A CONNECTICUT YANKEE IN KING ARTHUR'S COURT by MARK TWAIN (Samuel L. Clemens) Part 7. CHAPTER XXXII DOWLEY'S HUMILIATION Well, when that cargo arrived toward sunset, Saturday afternoon, I had my hands full to keep the Marcos from fainting. They weresure Jones and I were ruined past help, and they blamed themselvesas accessories to this bankruptcy. You see, in addition to thedinner-materials, which called for a sufficiently round sum, I had bought a lot of extras for the future comfort of the family:for instance, a big lot of wheat, a delicacy as rare to the tablesof their class as was ice-cream to a hermit's; also a sizeabledeal dinner-table; also two entire pounds of salt, which wasanother piece of extravagance in those people's eyes; also crockery, stools, the clothes, a small cask of beer, and so on. I instructedthe Marcos to keep quiet about this sumptuousness, so as to giveme a chance to surprise the guests and show off a little. Concerningthe new clothes, the simple couple were like children; they were upand down, all night, to see if it wasn't nearly daylight, so thatthey could put them on, and they were into them at last as muchas an hour before dawn was due. Then their pleasure--not to saydelirium--was so fresh and novel and inspiring that the sight of itpaid me well for the interruptions which my sleep had suffered. The king had slept just as usual--like the dead. The Marcos couldnot thank him for their clothes, that being forbidden; but theytried every way they could think of to make him see how gratefulthey were. Which all went for nothing: he didn't notice any change. It turned out to be one of those rich and rare fall days which isjust a June day toned down to a degree where it is heaven to beout of doors. Toward noon the guests arrived, and we assembledunder a great tree and were soon as sociable as old acquaintances. Even the king's reserve melted a little, though it was some littletrouble to him to adjust himself to the name of Jones along atfirst. I had asked him to try to not forget that he was a farmer;but I had also considered it prudent to ask him to let the thingstand at that, and not elaborate it any. Because he was just thekind of person you could depend on to spoil a little thing likethat if you didn't warn him, his tongue was so handy, and hisspirit so willing, and his information so uncertain. Dowley was in fine feather, and I early got him started, and thenadroitly worked him around onto his own history for a text andhimself for a hero, and then it was good to sit there and hear himhum. Self-made man, you know. They know how to talk. They dodeserve more credit than any other breed of men, yes, that is true;and they are among the very first to find it out, too. He told howhe had begun life an orphan lad without money and without friendsable to help him; how he had lived as the slaves of the meanestmaster lived; how his day's work was from sixteen to eighteen hourslong, and yielded him only enough black bread to keep him in ahalf-fed condition; how his faithful endeavors finally attractedthe attention of a good blacksmith, who came near knocking himdead with kindness by suddenly offering, when he was totallyunprepared, to take him as his bound apprentice for nine yearsand give him board and clothes and teach him the trade--or "mystery"as Dowley called it. That was his first great rise, his firstgorgeous stroke of fortune; and you saw that he couldn't yet speakof it without a sort of eloquent wonder and delight that such agilded promotion should have fallen to the lot of a common humanbeing. He got no new clothing during his apprenticeship, but onhis graduation day his master tricked him out in spang-new tow-linensand made him feel unspeakably rich and fine. "I remember me of that day!" the wheelwright sang out, withenthusiasm. "And I likewise!" cried the mason. "I would not believe theywere thine own; in faith I could not. " "Nor other!" shouted Dowley, with sparkling eyes. "I was liketo lose my character, the neighbors wending I had mayhap beenstealing. It was a great day, a great day; one forgetteth notdays like that. " Yes, and his master was a fine man, and prosperous, and alwayshad a great feast of meat twice in the year, and with it whitebread, true wheaten bread; in fact, lived like a lord, so to speak. And in time Dowley succeeded to the business and married the daughter. "And now consider what is come to pass, " said he, impressively. "Two times in every month there is fresh meat upon my table. "He made a pause here, to let that fact sink home, then added--"and eight times salt meat. " "It is even true, " said the wheelwright, with bated breath. "I know it of mine own knowledge, " said the mason, in the samereverent fashion. "On my table appeareth white bread every Sunday in the year, "added the master smith, with solemnity. "I leave it to your ownconsciences, friends, if this is not also true?" "By my head, yes, " cried the mason. "I can testify it--and I do, " said the wheelwright. "And as to furniture, ye shall say yourselves what mine equipmentis. " He waved his hand in fine gesture of granting frank andunhampered freedom of speech, and added: "Speak as ye are moved;speak as ye would speak; an I were not here. " "Ye have five stools, and of the sweetest workmanship at that, albeityour family is but three, " said the wheelwright, with deep respect. "And six wooden goblets, and six platters of wood and two of pewterto eat and drink from withal, " said the mason, impressively. "AndI say it as knowing God is my judge, and we tarry not here alway, but must answer at the last day for the things said in the body, be they false or be they sooth. " "Now ye know what manner of man I am, brother Jones, " said thesmith, with a fine and friendly condescension, "and doubtless yewould look to find me a man jealous of his due of respect andbut sparing of outgo to strangers till their rating and quality beassured, but trouble yourself not, as concerning that; wit ye wellye shall find me a man that regardeth not these matters but iswilling to receive any he as his fellow and equal that carrietha right heart in his body, be his worldly estate howsoever modest. And in token of it, here is my hand; and I say with my own mouthwe are equals--equals"--and he smiled around on the company withthe satisfaction of a god who is doing the handsome and graciousthing and is quite well aware of it. The king took the hand with a poorly disguised reluctance, andlet go of it as willingly as a lady lets go of a fish; all of whichhad a good effect, for it was mistaken for an embarrassment naturalto one who was being called upon by greatness. The dame brought out the table now, and set it under the tree. It caused a visible stir of surprise, it being brand new and asumptuous article of deal. But the surprise rose higher stillwhen the dame, with a body oozing easy indifference at every pore, but eyes that gave it all away by absolutely flaming with vanity, slowly unfolded an actual simon-pure tablecloth and spread it. That was a notch above even the blacksmith's domestic grandeurs, and it hit him hard; you could see it. But Marco was in Paradise;you could see that, too. Then the dame brought two fine newstools--whew! that was a sensation; it was visible in the eyes ofevery guest. Then she brought two more--as calmly as she could. Sensation again--with awed murmurs. Again she brought two--walking on air, she was so proud. The guests were petrified, andthe mason muttered: "There is that about earthly pomps which doth ever move to reverence. " As the dame turned away, Marco couldn't help slapping on the climaxwhile the thing was hot; so he said with what was meant for alanguid composure but was a poor imitation of it: "These suffice; leave the rest. " So there were more yet! It was a fine effect. I couldn't haveplayed the hand better myself. From this out, the madam piled up the surprises with a rush thatfired the general astonishment up to a hundred and fifty in theshade, and at the same time paralyzed expression of it down togasped "Oh's" and "Ah's, " and mute upliftings of hands and eyes. She fetched crockery--new, and plenty of it; new wooden gobletsand other table furniture; and beer, fish, chicken, a goose, eggs, roast beef, roast mutton, a ham, a small roast pig, and a wealthof genuine white wheaten bread. Take it by and large, that spreadlaid everything far and away in the shade that ever that crowd hadseen before. And while they sat there just simply stupefied withwonder and awe, I sort of waved my hand as if by accident, andthe storekeeper's son emerged from space and said he had cometo collect. "That's all right, " I said, indifferently. "What is the amount?give us the items. " Then he read off this bill, while those three amazed men listened, and serene waves of satisfaction rolled over my soul and alternatewaves of terror and admiration surged over Marco's: 2 pounds salt . