?”

“Pain? I do not know.”

“Certainly. How should you? Pain is not of your world; pain is
impossible to you; you have never experienced a physical pain.
Reduce that to a formula, a principle, and what have we?”

“What have we?”

“This: Things which are outside of our orbit--our own particular
world--things which by our constitution and equipment we are unable
to see, or feel, or otherwise experience--_cannot be made
comprehensible to us in words_. There you have the whole thing in a
nutshell. It is a principle, it is axiomatic, it is a law. Now do
you understand?”

The gentle creature looked dazed, and for all result she was
delivered of this vacant remark:

“What is axiomatic?”

She had missed the point. Necessarily she would. Yet her effort was
success for me, for it was a vivid confirmation of the truth of what
I had been saying. Axiomatic was for the present a thing outside of
the world of her experience, therefore it had no meaning for her. I
ignored her question and continued:

“What is fear?”

“Fear? I do not know.”

“Naturally. Why should you? You have not felt it, you cannot feel
it, it does not belong in your world. With a hundred thousand words
I should not be able to make you understand what fear is. How then
am I to explain death to you? You have never seen it, it is foreign
to your world, it is impossible to make the word mean anything to
you, so far as I can see. In a way, it is a sleep----”

“Oh, I know what that is!”

“But it is a sleep only in a way, as I said. It is more than a
sleep.”

“Sleep is pleasant, sleep is lovely!”

“But death is a long sleep--very long.”

“Oh, all the lovelier! Therefore I think nothing could be better
than death.”

I said to myself, “Poor child, some day you may know what a pathetic
truth you have spoken; some day you may say, out of a broken heart,
‘Come to me, O Death the compassionate! steep me in the merciful
oblivion, O refuge of the sorrowful, friend of the forsaken and the
desolate!’” Then I said aloud, “But this sleep is eternal.”

The word went over her head. Necessarily it would.

“Eternal. What is eternal?”

“Ah, that also is outside of your world, as yet. There is no way to
make you understand it.”

It was a hopeless case. Words referring to things outside of her
experience were a foreign language to her, and meaningless. She was
like a little baby whose mother says to it, “Don’t put your finger
in the candle flame; it will burn you.” Burn--it is a foreign word
to the baby, and will have no terrors for it until experience shall
have revealed its meaning. It is not worth while for mamma to make
the remark, the baby will goo-goo cheerfully, and put its finger in
the pretty flame--once. After these private reflections I said again
that I did not think there was any way to make her understand the
meaning of the word eternal. She was silent awhile, turning these
deep matters over in the unworn machinery of her mind; then she gave
up the puzzle and shifted her ground, saying:

“Well, there are those other words. What is good, and what is evil?”

“It is another difficulty. They, again, are outside of your world;
they have place in the moral kingdom only. You have no morals.”

“What are morals?”

“A system of law which distinguishes between right and wrong, good
morals and bad. These things do not exist for you. I cannot make it
clear; you would not understand.”

“But try.”

“Well, obedience to constituted authority is a moral law. Suppose
Adam should forbid you to put your child in the river and leave it
there overnight--would you put the child there?”

She answered with a darling simplicity and guilelessness:

“Why, yes, if I wanted to.”

“There, it is just as I said--you would not know any better; you
have no idea of duty, command, obedience; they have no meaning for
you. In your present estate you are in no possible way responsible
for anything you do or say or think. It is impossible for you to do
wrong, for you have no more notion of right and wrong than the other
animals have. You and they can do only right; whatever you and they
do is right and innocent. It is a divine estate, the loftiest and
purest attainable in heaven and in earth. It is the angel gift. The
angels are wholly pure and sinless, for they do not know right from
wrong, and all the acts of such are blameless. No one can do wrong
without knowing how to distinguish between right and wrong.”

“Is it an advantage to know?”

“Most certainly not! That knowledge would remove all that is divine,
all that is angelic, from the angels, and immeasurably degrade
them.”

“Are there any persons that know right from wrong?”

“Not in--well, not in heaven.”

“What gives that knowledge?”

“The Moral Sense.”

“What is that?”

“Well--no matter. Be thankful that you lack it.”

“Why?”

“Because it is a degradation, a disaster. Without it one cannot do
wrong; with it, one can. Therefore it has but one office, only
one--to teach how to do wrong. It can teach no other thing--no other
thing whatever. It is the _creator_ of wrong; wrong cannot exist
until the Moral Sense brings it into being.”

“How can one acquire the Moral Sense?”

“By eating of the fruit of the Tree, here. But why do you wish to
know? Would you like to have the Moral Sense?”

She turned wistfully to Adam:

“Would you like to have it?”

He showed no particular interest, and only said:

“I am indifferent. I have not understood any of this talk, but if
you like we will eat it, for I cannot see that there is any
objection to it.”

Poor ignorant things, the command of refrain had meant nothing to
them, they were but children, and could not understand untried
things and verbal abstractions which stood for matters outside of
their little world and their narrow experience. Eve reached for an
apple!--oh, farewell, Eden and your sinless joys, come poverty and
pain, hunger and cold and heartbreak, bereavement, tears and shame,
envy, strife, malice and dishonor, age, weariness, remorse; then
desperation and the prayer for the release of death, indifferent
that the gates of hell yawn beyond it!

She tasted--the fruit fell from her hand.

It was pitiful. She was like one who wakens slow and confusedly out
of a sleep. She gazed half vacantly at me, then at Adam, holding her
curtaining fleece of golden hair back with her hand; then her
wandering glance fell upon her naked person. The red blood mounted
to her cheek, and she sprang behind a bush and stood there crying,
and saying:

“Oh, my modesty is lost to me--my unoffending form is become a shame
to me!” She moaned and muttered in her pain, and dropped her head,
saying, “I am degraded--I have fallen, oh, so low, and I shall never
rise again.”

Adam’s eyes were fixed upon her in a dreamy amazement, for he could
not understand what had happened, it being outside his world as yet,
and her words having no meaning for one void of the Moral Sense. And
now his wonder grew: for, unknown to Eve, her hundred years rose
upon her, and faded the heaven of her eyes and the tints of her
young flesh, and touched her hair with gray, and traced faint sprays
of wrinkles about her mouth and eyes, and shrunk her form, and
dulled the satin luster of her skin.

All this the fair boy saw: then loyally and bravely he took the
apple and tasted it, saying nothing.

The change came upon him also. Then he gathered boughs for both and
clothed their nakedness, and they turned and went their way, hand in
hand and bent with age, and so passed from sight.

EVE SPEAKS

They drove us from the Garden with their swords of flame, the fierce
cherubim. And what had we done? We meant no harm. We were ignorant,
and did as any other children might do. We could not know it was
wrong to disobey the command, for the words were strange to us and
we did not understand them. We did not know right from wrong--how
should we know? We could not, without the Moral Sense; it was not
possible. If we had been given the Moral Sense first--ah, that would
have been fairer, that would have been kinder; then we should be to
blame if we disobeyed. But to say to us poor ignorant children words
which we could not understand, and then punish us because we did not
do as we were told--ah, how can that be justified? We knew no more
then than this littlest child of mine knows now, with its four
years--oh, not so much, I think. Would I say to it, “If thou
touchest this bread I will overwhelm thee with unimaginable
disaster, even to the dissolution of thy corporeal elements,” and
when it took the bread and smiled up in my face, thinking no harm,
as not understanding those strange words, would I take advantage of
its innocence and strike it down with the mother hand it trusted?
Whoso knoweth the mother heart, let him judge if it would do that
thing. Adam says my brain is turned by my troubles and that I am
become wicked. I am as I am; I did not make myself.

They drove us out. Drove us out into this harsh wilderness, and shut
the gates against us. We that had meant no harm. It is three months.
We were ignorant then; we are rich in learning, now--ah, how rich!
We know hunger, thirst, and cold; we know pain, disease, and grief;
we know hate, rebellion, and deceit; we know remorse, the conscience
that prosecutes guilt and innocence alike, making no distinction; we
know weariness of body and spirit, the unrefreshing sleep, the rest
which rests not, the dreams which restore Eden, and banish it again
with the waking; we know misery; we know torture and the heartbreak;
we know humiliation and insult; we know indecency, immodesty, and
the soiled mind; we know the scorn that attaches to the transmitted
image of God exposed unclothed to the day; we know fear; we know
vanity, folly, envy, hypocrisy; we know irreverence; we know
blasphemy; we know right from wrong, and how to avoid the one and do
the other; we know all the rich product of the Moral Sense, and it
is our possession. Would we could sell it for one hour of Eden and
white purity; would we could degrade the animals with it!

We have it all--that treasure. All but death. Death.... Death. What
may that be?

Adam comes.

“Well?”

“He still sleeps.”

That is our second-born--our Abel.

“He has slept enough for his good, and his garden suffers for his
care. Wake him.”

“I have tried and cannot.”

“Then he is very tired. Let him sleep on.”

“I think it is his hurt that makes him sleep so long.”

I answer: “It may be so. Then we will let him rest; no doubt the
sleep is healing it.”

It is a day and a night, now, that he has slept. We found him by his
altar in his field, that morning, his face and body drenched in
blood. He said his eldest brother struck him down. Then he spoke no
more and fell asleep. We laid him in his bed and washed the blood
away, and were glad to know the hurt was light and that he had no
pain; for if he had had pain he would not have slept.

It was in the early morning that we found him. All day he slept that
sweet, reposeful sleep, lying always on his back, and never moving,
never turning. It showed how tired he was, poor thing. He is so good
and works so hard, rising with the dawn and laboring till the dark.
And now he is overworked; it will be best that he tax himself less,
after this, and I will ask him; he will do anything I wish.

