ALONZO FITZ AND OTHER STORIES

by Mark Twain

Contents:

 The Loves Of Alonzo Fitz Clarence And Rosannah Ethelton On The Decay Of The Art Of Lying About Magnanimous-Incident Literature The Grateful Poodle The Benevolent Author The Grateful Husband Punch, Brothers, Punch The Great Revolution In Pitcairn The Canvasser's Tale An Encounter With An Interviewer Paris Notes Legend Of Sagenfeld, In Germany Speech On The Babies Speech On The Weather Concerning The American Language Rogers

THE LOVES OF ALONZO FITZ CLARENCE AND ROSANNAH ETHELTON

It was well along in the forenoon of a bitter winter's day. The town ofEastport, in the state of Maine, lay buried under a deep snow that wasnewly fallen. The customary bustle in the streets was wanting. Onecould look long distances down them and see nothing but a dead-whiteemptiness, with silence to match. Of course I do not mean that you couldsee the silence--no, you could only hear it. The sidewalks were merelylong, deep ditches, with steep snow walls on either side. Here and thereyou might hear the faint, far scrape of a wooden shovel, and if youwere quick enough you might catch a glimpse of a distant black figurestooping and disappearing in one of those ditches, and reappearing thenext moment with a motion which you would know meant the heaving out ofa shovelful of snow. But you needed to be quick, for that black figurewould not linger, but would soon drop that shovel and scud for thehouse, thrashing itself with its arms to warm them. Yes, it was toovenomously cold for snow-shovelers or anybody else to stay out long. 

Presently the sky darkened; then the wind rose and began to blow infitful, vigorous gusts, which sent clouds of powdery snow aloft, andstraight ahead, and everywhere. Under the impulse of one of these gusts, great white drifts banked themselves like graves across the streets; amoment later another gust shifted them around the other way, driving afine spray of snow from their sharp crests, as the gale drives the spumeflakes from wave-crests at sea; a third gust swept that place as cleanas your hand, if it saw fit. This was fooling, this was play; but eachand all of the gusts dumped some snow into the sidewalk ditches, forthat was business. 

Alonzo Fitz Clarence was sitting in his snug and elegant little parlor, in a lovely blue silk dressing-gown, with cuffs and facings of crimsonsatin, elaborately quilted. The remains of his breakfast were beforehim, and the dainty and costly little table service added a harmoniouscharm to the grace, beauty, and richness of the fixed appointments ofthe room. A cheery fire was blazing on the hearth. 

A furious gust of wind shook the windows, and a great wave of snowwashed against them with a drenching sound, so to speak. The handsomeyoung bachelor murmured:

"That means, no going out to-day. Well, I am content. But what to do forcompany? Mother is well enough, Aunt Susan is well enough; but these, like the poor, I have with me always. On so grim a day as this, one needs a new interest, a fresh element, to whet the dull edge ofcaptivity. That was very neatly said, but it doesn't mean anything. Onedoesn't want the edge of captivity sharpened up, you know, but just thereverse. "

He glanced at his pretty French mantel-clock. 

"That clock's wrong again. That clock hardly ever knows what time itis; and when it does know, it lies about it--which amounts to the samething. Alfred!"

There was no answer. 

"Alfred!. .. Good servant, but as uncertain as the clock. "

Alonzo touched an electric bell button in the wall. He waited a moment, then touched it again; waited a few moments more, and said:

"Battery out of order, no doubt. But now that I have started, I willfind out what time it is. " He stepped to a speaking-tube in the wall, blew its whistle, and called, "Mother!" and repeated it twice. 

"Well, that's no use. Mother's battery is out of order, too. Can't raiseanybody down-stairs--that is plain. "

He sat down at a rosewood desk, leaned his chin on the left-hand edge ofit and spoke, as if to the floor: "Aunt Susan!"

A low, pleasant voice answered, "Is that you, Alonzo?'

"Yes. I'm too lazy and comfortable to go downstairs; I am in extremity, and I can't seem to scare up any help. "

"Dear me, what is the matter?"

"Matter enough, I can tell you!"

"Oh, don't keep me in suspense, dear! What is it?"

"I want to know what time it is. "

"You abominable boy, what a turn you did give me! Is that all?"

"All--on my honor. Calm yourself. Tell me the time, and receive myblessing. "

"Just five minutes after nine. No charge--keep your blessing. "

"Thanks. It wouldn't have impoverished me, aunty, nor so enriched youthat you could live without other means. "

He got up, murmuring, "Just five minutes after nine, " and faced hisclock. "Ah, " said he, "you are doing better than usual. You are onlythirty-four minutes wrong. Let me see. .. Let me see. .. . Thirty-threeand twenty-one are fifty-four; four times fifty-four are two hundred andthirty-six. One off, leaves two hundred and thirty-five. That's right. "

He turned the hands of his clock forward till they marked twenty-fiveminutes to one, and said, "Now see if you can't keep right for awhile--else I'll raffle you!"

He sat down at the desk again, and said, "Aunt Susan!"

"Yes, dear. "

"Had breakfast?"

"Yes, indeed, an hour ago. "

"Busy?"

"No--except sewing. Why?"

"Got any company?"

"No, but I expect some at half past nine. "

"I wish I did. I'm lonesome. I want to talk to somebody. "

"Very well, talk to me. "

"But this is very private. "

"Don't be afraid--talk right along, there's nobody here but me. "

"I hardly know whether to venture or not, but--"

"But what? Oh, don't stop there! You know you can trust me, Alonzo--youknow, you can. "

"I feel it, aunt, but this is very serious. It affects me deeply--me, and all the family---even the whole community. "

"Oh, Alonzo, tell me! I will never breathe a word of it. What is it?"

"Aunt, if I might dare--"

"Oh, please go on! I love you, and feel for you. Tell me all. Confide inme. What is it?"

"The weather!"

"Plague take the weather! I don't see how you can have the heart toserve me so, Lon. "

"There, there, aunty dear, I'm sorry; I am, on my honor. I won't do itagain. Do you forgive me?"

"Yes, since you seem so sincere about it, though I know I oughtn't to. You will fool me again as soon as I have forgotten this time. "

"No, I won't, honor bright. But such weather, oh, such weather! You'vegot to keep your spirits up artificially. It is snowy, and blowy, andgusty, and bitter cold! How is the weather with you?"

"Warm and rainy and melancholy. The mourners go about the streets withtheir umbrellas running streams from the end of every whalebone. There'san elevated double pavement of umbrellas, stretching down the sides ofthe streets as far as I can see. I've got a fire for cheerfulness, andthe windows open to keep cool. But it is vain, it is useless: nothingcomes in but the balmy breath of December, with its burden of mockingodors from the flowers that possess the realm outside, and rejoice intheir lawless profusion whilst the spirit of man is low, and flaunttheir gaudy splendors in his face while his soul is clothed in sackclothand ashes and his heart breaketh. "

Alonzo opened his lips to say, "You ought to print that, and get itframed, " but checked himself, for he heard his aunt speaking to someone else. He went and stood at the window and looked out upon the wintryprospect. The storm was driving the snow before it more furiously thanever; window-shutters were slamming and banging; a forlorn dog, withbowed head and tail withdrawn from service, was pressing his quakingbody against a windward wall for shelter and protection; a young girlwas plowing knee-deep through the drifts, with her face turned from theblast, and the cape of her waterproof blowing straight rearward over herhead. Alonzo shuddered, and said with a sigh, "Better the slop, and thesultry rain, and even the insolent flowers, than this!"

He turned from the window, moved a step, and stopped in a listeningattitude. The faint, sweet notes of a familiar song caught his ear. Heremained there, with his head unconsciously bent forward, drinking inthe melody, stirring neither hand nor foot, hardly breathing. There wasa blemish in the execution of the song, but to Alonzo it seemed an addedcharm instead of a defect. This blemish consisted of a marked flattingof the third, fourth, fifth, sixth, and seventh notes of the refrain orchorus of the piece. When the music ended, Alonzo drew a deep breath, and said, "Ah, I never have heard 'In the Sweet By-and-by' sung likethat before!"

He stepped quickly to the desk, listened a moment, and said in aguarded, confidential voice, "Aunty, who is this divine singer?"

"She is the company I was expecting. Stays with me a month or two. Iwill introduce you. Miss--"

"For goodness' sake, wait a moment, Aunt Susan! You never stop to thinkwhat you are about!"

He flew to his bedchamber, and returned in a moment perceptibly changedin his outward appearance, and remarking, snappishly:

"Hang it, she would have introduced me to this angel in that sky-bluedressing-gown with red-hot lapels! Women never think, when they geta-going. "

He hastened and stood by the desk, and said eagerly, "Now, Aunty, I amready, " and fell to smiling and bowing with all the persuasiveness andelegance that were in him. 