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 200 8 dozen pints beer, in the wood . . . . . 800 3 bushels wheat . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2, 700 2 pounds fish . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100 3 hens . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 400 1 goose . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 400 3 dozen eggs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 150 1 roast of beef . . . . . . . . . . . . . 450 1 roast of mutton . . . . . . . . . . . . 400 1 ham . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 800 1 sucking pig . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 500 2 crockery dinner sets . . . . . . . . . 6, 000 2 men's suits and underwear . . . . . . . 2, 800 1 stuff and 1 linsey-woolsey gown and underwear . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1, 600 8 wooden goblets . . . . . . . . . . . . 800 Various table furniture . . . . . . . . . 10, 000 1 deal table . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3, 000 8 stools . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4, 000 2 miller guns, loaded . . . . . . . . . . 3, 000 He ceased. There was a pale and awful silence. Not a limb stirred. Not a nostril betrayed the passage of breath. "Is that all?" I asked, in a voice of the most perfect calmness. "All, fair sir, save that certain matters of light moment areplaced together under a head hight sundries. If it would likeyou, I will sepa--" "It is of no consequence, " I said, accompanying the words witha gesture of the most utter indifference; "give me the grandtotal, please. " The clerk leaned against the tree to stay himself, and said: "Thirty-nine thousand one hundred and fifty milrays!" The wheelwright fell off his stool, the others grabbed the tableto save themselves, and there was a deep and general ejaculation of: "God be with us in the day of disaster!" The clerk hastened to say: "My father chargeth me to say he cannot honorably require youto pay it all at this time, and therefore only prayeth you--" I paid no more heed than if it were the idle breeze, but, with anair of indifference amounting almost to weariness, got out my moneyand tossed four dollars on to the table. Ah, you should have seenthem stare! The clerk was astonished and charmed. He asked me to retainone of the dollars as security, until he could go to town and--I interrupted: "What, and fetch back nine cents? Nonsense! Take the whole. Keep the change. " There was an amazed murmur to this effect: "Verily this being is _made_ of money! He throweth it away evenas if it were dirt. " The blacksmith was a crushed man. The clerk took his money and reeled away drunk with fortune. I saidto Marco and his wife: "Good folk, here is a little trifle for you"--handing the miller-gunsas if it were a matter of no consequence, though each of themcontained fifteen cents in solid cash; and while the poor creatureswent to pieces with astonishment and gratitude, I turned to theothers and said as calmly as one would ask the time of day: "Well, if we are all ready, I judge the dinner is. Come, fall to. " Ah, well, it was immense; yes, it was a daisy. I don't know thatI ever put a situation together better, or got happier spectaculareffects out of the materials available. The blacksmith--well, hewas simply mashed. Land! I wouldn't have felt what that man wasfeeling, for anything in the world. Here he had been blowing andbragging about his grand meat-feast twice a year, and his freshmeat twice a month, and his salt meat twice a week, and his whitebread every Sunday the year round--all for a family of three; theentire cost for the year not above 69. 2. 6 (sixty-nine cents, twomills and six milrays), and all of a sudden here comes along a manwho slashes out nearly four dollars on a single blow-out; and notonly that, but acts as if it made him tired to handle such smallsums. Yes, Dowley was a good deal wilted, and shrunk-up andcollapsed; he had the aspect of a bladder-balloon that's beenstepped on by a cow. CHAPTER XXXIII SIXTH CENTURY POLITICAL ECONOMY However, I made a dead set at him, and before the first thirdof the dinner was reached, I had him happy again. It was easyto do--in a country of ranks and castes. You see, in a countrywhere they have ranks and castes, a man isn't ever a man, he isonly part of a man, he can't ever get his full growth. You proveyour superiority over him in station, or rank, or fortune, andthat's the end of it--he knuckles down. You can't insult himafter that. No, I don't mean quite that; of course you _can_ insulthim, I only mean it's difficult; and so, unless you've got a lotof useless time on your hands it doesn't pay to try. I had thesmith's reverence now, because I was apparently immensely prosperousand rich; I could have had his adoration if I had had some littlegimcrack title of nobility. And not only his, but any commoner'sin the land, though he were the mightiest production of all the ages, in intellect, worth, and character, and I bankrupt in all three. This was to remain so, as long as England should exist in theearth. With the spirit of prophecy upon me, I could look intothe future and see her erect statues and monuments to her unspeakableGeorges and other royal and noble clothes-horses, and leave unhonoredthe creators of this world--after God--Gutenburg, Watt, Arkwright, Whitney, Morse, Stephenson, Bell. The king got his cargo aboard, and then, the talk not turning uponbattle, conquest, or iron-clad duel, he dulled down to drowsinessand went off to take a nap. Mrs. Marco cleared the table, placedthe beer keg handy, and went away to eat her dinner of leavingsin humble privacy, and the rest of us soon drifted into mattersnear and dear to the hearts of our sort--business and wages, of course. At a first glance, things appeared to be exceedingprosperous in this little tributary kingdom--whose lord wasKing Bagdemagus--as compared with the state of things in my ownregion. They had the "protection" system in full force here, whereas we were working along down toward free-trade, by easystages, and were now about half way. Before long, Dowley and Iwere doing all the talking, the others hungrily listening. Dowleywarmed to his work, snuffed an advantage in the air, and beganto put questions which he considered pretty awkward ones for me, and they did have something of that look: "In your country, brother, what is the wage of a master bailiff, master hind, carter, shepherd, swineherd?" "Twenty-five milrays a day; that is to say, a quarter of a cent. " The smith's face beamed with joy. He said: "With us they are allowed the double of it! And what may a mechanicget--carpenter, dauber, mason, painter, blacksmith, wheelwright, and the like?" "On the average, fifty milrays; half a cent a day. " "Ho-ho! With us they are allowed a hundred! With us any goodmechanic is allowed a cent a day! I count out the tailor, butnot the others--they are all allowed a cent a day, and in drivingtimes they get more--yes, up to a hundred and ten and even fifteenmilrays a day. I've paid a hundred and fifteen myself, withinthe week. 'Rah for protection--to Sheol with free-trade!" And his face shone upon the company like a sunburst. But I didn'tscare at all. I rigged up my pile-driver, and allowed myselffifteen minutes to drive him into the earth--drive him _all_ in--drive him in till not even the curve of his skull should showabove ground. Here is the way I started in on him. I asked: "What do you pay a pound for salt?" "A hundred milrays. " "We pay forty. What do you pay for beef and mutton--when youbuy it?" That was a neat hit; it made the color come. "It varieth somewhat, but not much; one may say seventy-five milraysthe pound. " "_We_ pay thirty-three. What do you pay for eggs?" "Fifty milrays the dozen. " "We pay twenty. What do you pay for beer?" "It costeth us eight and one-half milrays the pint. " "We get it for four; twenty-five bottles for a cent. What do you pay for wheat?" "At the rate of nine hundred milrays the bushel. " "We pay four hundred. What do you pay for a man's tow-linen suit?" "Thirteen cents. " "We pay six. What do you pay for a stuff gown for the wife of thelaborer or the mechanic?" "We pay eight cents, four mills. " "Well, observe the difference: you pay eight cents and four mills, we pay only four cents. " I prepared now to sock it to him. I said:"Look here, dear friend, _what's become of your high wages youwere bragging so about a few minutes ago?_"--and I looked aroundon the company with placid satisfaction, for I had slipped upon him gradually and tied him hand and foot, you see, without hisever noticing that he was being tied at all. "What's become ofthose noble high wages of yours?