All the day he slept. I know, for I was always near, and made dishes
for him and kept them warm against his waking. Often I crept in and
fed my eyes upon his gentle face, and was thankful for that blessed
sleep. And still he slept on--slept with his eyes wide; a strange
thing, and made me think he was awake at first, but it was not so,
for I spoke and he did not answer. He always answers when I speak.
Cain has moods and will not answer, but not Abel.

I have sat by him all the night, being afraid he might wake and want
his food. His face was very white; and it changed, and he came to
look as he had looked when he was a little child in Eden long ago,
so sweet and good and dear. It carried me back over the abyss of
years, and I was lost in dreams and tears--oh, hours, I think. Then
I came to myself; and thinking he stirred, I kissed his cheek to
wake him, but he slumbered on and I was disappointed. His cheek was
cold. I brought sacks of wool and the down of birds and covered him,
but he was still cold, and I brought more. Adam has come again, and
says he is not yet warm. I do not understand it.

III

We cannot wake him! With my arms clinging about him I have looked
into his eyes, through the veil of my tears, and begged for one
little word, and he will not answer. Oh, is it that long sleep--is
it death? And will he wake no more?

FROM SATAN’S DIARY

Death has entered the world, the creatures are perishing; one of The
Family is fallen; the product of the Moral Sense is complete. The
Family think ill of death--they will change their minds.

SAMUEL ERASMUS MOFFETT
AUGUST 16, 1908

HIS CHARACTER AND HIS DEATH

_August 16th._--Early in the evening of the first day of this month
the telephone brought us a paralyzing shock: my nephew, Samuel E.
Moffett, was drowned. It was while sea bathing. The seas were
running high and he was urged not to venture out, but he was a
strong swimmer and not afraid. He made the plunge with confidence,
his frightened little son looking on. Instantly he was helpless. The
great waves tossed him hither and thither, they buried him, they
struck the life out of him. In a minute it was all over.

He was forty-eight years old, he was at his best, physically and
mentally, and was well on his way toward earned distinction. He was
large-minded and large-hearted, there was no blot nor fleck upon his
character, his ideals were high and clean, and by native impulse and
without effort he lived up to them.

He had been a working journalist, an editorial writer, for nearly
thirty years, and yet in that exposed position had preserved his
independence in full strength and his principles undecayed. Several
years ago he accepted a high place on the staff of _Collier’s
Weekly_ and was occupying it when he died.

In an early chapter of my _Autobiography_, written three years ago,
I have told how he wrote from San Francisco, when he was a stripling
and asked me to help him get a berth on a daily paper there; and how
he submitted to the severe conditions I imposed, and got the berth
and kept it sixteen years.

As child and lad his health was delicate, capricious, insecure, and
his eyesight affected by a malady which debarred him from book study
and from reading. This was a bitter hardship for him, for he had a
wonderful memory and a sharp hunger for knowledge. School was not
for him, yet while still a little boy he acquired an education, and
a good one. He managed it after a method of his own devising: he got
permission to listen while the classes of the normal school recited
their abstruse lessons and black-boarded their mathematics. By
questioning the little chap it was found that he was keeping up with
the star scholars of the school.

In those days he paid us a visit in Hartford. It was when he was
about twelve years old. I was laboriously constructing an
ancient-history game at the time, to be played by my wife and
myself, and I was digging the dates and facts for it out of
cyclopædias, a dreary and troublesome business. I had sweated blood
over that work and was pardonably proud of the result, as far as I
had gone. I showed the child my mass of notes, and he was at once as
excited as I should have been over a Sunday-school picnic at his
age. He wanted to help, he was eager to help, and I was as willing
to let him as I should have been to give away an interest in a
surgical operation that I was getting tired of. I made him free of
the cyclopædias, but he never consulted them--he had their contents
in his head. All alone he built and completed the game rapidly and
without effort.

Away back in ’80 or ’81 when the grand eruption of Krakatoa, in the
Straits of Sunda, occurred, the news reached San Francisco late in
the night--too late for editors to hunt for information about that
unknown volcano in cyclopædias and write it up exhaustively and
learnedly in time for the first edition. The managing editor said,
“Send to Moffett’s home; rout him out and fetch him; he will know
all about it; he won’t need the cyclopædia.” Which was true. He came
to the office and swiftly wrote it all up without having to refer to
books.

I will take a few paragraphs from the article about him in
_Collier’s Weekly_:

If you wanted to know any fact about any subject it was quicker to
go to him than to books of reference. His good nature made him the
martyr of interruptions. In the middle of a sentence, in a hurry
hour, he would look up happily, and whether the thing you wanted
was railroad statistics or international law, he would bring it
out of one of the pigeonholes in his brain. A born dispenser of
the light, he made the giving of information a privilege and a
pleasure on all occasions.

This cyclopædic faculty was marvelous because it was only a small
part of his equipment which became invaluable in association with
other gifts. A student and a humanist, he delighted equally in
books and in watching all the workings of a political convention.

For any one of the learned professions he had conspicuous ability.
He chose that which, in the cloister of the editorial rooms, makes
fame for others. Any judge or Cabinet Minister of our time may
well be proud of a career of such usefulness as his. Men with such
a quality of mind as Moffett’s are rare.

Anyone who discussed with him the things he advocated stood a
little awed to discover that here was a man who had carefully
thought out what would be best for all the people in the world two
or three generations hence, and guided his work according to that
standard. This was the one broad subject that covered all his
interests; in detail they included the movement for universal
peace about which he wrote repeatedly; so small a thing as a plan
to place flowers on the window sills and fire escapes of New York
tenement houses enlisted not only the advocacy of his pen, but his
direct personal presence and co-operation; again and again, in his
department in this paper, he gave indorsement and aid to similar
movements, whether broad or narrow in their scope--the saving of
the American forests, fighting tuberculosis, providing free meals
for poor school children in New York, old-age pensions, safety
appliances for protecting factory employees, the beautifying of
American cities, the creation of inland waterways, industrial
peace.

He leaves behind him wife, daughter, and son--inconsolable mourners.
The son is thirteen, a beautiful human creature, with the broad and
square face of his father and his grandfather, a face in which one
reads high character and intelligence. This boy will be
distinguished, by and by, I think.

In closing this slight sketch of Samuel E. Moffett I wish to dwell
with lingering and especial emphasis upon the dignity of his
character and ideals. In an age when we would rather have money than
health, and would rather have another man’s money than our own, he
lived and died unsordid; in a day when the surest road to national
greatness and admiration is by showy and rotten demagoguery in
politics and by giant crimes in finance, he lived and died a
gentleman.

THE NEW PLANET

(The astronomers at Harvard have observed “perturbations in the
orbital movement of Neptune,” such as might be caused by the
presence of a new planet in the vicinity.)

I believe in the new planet. I was eleven years old in 1846,
when Leverrier and Adams and Mary Somerville discovered Neptune
through the disturbance and discomfort it was causing Uranus.
“Perturbations,” they call that kind of disturbance. I had been
having those perturbations myself, for more than two months; in
fact, all through watermelon time, for they used to keep dogs in
some of the patches in those days. You notice that these recent
perturbations are considered remarkable because they perturbate
through three seconds of arc, but really that is nothing: often
I used to perturbate through as much as half an hour if it was a
dog that was attending to the perturbating. There isn’t any
Neptune that can outperturbate a dog; and I know, because I am
not speaking from hearsay. Why, if there was a planet two
hundred and fifty thousand “light-years” the other side of
Neptune’s orbit, Professor Pickering would discover it in a
minute if it could perturbate equal to a dog. Give me a dog
every time, when it comes to perturbating. You let a dog jump
out at you all of a sudden in the dark of the moon, and you will
see what a small thing three seconds of arc is: the shudder that
goes through you then would open the seams of Noah’s Ark itself,
from figurehead to rudder post, and you would drop that melon
the same as if you had never had any but just a casual interest
in it. I know about these things, because this is not tradition
I am writing, but history.

Now then, notice this. About the end of August, 1846, a change came
over me and I resolved to lead a better life, so I reformed; but it
was just as well, anyway, because they had got to having guns and
dogs both. Although I was reformed, the perturbations did not stop!
Does that strike you? They did not stop, they went right on and on
and on, for three weeks, clear up to the 23d of September; then
Neptune was discovered and the whole mystery stood explained. It
shows that I am so sensitively constructed that I perturbate when
any other planet is disturbed. This has been going on all my life.
It only happens in the watermelon season, but that has nothing to do
with it, and has no significance: geologists and anthropologists and
horticulturists all tell me it is only ancestral and hereditary, and
that is what I think myself. Now then, I got to perturbating again,
this summer--all summer through; all through watermelon time: and
_where_, do you think? Up here on my farm in Connecticut. Is that
significant? Unquestionably it is, for you couldn’t raise a
watermelon on this farm with a derrick.

That perturbating was caused by the new planet. That Washington
Observatory may throw as much doubt as it wants to, it cannot affect
me, because I know there _is_ a new planet. I know it because I
don’t perturbate for nothing. There has got to be a dog or a planet,
one or the other; and there isn’t any dog around here, so there’s
_got_ to be a planet. I hope it is going to be named after me; I
should just love it if I can’t have a constellation.

MARJORIE FLEMING, THE WONDER
CHILD

Marjorie has been in her tiny grave a hundred years; and still the
tears fall for her, and will fall. What an intensely human little
creature she was! How vividly she lived her small life; how
impulsive she was; how sudden, how tempestuous, how tender, how
loving, how sweet, how loyal, how rebellious, how repentant, how
wise, how unwise, how bursting with fun, how frank, how free, how
honest, how innocently bad, how natively good, how charged with
quaint philosophies, how winning, how precious, how adorable--and
how perennially and indestructibly interesting! And all this
exhibited, proved, and recorded before she reached the end of her
ninth year and “fell on sleep.”