"Very well. Miss Rosannah Ethelton, let me introduce to you my favoritenephew, Mr. Alonzo Fitz Clarence. There! You are both good people, andI like you; so I am going to trust you together while I attend to afew household affairs. Sit down, Rosannah; sit down, Alonzo. Good-by; Isha'n't be gone long. "

Alonzo had been bowing and smiling all the while, and motioningimaginary young ladies to sit down in imaginary chairs, but now he tooka seat himself, mentally saying, "Oh, this is luck! Let the winds blownow, and the snow drive, and the heavens frown! Little I care!"

While these young people chat themselves into an acquaintanceship, letus take the liberty of inspecting the sweeter and fairer of the two. Shesat alone, at her graceful ease, in a richly furnished apartment whichwas manifestly the private parlor of a refined and sensible lady, if signs and symbols may go for anything. For instance, by a low, comfortable chair stood a dainty, top-heavy workstand, whose summit wasa fancifully embroidered shallow basket, with varicolored crewels, andother strings and odds and ends protruding from under the gaping lid andhanging down in negligent profusion. On the floor lay bright shreds ofTurkey red, Prussian blue, and kindred fabrics, bits of ribbon, a spoolor two, a pair of scissors, and a roll or so of tinted silken stuffs. On a luxurious sofa, upholstered with some sort of soft Indian goodswrought in black and gold threads interwebbed with other threads notso pronounced in color, lay a great square of coarse white stuff, uponwhose surface a rich bouquet of flowers was growing, under the deftcultivation of the crochet-needle. The household cat was asleep on thiswork of art. In a bay-window stood an easel with an unfinished pictureon it, and a palette and brushes on a chair beside it. There were bookseverywhere: Robertson's Sermons, Tennyson, Moody and Sankey, Hawthorne, Rab and His Friends, cook-books, prayer-books, pattern-books--and booksabout all kinds of odious and exasperating pottery, of course. There wasa piano, with a deck-load of music, and more in a tender. There wasa great plenty of pictures on the walls, on the shelves of themantelpiece, and around generally; where coigns of vantage offeredwere statuettes, and quaint and pretty gimcracks, and rare and costlyspecimens of peculiarly devilish china. The bay-window gave upon agarden that was ablaze with foreign and domestic flowers and floweringshrubs. 

But the sweet young girl was the daintiest thing these premises, withinor without, could offer for contemplation: delicately chiseled features, of Grecian cast; her complexion the pure snow of a japonica that isreceiving a faint reflected enrichment from some scarlet neighbor ofthe garden; great, soft blue eyes fringed with long, curving lashes; anexpression made up of the trustfulness of a child and the gentleness ofa fawn; a beautiful head crowned with its own prodigal gold; a litheand rounded figure, whose every attitude and movement was instinct withnative grace. 

Her dress and adornment were marked by that exquisite harmony that cancome only of a fine natural taste perfected by culture. Her gown was ofa simple magenta tulle, cut bias, traversed by three rows of light-blueflounces, with the selvage edges turned up with ashes-of-roseschenille; overdress of dark bay tarlatan with scarlet satin lambrequins;corn-colored polonaise, en zanier, looped with mother-of-pearl buttonsand silver cord, and hauled aft and made fast by buff velvet lashings;basque of lavender reps, picked out with valenciennes; low neck, shortsleeves; maroon velvet necktie edged with delicate pink silk; insidehandkerchief of some simple three-ply ingrain fabric of a soft saffrontint; coral bracelets and locket-chain; coiffure of forget-me-nots andlilies-of-the-valley massed around a noble calla. 

This was all; yet even in this subdued attire she was divinelybeautiful. Then what must she have been when adorned for the festival orthe ball?

All this time she had been busily chatting with Alonzo, unconscious ofour inspection. The minutes still sped, and still she talked. But by andby she happened to look up, and saw the clock. A crimson blush sent itsrich flood through her cheeks, and she exclaimed:

"There, good-by, Mr. Fitz Clarence; I must go now!"

She sprang from her chair with such haste that she hardly heard theyoung man's answering good-by. She stood radiant, graceful, beautiful, and gazed, wondering, upon the accusing clock. Presently her poutinglips parted, and she said:

"Five minutes after eleven! Nearly two hours, and it did not seem twentyminutes! Oh, dear, what will he think of me!"

At the self-same moment Alonzo was staring at his clock. And presentlyhe said:

"Twenty-five minutes to three! Nearly two hours, and I didn't believeit was two minutes! Is it possible that this clock is humbugging again?Miss Ethelton! Just one moment, please. Are you there yet?"

"Yes, but be quick; I'm going right away. "

"Would you be so kind as to tell me what time it is?"

The girl blushed again, murmured to herself, "It's right down cruelof him to ask me!" and then spoke up and answered with admirablycounterfeited unconcern, "Five minutes after eleven. "

"Oh, thank you! You have to go, now, have you?"

"I'm sorry. "

No reply. 

"Miss Ethelton!"

"Well?"

"You you're there yet, ain't you?"

"Yes; but please hurry. What did you want to say?"

"Well, I--well, nothing in particular. It's very lonesome here. It'sasking a great deal, I know, but would you mind talking with me again byand by--that is, if it will not trouble you too much?"

"I don't know but I'll think about it. I'll try. "

"Oh, thanks! Miss Ethelton!. .. Ah, me, she's gone, and here are theblack clouds and the whirling snow and the raging winds come again! Butshe said good-by. She didn't say good morning, she said good-by! . .. Theclock was right, after all. What a lightning-winged two hours it was!"

He sat down, and gazed dreamily into his fire for a while, then heaved asigh and said:

"How wonderful it is! Two little hours ago I was a free man, and now myheart's in San Francisco!"

About that time Rosannah Ethelton, propped in the window-seat of herbedchamber, book in hand, was gazing vacantly out over the rainy seasthat washed the Golden Gate, and whispering to herself, "How differenthe is from poor Burley, with his empty head and his single little antictalent of mimicry!"

II

Four weeks later Mr. Sidney Algernon Burley was entertaining a gayluncheon company, in a sumptuous drawing-room on Telegraph Hill, withsome capital imitations of the voices and gestures of certain popularactors and San Franciscan literary people and Bonanza grandees. He waselegantly upholstered, and was a handsome fellow, barring a triflingcast in his eye. He seemed very jovial, but nevertheless he kept his eyeon the door with an expectant and uneasy watchfulness. By and by a nobbylackey appeared, and delivered a message to the mistress, who nodded herhead understandingly. That seemed to settle the thing for Mr. Burley;his vivacity decreased little by little, and a dejected look began tocreep into one of his eyes and a sinister one into the other. 

The rest of the company departed in due time, leaving him with themistress, to whom he said:

"There is no longer any question about it. She avoids me. Shecontinually excuses herself. If I could see her, if I could speak to heronly a moment, but this suspense--"

"Perhaps her seeming avoidance is mere accident, Mr. Burley. Go tothe small drawing-room up-stairs and amuse yourself a moment. I willdespatch a household order that is on my mind, and then I will go to herroom. Without doubt she will be persuaded to see you. "

Mr. Burley went up-stairs, intending to go to the small drawing-room, but as he was passing "Aunt Susan's" private parlor, the door of whichstood slightly ajar, he heard a joyous laugh which he recognized; sowithout knock or announcement he stepped confidently in. But before hecould make his presence known he heard words that harrowed up his souland chilled his young blood, he heard a voice say:

"Darling, it has come!"

Then he heard Rosannah Ethelton, whose back was toward him, say:

"So has yours, dearest!"

He saw her bowed form bend lower; he heard her kiss something--notmerely once, but again and again! His soul raged within him. Theheartbreaking conversation went on:

"Rosannah, I knew you must be beautiful, but this is dazzling, this isblinding, this is intoxicating!"

"Alonzo, it is such happiness to hear you say it. I know it is not true, but I am so grateful to have you think it is, nevertheless! I knew youmust have a noble face, but the grace and majesty of the reality beggarthe poor creation of my fancy. "

Burley heard that rattling shower of kisses again. 

"Thank you, my Rosannah! The photograph flatters me, but you must notallow yourself to think of that. Sweetheart?"

"Yes, Alonzo. "

"I am so happy, Rosannah. "

"Oh, Alonzo, none that have gone before me knew what love was, none thatcome after me will ever know what happiness is. I float in a gorgeouscloud land, a boundless firmament of enchanted and bewildering ecstasy!"

"Oh, my Rosannah! for you are mine, are you not?"