--I seem to have knocked thestuffing all out of them, it appears to me. " But if you will believe me, he merely looked surprised, thatis all! he didn't grasp the situation at all, didn't know he hadwalked into a trap, didn't discover that he was _in_ a trap. I couldhave shot him, from sheer vexation. With cloudy eye and a strugglingintellect he fetched this out: "Marry, I seem not to understand. It is _proved_ that our wagesbe double thine; how then may it be that thou'st knocked therefromthe stuffing?--an miscall not the wonderly word, this being thefirst time under grace and providence of God it hath been grantedme to hear it. " Well, I was stunned; partly with this unlooked-for stupidity onhis part, and partly because his fellows so manifestly sided withhim and were of his mind--if you might call it mind. My positionwas simple enough, plain enough; how could it ever be simplifiedmore? However, I must try: "Why, look here, brother Dowley, don't you see? Your wages aremerely higher than ours in _name_, not in _fact_. " "Hear him! They are the _double_--ye have confessed it yourself. " "Yes-yes, I don't deny that at all. But that's got nothing to dowith it; the _amount_ of the wages in mere coins, with meaninglessnames attached to them to know them by, has got nothing to dowith it. The thing is, how much can you _buy_ with your wages?--that's the idea. While it is true that with you a good mechanicis allowed about three dollars and a half a year, and with us onlyabout a dollar and seventy-five--" "There--ye're confessing it again, ye're confessing it again!" "Confound it, I've never denied it, I tell you! What I say isthis. With us _half_ a dollar buys more than a _dollar_ buyswith you--and THEREFORE it stands to reason and the commonestkind of common-sense, that our wages are _higher_ than yours. " He looked dazed, and said, despairingly: "Verily, I cannot make it out. Ye've just said ours are thehigher, and with the same breath ye take it back. " "Oh, great Scott, isn't it possible to get such a simple thingthrough your head? Now look here--let me illustrate. We payfour cents for a woman's stuff gown, you pay 8. 4. 0, which isfour mills more than _double_. What do you allow a laboringwoman who works on a farm?" "Two mills a day. " "Very good; we allow but half as much; we pay her only a tenthof a cent a day; and--" "Again ye're conf--" "Wait! Now, you see, the thing is very simple; this time you'llunderstand it. For instance, it takes your woman 42 days to earnher gown, at 2 mills a day--7 weeks' work; but ours earns hersin forty days--two days _short_ of 7 weeks. Your woman has a gown, and her whole seven weeks wages are gone; ours has a gown, andtwo days' wages left, to buy something else with. There--_now_you understand it!" He looked--well, he merely looked dubious, it's the most I can say;so did the others. I waited--to let the thing work. Dowley spokeat last--and betrayed the fact that he actually hadn't gotten awayfrom his rooted and grounded superstitions yet. He said, witha trifle of hesitancy: "But--but--ye cannot fail to grant that two mills a day is betterthan one. " Shucks! Well, of course, I hated to give it up. So I chancedanother flyer: "Let us suppose a case. Suppose one of your journeymen goes outand buys the following articles: "1 pound of salt; 1 dozen eggs; 1 dozen pints of beer; 1 bushel of wheat; 1 tow-linen suit; 5 pounds of beef; 5 pounds of mutton. "The lot will cost him 32 cents. It takes him 32 working daysto earn the money--5 weeks and 2 days. Let him come to us andwork 32 days at _half_ the wages; he can buy all those things fora shade under 14 1/2 cents; they will cost him a shade under 29days' work, and he will have about half a week's wages over. Carryit through the year; he would save nearly a week's wages everytwo months, _your_ man nothing; thus saving five or six weeks' wagesin a year, your man not a cent. _Now_ I reckon you understand that'high wages' and 'low wages' are phrases that don't mean anythingin the world until you find out which of them will _buy_ the most!" It was a crusher. But, alas! it didn't crush. No, I had to give it up. What thosepeople valued was _high wages_; it didn't seem to be a matter ofany consequence to them whether the high wages would buy anythingor not. They stood for "protection, " and swore by it, which wasreasonable enough, because interested parties had gulled them intothe notion that it was protection which had created their highwages. I proved to them that in a quarter of a century their wageshad advanced but 30 per cent. , while the cost of living had goneup 100; and that with us, in a shorter time, wages had advanced40 per cent. While the cost of living had gone steadily down. Butit didn't do any good. Nothing could unseat their strange beliefs. Well, I was smarting under a sense of defeat. Undeserved defeat, but what of that? That didn't soften the smart any. And to thinkof the circumstances! the first statesman of the age, the capablestman, the best-informed man in the entire world, the loftiestuncrowned head that had moved through the clouds of any politicalfirmament for centuries, sitting here apparently defeated inargument by an ignorant country blacksmith! And I could see thatthose others were sorry for me--which made me blush till I couldsmell my whiskers scorching. Put yourself in my place; feel as meanas I did, as ashamed as I felt--wouldn't _you_ have struck below thebelt to get even? Yes, you would; it is simply human nature. Well, that is what I did. I am not trying to justify it; I'm onlysaying that I was mad, and _anybody_ would have done it. Well, when I make up my mind to hit a man, I don't plan outa love-tap; no, that isn't my way; as long as I'm going to hit himat all, I'm going to hit him a lifter. And I don't jump at himall of a sudden, and risk making a blundering half-way businessof it; no, I get away off yonder to one side, and work up on himgradually, so that he never suspects that I'm going to hit himat all; and by and by, all in a flash, he's flat on his back, andhe can't tell for the life of him how it all happened. That isthe way I went for brother Dowley. I started to talking lazy andcomfortable, as if I was just talking to pass the time; and theoldest man in the world couldn't have taken the bearings of mystarting place and guessed where I was going to fetch up: "Boys, there's a good many curious things about law, and custom, and usage, and all that sort of thing, when you come to look at it;yes, and about the drift and progress of human opinion and movement, too. There are written laws--they perish; but there are alsounwritten laws--_they_ are eternal. Take the unwritten law of wages:it says they've got to advance, little by little, straight throughthe centuries. And notice how it works. We know what wages arenow, here and there and yonder; we strike an average, and say that'sthe wages of to-day. We know what the wages were a hundred yearsago, and what they were two hundred years ago; that's as far backas we can get, but it suffices to give us the law of progress, the measure and rate of the periodical augmentation; and so, withouta document to help us, we can come pretty close to determiningwhat the wages were three and four and five hundred years ago. Good, so far. Do we stop there? No. We stop looking backward;we face around and apply the law to the future. My friends, I cantell you what people's wages are going to be at any date in thefuture you want to know, for hundreds and hundreds of years. " "What, goodman, what!" "Yes. In seven hundred years wages will have risen to six timeswhat they are now, here in your region, and farm hands will beallowed 3 cents a day, and mechanics 6. " "I would't I might die now and live then!" interrupted Smug, thewheelwright, with a fine avaricious glow in his eye. "And that isn't all; they'll get their board besides--such as it is:it won't bloat them. Two hundred and fifty years later--pay attentionnow--a mechanic's wages will be--mind you, this is law, notguesswork; a mechanic's wages will then be _twenty_ cents a day!" There was a general gasp of awed astonishment, Dickon the masonmurmured, with raised eyes and hands: "More than three weeks' pay for one day's work!" "Riches!