Geographically considered, the lassie was a Scot; but in fact she
had no frontiers, she was the world’s child, she was the human race
in little. It is one of the prides of my life that the first time I
ever heard her name it came from the lips of Dr. John Brown--his
very own self--Dr. John Brown of Edinburgh--Dr. John Brown of _Rab
and His Friends_--Dr. John Brown of the beautiful face and the sweet
spirit, whose friends loved him with a love that was worship--Dr.
John Brown, who was Marjorie’s biographer, and who had clasped an
aged hand that had caressed Marjorie’s fifty years before, thus
linking me with that precious child by an unbroken chain of
handshakes, for I had shaken hands with Dr. John. This was in
Edinburgh thirty-six years ago. He gave my wife his little biography
of Marjorie, and I have it yet.

Is Marjorie known in America? No--at least to only a few. When Mr.
L. MacBean’s new and enlarged and charming biography[17] of her was
published five years ago it was sent over here in sheets, the market
not being large enough to justify recomposing and reprinting it on
our side of the water. I find that there are even cultivated
Scotchmen among us who have not heard of Marjorie Fleming.

She was born in Kirkcaldy in 1803, and she died when she was eight
years and eleven months old. By the time she was five years old she
was become a devourer of various kinds of literature--both heavy and
light--and was also become a quaint and free-spoken and charming
little thinker and philosopher whose views were a delightful jumble
of first-hand cloth of gold and second-hand rags.

When she was six she opened up that rich mine, her journals, and
continued to work it by spells during the remainder of her brief
life. She was a pet of Walter Scott, from the cradle, and when he
could have her society for a few hours he was content, and required
no other. Her little head was full of noble passages from
Shakespeare and other favorites of hers, and the fact that she could
deliver them with moving effect is proof that her elocution was a
born gift with her, and not a mechanical reproduction of somebody
else’s art, for a child’s parrot-work does not move. When she was a
little creature of seven years, Sir Walter Scott “would read ballads
to her in his own glorious way, the two getting wild with excitement
over them; and he would take her on his knee and make her repeat
Constance’s speeches in _King John_ till he swayed to and fro,
sobbing his fill.” [Dr. John Brown.]

“_Sobbing his fill_”--that great man--over that little thing’s
inspired interpretations. It is a striking picture; there is no mate
to it. Sir Walter said of her:

“She’s the most extraordinary creature I ever met with, and her
repeating of Shakespeare overpowers me as nothing else does.”

She spent the whole of her little life in a Presbyterian heaven; yet
she was not affected by it; she could not have been happier if she
had been in the other heaven.

She was made out of thunderstorms and sunshine, and not even her
little perfunctory pieties and shop-made holiness could squelch her
spirits or put out her fires for long. Under pressure of a pestering
sense of duty she heaves a shovelful of trade godliness into her
journals every little while, but it does not offend, for none of it
is her own; it is all borrowed, it is a convention, a custom of her
environment, it is the most innocent of hypocrisies, and this
tainted butter of hers soon gets to be as delicious to the reader as
are the stunning and worldly sincerities she splatters around it
every time her pen takes a fresh breath. The adorable child! she
hasn’t a discoverable blemish in her make-up anywhere.

Marjorie’s first letter was written before she was six years old; it
was to her cousin, Isa Keith, a young lady of whom she was
passionately fond. It was done in a sprawling hand, ten words to the
page--and in those foolscap days a page was a spacious thing:

“MY DEAR ISA--

“I now sit down on my botom to answer all the kind & beloved letters
which you was so so good as to write to me. This is the first time I
ever wrote a letter in my life.

“Miss Potune, a lady of my acquaintance, praises me dreadfully. I
repeated something out of Deen Swift & she said I was fit for the
stage, & you may think I was primmed up with majestick Pride, but
upon my word I felt myself turn a little birsay--birsay is a word
which is a word that William composed which is as you may suppose a
little enraged. This horid fat Simpliton says that my Aunt is
beautifull which is intirely impossible for that is not her nature.”

Frank? Yes, Marjorie was that. And during the brief moment that she
enchanted this dull earth with her presence she was the
bewitchingest speller and punctuator in all Christendom.

The average child of six “prints” its correspondence in rickety and
reeling Roman capitals, or dictates to mamma, who puts the little
chap’s message on paper. The sentences are labored, repetitious, and
slow; there are but three or four of them; they deal in information
solely, they contain no ideas, they venture no judgments, no
opinions; they inform papa that the cat has had kittens again; that
Mary has a new doll that can wink; that Tommy has lost his top; and
will papa come soon and bring the writer something nice? But with
Marjorie it is different.

She needs no amanuensis, she puts her message on paper herself; and
not in weak and tottering Roman capitals, but in a thundering hand
that can be heard a mile and be read across the square without
glasses. And she doesn’t have to study, and puzzle, and search her
head for something to say; no, she had only to connect the pen with
the paper and turn on the current; the words spring forth at once,
and go chasing after each other like leaves dancing down a stream.
For she has a faculty, has Marjorie! Indeed yes; when she sits down
on her bottom to do a letter, there isn’t going to be any lack of
materials, nor of fluency, and neither is her letter going to be
wanting in pepper, or vinegar, or vitriol, or any of the other
condiments employed by genius to save a literary work of art from
flatness and vapidity. And as for judgments and opinions, they are
as commodiously in her line as they are in the Lord Chief Justice’s.
They have weight, too, and are convincing: for instance, for
thirty-six years they have damaged that “horid Simpliton” in my
eyes; and, more than that, they have even imposed upon me--and most
unfairly and unwarrantably--an aversion to the horid fat Simpliton’s
name; a perfectly innocent name, and yet, because of the prejudice
against it with which this child has poisoned my mind for a
generation I cannot see “Potune” on paper and keep my gorge from
rising.

In her journals Marjorie changes her subject whenever she wants
to--and that is pretty often. When the deep moralities pay her a
passing visit she registers them. Meantime if a cherished love
passage drifts across her memory she shoves it into the midst of the
moralities--it is nothing to her that it may not feel at home there:

“We should not be happy at the death of our fellow creatures, for
they love life like us love your neighbor & he will love you
Bountifulness and Mercifulness are always rewarded. In my travels I
met with a handsome lad named Charles Balfour Esge [Esqr.] and from
him I got offers of marage--ofers of marage did I say? nay plainly
[he] loved me. Goodness does not belong to the wicked but badness
dishonor befals wickedness but not virtue, no disgrace befals virtue
perciverence overcomes almost al difficulties no I am rong in saying
almost I should say always as it is so perciverence is a virtue my
Csosin says pacience is a cristain virtue, which is true.”

She is not copying these profundities out of a book, she is getting
them out of her memory; her spelling shows that the book is not
before her. The easy and effortless flow of her talk is a marvelous
thing in a baby of her age. Her interests are as wide and varied as
a grown person’s: she discusses all sorts of books, and fearlessly
delivers judgment upon them; she examines whomsoever crosses the
field of her vision, and again delivers a verdict; she dips into
religion and history, and even into politics; she takes a shy at the
news of the day, and comments upon it; and now and then she drops
into poetry--into rhyme, at any rate.

Marjorie would not intentionally mislead anyone, but she has just
been making a remark which moves me to hoist a danger-signal for the
protection of the modern reader. It is this one: “_In my travels._”
Naturally we are apt to clothe a word with its present-day
meaning--the meaning we are used to, the meaning we are familiar
with; and so--well, you get the idea: some words that are giants
to-day were very small dwarfs a century ago, and if we are not
careful to take that vast enlargement into account when we run
across them in the literatures of the past, they are apt to convey
to us a distinctly wrong impression. To-day, when a person says “_in
my travels_” he means that he has been around the globe nineteen or
twenty times, and we so understand him; and so, when Marjorie says
it, it startles us for a moment, for it gives us the impression that
_she_ has been around it fourteen or fifteen times; whereas, such is
not at all the case. She has traveled prodigiously for _her_ day,
but not for ours. She had “traveled,” altogether, three miles by
land and eight by water--per ferryboat. She is fairly and justly
proud of it, for it is the exact equivalent, in grandeur and
impressiveness, in the case of a child of our day, to two trips
across the Atlantic and a thousand miles by rail.

“In the love novels all the heroins are very desperate Isabella will
not allow me to speak about lovers and heroins, and tiss too refined
for my taste a loadstone is a curous thing indeed it is true Heroic
love doth never win disgrace this is my maxum and I will follow it
forever Miss Eguards [Edgeworth] tails are very good particularly
some that are very much adopted for youth as Lazy Lawrence Tarelton
False Key &c &c Persons of the parlement house are as I think caled
Advocakes Mr Cay & Mr Crakey has that honour. This has been a very
mild winter. Mr Banestors Budget is to-night I hope it will be a
good one. A great many authors have expressed themselfs too
sentimentaly.... The Mercandile Afares are in a perilous situation
sickness & a delicante frame I have not & I do not know what it is,
but Ah me perhaps I shall have it.[18] Grandure reigns in
Edinburgh.... Tomson is a beautifull author and Pope but nothing is
like Shakepear of which I have a little knolegde of. An unfortunate
death James the 5 had for he died of greif Macbeth is a pretty
composition but awful one Macbeth is so bad & wicked, but Lady
Macbeth is so hardened in guilt she does not mind her sins & faults
No.

“... A sailor called here to say farewell, it must be dreadful to
leave his native country where he might get a wife or perhaps me,
for I love him very much & with all my heart, but O I forgot
Isabella forbid me to speak about love.... I wish everybody would
follow her example & be as good as pious & virtious as she is & they
would get husbands soon enough, love is a parithatick [pathetic]
thing as well as troublesome & tiresome but O Isabella forbid me to
speak about it.”