"Wholly, oh, wholly yours, Alonzo, now and forever! All the day long, and all through my nightly dreams, one song sings itself, and its sweetburden is, 'Alonzo Fitz Clarence, Alonzo Fitz Clarence, Eastport, stateof Maine!'"

"Curse him, I've got his address, anyway!" roared Burley, inwardly, andrushed from the place. 

Just behind the unconscious Alonzo stood his mother, a picture ofastonishment. She was so muffled from head to heel in furs that nothingof herself was visible but her eyes and nose. She was a good allegory ofwinter, for she was powdered all over with snow. 

Behind the unconscious Rosannah stood "Aunt Susan, " another picture ofastonishment. She was a good allegory of summer, for she was lightlyclad, and was vigorously cooling the perspiration on her face with afan. 

Both of these women had tears of joy in their eyes. 

"Soho!" exclaimed Mrs. Fitz Clarence, "this explains why nobody has beenable to drag you out of your room for six weeks, Alonzo!"

"So ho!" exclaimed Aunt Susan, "this explains why you have been a hermitfor the past six weeks, Rosannah!"

The young couple were on their feet in an instant, abashed, and standinglike detected dealers in stolen goods awaiting judge Lynch's doom. 

"Bless you, my son! I am happy in your happiness. Come to your mother'sarms, Alonzo!"

"Bless you, Rosannah, for my dear nephew's sake! Come to my arms!"

Then was there a mingling of hearts and of tears of rejoicing onTelegraph Hill and in Eastport Square. 

Servants were called by the elders, in both places. Unto one was giventhe order, "Pile this fire high, with hickory wood, and bring me aroasting-hot lemonade. "

Unto the other was given the order, "Put out this fire, and bring me twopalm-leaf fans and a pitcher of ice-water. "

Then the young people were dismissed, and the elders sat down to talkthe sweet surprise over and make the wedding plans. 

Some minutes before this Mr. Burley rushed from the mansion on TelegraphHill without meeting or taking formal leave of anybody. He hissedthrough his teeth, in unconscious imitation of a popular favorite inmelodrama, "Him shall she never wed! I have sworn it! Ere great Natureshall have doffed her winter's ermine to don the emerald gauds ofspring, she shall be mine!"

III

Two weeks later. Every few hours, during same three or four days, a veryprim and devout-looking Episcopal clergyman, with a cast in his eye, hadvisited Alonzo. According to his card, he was the Rev. Melton Hargrave, of Cincinnati. He said he had retired from the ministry on account ofhis health. If he had said on account of ill-health, he would probablyhave erred, to judge by his wholesome looks and firm build. He was theinventor of an improvement in telephones, and hoped to make his breadby selling the privilege of using it. "At present, " he continued, "a manmay go and tap a telegraph wire which is conveying a song or a concertfrom one state to another, and he can attach his private telephone andsteal a hearing of that music as it passes along. My invention will stopall that. "

"Well, " answered Alonzo, "if the owner of the music could not miss whatwas stolen, why should he care?"

"He shouldn't care, " said the Reverend. 

"Well?" said Alonzo, inquiringly. 

"Suppose, " replied the Reverend, "suppose that, instead of music thatwas passing along and being stolen, the burden of the wire was lovingendearments of the most private and sacred nature?"

Alonzo shuddered from head to heel. "Sir, it is a priceless invention, "said he; "I must have it at any cost. "

But the invention was delayed somewhere on the road from Cincinnati, most unaccountably. The impatient Alonzo could hardly wait. The thoughtof Rosannah's sweet words being shared with him by some ribald thief wasgalling to him. The Reverend came frequently and lamented the delay, andtold of measures he had taken to hurry things up. This was some littlecomfort to Alonzo. 

One forenoon the Reverend ascended the stairs and knocked at Alonzo'sdoor. There was no response. He entered, glanced eagerly around, closedthe door softly, then ran to the telephone. The exquisitely soft andremote strains of the "Sweet By-and-by" came floating through theinstrument. The singer was flatting, as usual, the five notes thatfollow the first two in the chorus, when the Reverend interrupted herwith this word, in a voice which was an exact imitation of Alonzo's, with just the faintest flavor of impatience added:

"Sweetheart?"

"Yes, Alonzo?"

"Please don't sing that any more this week--try something modern. "

The agile step that goes with a happy heart was heard on the stairs, and the Reverend, smiling diabolically, sought sudden refuge behind theheavy folds of the velvet window-curtains. Alonzo entered and flew tothe telephone. Said he:

"Rosannah, dear, shall we sing something together?"

"Something modern?" asked she, with sarcastic bitterness. 

"Yes, if you prefer. "

"Sing it yourself, if you like!"

This snappishness amazed and wounded the young man. He said:

"Rosannah, that was not like you. "

"I suppose it becomes me as much as your very polite speech became you, Mr. Fitz Clarence. "

"Mister Fitz Clarence! Rosannah, there was nothing impolite about myspeech. "

"Oh, indeed! Of course, then, I misunderstood you, and I most humblybeg your pardon, ha-ha-ha! No doubt you said, 'Don't sing it any moreto-day. '"

"Sing what any more to-day?"

"The song you mentioned, of course, How very obtuse we are, all of asudden!"

"I never mentioned any song. "

"Oh, you didn't?"

"No, I didn't!"

"I am compelled to remark that you did. "

"And I am obliged to reiterate that I didn't. "

"A second rudeness! That is sufficient, sir. I will never forgive you. All is over between us. "

Then came a muffled sound of crying. Alonzo hastened to say:

"Oh, Rosannah, unsay those words! There is some dreadful mystery here, some hideous mistake. I am utterly earnest and sincere when I say Inever said anything about any song. I would not hurt you for the wholeworld. .. . Rosannah, dear speak to me, won't you?"

There was a pause; then Alonzo heard the girl's sobbings retreating, and knew she had gone from the telephone. He rose with a heavy sigh, andhastened from the room, saying to himself, "I will ransack the charitymissions and the haunts of the poor for my mother. She will persuade herthat I never meant to wound her. "

A minute later the Reverend was crouching over the telephone like a catthat knoweth the ways of the prey. He had not very many minutes to wait. A soft, repentant voice, tremulous with tears, said:

"Alonzo, dear, I have been wrong. You could not have said so cruel athing. It must have been some one who imitated your voice in malice orin jest. "

The Reverend coldly answered, in Alonzo's tones:

"You have said all was over between us. So let it be. I spurn yourproffered repentance, and despise it!"

Then he departed, radiant with fiendish triumph, to return no more withhis imaginary telephonic invention forever. 

Four hours afterward Alonzo arrived with his mother from her favoritehaunts of poverty and vice. They summoned the San Francisco household;but there was no reply. They waited, and continued to wait, upon thevoiceless telephone. 

At length, when it was sunset in San Francisco, and three hours anda half after dark in Eastport, an answer to the oft-repeated cry of"Rosannah!"

But, alas, it was Aunt Susan's voice that spake. She said:

"I have been out all day; just got in. I will go and find her. "

The watchers waited two minutes--five minutes--ten minutes. Then camethese fatal words, in a frightened tone:

"She is gone, and her baggage with her. To visit another friend, shetold the servants. But I found this note on the table in her room. Listen: 'I am gone; seek not to trace me out; my heart is broken; youwill never see me more. Tell him I shall always think of him when I singmy poor "Sweet By-and-by, " but never of the unkind words he said aboutit. ' That is her note. Alonzo, Alonzo, what does it mean? What hashappened?"

But Alonzo sat white and cold as the dead. His mother threw backthe velvet curtains and opened a window. The cold air refreshed thesufferer, and he told his aunt his dismal story. Meantime his motherwas inspecting a card which had disclosed itself upon the floor whenshe cast the curtains back. It read, "Mr. Sidney Algernon Burley, SanFrancisco. "

"The miscreant!" shouted Alonzo, and rushed forth to seek the falseReverend and destroy him; for the card explained everything, since inthe course of the lovers' mutual confessions they had told each otherall about all the sweethearts they had ever had, and thrown no end ofmud at their failings and foibles for lovers always do that. It has afascination that ranks next after billing and cooing. 

IV

During the next two months many things happened. It had early transpiredthat Rosannah, poor suffering orphan, had neither returned to hergrandmother in Portland, Oregon, nor sent any word to her save aduplicate of the woeful note she had left in the mansion on TelegraphHill. Whosoever was sheltering her--if she was still alive--had beenpersuaded not to betray her whereabouts, without doubt; for all effortsto find trace of her had failed. 