--of a truth, yes, riches!" muttered Marco, his breathcoming quick and short, with excitement. "Wages will keep on rising, little by little, little by little, as steadily as a tree grows, and at the end of three hundred andforty years more there'll be at least _one_ country where themechanic's average wage will be _two hundred_ cents a day!" It knocked them absolutely dumb! Not a man of them could gethis breath for upwards of two minutes. Then the coal-burnersaid prayerfully: "Might I but live to see it!" "It is the income of an earl!" said Smug. "An earl, say ye?" said Dowley; "ye could say more than that andspeak no lie; there's no earl in the realm of Bagdemagus that hathan income like to that. Income of an earl--mf! it's the incomeof an angel!" "Now, then, that is what is going to happen as regards wages. In that remote day, that man will earn, with _one_ week's work, that bill of goods which it takes you upwards of _fifty_ weeks toearn now. Some other pretty surprising things are going to happen, too. Brother Dowley, who is it that determines, every spring, what the particular wage of each kind of mechanic, laborer, andservant shall be for that year?" "Sometimes the courts, sometimes the town council; but most of all, the magistrate. Ye may say, in general terms, it is the magistratethat fixes the wages. " "Doesn't ask any of those poor devils to _help_ him fix their wagesfor them, does he?" "Hm! That _were_ an idea! The master that's to pay him the moneyis the one that's rightly concerned in that matter, ye will notice. " "Yes--but I thought the other man might have some little trifleat stake in it, too; and even his wife and children, poor creatures. The masters are these: nobles, rich men, the prosperous generally. These few, who do no work, determine what pay the vast hive shallhave who _do_ work. You see? They're a 'combine'--a trade union, to coin a new phrase--who band themselves together to force theirlowly brother to take what they choose to give. Thirteen hundredyears hence--so says the unwritten law--the 'combine' will be theother way, and then how these fine people's posterity will fumeand fret and grit their teeth over the insolent tyranny of tradeunions! Yes, indeed! the magistrate will tranquilly arrange thewages from now clear away down into the nineteenth century; andthen all of a sudden the wage-earner will consider that a coupleof thousand years or so is enough of this one-sided sort of thing;and he will rise up and take a hand in fixing his wages himself. Ah, he will have a long and bitter account of wrong and humiliationto settle. " "Do ye believe--" "That he actually will help to fix his own wages? Yes, indeed. And he will be strong and able, then. " "Brave times, brave times, of a truth!" sneered the prosperous smith. "Oh, --and there's another detail. In that day, a master may hirea man for only just one day, or one week, or one month at a time, if he wants to. " "What?" "It's true. Moreover, a magistrate won't be able to force a manto work for a master a whole year on a stretch whether the manwants to or not. " "Will there be _no_ law or sense in that day?" "Both of them, Dowley. In that day a man will be his own property, not the property of magistrate and master. And he can leave townwhenever he wants to, if the wages don't suit him!--and they can'tput him in the pillory for it. " "Perdition catch such an age!" shouted Dowley, in strong indignation. "An age of dogs, an age barren of reverence for superiors andrespect for authority! The pillory--" "Oh, wait, brother; say no good word for that institution. I thinkthe pillory ought to be abolished. " "A most strange idea. Why?" "Well, I'll tell you why. Is a man ever put in the pillory fora capital crime?" "No. " "Is it right to condemn a man to a slight punishment for a smalloffense and then kill him?" There was no answer. I had scored my first point! For the firsttime, the smith wasn't up and ready. The company noticed it. Good effect. "You don't answer, brother. You were about to glorify the pillorya while ago, and shed some pity on a future age that isn't goingto use it. I think the pillory ought to be abolished. Whatusually happens when a poor fellow is put in the pillory for somelittle offense that didn't amount to anything in the world? Themob try to have some fun with him, don't they?" "Yes. " "They begin by clodding him; and they laugh themselves to piecesto see him try to dodge one clod and get hit with another?" "Yes. " "Then they throw dead cats at him, don't they?" "Yes. " "Well, then, suppose he has a few personal enemies in that moband here and there a man or a woman with a secret grudge againsthim--and suppose especially that he is unpopular in the community, for his pride, or his prosperity, or one thing or another--stonesand bricks take the place of clods and cats presently, don't they?" "There is no doubt of it. " "As a rule he is crippled for life, isn't he?--jaws broken, teethsmashed out?--or legs mutilated, gangrened, presently cut off?--or an eye knocked out, maybe both eyes?" "It is true, God knoweth it. " "And if he is unpopular he can depend on _dying_, right there inthe stocks, can't he?" "He surely can! One may not deny it. " "I take it none of _you_ are unpopular--by reason of pride orinsolence, or conspicuous prosperity, or any of those things thatexcite envy and malice among the base scum of a village? _You_wouldn't think it much of a risk to take a chance in the stocks?" Dowley winced, visibly. I judged he was hit. But he didn't betrayit by any spoken word. As for the others, they spoke out plainly, and with strong feeling. They said they had seen enough of thestocks to know what a man's chance in them was, and they wouldnever consent to enter them if they could compromise on a quickdeath by hanging. "Well, to change the subject--for I think I've established mypoint that the stocks ought to be abolished. I think some of ourlaws are pretty unfair. For instance, if I do a thing which oughtto deliver me to the stocks, and you know I did it and yet keepstill and don't report me, _you_ will get the stocks if anybodyinforms on you. " "Ah, but that would serve you but right, " said Dowley, "for you_must_ inform. So saith the law. " The others coincided. "Well, all right, let it go, since you vote me down. But there'sone thing which certainly isn't fair. The magistrate fixes amechanic's wage at one cent a day, for instance. The law says thatif any master shall venture, even under utmost press of business, to pay anything _over_ that cent a day, even for a single day, heshall be both fined and pilloried for it; and whoever knows he didit and doesn't inform, they also shall be fined and pilloried. Nowit seems to me unfair, Dowley, and a deadly peril to all of us, that because you thoughtlessly confessed, a while ago, that withina week you have paid a cent and fifteen mil--" Oh, I tell _you_ it was a smasher! You ought to have seen them togo to pieces, the whole gang. I had just slipped up on poorsmiling and complacent Dowley so nice and easy and softly, thathe never suspected anything was going to happen till the blowcame crashing down and knocked him all to rags. A fine effect. In fact, as fine as any I ever produced, with solittle time to work it up in. But I saw in a moment that I had overdone the thing a little. I was expecting to scare them, but I wasn't expecting to scarethem to death. They were mighty near it, though. You see theyhad been a whole lifetime learning to appreciate the pillory; andto have that thing staring them in the face, and every one of themdistinctly at the mercy of me, a stranger, if I chose to go andreport--well, it was awful, and they couldn't seem to recoverfrom the shock, they couldn't seem to pull themselves together. Pale, shaky, dumb, pitiful? Why, they weren't any better thanso many dead men. It was very uncomfortable. Of course, I thoughtthey would appeal to me to keep mum, and then we would shake hands, and take a drink all round, and laugh it off, and there an end. But no; you see I was an unknown person, among a cruelly oppressedand suspicious people, a people always accustomed to having advantagetaken of their helplessness, and never expecting just or kindtreatment from any but their own families and very closest intimates. Appeal to _me_ to be gentle, to be fair, to be generous? Of course, they wanted to, but they couldn't dare. CHAPTER XXXIV THE YANKEE AND THE KING SOLD AS SLAVES Well, what had I better do? Nothing in a hurry, sure. I mustget up a diversion; anything to employ me while I could think, and while these poor fellows could have a chance to come to lifeagain. There sat Marco, petrified in the act of trying to getthe hang of his miller-gun--turned to stone, just in the attitudehe was in when my pile-driver fell, the toy still gripped in hisunconscious fingers. So I took it from him and proposed to explainits mystery. Mystery! a simple little thing like that; and yet itwas mysterious enough, for that race and that age. I never saw such an awkward people, with machinery; you see, theywere totally unused to it. The miller-gun was a little double-barreledtube of toughened glass, with a neat little trick of