But the little rascal can’t _keep_ from speaking about it, because
it is her supreme interest in life; her heart is not capacious
enough to hold all the product that is engendered by the
ever-recurring inflaming spectacle of man-creatures going by, and
the surplus is obliged to spill over; Isa’s prohibitions are no
sufficient dam for such a discharge.

“Love I think is the fasion for everybody is marring [marrying]....
Yesterday a marrade man named Mr John Balfour Esg [Esq.] offered to
kiss me, & offered to marry me though the man was espused
[espoused], & his wife was present & said he must ask her permission
but he did not, I think he was ashamed or confounded before 3
gentleman Mr Jobson and two Mr Kings.”

I must make room here for another of Marjorie’s second-hand
high-morality outbreaks. They give me a sinful delight which I ought
to grieve at, I suppose, but I can’t seem to manage it:

“James Macary is to be transported for murder in the flower of his
youth O passion is a terible thing for it leads people from sin to
sin at last it gets so far as to come to greater crimes than we
thought we could comit and it must be dreadful to leave his native
country and his friends and to be so disgraced and affronted.”

That is Marjorie talking shop, dear little diplomat--to please and
comfort mamma and Isa, no doubt.

This wee little child has a marvelous range of interests. She reads
philosophies, novels, baby books, histories, the mighty poets--reads
them with burning interest, and frankly and freely criticizes them
all; she revels in storms, sunsets, cloud effects, scenery of
mountain, plain, ocean, and forest, and all the other wonders of
nature, and sets down her joy in them all; she loves people, she
detests people, according to mood and circumstances, and delivers
her opinion of them, sometimes seasoned with attar of roses,
sometimes with vitriol; in games, and all kinds of childish play she
is an enthusiast; she adores animals, adores them all; none is too
forlorn to fail of favor in her friendly eyes, no creature so humble
that she cannot find something in it on which to lavish her
caressing worship.

“I am going to-morrow to a delightfull place, Braehead by name,
belonging to Mrs. Crraford [Crauford], where there is ducks cocks
hens bobblyjocks 2 dogs 2 cats and swine which is delightful. I
think it is shocking to think that the dog and cat should bear them
and they are drowned after all.”

She is a dear child, a bewitching little scamp; and never dearer, I
think, than when the devil has had her in possession and she is
breaking her stormy little heart over the remembrance of it:

“I confess I have been very more like a little young divil than a
creature for when Isabella went up stairs to teach me religion and
my multiplication and to be good and all my other lessons I stamped
with my foot and threw my new hat which she had made on the ground
and was sulky and was dreadfully passionate, but she never whiped me
but said Marjory go into another room and think what a great crime
you are committing letting your temper git the better of you. But I
went so sulkily that the devil got the better of me but she never
never never whips me so that I think I would be the better of it &
the next time that I behave ill I think she should do it for she
never does it.... Isabella has given me praise for checking my
temper for I was sulky even when she was kneeling an whole hour
teaching me to write.”

The wise Isabella, the sweet and patient Isabella! It is just a
hundred years now (May, 1909) since the grateful child made that
golden picture of you and laid your good heart bare for distant
generations to see and bless; a hundred years--but if the picture
endures a thousand it will still bring you the blessing, and with it
the reverent homage that is your due. You had the seeing eye and the
wise head. A fool would have punished Marjorie and wrecked her, but
you held your hand, as knowing that when her volcanic fires went
down she would repent, and grieve, and punish herself, and be saved.

Sometimes when Marjorie was miraculously good, she got a penny for
it, and once when she got an entire sixpence, she recognized that it
was wealth. This wealth brought joy to her heart. Why? Because she
could spend it on somebody else! We who know Marjorie would know
that without being told it. I am sorry--often sorry, often
grieved--that I was not there and looking over her shoulder when she
was writing down her valued penny rewards: I would have said, “Save
that scrap of manuscript, dear; make a will, and leave it to your
posterity, to save them from want when penury shall threaten them; a
day will come when it will be worth a thousand guineas, and a later
day will come when it will be worth five thousand; here you are,
rejoicing in copper farthings, and don’t know that your magic pen is
showering gold coin all over the paper.” But I was not there to say
it; those who were there did not think to say it; and so there is
not a line of that quaint precious cacography in existence to-day.

I have adored Marjorie for six-and-thirty years; I have adored her
in detail, I have adored the whole of her; but above all other
details--just a little above all other details--I have adored her
because she detested that odious and confusing and unvanquishable
and unlearnable and shameless invention, the multiplication table:

“I am now going to tell you the horible and wretched plaege [plague]
that my multiplication gives me you can’t conceive it the most
Devilish thing is 8 times 8 & 7 times 7 it is what nature itself
cant endure.”

I stand reverently uncovered in the presence of that holy verdict.

Here is that person again whom I so dislike--and for no reason at
all except that my Marjorie doesn’t like her:

“Miss Potune is very fat she pretends to be very learned she says
she saw a stone that dropt from the skies, but she is a good
christian.”

Of course, stones have fallen from the skies, but I don’t believe
this “horid fat Simpliton” had ever seen one that had done it; but
even if she had, it was none of her business, and she could have
been better employed than in going around exaggerating it and
carrying on about it and trying to make trouble with a little child
that had never done _her_ any harm.

“... The Birds do chirp the Lambs do leap and Nature is clothed with
the garments of green yellow, and white, purple, and red.

“... There is a book that is called the Newgate Calender that
contains all the Murders: all the Murders did I say, nay all Thefts
& Forgeries that ever were committed & fills me with horror &
consternation.”

Marjorie is a diligent little student, and her education is always
storming along and making great time and lots of noise:

“Isabella this morning taught me some French words one of which is
bon suar the interpretation is good morning.”

It slanders Isabella, but the slander is not intentional. The main
thing to notice is that big word, “interpretation.” Not many
children of Marjorie’s age can handle a five syllable team in that
easy and confident way. It is observable that she frequently employs
words of an imposingly formidable size, and is manifestly quite
familiar with them and not at all afraid of them.

“Isa is teaching me to make Simecolings nots of interrigations
periods & commas &c. As this is Sunday I will meditate uppon
senciable & Religious subjects first I should be very thankful I am
not a beggar as many are.”

That was the “first.” She didn’t get to her second subject, but got
side-tracked by a saner interest, and used her time to better
purpose.

“It is melancholy to think, that I have so many talents, & many
there are that have not had the attention paid to them that I have,
& yet they contrive to be better then me.

“... Isabella is far too indulgent to me & even the Miss Crafords
say that they wonder at her patience with me & it is indeed true for
my temper is a bad one.”

The daring child wrote a (synopsized) history of Mary Queen of Scots
and of five of the royal Jameses in rhyme--but never mind, we have
no room to discuss it here. Nothing was entirely beyond her literary
jurisdiction; if it had occurred to her that the laws of Rome needed
codifying she would have taken a chance at it.

Here is a sad note:

“My religion is greatly falling off because I dont pray with so much
attention when I am saying my prayers and my character is lost
a-mong the Breahead people I hope I will be religious again but as
for regaining my character I despare of it.”

When religion and character go, they leave a large vacuum. But there
are ways to fill it:

“I’ve forgot to say, but I’ve four lovers, the other one is Harry
Watson, a very delightful boy.... James Keith hardly ever Spoke to
me, he said Girl! make less noise.... Craky hall ... I walked to
that delightfull place with a delightful young man beloved by all
his friends and espacialy by me his loveress but I must not talk any
longer about him for Isa said it is not proper for to speak of
gentalman but I will never forget him....

“The Scythians tribe live very coarsely for a Gluton Introduced to
Arsaces the Captain of the Army, 1 man who Dressed hair & another
man who was a good cook but Arsaces said that he would keep 1 for
brushing his horses tail and the other to fead his pigs....

“On Saturday I expected no less than three well-made bucks, the
names of whom is here advertised. Mr. Geo. Crakey [Cragie], and Wm.
Keith and Jn Keith--the first is the funniest of every one of them.
Mr. Crakey and I walked to Craky-hall [Craigiehall] hand and hand in
Innocence and matitation sweet thinking on the kind love which flows
in our tender hearted mind which is overflowing with majestic
pleasure no one was ever so polite to me in the hole state of my
existence. Mr. Craky you must know is a great Buck and pretty
good-looking.”

For a purpose, I wish the reader to take careful note of these
statistics:

“I am going to tell you of a melancholy story. A young turkie of 2
or 3 months old, would you believe it, the father broke its leg, &
he killed another! I think he ought to be transported or hanged.”

Marjorie wrote some verses about this tragedy--I think. I cannot be
quite certain it is this one, for in the verses there are three
deaths, whereas these statistics do not furnish so many. Also in the
statistics the father of the deceased is indifferent about the loss
he has sustained, whereas in the verses he is not. Also in the third
verse, the _mother_, too, exhibits feeling, whereas in the two
closing verses of the poem she--at least it seems to be she--is
indifferent. At least it looks like indifference to me, and I
believe it _is_ indifference:

“Three turkeys fair their last have breathed,
And now this world forever leaved;
Their father, and their mother too,
They sighed and weep as well as you;
Indeed, the rats their bones have cranched.
Into eternity theire launched.
A direful death indeed they had,
As wad put any parent mad;
But she was more than usual calm,
She did not give a single dam.”

The naughty little scamp! I mean, for not leaving out the _l_ in the
word “Calm,” so as to perfect the rhyme. It seems a pity to damage
with a lame rhyme a couplet that is otherwise without a blemish.

Marjorie wrote four journals. She began the first one in January,
1809, when she was just six years old, and finished it five months
later, in June.

She began the second in the following month, and finished it six
months afterward (January, 1810), when she was just seven.