Did Alonzo give her up? Not he. He said to himself, "She will singthat sweet song when she is sad; I shall find her. " So he took hiscarpet-sack and a portable telephone, and shook the snow of his nativecity from his arctics, and went forth into the world. He wandered farand wide and in many states. Time and again, strangers were astounded tosee a wasted, pale, and woe-worn man laboriously climb a telegraph-polein wintry and lonely places, perch sadly there an hour, with his ear ata little box, then come sighing down, and wander wearily away. Sometimesthey shot at him, as peasants do at aeronauts, thinking him mad anddangerous. Thus his clothes were much shredded by bullets and his persongrievously lacerated. But he bore it all patiently. 

In the beginning of his pilgrimage he used often to say, "Ah, if I couldbut hear the 'Sweet By-and-by'!" But toward the end of it he used toshed tears of anguish and say, "Ah, if I could but hear something else!"

Thus a month and three weeks drifted by, and at last some humane peopleseized him and confined him in a private mad-house in New York. He madeno moan, for his strength was all gone, and with it all heart and allhope. The superintendent, in pity, gave up his own comfortable parlorand bedchamber to him and nursed him with affectionate devotion. 

At the end of a week the patient was able to leave his bed for the firsttime. He was lying, comfortably pillowed, on a sofa, listening to theplaintive Miserere of the bleak March winds and the muffled sound oftramping feet in the street below for it was about six in the evening, and New York was going home from work. He had a bright fire and theadded cheer of a couple of student-lamps. So it was warm and snugwithin, though bleak and raw without; it was light and bright within, though outside it was as dark and dreary as if the world had been litwith Hartford gas. Alonzo smiled feebly to think how his loving vagarieshad made him a maniac in the eyes of the world, and was proceeding topursue his line of thought further, when a faint, sweet strain, the veryghost of sound, so remote and attenuated it seemed, struck upon his ear. His pulses stood still; he listened with parted lips and batedbreath. The song flowed on--he waiting, listening, rising slowly andunconsciously from his recumbent position. At last he exclaimed:

"It is! it is she! Oh, the divine hated notes!"

He dragged himself eagerly to the corner whence the sounds proceeded, tore aside a curtain, and discovered a telephone. He bent over, and asthe last note died away he burst forthwith the exclamation:

"Oh, thank Heaven, found at last! Speak tome, Rosannah, dearest! Thecruel mystery has been unraveled; it was the villain Burley who mimickedmy voice and wounded you with insolent speech!"

There was a breathless pause, a waiting age to Alonzo; then a faintsound came, framing itself into language:

"Oh, say those precious words again, Alonzo!"

"They are the truth, the veritable truth, my Rosannah, and you shallhave the proof, ample and abundant proof!"

"Oh; Alonzo, stay by me! Leave me not for a moment! Let me feel that youare near me! Tell me we shall never be parted more! Oh, this happy hour, this blessed hour, this memorable hour!"

"We will make record of it, my Rosannah; every year, as this dear hourchimes from the clock, we will celebrate it with thanksgivings, all theyears of our life. "

"We will, we will, Alonzo!"

"Four minutes after six, in the evening, my Rosannah, shallhenceforth--"

"Twenty-three minutes after twelve, afternoon shall--"

"Why; Rosannah, darling, where are you?"

"In Honolulu, Sandwich Islands. And where are you? Stay by me; do notleave me for a moment. I cannot bear it. Are you at home?"

"No, dear, I am in New York--a patient in the doctor's hands. "

An agonizing shriek came buzzing to Alonzo's ear, like the sharp buzzingof a hurt gnat; it lost power in traveling five thousand miles. Alonzohastened to say:

"Calm yourself, my child. It is nothing. Already I am getting well underthe sweet healing of your presence. Rosannah?"

"Yes, Alonzo? Oh, how you terrified me! Say on. "

"Name the happy day, Rosannah!"

There was a little pause. Then a diffident small voice replied, "Iblush--but it is with pleasure, it is with happiness. Would--would youlike to have it soon?"

"This very night, Rosannah! Oh, let us risk no more delays. Let it benow!--this very night, this very moment!"

"Oh, you impatient creature! I have nobody here but my good old uncle, a missionary for a generation, and now retired from service--nobody buthim and his wife. I would so dearly like it if your mother and your AuntSusan--"

"Our mother and our Aunt Susan, my Rosannah. "

"Yes, our mother and our Aunt Susan--I am content to word it so if itpleases you; I would so like to have them present. "

"So would I. Suppose you telegraph Aunt Susan. How long would it takeher to come?"

"The steamer leaves San Francisco day after tomorrow. The passage iseight days. She would be here the 31st of March. "

"Then name the 1st of April; do, Rosannah, dear. "

"Mercy, it would make us April fools, Alonzo!"

"So we be the happiest ones that that day's suit looks down upon in thewhole broad expanse of the globe, why need we care? Call it the 1st ofApril, dear. "

"Then the 1st of April at shall be, with all my heart!"

"Oh, happiness! Name the hour, too, Rosannah. "

"I like the morning, it is so blithe. Will eight in the morning do, Alonzo?"

"The loveliest hour in the day--since it will make you mine. "

There was a feeble but frantic sound for some little time, as ifwool-upped, disembodied spirits were exchanging kisses; then Rosannahsaid, "Excuse me just a moment, dear; I have an appointment, and amcalled to meet it. "

The young girl sought a large parlor and took her place at a windowwhich looked out upon a beautiful scene. To the left one could view thecharming Nuuana Valley, fringed with its ruddy flush of tropical flowersand its plumed and graceful cocoa palms; its rising foothills clothedin the shining green of lemon, citron, and orange groves; its storiedprecipice beyond, where the first Kamehameha drove his defeated foesover to their destruction, a spot that had forgotten its grim history, no doubt, for now it was smiling, as almost always at noonday, under theglowing arches of a succession of rainbows. In front of the window onecould see the quaint town, and here and there a picturesque group ofdusky natives, enjoying the blistering weather; and far to the right laythe restless ocean, tossing its white mane in the sunshine. 

Rosannah stood there, in her filmy white raiment, fanning her flushedand heated face, waiting. A Kanaka boy, clothed in a damaged bluenecktie and part of a silk hat, thrust his head in at the door, andannounced, "'Frisco haole!"

"Show him in, " said the girl, straightening herself up and assuming ameaning dignity. Mr. Sidney Algernon Burley entered, clad from head toheel in dazzling snow--that is to say, in the lightest and whitest ofIrish linen. He moved eagerly forward, but the girl made a gesture andgave him a look which checked him suddenly. She said, coldly, "I amhere, as I promised. I believed your assertions, I yielded to yourimportune lies, and said I would name the day. I name the 1st ofApril--eight in the morning. NOW GO!"

"Oh, my dearest, if the gratitude of a lifetime--"

"Not a word. Spare me all sight of you, all communication with you, until that hour. No--no supplications; I will have it so. "

When he was gone, she sank exhausted in a chair, for the long siege oftroubles she had undergone had wasted her strength. Presently shesaid, "What a narrow escape! If the hour appointed had been an hourearlier--Oh, horror, what an escape I have made! And to think I had cometo imagine I was loving this beguiling, this truthless, this treacherousmonster! Oh, he shall repent his villainy!"

Let us now draw this history to a close, for little more needs to betold. On the 2d of the ensuing April, the Honolulu Advertiser containedthis notice:

 MARRIED. --In this city, by telephone, yesterday morning, --at eight o'clock, by Rev. Nathan Hays, assisted by Rev. Nathaniel Davis, of New York, Mr. Alonzo Fitz Clarence, of Eastport, Maine, U. S. , and Miss Rosannah Ethelton, of Portland, Oregon, U. S. Mrs. Susan Howland, of San Francisco, a friend of the bride, was present, she being the guest of the Rev. Mr. Hays and wife, uncle and aunt of the bride. Mr. Sidney Algernon Burley, of San Francisco, was also present but did not remain till the conclusion of the marriage service. Captain Hawthorne's beautiful yacht, tastefully decorated, was in waiting, and the happy bride and her friends immediately departed on a bridal trip to Lahaina and Haleakala. 

The New York papers of the same date contained this notice:

 MARRIED. --In this city, yesterday, by telephone, at half-past two in the morning, by Rev. Nathaniel Davis, assisted by Rev. Nathan Hays, of Honolulu, Mr. Alonzo Fitz Clarence, of Eastport, Maine, and Miss Rosannah Ethelton, of Portland, Oregon. The parents and several friends of the bridegroom were present, and enjoyed a sumptuous breakfast and much festivity until nearly sunrise, and then departed on a bridal trip to the Aquarium, the bridegroom's state of health not admitting of a more extended journey. 