a springto it, which upon pressure would let a shot escape. But the shotwouldn't hurt anybody, it would only drop into your hand. In thegun were two sizes--wee mustard-seed shot, and another sort thatwere several times larger. They were money. The mustard-seedshot represented milrays, the larger ones mills. So the gun wasa purse; and very handy, too; you could pay out money in the darkwith it, with accuracy; and you could carry it in your mouth; orin your vest pocket, if you had one. I made them of several sizes--one size so large that it would carry the equivalent of a dollar. Using shot for money was a good thing for the government; the metalcost nothing, and the money couldn't be counterfeited, for I wasthe only person in the kingdom who knew how to manage a shot tower. "Paying the shot" soon came to be a common phrase. Yes, and I knewit would still be passing men's lips, away down in the nineteenthcentury, yet none would suspect how and when it originated. The king joined us, about this time, mightily refreshed by his nap, and feeling good. Anything could make me nervous now, I was souneasy--for our lives were in danger; and so it worried me todetect a complacent something in the king's eye which seemed toindicate that he had been loading himself up for a performanceof some kind or other; confound it, why must he go and choosesuch a time as this? I was right. He began, straight off, in the most innocentlyartful, and transparent, and lubberly way, to lead up to thesubject of agriculture. The cold sweat broke out all over me. I wanted to whisper in his ear, "Man, we are in awful danger!every moment is worth a principality till we get back these men'sconfidence; _don't_ waste any of this golden time. " But of courseI couldn't do it. Whisper to him? It would look as if we wereconspiring. So I had to sit there and look calm and pleasant whilethe king stood over that dynamite mine and mooned along about hisdamned onions and things. At first the tumult of my own thoughts, summoned by the danger-signal and swarming to the rescue fromevery quarter of my skull, kept up such a hurrah and confusionand fifing and drumming that I couldn't take in a word; butpresently when my mob of gathering plans began to crystallizeand fall into position and form line of battle, a sort of order andquiet ensued and I caught the boom of the king's batteries, as ifout of remote distance: "--were not the best way, methinks, albeit it is not to be deniedthat authorities differ as concerning this point, some contendingthat the onion is but an unwholesome berry when stricken earlyfrom the tree--" The audience showed signs of life, and sought each other's eyesin a surprised and troubled way. "--whileas others do yet maintain, with much show of reason, thatthis is not of necessity the case, instancing that plums and otherlike cereals do be always dug in the unripe state--" The audience exhibited distinct distress; yes, and also fear. "--yet are they clearly wholesome, the more especially when onedoth assuage the asperities of their nature by admixture of thetranquilizing juice of the wayward cabbage--" The wild light of terror began to glow in these men's eyes, andone of them muttered, "These be errors, every one--God hath surelysmitten the mind of this farmer. " I was in miserable apprehension;I sat upon thorns. "--and further instancing the known truth that in the case ofanimals, the young, which may be called the green fruit of thecreature, is the better, all confessing that when a goat is ripe, his fur doth heat and sore engame his flesh, the which defect, taken in connection with his several rancid habits, and fulsomeappetites, and godless attitudes of mind, and bilious qualityof morals--" They rose and went for him! With a fierce shout, "The one wouldbetray us, the other is mad! Kill them! Kill them!" they flungthemselves upon us. What joy flamed up in the king's eye! Hemight be lame in agriculture, but this kind of thing was just inhis line. He had been fasting long, he was hungry for a fight. He hit the blacksmith a crack under the jaw that lifted him clearoff his feet and stretched him flat on his back. "St. George forBritain!" and he downed the wheelwright. The mason was big, butI laid him out like nothing. The three gathered themselves up andcame again; went down again; came again; and kept on repeatingthis, with native British pluck, until they were battered to jelly, reeling with exhaustion, and so blind that they couldn't tell usfrom each other; and yet they kept right on, hammering away withwhat might was left in them. Hammering each other--for we steppedaside and looked on while they rolled, and struggled, and gouged, and pounded, and bit, with the strict and wordless attention tobusiness of so many bulldogs. We looked on without apprehension, for they were fast getting past ability to go for help against us, and the arena was far enough from the public road to be safefrom intrusion. Well, while they were gradually playing out, it suddenly occurredto me to wonder what had become of Marco. I looked around; hewas nowhere to be seen. Oh, but this was ominous! I pulled theking's sleeve, and we glided away and rushed for the hut. No Marcothere, no Phyllis there! They had gone to the road for help, sure. I told the king to give his heels wings, and I would explain later. We made good time across the open ground, and as we darted intothe shelter of the wood I glanced back and saw a mob of excitedpeasants swarm into view, with Marco and his wife at their head. They were making a world of noise, but that couldn't hurt anybody;the wood was dense, and as soon as we were well into its depthswe would take to a tree and let them whistle. Ah, but then cameanother sound--dogs! Yes, that was quite another matter. Itmagnified our contract--we must find running water. We tore along at a good gait, and soon left the sounds far behindand modified to a murmur. We struck a stream and darted into it. We waded swiftly down it, in the dim forest light, for as muchas three hundred yards, and then came across an oak with a greatbough sticking out over the water. We climbed up on this bough, and began to work our way along it to the body of the tree; nowwe began to hear those sounds more plainly; so the mob had struckour trail. For a while the sounds approached pretty fast. Andthen for another while they didn't. No doubt the dogs had foundthe place where we had entered the stream, and were now waltzingup and down the shores trying to pick up the trail again. When we were snugly lodged in the tree and curtained with foliage, the king was satisfied, but I was doubtful. I believed we couldcrawl along a branch and get into the next tree, and I judged itworth while to try. We tried it, and made a success of it, thoughthe king slipped, at the junction, and came near failing to connect. We got comfortable lodgment and satisfactory concealment amongthe foliage, and then we had nothing to do but listen to the hunt. Presently we heard it coming--and coming on the jump, too; yes, and down both sides of the stream. Louder--louder--next minuteit swelled swiftly up into a roar of shoutings, barkings, tramplings, and swept by like a cyclone. "I was afraid that the overhanging branch would suggest somethingto them, " said I, "but I don't mind the disappointment. Come, my liege, it were well that we make good use of our time. We'veflanked them. Dark is coming on, presently. If we can cross thestream and get a good start, and borrow a couple of horses fromsomebody's pasture to use for a few hours, we shall be safe enough. " We started down, and got nearly to the lowest limb, when we seemedto hear the hunt returning. We stopped to listen. "Yes, " said I, "they're baffled, they've given it up, they're ontheir way home. We will climb back to our roost again, and letthem go by. " So we climbed back. The king listened a moment and said: "They still search--I wit the sign. We did best to abide. " He was right. He knew more about hunting than I did. The noiseapproached steadily, but not with a rush. The king said: "They reason that we were advantaged by no parlous start of them, and being on foot are as yet no mighty way from where we tookthe water. " "Yes, sire, that is about it, I am afraid, though I was hopingbetter things. " The noise drew nearer and nearer, and soon the van was driftingunder us, on both sides of the water. A voice called a halt fromthe other bank, and said: "An they were so minded, they could get to yon tree by this branchthat overhangs, and yet not touch ground. Ye will do well to senda man up it. " "Marry, that we will do!" I was obliged to admire my cuteness in foreseeing this very thingand swapping trees to beat it. But, don't you know, there aresome things that can beat smartness and