She began the third one in April, 1810, and finished it in the
autumn.

She wrote the fourth in the winter of 1810-11, and the last entry in
it bears date July 19, 1811, and she died exactly five months later,
December 19th, aged eight years and eleven months. It contains her
rhymed Scottish histories.

Let me quote from Dr. John Brown:

“The day before her death, Sunday, she sat up in bed, worn and thin,
her eye gleaming as with the light of a coming world, and with a
tremulous, old voice repeated a long poem by Burns--heavy with the
shadow of death, and lit with the fantasy of the judgment seat--the
publican’s prayer in paraphrase, beginning:

“‘Why am I loth to leave this earthly scene?
Have I so found it full of pleasing charms?
Some drops of joy, with draughts of ill between,
Some gleams of sunshine ’mid renewing storms.’

“It is more affecting than we care to say to read her mother’s and
Isabella Keith’s letters written immediately after her death. Old
and withered, tattered and pale, they are now; but when you read
them, how quick, how throbbing with life and love! how rich in that
language of affection which only women, and Shakespeare, and Luther
can use--that power of detaining the soul over the beloved object
and its loss.”

Fifty years after Marjorie’s death her sister, writing to Dr. Brown,
said:

“My mother was struck by the patient quietness manifested by
Marjorie during this illness, unlike her ardent, impulsive nature;
but love and poetic feeling were unquenched. When Dr. Johnstone
rewarded her submissiveness with a sixpence, the request speedily
followed that she might get out ere New Year’s Day came. When asked
why she was so desirous of getting out, she immediately rejoined:
‘Oh, I am so anxious to buy something with my sixpence for my dear
Isa Keith.’ Again, when lying very still, her mother asked her if
there was anything she wished: ‘Oh yes, if you would just leave the
room door open a wee bit, and play the _Land o’ the Leal_, and I
will lie and _think_ and enjoy myself’ (this is just as stated to me
by her mother and mine). Well, the happy day came, alike to parents
and child, when Marjorie was allowed to come forth from the nursery
to the parlor. It was Sabbath evening, and after tea. My father, who
idolized this child, and never afterward in my hearing mentioned her
name, took her in his arms; and while walking her up and down the
room she said: ‘Father, I will repeat something to you; what would
you like?’ He said, ‘Just choose for yourself, Maidie.’ She
hesitated for a moment between the paraphrase, ‘Few are thy days and
full of woe,’ and the lines of Burns already quoted, but decided on
the latter; a remarkable choice for a child. The repeating of these
lines seemed to stir up the depths of feeling in her soul. She asked
to be allowed to write a poem. There was a doubt whether it would be
right to allow her, in case of hurting her eyes. She pleaded
earnestly, ‘Just this once’; the point was yielded, her slate was
given her, and with great rapidity she wrote an address of fourteen
lines ‘To my loved cousin on the author’s recovery.’”

The cousin was Isa Keith.

“She went to bed apparently well, awoke in the middle of the night
with the old cry of woe to a mother’s heart, ‘My head, my head!’
Three days of the dire malady, ‘water in the head,’ followed, and
the end came.”

-----

Footnote 17:

_Marjorie Fleming._ By L. MacBean. G. P. Putnam’s Sons,
publishers, London and New York.

Permission to use the extracts quoted from Marjorie’s Journal in
this article has been granted me by the publishers.

Footnote 18:

It is a whole century since the dimly conscious little prophet
said it, but the pathos of it is still there.

ADAM’S SOLILOQUY

(The spirit of Adam is supposed to be visiting New York City
inspecting the dinosaur at the Museum of Natural History)

(1905)

It is strange ... very strange. _I_ do not remember this creature.
(_After gazing long and admiringly._) Well, it is wonderful! The
mere _skeleton_ fifty-seven feet long and sixteen feet high! Thus
far, it seems, they’ve found only this sample--without doubt a
merely medium-sized one; a person could not step out here into the
Park and happen by luck upon the largest horse in America; no, he
would happen upon one that would look small alongside of the biggest
Normandy. It is quite likely that the biggest dinosaur was ninety
feet long and twenty feet high. It would be five times as long as an
elephant; an elephant would be to it what a calf is to an elephant.
The bulk of the creature! The weight of him! As long as the longest
whale, and twice the substance in him! And all good wholesome pork,
most likely; meat enough to last a village a year.... Think of a
hundred of them in line, draped in shining cloth of gold!--a
majestic thing for a coronation procession. But expensive, for he
would eat much; only kings and millionaires could afford him.

I have no recollection of him; neither Eve nor I had heard of him
until yesterday. We spoke to Noah about him; he colored and changed
the subject. Being brought back to it--and pressed a little--he
confessed that in the matter of stocking the Ark the stipulations
had not been carried out with absolute strictness--that is, in minor
details, unessentials. There were some irregularities. He said the
boys were to blame for this--the boys mainly, his own fatherly
indulgence partly. They were in the giddy heyday of their youth at
the time, the happy springtime of life; their hundred years sat upon
them lightly, and--well, he had once been a boy himself, and he had
not the heart to be too exacting with them. And so--well, they did
things they shouldn’t have done, and he--to be candid, he winked.
But on the whole they did pretty faithful work, considering their
age. They collected and stowed a good share of the really useful
animals; and also, when Noah was not watching, a multitude of
useless ones, such as flies, mosquitoes, snakes, and so on, but they
did certainly leave ashore a good many creatures which might
possibly have had value some time or other, in the course of time.
Mainly these were vast saurians a hundred feet long, and monstrous
mammals, such as the megatherium and that sort, and there was really
some excuse for leaving them behind, for two reasons: (1) it was
manifest that some time or other they would be needed as fossils for
museums and (2) there had been a miscalculation, the Ark was smaller
than it should have been, and so there wasn’t room for those
creatures. There was actually fossil material enough all by
itself to freight twenty-five Arks like that one. As for the
dinosaur----But Noah’s conscience was easy; it was not named in his
cargo list and he and the boys were not aware that there was such a
creature. He said he could not blame himself for not knowing about
the dinosaur, because it was an American animal, and America had not
then been discovered.

Noah went on to say, “I did reproach the boys for not making the
most of the room we had, by discarding trashy animals and
substituting beasts like the mastodon, which could be useful to man
in doing heavy work such as the elephant performs, but they said
those great creatures would have increased our labors beyond our
strength, in the matter of feeding and watering them, we being
short-handed. There was something in that. We had no pump; there was
but one window; we had to let down a bucket from that, and haul it
up a good fifty feet, which was very tiresome; then we had to carry
the water downstairs--fifty feet again, in cases where it was for
the elephants and their kind, for we kept them in the hold to serve
for ballast. As it was, we lost many animals--choice animals that
would have been valuable in menageries--different breeds of lions,
tigers, hyenas, wolves, and so on; for they wouldn’t drink the water
after the salt sea water got mixed with the fresh. But we never lost
a locust, nor a grasshopper, nor a weevil, nor a rat, nor a cholera
germ, nor any of that sort of beings. On the whole, I think we did
very well, everything considered. We were shepherds and farmers; we
had never been to sea before; we were ignorant of naval matters, and
I know this for certain, that there is more difference between
agriculture and navigation than a person would think. It is my
opinion that the two trades do not belong together. Shem thinks the
same; so does Japheth. As for what Ham thinks, it is not important.
Ham is biased. You find me a Presbyterian that isn’t, if you think
you can.”

He said it aggressively; it had in it the spirit of a challenge. I
avoided argument by changing the subject. With Noah, arguing is a
passion, a disease, and it is growing upon him; has been growing
upon him for thirty thousand years, and more. It makes him
unpopular, unpleasant; many of his oldest friends dread to meet him.
Even strangers soon get to avoiding him, although at first they are
glad to meet him and gaze at him, on account of his celebrated
adventure. For a time they are proud of his notice, because he is so
distinguished; but he argues them to rags, and before long they
begin to wish, like the rest, that something had happened to the
Ark.

(_On the bench in the Park, midafternoon, dreamily noting the drift,
of the human species back and forth._) To think--this multitude is
but a wee little fraction of the earth’s population! And all blood
kin to me, every one! Eve ought to have come with me; this would
excite her affectionate heart. She was never able to keep her
composure when she came upon a relative; she would try to kiss every
one of these people, black and white and all. (_A baby wagon
passes._) How little change one can notice--none at all, in fact. I
remember the first child well----Let me see ... it is three hundred
thousand years ago come Tuesday. This one is just like it. So
between the first one and the last one there is really nothing to
choose. The same insufficiency of hair, the same absence of teeth,
the same feebleness of body and apparent vacancy of mind, the same
general unattractiveness all around. Yet Eve worshiped that early
one, and it was pretty to see her with it. This latest one’s mother
worships _it_; it shows in her eyes--it is the very look that used
to shine in Eve’s. To think that so subtle and intangible a thing as
a _look_ could flit and flash from face to face down a procession
three hundred thousand years long and remain the same, without shade
of change! Yet here it is, lighting this young creature’s face just
as it lighted Eve’s in the long ago--the newest thing I have seen in
the earth, and the oldest. Of course, the dinosaur----But that is in
another class.

She drew the baby wagon to the bench and sat down and began to shove
it softly back and forth with one hand while she held up a newspaper
with the other and absorbed herself in its contents. Presently,
“My!” she exclaimed; which startled me, and I ventured to ask her,
modestly and respectfully, what was the matter. She courteously
passed the paper to me and said--pointing with her finger:

“There--it reads like fact, but I don’t know.”

It was very embarrassing. I tried to look at my ease, and
nonchalantly turned the paper this and that and the other way, but
her eye was upon me and I felt that I was not succeeding. Pretty
soon she asked, hesitatingly:

“Can’t--can’t--you--read?”