Toward the close of that memorable day Mr. And Mrs. Alonzo Fitz Clarencewere buried in sweet converse concerning the pleasures of their severalbridal tours, when suddenly the young wife exclaimed: "Oh, Lonny, Iforgot! I did what I said I would. "

"Did you, dear?"

"Indeed, I did. I made him the April fool! And I told him so, too!Ah, it was a charming surprise! There he stood, sweltering in a blackdress-suit, with the mercury leaking out of the top of the thermometer, waiting to be married. You should have seen the look he gave when Iwhispered it in his ear. Ah, his wickedness cost me many a heartacheand many a tear, but the score was all squared up, then. So the vengefulfeeling went right out of my heart, and I begged him to stay, and saidI forgave him everything. But he wouldn't. He said he would live to beavenged; said he would make our lives a curse to us. But he can't, canhe, dear?"

"Never in this world, my Rosannah!"

Aunt Susan, the Oregonian grandmother, and the young couple and theirEastport parents, are all happy at this writing, and likely to remainso. Aunt Susan brought the bride from the islands, accompanied heracross our continent, and had the happiness of witnessing the rapturousmeeting between an adoring husband and wife who had never seen eachother until that moment. 

A word about the wretched Burley, whose wicked machinations came sonear wrecking the hearts and lives of our poor young friends, will besufficient. In a murderous attempt to seize a crippled and helplessartisan who he fancied had done him some small offense, he fell into acaldron of boiling oil and expired before he could be extinguished. 

ON THE DECAY OF THE ART OF LYING

ESSAY, FOR DISCUSSION, READ AT A MEETING OF THE HISTORICAL ANDANTIQUARIAN CLUB OF HARTFORD, AND OFFERED FOR THE THIRTY-DOLLAR PRIZE. NOW FIRST PUBLISHED. --[Did not take the prize]

Observe, I do not mean to suggest that the custom of lying has sufferedany decay or interruption--no, for the Lie, as a Virtue, a Principle, iseternal; the Lie, as a recreation, a solace, a refuge in time of need, the fourth Grace, the tenth Muse, man's best and surest friend, isimmortal, and cannot perish from the earth while this Club remains. Mycomplaint simply concerns the decay of the art of lying. No high-mindedman, no man of right feeling, can contemplate the lumbering andslovenly lying of the present day without grieving to see a noble art soprostituted. In this veteran presence I naturally enter upon this schemewith diffidence; it is like an old maid trying to teach nursery mattersto the mothers in Israel. It would not become me to criticize you, gentlemen, who are nearly all my elders--and my superiors, in thisthing--and so, if I should here and there seem to do it, I trust it willin most cases be more in a spirit of admiration than of fault-finding;indeed, if this finest of the fine arts had everywhere received theattention, encouragement, and conscientious practice and developmentwhich this Club has devoted to it I should not need to utter this lamentor shed a single tear. I do not say this to flatter: I say it in aspirit of just and appreciative recognition. 

[It had been my intention, at this point, to mention names and giveillustrative specimens, but indications observable about me admonishedme to beware of particulars and confine myself to generalities. ]

No fact is more firmly established than that lying is a necessity ofour circumstances--the deduction that it is then a Virtue goes withoutsaying. No virtue can reach its highest usefulness without careful anddiligent cultivation--therefore, it goes without saying that this oneought to be taught in the public schools--at the fireside--even in thenewspapers. What chance has the ignorant, uncultivated liar against theeducated expert? What chance have I against Mr. Per-- against a lawyer?Judicious lying is what the world needs. I sometimes think it wereeven better and safer not to lie at all than to lie injudiciously. Anawkward, unscientific lie is often as ineffectual as the truth. 

Now let us see what the philosophers say. Note that venerableproverb: Children and fools always speak the truth. The deduction isplain--adults and wise persons never speak it. Parkman, the historian, says, "The principle of truth may itself be carried into an absurdity. "In another place in the same chapter he says, "The saying is oldthat truth should not be spoken at all times; and those whom a sickconscience worries into habitual violation of the maxim are imbecilesand nuisances. " It is strong language, but true. None of us could livewith an habitual truth-teller; but, thank goodness, none of us has to. An habitual truth-teller is simply an impossible creature; he does notexist; he never has existed. Of course there are people who think theynever lie, but it is not so--and this ignorance is one of the verythings that shame our so-called civilization. Everybody lies--every day;every hour; awake; asleep; in his dreams; in his joy; in his mourning;if he keeps his tongue still, his hands, his feet, his eyes, hisattitude, will convey deception--and purposely. Even in sermons--butthat is a platitude. 

In a far country where I once lived the ladies used to go around payingcalls, under the humane and kindly pretense of wanting to see eachother; and when they returned home, they would cry out with a gladvoice, saying, "We made sixteen calls and found fourteen of themout"--not meaning that they found out anything against the fourteen--no, that was only a colloquial phrase to signify that they were not athome--and their manner of saying it--expressed their lively satisfactionin that fact. Now, their pretense of wanting to see the fourteen--andthe other two whom they had been less lucky with--was that commonest andmildest form of lying which is sufficiently described as a deflectionfrom the truth. Is it justifiable? Most certainly. It is beautiful, it is noble; for its object is, not to reap profit, but to convey apleasure to the sixteen. The iron-souled truth-monger would plainlymanifest, or even utter the fact, that he didn't want to see thosepeople--and he would be an ass, and inflict a totally unnecessary pain. And next, those ladies in that far country--but never mind, they had athousand pleasant ways of lying, that grew out of gentle impulses, andwere a credit to their intelligence and at honor to their hearts. Letthe particulars go. 

The men in that far country were liars; every one. Their mere howdy-dowas a lie, because they didn't care how you did, except they wereundertakers. To the ordinary inquirer you lied in return; for you madeno conscientious diagnosis of your case, but answered at random, andusually missed it considerably. You lied to the undertaker, and saidyour health was failing--a wholly commendable lie, since it cost younothing and pleased the other man. If a stranger called and interruptedyou, you said with your hearty tongue, "I'm glad to see you, " and saidwith your heartier soul, "I wish you were with the cannibals and it wasdinner-time. " When he went, you said regretfully, "Must you go?" andfollowed it with a "Call again"; but you did no harm, for you did notdeceive anybody nor inflict any hurt, whereas the truth would have madeyou both unhappy. 

I think that all this courteous lying is a sweet and loving art, andshould be cultivated. The highest perfection of politeness is only abeautiful edifice, built, from the base to the dome, of graceful andgilded forms of charitable and unselfish lying. 

What I bemoan is the growing prevalence of the brutal truth. Let us dowhat we can to eradicate it. An injurious truth has no merit over aninjurious lie. Neither should ever be uttered. The man who speaks aninjurious truth, lest his soul be not saved if he do otherwise, shouldreflect that that sort of a soul is not strictly worth saving. The manwho tells a lie to help a poor devil out of trouble is one of whom theangels doubtless say, "Lo, here is an heroic soul who casts his ownwelfare into jeopardy to succor his neighbor's; let us exalt thismagnanimous liar. "

An injurious lie is an uncommendable thing; and so, also, and in thesame degree, is an injurious truth--a fact which is recognized by thelaw of libel. 

Among other common lies, we have the silent lie, the deception which oneconveys by simply keeping still and concealing the truth. Many obstinatetruth-mongers indulge in this dissipation, imagining that if they speakno lie, they lie not at all. In that far country where I once lived, there was a lovely spirit, a lady whose impulses were always high andpure, and whose character answered to them. One day I was there atdinner, and remarked, in a general way, that we are all liars. She wasamazed, and said, "Not all!" It was before "Pinafore's" time so I didnot make the response which would naturally follow in our day, butfrankly said, "Yes, all--we are all liars; there are no exceptions. " Shelooked almost offended, and said, "Why, do you include me?" "Certainly, "I said, "I think you even rank as an expert. " She said, "'Sh!--'sh! thechildren!"