foresight? Awkwardnessand stupidity can. The best swordsman in the world doesn't needto fear the second best swordsman in the world; no, the personfor him to be afraid of is some ignorant antagonist who has neverhad a sword in his hand before; he doesn't do the thing he oughtto do, and so the expert isn't prepared for him; he does the thinghe ought not to do; and often it catches the expert out and endshim on the spot. Well, how could I, with all my gifts, make anyvaluable preparation against a near-sighted, cross-eyed, pudding-headedclown who would aim himself at the wrong tree and hit the rightone? And that is what he did. He went for the wrong tree, whichwas, of course, the right one by mistake, and up he started. Matters were serious now. We remained still, and awaited developments. The peasant toiled his difficult way up. The king raised himselfup and stood; he made a leg ready, and when the comer's headarrived in reach of it there was a dull thud, and down went the manfloundering to the ground. There was a wild outbreak of angerbelow, and the mob swarmed in from all around, and there we weretreed, and prisoners. Another man started up; the bridging boughwas detected, and a volunteer started up the tree that furnishedthe bridge. The king ordered me to play Horatius and keep thebridge. For a while the enemy came thick and fast; but no matter, the head man of each procession always got a buffet that dislodgedhim as soon as he came in reach. The king's spirits rose, his joywas limitless. He said that if nothing occurred to mar the prospectwe should have a beautiful night, for on this line of tactics wecould hold the tree against the whole country-side. However, the mob soon came to that conclusion themselves; whereforethey called off the assault and began to debate other plans. They had no weapons, but there were plenty of stones, and stonesmight answer. We had no objections. A stone might possiblypenetrate to us once in a while, but it wasn't very likely; we werewell protected by boughs and foliage, and were not visible fromany good aiming point. If they would but waste half an hour instone-throwing, the dark would come to our help. We were feelingvery well satisfied. We could smile; almost laugh. But we didn't; which was just as well, for we should have beeninterrupted. Before the stones had been raging through the leavesand bouncing from the boughs fifteen minutes, we began to noticea smell. A couple of sniffs of it was enough of an explanation--it was smoke! Our game was up at last. We recognized that. Whensmoke invites you, you have to come. They raised their pile ofdry brush and damp weeds higher and higher, and when they sawthe thick cloud begin to roll up and smother the tree, they brokeout in a storm of joy-clamors. I got enough breath to say: "Proceed, my liege; after you is manners. " The king gasped: "Follow me down, and then back thyself against one side of thetrunk, and leave me the other. Then will we fight. Let each pilehis dead according to his own fashion and taste. " Then he descended, barking and coughing, and I followed. I struckthe ground an instant after him; we sprang to our appointed places, and began to give and take with all our might. The powwow andracket were prodigious; it was a tempest of riot and confusion andthick-falling blows. Suddenly some horsemen tore into the midstof the crowd, and a voice shouted: "Hold--or ye are dead men!" How good it sounded! The owner of the voice bore all the marks ofa gentleman: picturesque and costly raiment, the aspect of command, a hard countenance, with complexion and features marred by dissipation. The mob fell humbly back, like so many spaniels. The gentlemaninspected us critically, then said sharply to the peasants: "What are ye doing to these people?" "They be madmen, worshipful sir, that have come wandering we knownot whence, and--" "Ye know not whence? Do ye pretend ye know them not?" "Most honored sir, we speak but the truth. They are strangersand unknown to any in this region; and they be the most violentand bloodthirsty madmen that ever--" "Peace! Ye know not what ye say. They are not mad. Who are ye?And whence are ye? Explain. " "We are but peaceful strangers, sir, " I said, "and traveling uponour own concerns. We are from a far country, and unacquaintedhere. We have purposed no harm; and yet but for your braveinterference and protection these people would have killed us. As you have divined, sir, we are not mad; neither are we violentor bloodthirsty. " The gentleman turned to his retinue and said calmly: "Lash methese animals to their kennels!" The mob vanished in an instant; and after them plunged the horsemen, laying about them with their whips and pitilessly riding down suchas were witless enough to keep the road instead of taking to thebush. The shrieks and supplications presently died away in thedistance, and soon the horsemen began to straggle back. Meantimethe gentleman had been questioning us more closely, but had dugno particulars out of us. We were lavish of recognition of theservice he was doing us, but we revealed nothing more than that wewere friendless strangers from a far country. When the escort wereall returned, the gentleman said to one of his servants: "Bring the led-horses and mount these people. " "Yes, my lord. " We were placed toward the rear, among the servants. We traveledpretty fast, and finally drew rein some time after dark at aroadside inn some ten or twelve miles from the scene of ourtroubles. My lord went immediately to his room, after orderinghis supper, and we saw no more of him. At dawn in the morningwe breakfasted and made ready to start. My lord's chief attendant sauntered forward at that moment withindolent grace, and said: "Ye have said ye should continue upon this road, which is ourdirection likewise; wherefore my lord, the earl Grip, hath givencommandment that ye retain the horses and ride, and that certainof us ride with ye a twenty mile to a fair town that hight Cambenet, whenso ye shall be out of peril. " We could do nothing less than express our thanks and accept theoffer. We jogged along, six in the party, at a moderate andcomfortable gait, and in conversation learned that my lord Gripwas a very great personage in his own region, which lay a day'sjourney beyond Cambenet. We loitered to such a degree that it wasnear the middle of the forenoon when we entered the market squareof the town. We dismounted, and left our thanks once more formy lord, and then approached a crowd assembled in the center ofthe square, to see what might be the object of interest. It was theremnant of that old peregrinating band of slaves! So they hadbeen dragging their chains about, all this weary time. That poorhusband was gone, and also many others; and some few purchaseshad been added to the gang. The king was not interested, andwanted to move along, but I was absorbed, and full of pity. I couldnot take my eyes away from these worn and wasted wrecks of humanity. There they sat, grounded upon the ground, silent, uncomplaining, with bowed heads, a pathetic sight. And by hideous contrast, aredundant orator was making a speech to another gathering not thirtysteps away, in fulsome laudation of "our glorious British liberties!" I was boiling. I had forgotten I was a plebeian, I was rememberingI was a man. Cost what it might, I would mount that rostrum and-- Click! the king and I were handcuffed together! Our companions, those servants, had done it; my lord Grip stood looking on. Theking burst out in a fury, and said: "What meaneth this ill-mannered jest?" My lord merely said to his head miscreant, coolly: "Put up the slaves and sell them!" _Slaves!_ The word had a new sound--and how unspeakably awful! Theking lifted his manacles and brought them down with a deadly force;but my lord was out of the way when they arrived. A dozen ofthe rascal's servants sprang forward, and in a moment we werehelpless, with our hands bound behind us. We so loudly and soearnestly proclaimed ourselves freemen, that we got the interestedattention of that liberty-mouthing orator and his patriotic crowd, and they gathered about us and assumed a very determined attitude. The orator said: "If, indeed, ye are freemen, ye have nought to fear--the God-givenliberties of Britain are about ye for your shield and shelter!