I had to confess that I couldn’t. It filled her with wonder. But it
had one pleasant effect--it interested her in me, and I was
thankful, for I was getting lonesome for some one to talk to and
listen to. The young fellow who was showing me around--on his own
motion, I did not invite him--had missed his appointment at the
Museum, and I was feeling disappointed, for he was good company.
When I told the young woman I could not read, she asked me another
embarrassing question:

“Where are you from?”

I skirmished--to gain time and position. I said:

“Make a guess. See how near you can come.”

She brightened, and exclaimed:

“I shall dearly like it, sir, if you don’t mind. If I guess right
will you tell me?”

“Yes.”

“Honor bright?”

“Honor bright? What is that?”

She laughed delightedly and said:

“That’s a good start! I was _sure_ that that phrase would catch you.
I know one thing, now, all right. I know----”

“What do you know?”

“That you are not an American. And you aren’t, _are_ you?”

“No. You are right. I’m not--honor bright, as you say.”

She looked immensely pleased with herself, and said:

“I reckon I’m not always smart, but _that_ was smart, anyway. But
not so _very_, after all, because I already knew--believed I
knew--that you were a foreigner, by another sign.”

“What was that?”

“Your accent.”

She was an accurate observer; I do speak English with a heavenly
accent, and she had detected the foreign twang in it. She ran
charmingly on, most naïvely and engagingly pleased with her triumph:

“The minute you said, ‘See ’ow near you can come to it,’ I said to
myself, ‘Two to one he is a foreigner, and ten to one he’s English.’
Now that _is_ your nationality, _isn’t_ it?”

I was sorry to spoil her victory, but I had to do it: “Ah--you’ll
have to guess again.”

“What--you are not an Englishman?”

“No--honor bright.”

She looked me searchingly over, evidently communing with
herself--adding up my points, then she said:

“Well, you don’t _look_ like an Englishman, and that is true.” After
a little she added, “The fact is, you don’t look like _any_
foreigner--not quite like ... like _anybody_ I’ve seen before. I
will guess some more.”

She guessed every country whose name she could think of and grew
gradually discouraged. Finally she said:

“You must be the Man Without a Country--the one the story tells
about. You don’t seem to have any nationality at all. How did you
come to come to America? Have you any kinfolks here?”

“Yes--several.”

“Oh, then you came to see _them_.”

“Partly--yes.”

She sat awhile, thinking, then:

“Well, I’m not going to give up quite yet. Where do you live when
you are at home--in a city, or in the country?”

“Which do you think?”

“Well, I don’t quite know. You _do_ look a little countrified, if
you don’t mind my saying it; but you look a little citified,
too--not much, but a little, although you can’t read, which is very
curious, and you are not used to newspapers. Now _my_ guess is that
you live mainly in the country when you are at home, and not very
much in the city. Is that right?”

“Yes, quite right.”

“Oh, good! Now I’ll take a fresh start.”

Then she wore herself to the bone, naming cities. No success. Next
she wanted me to help her a little with some “pointers,” as she
phrased it. Was my city large? Yes. Was it very large? Yes. Did they
have mobiles there? No. Electric light? No. Railroads, hospitals,
colleges, cops? No.

“Why, then, it’s not civilized! Where _can_ that place be? Be good
and tell me just one peculiarity of it--then maybe I can guess.”

“Well, then, just one; it has gates of pearl.”

“Oh, go along! That’s the New Jerusalem. It isn’t fair to joke.
Never mind. I’ll guess it yet--it will come into my head pretty
soon, just when I’m not expecting it. Oh, I’ve got an idea! Please
talk a little in your own language--that’ll be a good pointer.” I
accommodated her with a sentence or two. She shook her head
despondently.

“No,” she said, “it doesn’t sound human. I mean, it doesn’t sound
like any of these other foreigners. It’s pretty enough--it’s quite
pretty, I think--but I’m sure I’ve not heard it before. Maybe if you
were to pronounce your name---- What _is_ your name, if you’ll be
so good?”

“Adam.”

“Adam?”

“Yes.”

“But Adam _what_?”

“That is all--just Adam.”

“Nothing at all but just that? Why, how curious! There’s plenty of
Adams; how can they tell you from the rest?”

“Oh, that is no trouble. I’m the only one there is, there where I’m
from.”

“Upon my word! Well, it beats the band! It reminds a person of the
old original. That was his name, too, and he hadn’t any but
that--just like you.” Then, archly, “You’ve heard of him, I
suppose?”

“Oh yes! Do you know him? Have you ever seen him?”

“_Seen_ him? Seen _Adam_? Thanks to goodness, no! It would scare me
into fits.”

“I don’t see why.”

“You don’t?”

“No.”

“_Why_ don’t you see why?”

“Because there is no sense in a person being scared of his kin.”

“_Kin?_”

“Yes. Isn’t he a distant relative of yours?”

She thought it was prodigiously funny, and said it was perfectly
true, but _she_ never would have been bright enough to think of it.
I found it a new and most pleasant sensation to have my wit admired,
and was about to try to do some more when that young fellow came. He
planted himself on the other side of the young woman and began a
vapid remark about the weather, but she gave him a look that
withered him and got stiffly up and wheeled the baby away.

BIBLE TEACHING AND RELIGIOUS
PRACTICE

Religion had its share in the changes of civilization and national
character, of course. What share? The lion’s. In the history of the
human race this has always been the case, will always be the case,
to the end of time, no doubt; or at least until man by the slow
processes of evolution shall develop into something really fine and
high--some billions of years hence, say.

The Christian’s Bible is a drug store. Its contents remain the same;
but the medical practice changes. For eighteen hundred years these
changes were slight--scarcely noticeable. The practice was
allopathic--allopathic in its rudest and crudest form. The dull and
ignorant physician day and night, and all the days and all the
nights, drenched his patient with vast and hideous doses of the most
repulsive drugs to be found in the store’s stock; he bled him,
cupped him, purged him, puked him, salivated him, never gave his
system a chance to rally, nor nature a chance to help. He kept him
religion sick for eighteen centuries, and allowed him not a well day
during all that time. The stock in the store was made up of about
equal portions of baleful and debilitating poisons, and healing and
comforting medicines; but the practice of the time confined the
physician to the use of the former; by consequence, he could only
damage his patient, and that is what he did.

Not until far within our century was any considerable change in the
practice introduced; and then mainly, or in effect only, in Great
Britain and the United States. In the other countries to-day, the
patient either still takes the ancient treatment or does not call
the physician at all. In the English-speaking countries the changes
observable in our century were forced by that very thing just
referred to--the revolt of the patient against the system; they were
not projected by the physician. The patient fell to doctoring
himself, and the physician’s practice began to fall off. He modified
his method to get back his trade. He did it gradually, reluctantly;
and never yielded more at a time than the pressure compelled. At
first he relinquished the daily dose of hell and damnation, and
administered it every other day only; next he allowed another day to
pass; then another and presently another; when he had restricted it
at last to Sundays, and imagined that now there would surely be a
truce, the homœopath arrived on the field and made him abandon hell
and damnation altogether, and administered Christ’s love, and
comfort, and charity and compassion in its stead. These had been in
the drug store all the time, gold labeled and conspicuous among the
long shelfloads of repulsive purges and vomits and poisons, and so
the practice was to blame that they had remained unused, not the
pharmacy. To the ecclesiastical physician of fifty years ago, his
predecessor for eighteen centuries was a quack; to the
ecclesiastical physician of to-day, his predecessor of fifty years
ago was a quack. To the every-man-his-own-ecclesiastical-doctor
of--when?--what will the ecclesiastical physician of to-day be?
Unless evolution, which has been a truth ever since the globes,
suns, and planets of the solar system were but wandering films of
meteor dust, shall reach a limit and become a lie, there is but one
fate in store for him.

The methods of the priest and the parson have been very curious,
their history is very entertaining. In all the ages the Roman Church
has owned slaves, bought and sold slaves, authorized and encouraged
her children to trade in them. Long after some Christian peoples had
freed their slaves the Church still held on to hers. If any could
know, to absolute certainty, that all this was right, and according
to God’s will and desire, surely it was she, since she was God’s
specially appointed representative in the earth and sole authorized
and infallible expounder of his Bible. There were the texts; there
was no mistaking their meaning; she was right, she was doing in this
thing what the Bible had mapped out for her to do. So unassailable
was her position that in all the centuries she had no word to say
against human slavery. Yet now at last, in our immediate day, we
hear a Pope saying slave trading is wrong, and we see him sending an
expedition to Africa to stop it. The texts remain: it is the
practice that has changed. Why? Because the world has corrected the
Bible. The Church never corrects it; and also never fails to drop in
at the tail of the procession--and take the credit of the
correction. As she will presently do in this instance.

Christian England supported slavery and encouraged it for two
hundred and fifty years, and her Church’s consecrated ministers
looked on, sometimes taking an active hand, the rest of the time
indifferent. England’s interest in the business may be called a
Christian interest, a Christian industry. She had her full share in
its revival after a long period of inactivity, and this revival was
a Christian monopoly; that is to say, it was in the hands of
Christian countries exclusively. English parliaments aided the slave
traffic and protected it; two English kings held stock in
slave-catching companies. The first regular English slave
hunter--John Hawkins, of still revered memory--made such successful
havoc, on his second voyage, in the matter of surprising and burning
villages, and maiming, slaughtering, capturing, and selling their
unoffending inhabitants, that his delighted queen conferred the
chivalric honor of knighthood on him--a rank which had acquired its
chief esteem and distinction in other and earlier fields of
Christian effort. The new knight, with characteristic English
frankness and brusque simplicity, chose as his device the figure of
a negro slave, kneeling and in chains. Sir John’s work was the
invention of Christians, was to remain a bloody and awful monopoly
in the hands of Christians for a quarter of a millennium, was to
destroy homes, separate families, enslave friendless men and women,
and break a myriad of human hearts, to the end that Christian
nations might be prosperous and comfortable, Christian churches be
built, and the gospel of the meek and merciful Redeemer be spread
abroad in the earth; and so in the name of his ship, unsuspected but
eloquent and clear, lay hidden prophecy. She was called _The Jesus_.