So the subject was changed in deference to the children's presence, andwe went on talking about other things. But as soon as the young peoplewere out of the way, the lady came warmly back to the matter and said, "I have made it the rule of my life to never tell a lie; and I havenever departed from it in a single instance. " I said, "I don't mean theleast harm or disrespect, but really you have been lying like smokeever since I've been sitting here. It has caused me a good deal of pain, because I am not used to it. " She required of me an instance--just asingle instance. So I said:

"Well, here is the unfilled duplicate of the blank which the Oaklandhospital people sent to you by the hand of the sick-nurse when she camehere to nurse your little nephew through his dangerous illness. Thisblank asks all manner of questions as to the conduct of that sick-nurse:'Did she ever sleep on her watch? Did she ever forget to give themedicine?' and so forth and so on. You are warned to be very careful andexplicit in your answers, for the welfare of the service requires thatthe nurses be promptly fined or otherwise punished for derelictions. You told me you were perfectly delighted with that nurse--that she hada thousand perfections and only one fault: you found you never coulddepend on her wrapping Johnny up half sufficiently while he waited ina chilly chair for her to rearrange the warm bed. You filled up theduplicate of this paper, and sent it back to the hospital by the hand ofthe nurse. How did you answer this question--'Was the nurse at anytime guilty of a negligence which was likely to result in the patient'staking cold?' Come--everything is decided by a bet here in California:ten dollars to ten cents you lied when you answered that question. " Shesaid, "I didn't; I left it blank!" "Just so--you have told a silent lie;you have left it to be inferred that you had no fault to find in thatmatter. " She said, "Oh, was that a lie? And how could I mention her onesingle fault, and she so good?--it would have been cruel. " I said, "Oneought always to lie when one can do good by it; your impulse was right, but, your judgment was crude; this comes of unintelligent practice. Nowobserve the result of this inexpert deflection of yours. You knowMr. Jones's Willie is lying very low with scarlet fever; well, yourrecommendation was so enthusiastic that that girl is there nursing him, and the worn-out family have all been trustingly sound asleep for thelast fourteen hours, leaving their darling with full confidence inthose fatal hands, because you, like young George Washington, have areputa--However, if you are not going to have anything to do, I willcome around to-morrow and we'll attend the funeral together, for, ofcourse, you'll naturally feel a peculiar interest in Willie's case--aspersonal a one, in fact, as the undertaker. "

But that was all lost. Before I was half-way through she was in acarriage and making thirty miles an hour toward the Jones mansion tosave what was left of Willie and tell all she knew about the deadlynurse. All of which was unnecessary, as Willie wasn't sick; I had beenlying myself. But that same day, all the same, she sent a line to thehospital which filled up the neglected blank, and stated the facts, too, in the squarest possible manner. 

Now, you see, this lady's fault was not in lying, but only in lyinginjudiciously. She should have told the truth there, and made it up tothe nurse with a fraudulent compliment further along in the paper. Shecould have said, "In one respect the sick-nurse is perfection--when sheis on watch, she never snores. " Almost any little pleasant lie wouldhave taken the sting out of that troublesome but necessary expression ofthe truth. 

Lying is universal we all do it; we all must do it. Therefore, thewise thing is for us diligently to train ourselves to lie thoughtfully, judiciously; to lie with a good object, and not an evil one; to liefor others' advantage, and not our own; to lie healingly, charitably, humanely, not cruelly, hurtfully, maliciously; to lie gracefullyand graciously, not awkwardly and clumsily; to lie firmly, frankly, squarely, with head erect, not haltingly, tortuously, with pusillanimousmien, as being ashamed of our high calling. Then shall we be rid ofthe rank and pestilent truth that is rotting the land; then shall we begreat and good and beautiful, and worthy dwellers in a world whereeven benign Nature habitually lies, except when she promises execrableweather. Then--but I am but a new and feeble student in this graciousart; I can not instruct this Club. 

Joking aside, I think there is much need of wise examination into whatsorts of lies are best and wholesomest to be indulged, seeing we mustall lie and do all lie, and what sorts it may be best to avoid--and thisis a thing which I feel I can confidently put into the hands of thisexperienced Club--a ripe body, who may be termed, in this regard, andwithout undue flattery, Old Masters. 

ABOUT MAGNANIMOUS-INCIDENT LITERATURE

All my life, from boyhood up, I have had the habit of reading a certainset of anecdotes, written in the quaint vein of The World's ingeniousFabulist, for the lesson they taught me and the pleasure they gave me. They lay always convenient to my hand, and whenever I thought meanly ofmy kind I turned to them, and they banished that sentiment; wheneverI felt myself to be selfish, sordid, and ignoble I turned to them, andthey told me what to do to win back my self-respect. Many times I wishedthat the charming anecdotes had not stopped with their happy climaxes, but had continued the pleasing history of the several benefactors andbeneficiaries. This wish rose in my breast so persistently that at lastI determined to satisfy it by seeking out the sequels of those anecdotesmyself. So I set about it, and after great labor and tedious researchaccomplished my task. I will lay the result before you, giving you eachanecdote in its turn, and following it with its sequel as I gathered itthrough my investigations. 

 THE GRATEFUL POODLE

One day a benevolent physician (who had read the books) having found astray poodle suffering from a broken leg, conveyed the poor creatureto his home, and after setting and bandaging the injured limb gave thelittle outcast its liberty again, and thought no more about the matter. But how great was his surprise, upon opening his door one morning, somedays later, to find the grateful poodle patiently waiting there, and inits company another stray dog, one of whose legs, by some accident, hadbeen broken. The kind physician at once relieved the distressed animal, nor did he forget to admire the inscrutable goodness and mercy of God, who had been willing to use so humble an instrument as the poor outcastpoodle for the inculcating of, etc. , etc. , etc. 

 SEQUEL

The next morning the benevolent physician found the two dogs, beaming with gratitude, waiting at his door, and with them two otherdogs-cripples. The cripples were speedily healed, and the four wenttheir way, leaving the benevolent physician more overcome by piouswonder than ever. The day passed, the morning came. There at the doorsat now the four reconstructed dogs, and with them four others requiringreconstruction. This day also passed, and another morning came; and nowsixteen dogs, eight of them newly crippled, occupied the sidewalk, andthe people were going around. By noon the broken legs were all set, butthe pious wonder in the good physician's breast was beginning to getmixed with involuntary profanity. The sun rose once more, and exhibitedthirty-two dogs, sixteen of them with broken legs, occupying thesidewalk and half of the street; the human spectators took up the restof the room. The cries of the wounded, the songs of the healed brutes, and the comments of the onlooking citizens made great and inspiringcheer, but traffic was interrupted in that street. The good physicianhired a couple of assistant surgeons and got through his benevolentwork before dark, first taking the precaution to cancel hischurch-membership, so that he might express himself with the latitudewhich the case required. 

But some things have their limits. When once more the morning dawned, and the good physician looked out upon a massed and far-reachingmultitude of clamorous and beseeching dogs, he said, "I might as wellacknowledge it, I have been fooled by the books; they only tell thepretty part of the story, and then stop. Fetch me the shotgun; thisthing has gone along far enough. "

He issued forth with his weapon, and chanced to step upon the tail ofthe original poodle, who promptly bit him in the leg. Now the great andgood work which this poodle had been engaged in had engendered in himsuch a mighty and augmenting enthusiasm as to turn his weak head at lastand drive him mad. A month later, when the benevolent physician lay inthe death-throes of hydrophobia, he called his weeping friends abouthim, and said:

"Beware of the books. They tell but half of the story. Whenever a poorwretch asks you for help, and you feel a doubt as to what result mayflow from your benevolence, give yourself the benefit of the doubt andkill the applicant. "

And so saying he turned his face to the wall and gave up the ghost. 

 THE BENEVOLENT AUTHOR

A poor and young literary beginner had tried in vain to get hismanuscripts accepted. At last, when the horrors of starvation werestaring him in the face, he laid his sad case before a celebratedauthor, beseeching his counsel and assistance. This generous manimmediately put aside his own matters and proceeded to peruse one ofthe despised manuscripts. Having completed his kindly task, he shook thepoor young man cordially by the hand, saying, "I perceive merit inthis; come again to me on Monday. " At the time specified, the celebratedauthor, with a sweet smile, but saying nothing, spread open amagazine which was damp from the press. What was the poor young man'sastonishment to discover upon the printed page his own article. "Howcan I ever, " said he, falling upon his knees and bursting into tears, "testify my gratitude for this noble conduct!"

The celebrated author was the renowned Snodgrass; the poor youngbeginner thus rescued from obscurity and starvation was the afterwardequally renowned Snagsby. Let this pleasing incident admonish us to turna charitable ear to all beginners that need help. 

 SEQUEL

The next week Snagsby was back with five rejected manuscripts. Thecelebrated author was a little surprised, because in the books theyoung struggler had needed but one lift, apparently. However, he plowedthrough these papers, removing unnecessary flowers and digging up someacres of adjective stumps, and then succeeded in getting two of thearticles accepted. 

A week or so drifted by, and the grateful Snagsby arrived with anothercargo. The celebrated author had felt a mighty glow of satisfactionwithin himself the first time he had successfully befriended the pooryoung struggler, and had compared himself with the generous people inthe books with high gratification; but he was beginning to suspect nowthat he had struck upon something fresh in the noble-episode line. His enthusiasm took a chill. Still, he could not bear to repulse thisstruggling young author, who clung to him with such pretty simplicityand trustfulness. 