(Applause. ) Ye shall soon see. Bring forth your proofs. " "What proofs?" "Proof that ye are freemen. " Ah--I remembered! I came to myself; I said nothing. But theking stormed out: "Thou'rt insane, man. It were better, and more in reason, thatthis thief and scoundrel here prove that we are _not_ freemen. " You see, he knew his own laws just as other people so often knowthe laws; by words, not by effects. They take a _meaning_, and getto be very vivid, when you come to apply them to yourself. All hands shook their heads and looked disappointed; some turnedaway, no longer interested. The orator said--and this time in thetones of business, not of sentiment: "An ye do not know your country's laws, it were time ye learnedthem. Ye are strangers to us; ye will not deny that. Ye may befreemen, we do not deny that; but also ye may be slaves. The lawis clear: it doth not require the claimant to prove ye are slaves, it requireth you to prove ye are not. " I said: "Dear sir, give us only time to send to Astolat; or give us onlytime to send to the Valley of Holiness--" "Peace, good man, these are extraordinary requests, and you maynot hope to have them granted. It would cost much time, and wouldunwarrantably inconvenience your master--" "_Master_, idiot!" stormed the king. "I have no master, I myselfam the m--" "Silence, for God's sake!" I got the words out in time to stop the king. We were in troubleenough already; it could not help us any to give these peoplethe notion that we were lunatics. There is no use in stringing out the details. The earl put us upand sold us at auction. This same infernal law had existed inour own South in my own time, more than thirteen hundred yearslater, and under it hundreds of freemen who could not prove thatthey were freemen had been sold into lifelong slavery withoutthe circumstance making any particular impression upon me; but theminute law and the auction block came into my personal experience, a thing which had been merely improper before became suddenlyhellish. Well, that's the way we are made. Yes, we were sold at auction, like swine. In a big town and anactive market we should have brought a good price; but this placewas utterly stagnant and so we sold at a figure which makes meashamed, every time I think of it. The King of England broughtseven dollars, and his prime minister nine; whereas the king waseasily worth twelve dollars and I as easily worth fifteen. Butthat is the way things always go; if you force a sale on a dullmarket, I don't care what the property is, you are going to makea poor business of it, and you can make up your mind to it. Ifthe earl had had wit enough to-- However, there is no occasion for my working my sympathies upon his account. Let him go, for the present; I took his number, so to speak. The slave-dealer bought us both, and hitched us onto that longchain of his, and we constituted the rear of his procession. Wetook up our line of march and passed out of Cambenet at noon;and it seemed to me unaccountably strange and odd that the Kingof England and his chief minister, marching manacled and fetteredand yoked, in a slave convoy, could move by all manner of idle menand women, and under windows where sat the sweet and the lovely, and yet never attract a curious eye, never provoke a single remark. Dear, dear, it only shows that there is nothing diviner about a kingthan there is about a tramp, after all. He is just a cheap andhollow artificiality when you don't know he is a king. But revealhis quality, and dear me it takes your very breath away to lookat him. I reckon we are all fools. Born so, no doubt. CHAPTER XXXV A PITIFUL INCIDENT It's a world of surprises. The king brooded; this was natural. What would he brood about, should you say? Why, about the prodigiousnature of his fall, of course--from the loftiest place in the worldto the lowest; from the most illustrious station in the world tothe obscurest; from the grandest vocation among men to the basest. No, I take my oath that the thing that graveled him most, to startwith, was not this, but the price he had fetched! He couldn'tseem to get over that seven dollars. Well, it stunned me so, whenI first found it out, that I couldn't believe it; it didn't seemnatural. But as soon as my mental sight cleared and I got a rightfocus on it, I saw I was mistaken; it _was_ natural. For thisreason: a king is a mere artificiality, and so a king's feelings, like the impulses of an automatic doll, are mere artificialities;but as a man, he is a reality, and his feelings, as a man, arereal, not phantoms. It shames the average man to be valued belowhis own estimate of his worth, and the king certainly wasn'tanything more than an average man, if he was up that high. Confound him, he wearied me with arguments to show that in anythinglike a fair market he would have fetched twenty-five dollars, sure--a thing which was plainly nonsense, and full or the baldestconceit; I wasn't worth it myself. But it was tender ground forme to argue on. In fact, I had to simply shirk argument and dothe diplomatic instead. I had to throw conscience aside, andbrazenly concede that he ought to have brought twenty-five dollars;whereas I was quite well aware that in all the ages, the world hadnever seen a king that was worth half the money, and during thenext thirteen centuries wouldn't see one that was worth the fourthof it. Yes, he tired me. If he began to talk about the crops;or about the recent weather; or about the condition of politics;or about dogs, or cats, or morals, or theology--no matter what--I sighed, for I knew what was coming; he was going to get out of ita palliation of that tiresome seven-dollar sale. Wherever wehalted where there was a crowd, he would give me a look whichsaid plainly: "if that thing could be tried over again now, withthis kind of folk, you would see a different result. " Well, whenhe was first sold, it secretly tickled me to see him go for sevendollars; but before he was done with his sweating and worryingI wished he had fetched a hundred. The thing never got a chanceto die, for every day, at one place or another, possible purchaserslooked us over, and, as often as any other way, their comment onthe king was something like this: "Here's a two-dollar-and-a-half chump with a thirty-dollar style. Pity but style was marketable. " At last this sort of remark produced an evil result. Our ownerwas a practical person and he perceived that this defect must bemended if he hoped to find a purchaser for the king. So he wentto work to take the style out of his sacred majesty. I could havegiven the man some valuable advice, but I didn't; you mustn'tvolunteer advice to a slave-driver unless you want to damagethe cause you are arguing for. I had found it a sufficientlydifficult job to reduce the king's style to a peasant's style, even when he was a willing and anxious pupil; now then, to undertaketo reduce the king's style to a slave's style--and by force--go to!it was a stately contract. Never mind the details--it will save metrouble to let you imagine them. I will only remark that at theend of a week there was plenty of evidence that lash and cluband fist had done their work well; the king's body was a sightto see--and to weep over; but his spirit?--why, it wasn't evenphased. Even that dull clod of a slave-driver was able to seethat there can be such a thing as a slave who will remain a mantill he dies; whose bones you can break, but whose manhood youcan't. This man found that from his first effort down to hislatest, he couldn't ever come within reach of the king, but theking was ready to plunge for him, and did it. So he gave upat last, and left the king in possession of his style unimpaired. The fact is, the king was a good deal more than a king, he wasa man; and when a man is a man, you can't knock it out of him. We had a rough time for a month, tramping to and fro in the earth, and suffering. And what Englishman was the most interested inthe slavery question by that time? His grace the king! Yes; frombeing the most indifferent, he was become the most interested. He was become the bitterest hater of the institution I had everheard talk. And so I ventured to ask once more a question whichI had asked years before and had gotten such a sharp answer thatI had not thought it prudent to meddle in the matter further. Would he abolish slavery? His answer was as sharp as before, but it was music this time;I shouldn't ever wish to hear pleasanter, though the profanitywas not good, being awkwardly put together, and with the crash-wordalmost in the middle instead of at the end, where, of course, itought to have been. I was ready and willing to get free now; I hadn't wanted to getfree any sooner. No, I cannot quite say that. I had wanted to, but I had not been willing to take desperate chances, and hadalways dissuaded the king from them. But now--ah, it was a newatmosphere! Liberty would be worth any cost that might be putupon it now. I set about a plan, and was straightway charmedwith it. It would require time, yes, and patience, too, a greatdeal of both. One could invent quicker ways, and fully as sureones; but none that would be as picturesque as this; none thatcould be made so dramatic. And so I was not going to give thisone