But at last in England, an illegitimate Christian rose against
slavery. It is curious that when a Christian rises against a rooted
wrong at all, he is usually an illegitimate Christian, member of
some despised and bastard sect. There was a bitter struggle, but in
the end the slave trade had to go--and went. The Biblical
authorization remained, but the practice changed.

Then--the usual thing happened; the visiting English critic among us
began straightway to hold up his pious hands in horror at our
slavery. His distress was unappeasable, his words full of bitterness
and contempt. It is true we had not so many as fifteen hundred
thousand slaves for him to worry about, while his England still
owned twelve millions, in her foreign possessions; but that fact did
not modify his wail any, or stay his tears, or soften his censure.
The fact that every time we had tried to get rid of our slavery in
previous generations, but had always been obstructed, balked, and
defeated by England, was a matter of no consequence to him; it was
ancient history, and not worth the telling.

Our own conversion came at last. We began to stir against slavery.
Hearts grew soft, here, there, and yonder. There was no place in the
land where the seeker could not find some small budding sign of pity
for the slave. No place in all the land but one--the pulpit. It
yielded at last; it always does. It fought a strong and stubborn
fight, and then did what it always does, joined the procession--at
the tail end. Slavery fell. The slavery text remained; the practice
changed, that was all.

During many ages there were witches. The Bible said so. The Bible
commanded that they should not be allowed to live. Therefore the
Church, after doing its duty in but a lazy and indolent way for
eight hundred years, gathered up its halters, thumb-screws, and
firebrands, and set about its holy work in earnest. She worked hard
at it night and day during nine centuries and imprisoned, tortured,
hanged, and burned whole hordes and armies of witches, and washed
the Christian world clean with their foul blood.

Then it was discovered that there was no such thing as witches, and
never had been. One does not know whether to laugh or to cry. Who
discovered that there was no such thing as a witch--the priest, the
parson? No, these never discover anything. At Salem, the parson
clung pathetically to his witch text after the laity had abandoned
it in remorse and tears for the crimes and cruelties it has
persuaded them to do. The parson wanted more blood, more shame, more
brutalities; it was the unconsecrated laity that stayed his hand. In
Scotland the parson killed the witch after the magistrate had
pronounced her innocent; and when the merciful legislature proposed
to sweep the hideous laws against witches from the statute book, it
was the parson who came imploring, with tears and imprecations, that
they be suffered to stand.

There are no witches. The witch text remains; only the practice has
changed. Hell fire is gone, but the text remains. Infant damnation
is gone, but the text remains. More than two hundred death penalties
are gone from the law books, but the texts that authorized them
remain.

Is it not well worthy of note that of all the multitude of texts
through which man has driven his annihilating pen he has never once
made the mistake of obliterating a good and useful one? It does
certainly seem to suggest that if man continues in the direction of
enlightenment, his religious practice may, in the end, attain some
semblance of human decency.

THE WAR PRAYER
(Dictated 1904-05)

It was a time of great and exalting excitement. The country was up
in arms, the war was on, in every breast burned the holy fire of
patriotism; the drums were beating, the bands playing, the toy
pistols popping, the bunched firecrackers hissing and spluttering;
on every hand and far down the receding and fading spread of roofs
and balconies a fluttering wilderness of flags flashed in the sun;
daily the young volunteers marched down the wide avenue gay and fine
in their new uniforms, the proud fathers and mothers and sisters and
sweethearts cheering them with voices choked with happy emotion as
they swung by; nightly the packed mass meetings listened, panting,
to patriot oratory which stirred the deepest deeps of their hearts,
and which they interrupted at briefest intervals with cyclones of
applause, the tears running down their cheeks the while; in the
churches the pastors preached devotion to flag and country, and
invoked the God of Battles, beseeching His aid in our good cause in
outpouring of fervid eloquence which moved every listener. It was
indeed a glad and gracious time, and the half dozen rash spirits
that ventured to disapprove of the war and cast a doubt upon its
righteousness straightway got such a stern and angry warning that
for their personal safety’s sake they quickly shrank out of sight
and offended no more in that way.

Sunday morning came--next day the battalions would leave for the
front; the church was filled; the volunteers were there, their young
faces alight with martial dreams--visions of the stern advance, the
gathering momentum, the rushing charge, the flashing sabers, the
flight of the foe, the tumult, the enveloping smoke, the fierce
pursuit, the surrender!--them home from the war, bronzed heroes,
welcomed, adored, submerged in golden seas of glory! With the
volunteers sat their dear ones, proud, happy, and envied by the
neighbors and friends who had no sons and brothers to send forth to
the field of honor, there to win for the flag, or, failing, die the
noblest of noble deaths. The service proceeded; a war chapter from
the Old Testament was read; the first prayer was said; it was
followed by an organ burst that shook the building, and with one
impulse the house rose, with glowing eyes and beating hearts, and
poured out that tremendous invocation--

“God the all-terrible! Thou who ordainest,
Thunder thy clarion and lightning thy sword!”

Then came the “long” prayer. None could remember the like of it for
passionate pleading and moving and beautiful language. The burden of
its supplication was, that an ever-merciful and benignant Father of
us all would watch over our noble young soldiers, and aid, comfort,
and encourage them in their patriotic work; bless them, shield them
in the day of battle and the hour of peril, bear them in His mighty
hand, make them strong and confident, invincible in the bloody
onset; help them to crush the foe, grant to them and to their flag
and country imperishable honor and glory--

An aged stranger entered and moved with slow and noiseless step up
the main aisle, his eyes fixed upon the minister, his long body
clothed in a robe that reached to his feet, his head bare, his white
hair descending in a frothy cataract to his shoulders, his seamy
face unnaturally pale, pale even to ghastliness. With all eyes
following him and wondering, he made his silent way; without
pausing, he ascended to the preacher’s side and stood there,
waiting. With shut lids the preacher, unconscious of his presence,
continued his moving prayer, and at last finished it with the words,
uttered in fervent appeal, “Bless our arms, grant us the victory, O
Lord our God, Father and Protector of our land and flag!”

The stranger touched his arm, motioned him to step aside--which the
startled minister did--and took his place. During some moments he
surveyed the spellbound audience with solemn eyes, in which burned
an uncanny light; then in a deep voice he said:

“I come from the Throne--bearing a message from Almighty God!” The
words smote the house with a shock; if the stranger perceived it he
gave no attention. “He has heard the prayer of His servant your
shepherd, and will grant it if such shall be your desire after I,
His messenger, shall have explained to you its import--that is to
say, its full import. For it is like unto many of the prayers of
men, in that it asks for more than he who utters it is aware
of--except he pause and think.

“God’s servant and yours has prayed his prayer. Has he paused and
taken thought? Is it one prayer? No, it is two--one uttered, the
other not. Both have reached the ear of Him Who heareth all
supplications, the spoken and the unspoken. Ponder this--keep it in
mind. If you would beseech a blessing upon yourself, beware! lest
without intent you invoke a curse upon a neighbor at the same time.
If you pray for the blessing of rain upon your crop which needs it,
by that act you are possibly praying for a curse upon some
neighbor’s crop which may not need rain and can be injured by it.

“You have heard your servant’s prayer--the uttered part of it. I am
commissioned of God to put into words the other part of it--that
part which the pastor--and also you in your hearts--fervently prayed
silently. And ignorantly and unthinkingly? God grant that it was so!
You heard these words: ‘Grant us the victory, O Lord our God!’ That
is sufficient. The _whole_ of the uttered prayer is compact into
those pregnant words. Elaborations were not necessary. When you have
prayed for victory you have prayed for many unmentioned results
which follow victory--_must_ follow it, cannot help but follow it.
Upon the listening spirit of God the Father fell also the unspoken
part of the prayer. He commandeth me to put it into words. Listen!

“O Lord our Father, our young patriots, idols of our hearts, go
forth to battle--be Thou near them! With them--in spirit--we also go
forth from the sweet peace of our beloved firesides to smite the
foe. O Lord our God, help us to tear their soldiers to bloody shreds
with our shells; help us to cover their smiling fields with the pale
forms of their patriot dead; help us to drown the thunder of the
guns with the shrieks of their wounded, writhing in pain; help us to
lay waste their humble homes with a hurricane of fire; help us to
wring the hearts of their unoffending widows with unavailing grief;
help us to turn them out roofless with their little children to
wander unfriended the wastes of their desolated land in rags and
hunger and thirst, sports of the sun flames of summer and the icy
winds of winter, broken in spirit, worn with travail, imploring Thee
for the refuge of the grave and denied it--for our sakes who adore
Thee, Lord, blast their hopes, blight their lives, protract their
bitter pilgrimage, make heavy their steps, water their way with
their tears, stain the white snow with the blood of their wounded
feet! We ask it, in the spirit of love, of Him Who is the Source of
Love, and Who is the ever-faithful refuge and friend of all that are
sore beset and seek His aid with humble and contrite hearts. Amen.”

(_After a pause._) “Ye have prayed it; if ye still desire it, speak!
The messenger of the Most High waits.”

It was believed afterward that the man was a lunatic, because there
was no sense in what he said.