Well, the upshot of it all was that the celebrated author presentlyfound himself permanently freighted with the poor young beginner. Allhis mild efforts to unload this cargo went for nothing. He had to givedaily counsel, daily encouragement; he had to keep on procuringmagazine acceptances, and then revamping the manuscripts to make thempresentable. When the young aspirant got a start at last, he rode intosudden fame by describing the celebrated author's private life with sucha caustic humor and such minuteness of blistering detail that the booksold a prodigious edition, and broke the celebrated author's heart withmortification. With his latest gasp he said, "Alas, the books deceivedme; they do not tell the whole story. Beware of the strugglingyoung author, my friends. Whom God sees fit to starve, let not manpresumptuously rescue to his own undoing. "

 THE GRATEFUL HUSBAND

One day a lady was driving through the principal street of a great citywith her little boy, when the horses took fright and dashed madly away, hurling the coachman from his box and leaving the occupants of thecarnage paralyzed with terror. But a brave youth who was driving agrocery-wagon threw himself before the plunging animals, and succeededin arresting their flight at the peril of his own. --[This is probably amisprint. --M. T. ]--The grateful lady took his number, and upon arrivingat her home she related the heroic act to her husband (who had read thebooks), who listened with streaming eyes to the moving recital, and who, after returning thanks, in conjunction with his restored loved ones, toHim who suffereth not even a sparrow to fall to the ground unnoticed, sent for the brave young person, and, placing a check for five hundreddollars in his hand, said, "Take this as a reward for your noble act, William Ferguson, and if ever you shall need a friend, remember thatThompson McSpadden has a grateful heart. " Let us learn from this that agood deed cannot fail to benefit the doer, however humble he may be. 

 SEQUEL

William Ferguson called the next week and asked Mr. McSpadden to use hisinfluence to get him a higher employment, he feeling capable ofbetter things than driving a grocer's wagon. Mr. McSpadden got him anunderclerkship at a good salary. 

Presently William Ferguson's mother fell sick, and William--Well, tocut the story short, Mr. McSpadden consented to take her into his house. Before long she yearned for the society of her younger children; so Maryand Julia were admitted also, and little Jimmy, their brother. Jimmy hada pocket knife, and he wandered into the drawing-room with it oneday, alone, and reduced ten thousand dollars' worth of furniture to anindeterminable value in rather less than three-quarters of an hour. Aday or two later he fell down-stairs and broke his neck, and seventeenof his family's relatives came to the house to attend the funeral. Thismade them acquainted, and they kept the kitchen occupied after that, andlikewise kept the McSpaddens busy hunting-up situations of various sortsfor them, and hunting up more when they wore these out. The old womandrank a good deal and swore a good deal; but the grateful McSpaddensknew it was their duty to reform her, considering what her son had donefor them, so they clave nobly to their generous task. William cameoften and got decreasing sums of money, and asked for higher andmore lucrative employments--which the grateful McSpadden more or lesspromptly procured for him. McSpadden consented also, after some demur, to fit William for college; but when the first vacation came and thehero requested to be sent to Europe for his health, the persecutedMcSpadden rose against the tyrant and revolted. He plainly and squarelyrefused. William Ferguson's mother was so astounded that she let hergin-bottle drop, and her profane lips refused to do their office. Whenshe recovered she said in a half-gasp, "Is this your gratitude? Wherewould your wife and boy be now, but for my son?"

William said, "Is this your gratitude? Did I save your wife's life ornot? Tell me that!"

Seven relations swarmed in from the kitchen and each said, "And this ishis gratitude!"

William's sisters stared, bewildered, and said, "And this is hisgrat--" but were interrupted by their mother, who burst into tears andexclaimed, "To think that my sainted little Jimmy threw away his life in theservice of such a reptile!"

Then the pluck of the revolutionary McSpadden rose to the occasion, andhe replied with fervor, "Out of my house, the whole beggarly tribeof you! I was beguiled by the books, but shall never be beguiledagain--once is sufficient for me. " And turning to William he shouted, "Yes, you did save my wife's life, and the next man that does it shalldie in his tracks!"

Not being a clergyman, I place my text at the end of my sermon insteadof at the beginning. Here it is, from Mr. Noah Brooks's Recollections ofPresident Lincoln in Scribners Monthly:

 J. H. Hackett, in his part of Falstaff, was an actor who gave Mr. Lincoln great delight. With his usual desire to signify to others his sense of obligation, Mr. Lincoln wrote a genial little note to the actor expressing his pleasure at witnessing his performance. Mr. Hackett, in reply, sent a book of some sort; perhaps it was one of his own authorship. He also wrote several notes to the President. One night, quite late, when the episode had passed out of my mind, I went to the white House in answer to a message. Passing into the President's office, I noticed, to my surprise, Hackett sitting in the anteroom as if waiting for an audience. The President asked me if any one was outside. On being told, he said, half sadly, "Oh, I can't see him, I can't see him; I was in hopes he had gone away. " Then he added, "Now this just illustrates the difficulty of having pleasant friends and acquaintances in this place. You know how I liked Hackett as an actor, and how I wrote to tell him so. He sent me that book, and there I thought the matter would end. He is a master of his place in the profession, I suppose, and well fixed in it; but just because we had a little friendly correspondence, such as any two men might have, he wants something. What do you suppose he wants?" I could not guess, and Mr. Lincoln added, "well, he wants to be consul to London. Oh, dear!"

I will observe, in conclusion, that the William Ferguson incidentoccurred, and within my personal knowledge--though I have changed thenature of the details, to keep William from recognizing himself in it. 

All the readers of this article have in some sweet and gushing hour oftheir lives played the role of Magnanimous-Incident hero. I wish I knewhow many there are among them who are willing to talk about that episodeand like to be reminded of the consequences that flowed from it. 

PUNCH, BROTHERS, PUNCH

Will the reader please to cast his eye over the following lines, and seeif he can discover anything harmful in them?

 Conductor, when you receive a fare, Punch in the presence of the passenjare! A blue trip slip for an eight-cent fare, A buff trip slip for a six-cent fare, A pink trip slip for a three-cent fare, Punch in the presence of the passenjare!

 CHORUS

 Punch, brothers! punch with care! Punch in the presence of the passenjare!

I came across these jingling rhymes in a newspaper, a little while ago, and read them a couple of times. They took instant and entire possessionof me. All through breakfast they went waltzing through my brain; andwhen, at last, I rolled up my napkin, I could not tell whether I hadeaten anything or not. I had carefully laid out my day's work the daybefore--thrilling tragedy in the novel which I am writing. I went to myden to begin my deed of blood. I took up my pen, but all I could get itto say was, "Punch in the presence of the passenjare. " I fought hard foran hour, but it was useless. My head kept humming, "A blue trip slip foran eight-cent fare, a buff trip slip for a six-cent fare, " and so on andso on, without peace or respite. The day's work was ruined--I couldsee that plainly enough. I gave up and drifted down-town, and presentlydiscovered that my feet were keeping time to that relentless jingle. When I could stand it no longer I altered my step. But it did nogood; those rhymes accommodated themselves to the new step and wenton harassing me just as before. I returned home, and suffered all theafternoon; suffered all through an unconscious and unrefreshing dinner;suffered, and cried, and jingled all through the evening; went to bedand rolled, tossed, and jingled right along, the same as ever; got up atmidnight frantic, and tried to read; but there was nothing visibleupon the whirling page except "Punch! punch in the presence of thepassenjare. " By sunrise I was out of my mind, and everybody marveled andwas distressed at the idiotic burden of my ravings--"Punch! oh, punch!punch in the presence of the passenjare!"

Two days later, on Saturday morning, I arose, a tottering wreck, andwent forth to fulfil an engagement with a valued friend, the Rev. Mr. ------, to walk to the Talcott Tower, ten miles distant. He stared atme, but asked no questions. We started. Mr. ------ talked, talked, talkedas is his wont. I said nothing; I heard nothing. At the end of a mile, Mr. ------ said "Mark, are you sick? I never saw a man look so haggardand worn and absent-minded. Say something, do!"

Drearily, without enthusiasm, I said: "Punch brothers, punch with care!Punch in the presence of the passenjare!"