up. It might delay us months, but no matter, I would carryit out or break something. Now and then we had an adventure. One night we were overtakenby a snow-storm while still a mile from the village we were makingfor. Almost instantly we were shut up as in a fog, the drivingsnow was so thick. You couldn't see a thing, and we were soonlost. The slave-driver lashed us desperately, for he saw ruinbefore him, but his lashings only made matters worse, for theydrove us further from the road and from likelihood of succor. So we had to stop at last and slump down in the snow where wewere. The storm continued until toward midnight, then ceased. By this time two of our feebler men and three of our women weredead, and others past moving and threatened with death. Ourmaster was nearly beside himself. He stirred up the living, andmade us stand, jump, slap ourselves, to restore our circulation, and he helped as well as he could with his whip. Now came a diversion. We heard shrieks and yells, and soon awoman came running and crying; and seeing our group, she flungherself into our midst and begged for protection. A mob of peoplecame tearing after her, some with torches, and they said she was awitch who had caused several cows to die by a strange disease, and practiced her arts by help of a devil in the form of a blackcat. This poor woman had been stoned until she hardly lookedhuman, she was so battered and bloody. The mob wanted to burn her. Well, now, what do you suppose our master did? When we closedaround this poor creature to shelter her, he saw his chance. Hesaid, burn her here, or they shouldn't have her at all. Imaginethat! They were willing. They fastened her to a post; theybrought wood and piled it about her; they applied the torch whileshe shrieked and pleaded and strained her two young daughtersto her breast; and our brute, with a heart solely for business, lashed us into position about the stake and warmed us into lifeand commercial value by the same fire which took away the innocentlife of that poor harmless mother. That was the sort of master wehad. I took _his_ number. That snow-storm cost him nine of hisflock; and he was more brutal to us than ever, after that, formany days together, he was so enraged over his loss. We had adventures all along. One day we ran into a procession. And such a procession! All the riffraff of the kingdom seemedto be comprehended in it; and all drunk at that. In the van wasa cart with a coffin in it, and on the coffin sat a comely younggirl of about eighteen suckling a baby, which she squeezed to herbreast in a passion of love every little while, and every littlewhile wiped from its face the tears which her eyes rained downupon it; and always the foolish little thing smiled up at her, happy and content, kneading her breast with its dimpled fat hand, which she patted and fondled right over her breaking heart. Men and women, boys and girls, trotted along beside or afterthe cart, hooting, shouting profane and ribald remarks, singingsnatches of foul song, skipping, dancing--a very holiday ofhellions, a sickening sight. We had struck a suburb of London, outside the walls, and this was a sample of one sort of Londonsociety. Our master secured a good place for us near the gallows. A priest was in attendance, and he helped the girl climb up, andsaid comforting words to her, and made the under-sheriff providea stool for her. Then he stood there by her on the gallows, andfor a moment looked down upon the mass of upturned faces at hisfeet, then out over the solid pavement of heads that stretched awayon every side occupying the vacancies far and near, and then beganto tell the story of the case. And there was pity in his voice--how seldom a sound that was in that ignorant and savage land!I remember every detail of what he said, except the words he saidit in; and so I change it into my own words: "Law is intended to mete out justice. Sometimes it fails. Thiscannot be helped. We can only grieve, and be resigned, and prayfor the soul of him who falls unfairly by the arm of the law, andthat his fellows may be few. A law sends this poor young thingto death--and it is right. But another law had placed her whereshe must commit her crime or starve with her child--and before Godthat law is responsible for both her crime and her ignominious death! "A little while ago this young thing, this child of eighteen years, was as happy a wife and mother as any in England; and her lipswere blithe with song, which is the native speech of glad andinnocent hearts. Her young husband was as happy as she; for he wasdoing his whole duty, he worked early and late at his handicraft, his bread was honest bread well and fairly earned, he was prospering, he was furnishing shelter and sustenance to his family, he wasadding his mite to the wealth of the nation. By consent of atreacherous law, instant destruction fell upon this holy home andswept it away! That young husband was waylaid and impressed, and sent to sea. The wife knew nothing of it. She sought himeverywhere, she moved the hardest hearts with the supplicationsof her tears, the broken eloquence of her despair. Weeks draggedby, she watching, waiting, hoping, her mind going slowly to wreckunder the burden of her misery. Little by little all her smallpossessions went for food. When she could no longer pay her rent, they turned her out of doors. She begged, while she had strength;when she was starving at last, and her milk failing, she stole apiece of linen cloth of the value of a fourth part of a cent, thinking to sell it and save her child. But she was seen by theowner of the cloth. She was put in jail and brought to trial. The man testified to the facts. A plea was made for her, and hersorrowful story was told in her behalf. She spoke, too, bypermission, and said she did steal the cloth, but that her mindwas so disordered of late by trouble that when she was overbornewith hunger all acts, criminal or other, swam meaningless throughher brain and she knew nothing rightly, except that she was sohungry! For a moment all were touched, and there was dispositionto deal mercifully with her, seeing that she was so young andfriendless, and her case so piteous, and the law that robbed herof her support to blame as being the first and only cause of hertransgression; but the prosecuting officer replied that whereasthese things were all true, and most pitiful as well, still therewas much small theft in these days, and mistimed mercy here wouldbe a danger to property--oh, my God, is there no property in ruinedhomes, and orphaned babes, and broken hearts that British lawholds precious!--and so he must require sentence. "When the judge put on his black cap, the owner of the stolenlinen rose trembling up, his lip quivering, his face as gray asashes; and when the awful words came, he cried out, 'Oh, poorchild, poor child, I did not know it was death!' and fell as atree falls. When they lifted him up his reason was gone; beforethe sun was set, he had taken his own life. A kindly man; a manwhose heart was right, at bottom; add his murder to this thatis to be now done here; and charge them both where they belong--to the rulers and the bitter laws of Britain. The time is come, mychild; let me pray over thee--not _for_ thee, dear abused poor heartand innocent, but for them that be guilty of thy ruin and death, who need it more. " After his prayer they put the noose around the young girl's neck, and they had great trouble to adjust the knot under her ear, because she was devouring the baby all the time, wildly kissing it, and snatching it to her face and her breast, and drenching itwith tears, and half moaning, half shrieking all the while, and thebaby crowing, and laughing, and kicking its feet with delight overwhat it took for romp and play. Even the hangman couldn't stand it, but turned away. When all was ready the priest gently pulled andtugged and forced the child out of the mother's arms, and steppedquickly out of her reach; but she clasped her hands, and made awild spring toward him, with a shriek; but the rope--and theunder-sheriff--held her short. Then she went on her knees andstretched out her hands and cried: "One more kiss--oh, my God, one more, one more, --it is the dyingthat begs it!" She got it; she almost smothered the little thing. And when theygot it away again, she cried out: "Oh, my child, my darling, it will die! It has no home, it hasno father, no friend, no mother--" "It has them all!" said that good priest. "All these will I beto it till I die. " You should have seen her face then! Gratitude? Lord, what doyou want with words to express that? Words are only painted fire;a look is the fire itself. She gave that look, and carried it awayto the treasury of heaven, where all things that are divine belong.