CORN-PONE OPINIONS
(Written in 1900)

Fifty years ago, when I was a boy of fifteen and helping to inhabit
a Missourian village on the banks of the Mississippi, I had a friend
whose society was very dear to me because I was forbidden by my
mother to partake of it. He was a gay and impudent and satirical and
delightful young black man--a slave--who daily preached sermons from
the top of his master’s woodpile, with me for sole audience. He
imitated the pulpit style of the several clergymen of the village,
and did it well, and with fine passion and energy. To me he was a
wonder. I believed he was the greatest orator in the United States
and would some day be heard from. But it did not happen; in the
distribution of rewards he was overlooked. It is the way, in this
world.

He interrupted his preaching, now and then, to saw a stick of wood;
but the sawing was a pretense--he did it with his mouth; exactly
imitating the sound the bucksaw makes in shrieking its way through
the wood. But it served its purpose; it kept his master from coming
out to see how the work was getting along. I listened to the sermons
from the open window of a lumber room at the back of the house. One
of his texts was this:

“You tell me whar a man gits his corn pone, en I’ll tell you what
his ’pinions is.“

I can never forget it. It was deeply impressed upon me. By my
mother. Not upon my memory, but elsewhere. She had slipped in upon
me while I was absorbed and not watching. The black philosopher’s
idea was that a man is not independent, and cannot afford views
which might interfere with his bread and butter. If he would
prosper, he must train with the majority; in matters of large
moment, like politics and religion, he must think and feel with the
bulk of his neighbors, or suffer damage in his social standing and
in his business prosperities. He must restrict himself to corn-pone
opinions--at least on the surface. He must get his opinions from
other people; he must reason out none for himself; he must have no
first-hand views.

I think Jerry was right, in the main, but I think he did not go far
enough.

1. It was his idea that a man conforms to the majority view of his
locality by calculation and intention.

This happens, but I think it is not the rule.

2. It was his idea that there is such a thing as a first-hand
opinion; an original opinion; an opinion which is coldly reasoned
out in a man’s head, by a searching analysis of the facts involved,
with the heart unconsulted, and the jury room closed against outside
influences. It may be that such an opinion has been born somewhere,
at some time or other, but I suppose it got away before they could
catch it and stuff it and put it in the museum.

I am persuaded that a coldly-thought-out and independent verdict
upon a fashion in clothes, or manners, or literature, or politics,
or religion, or any other matter that is projected into the field of
our notice and interest, is a most rare thing--if it has indeed ever
existed.

A new thing in costume appears--the flaring hoopskirt, for
example--and the passers-by are shocked, and the irreverent laugh.
Six months later everybody is reconciled; the fashion has
established itself; it is admired, now, and no one laughs. Public
opinion resented it before, public opinion accepts it now, and is
happy in it. Why? Was the resentment reasoned out? Was the
acceptance reasoned out? No. The instinct that moves to conformity
did the work. It is our nature to conform; it is a force which not
many can successfully resist. What is its seat? The inborn
requirement of self-approval. We all have to bow to that; there are
no exceptions. Even the woman who refuses from first to last to wear
the hoopskirt comes under that law and is its slave; she could not
wear the skirt and have her own approval; and that she _must_ have,
she cannot help herself. But as a rule our self-approval has its
source in but one place and not elsewhere--the approval of other
people. A person of vast consequences can introduce any kind of
novelty in dress and the general world will presently adopt
it--moved to do it, in the first place, by the natural instinct to
passively yield to that vague something recognized as authority, and
in the second place by the human instinct to train with the
multitude and have its approval. An empress introduced the
hoopskirt, and we know the result. A nobody introduced the bloomer,
and we know the result. If Eve should come again, in her ripe
renown, and reintroduce her quaint styles--well, we know what would
happen. And we should be cruelly embarrassed, along at first.

The hoopskirt runs its course and disappears. Nobody reasons about
it. One woman abandons the fashion; her neighbor notices this and
follows her lead; this influences the next woman; and so on and so
on, and presently the skirt has vanished out of the world, no one
knows how nor why; nor cares, for that matter. It will come again,
by and by; and in due course will go again.

Twenty-five years ago, in England, six or eight wine glasses stood
grouped by each person’s plate at a dinner party, and they were
used, not left idle and empty; to-day there are but three or four in
the group, and the average guest sparingly uses about two of them.
We have not adopted this new fashion yet, but we shall do it
presently. We shall not think it out; we shall merely conform, and
let it go at that. We get our notions and habits and opinions from
outside influences; we do not have to study them out.

Our table manners, and company manners, and street manners change
from time to time, but the changes are not reasoned out; we merely
notice and conform. We are creatures of outside influences; as a
rule we do not think, we only imitate. We cannot invent standards
that will stick; what we mistake for standards are only fashions,
and perishable. We may continue to admire them, but we drop the use
of them. We notice this in literature. Shakespeare is a standard,
and fifty years ago we used to write tragedies which we couldn’t
tell from--from somebody else’s; but we don’t do it any more, now.
Our prose standard, three quarters of a century ago, was ornate and
diffuse; some authority or other changed it in the direction of
compactness and simplicity, and conformity followed, without
argument. The historical novel starts up suddenly, and sweeps the
land. Everybody writes one, and the nation is glad. We had
historical novels before; but nobody read them, and the rest of us
conformed--without reasoning it out. We are conforming in the other
way, now, because it is another case of everybody.

The outside influences are always pouring in upon us, and we are
always obeying their orders and accepting their verdicts. The Smiths
like the new play; the Joneses go to see it, and they copy the Smith
verdict. Morals, religions, politics, get their following from
surrounding influences and atmospheres, almost entirely; not from
study, not from thinking. A man must and will have his own approval
first of all, in each and every moment and circumstance of his
life--even if he must repent of a self-approved act the moment after
its commission, in order to get his self-approval _again_: but,
speaking in general terms, a man’s self-approval in the large
concerns of life has its source in the approval of the peoples about
him, and not in a searching personal examination of the matter.
Mohammedans are Mohammedans because they are born and reared among
that sect, not because they have thought it out and can furnish
sound reasons for being Mohammedans; we know why Catholics are
Catholics; why Presbyterians are Presbyterians; why Baptists are
Baptists; why Mormons are Mormons; why thieves are thieves; why
monarchists are monarchists; why Republicans are Republicans and
Democrats, Democrats. We know it is a matter of association and
sympathy, not reasoning and examination; that hardly a man in the
world has an opinion upon morals, politics, or religion which he got
otherwise than through his associations and sympathies. Broadly
speaking, there are none but corn-pone opinions. And broadly
speaking, corn-pone stands for self-approval. Self-approval is
acquired mainly from the approval of other people. The result is
conformity. Sometimes conformity has a sordid business interest--the
bread-and-butter interest--but not in most cases, I think. I think
that in the majority of cases it is unconscious and not calculated;
that it is born of the human being’s natural yearning to stand well
with his fellows and have their inspiring approval and praise--a
yearning which is commonly so strong and so insistent that it cannot
be effectually resisted, and must have its way.

A political emergency brings out the corn-pone opinion in fine force
in its two chief varieties--the pocketbook variety, which has its
origin in self-interest, and the bigger variety, the sentimental
variety--the one which can’t bear to be outside the pale; can’t bear
to be in disfavor; can’t endure the averted face and the cold
shoulder; wants to stand well with his friends, wants to be smiled
upon, wants to be welcome, wants to hear the precious words, “_He’s_
on the right track!” Uttered, perhaps by an ass, but still an ass of
high degree, an ass whose approval is gold and diamonds to a smaller
ass, and confers glory and honor and happiness, and membership in
the herd. For these gauds many a man will dump his life-long
principles into the street, and his conscience along with them. We
have seen it happen. In some millions of instances.

Men think they think upon great political questions, and they do;
but they think with their party, not independently; they read its
literature, but not that of the other side; they arrive at
convictions, but they are drawn from a partial view of the matter in
hand and are of no particular value. They swarm with their party,
they feel with their party, they are happy in their party’s
approval; and where the party leads they will follow, whether for
right and honor, or through blood and dirt and a mush of mutilated
morals.

In our late canvass half of the nation passionately believed that in
silver lay salvation, the other half as passionately believed that
that way lay destruction. Do you believe that a tenth part of the
people, on either side, had any rational excuse for having an
opinion about the matter at all? I studied that mighty question to
the bottom--came out empty. Half of our people passionately believe
in high tariff, the other half believe otherwise. Does this mean
study and examination, or only feeling? The latter, I think. I have
deeply studied that question, too--and didn’t arrive. We all do no
end of feeling, and we mistake it for thinking. And out of it we get
an aggregation which we consider a boon. Its name is Public Opinion.
It is held in reverence. It settles everything. Some think it the
Voice of God.

THE END

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Transcriber’s Note

Errors deemed most likely to be the printer’s have been corrected,
and are noted here. The references are to the page and line in the
original.

ix.22 did not waste his chances[.] Added.
ix.24 on the list of Americ[n/a]n authors Replaced.
8.10 and yet wi[ll/th] all that silence Replaced.
10.14 the col[l]ossal myths of history Removed.
47.14 They all sat in a c[ri/ir]cle Transposed.
71.13 he wrote [i/a]t once to the Emperor Replaced.
97.7 men’s conception of the D[ie/ei]ty Transposed.
108.24 in his bay window![”] Added.
122.20 breezes would quiver the fo[il/li]age Transposed.
209.15 most lavishly u[n/p]holstered Replaced.
217.27 _[“]Il y a une ascenseur,”_ Added.
260.12 The Ka[si/is]er’s claim was paid Transposed.
268.13 our war work and our her[io/oi]sms Transposed.
275.21 [“]I deny emphatically Added.
277.28 Christian virtues[:/.] Replaced.
303.3 the[m/n] moved them to fall Replaced.
401.9 i[s/t] is admired Replaced.

*** End of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "Europe and elsewhere" ***

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