My friend eyed me blankly, looked perplexed, they said:

"I do not think I get your drift, Mark. Then does not seem to be anyrelevancy in what you have said, certainly nothing sad; and yet--maybeit was the way you said the words--I never heard anything that soundedso pathetic. What is--"

But I heard no more. I was already far away with my pitiless, heartbreaking "blue trip slip for an eight-cent fare, buff trip slipfor a six-cent fare, pink trip slip for a three-cent fare; punch inthe presence of the passenjare. " I do not know what occurred during theother nine miles. However, all of a sudden Mr. ------ laid his hand on myshoulder and shouted:

"Oh, wake up! wake up! wake up! Don't sleep all day! Here we are at theTower, man! I have talked myself deaf and dumb and blind, and never gota response. Just look at this magnificent autumn landscape! Look atit! look at it! Feast your eye on it! You have traveled; you have seenboaster landscapes elsewhere. Come, now, deliver an honest opinion. Whatdo you say to this?"

I sighed wearily; and murmured:

"A buff trip slip for a six-cent fare, a pink trip slip for a three-centfare, punch in the presence of the passenjare. "

Rev. Mr. ------ stood there, very grave, full of concern, apparently, and looked long at me; then he said:

"Mark, there is something about this that I cannot understand. Those areabout the same words you said before; there does not seem to be anythingin them, and yet they nearly break my heart when you say them. Punch inthe--how is it they go?"

I began at the beginning and repeated all the lines. 

My friend's face lighted with interest. He said:

"Why, what a captivating jingle it is! It is almost music. It flowsalong so nicely. I have nearly caught the rhymes myself. Say them overjust once more, and then I'll have them, sure. "

I said them over. Then Mr. ------ said them. He made one little mistake, which I corrected. The next time and the next he got them right. Now agreat burden seemed to tumble from my shoulders. That torturing jingledeparted out of my brain, and a grateful sense of rest and peacedescended upon me. I was light-hearted enough to sing; and I did singfor half an hour, straight along, as we went jogging homeward. Then myfreed tongue found blessed speech again, and the pent talk of manya weary hour began to gush and flow. It flowed on and on, joyously, jubilantly, until the fountain was empty and dry. As I wrung my friend'shand at parting, I said:

"Haven't we had a royal good time! But now I remember, you haven't saida word for two hours. Come, come, out with something!"

The Rev. Mr. ------ turned a lack-luster eye upon me, drew a deep sigh, and said, without animation, without apparent consciousness:

"Punch, brothers, punch with care! Punch in the presence of thepassenjare!"

A pang shot through me as I said to myself, "Poor fellow, poor fellow!he has got it, now. "

I did not see Mr. ------ for two or three days after that. Then, onTuesday evening, he staggered into my presence and sank dejectedly intoa seat. He was pale, worn; he was a wreck. He lifted his faded eyes tomy face and said:

"Ah, Mark, it was a ruinous investment that I made in those heartlessrhymes. They have ridden me like a nightmare, day and night, hour afterhour, to this very moment. Since I saw you I have suffered the tormentsof the lost. Saturday evening I had a sudden call, by telegraph, andtook the night train for Boston. The occasion was the death of a valuedold friend who had requested that I should preach his funeral sermon. Itook my seat in the cars and set myself to framing the discourse. But Inever got beyond the opening paragraph; for then the train startedand the car-wheels began their 'clack, clack-clack-clack-clack!clack-clack!--clack-clack-clack!' and right away those odious rhymesfitted themselves to that accompaniment. For an hour I sat there andset a syllable of those rhymes to every separate and distinct clackthe car-wheels made. Why, I was as fagged out, then, as if I had beenchopping wood all day. My skull was splitting with headache. It seemedto me that I must go mad if I sat there any longer; so I undressed andwent to bed. I stretched myself out in my berth, and--well, youknow what the result was. The thing went right along, just the same. 'Clack-clack clack, a blue trip slip, clack-clack-clack, for an eightcent fare; clack-clack-clack, a buff trip slip, clack clack-clack, for asix-cent fare, and so on, and so on, and so on punch in the presence ofthe passenjare!' Sleep? Not a single wink! I was almost a lunatic whenI got to Boston. Don't ask me about the funeral. I did the best I could, but every solemn individual sentence was meshed and tangled and woven inand out with 'Punch, brothers, punch with care, punch in the presenceof the passenjare. ' And the most distressing thing was that my deliverydropped into the undulating rhythm of those pulsing rhymes, and I couldactually catch absent-minded people nodding time to the swing of it withtheir stupid heads. And, Mark, you may believe it or not, but before Igot through the entire assemblage were placidly bobbing their heads insolemn unison, mourners, undertaker, and all. The moment I had finished, I fled to the anteroom in a state bordering on frenzy. Of courseit would be my luck to find a sorrowing and aged maiden aunt of thedeceased there, who had arrived from Springfield too late to get intothe church. She began to sob, and said:

"'Oh, oh, he is gone, he is gone, and I didn't see him before he died!'

"'Yes!' I said, 'he is gone, he is gone, he is gone--oh, will thissuffering never cease!'

"'You loved him, then! Oh, you too loved him!'

"'Loved him! Loved who?'

"'Why, my poor George! my poor nephew!'

"'Oh--him! Yes--oh, yes, yes. Certainly--certainly. Punch--punch--oh, this misery will kill me!'

"'Bless you! bless you, sir, for these sweet words! I, too, suffer inthis dear loss. Were you present during his last moments?'

"'Yes. I--whose last moments?'

"'His. The dear departed's. '

"'Yes! Oh, yes--yes--yes! I suppose so, I think so, I don't know! Oh, certainly--I was there I was there!'

"'Oh, what a privilege! what a precious privilege! And his lastwords--oh, tell me, tell me his last words! What did he say?'

"'He said--he said--oh, my head, my head, my head! He said--he said--henever said anything but Punch, punch, punch in the presence of thepassenjare! Oh, leave me, madam! In the name of all that is generous, leave me to my madness, my misery, my despair!--a buff trip slip for asix-cent fare, a pink trip slip for a three-cent fare--endu--rance canno fur--ther go!--PUNCH in the presence of the passenjare!"

My friend's hopeless eyes rested upon mine a pregnant minute, and thenhe said impressively:

"Mark, you do not say anything. You do not offer me any hope. But, ahme, it is just as well--it is just as well. You could not do me anygood. The time has long gone by when words could comfort me. Somethingtells me that my tongue is doomed to wag forever to the jigger of thatremorseless jingle. There--there it is coming on me again: a blue tripslip for an eight-cent fare, a buff trip slip for a--"

Thus murmuring faint and fainter, my friend sank into a peaceful tranceand forgot his sufferings in a blessed respite. 

How did I finally save him from an asylum? I took him to a neighboringuniversity and made him discharge the burden of his persecuting rhymesinto the eager ears of the poor, unthinking students. How is it withthem, now? The result is too sad to tell. Why did I write this article?It was for a worthy, even a noble, purpose. It was to warn you, reader, if you should came across those merciless rhymes, to avoid them--avoidthem as you would a pestilence. 

THE GREAT REVOLUTION IN PITCAIRN

Let me refresh the reader's memory a little. Nearly a hundred years agothe crew of the British ship Bounty mutinied, set the captain and hisofficers adrift upon the open sea, took possession of the ship, andsailed southward. They procured wives for themselves among the nativesof Tahiti, then proceeded to a lonely little rock in mid-Pacific, calledPitcairn's Island, wrecked the vessel, stripped her of everything thatmight be useful to a new colony, and established themselves on shore. Pitcairn's is so far removed from the track of commerce that it was manyyears before another vessel touched there. It had always been consideredan uninhabited island; so when a ship did at last drop its anchor there, in 1808, the captain was greatly surprised to find the place peopled. Although the mutineers had fought among themselves, and gradually killedeach other off until only two or three of the original stock remained, these tragedies had not occurred before a number of children had beenborn; so in 1808 the island had a population of twenty-seven persons. John Adams, the chief mutineer, still survived, and was to live manyyears yet, as governor and patriarch of the flock. From being mutineerand homicide, he had turned Christian and teacher, and his nation oftwenty-seven persons was now the purest and devoutest in Christendom. Adams had long ago hoisted the British flag and constituted his islandan appanage of the British crown. 

To-day the population numbers ninety persons--sixteen men, nineteenwomen, twenty-five boys, and thirty girls--all descendants of themutineers, all bearing the family names of those mutineers, and allspeaking English, and English only. The island stands high up out ofthe sea, and has precipitous walls. It is about three-quarters of a milelong, and in places is as much as half a mile wide. Such arable land asit affords is held by the several families, according to a division mademany years ago. There is some live stock--goats, pigs, chickens, andcats; but no dogs, and no large animals. There is one church-buildingused also as a capitol, a schoolhouse, and a public library. The titleof the governor has been, for a generation or two, "Magistrate and ChiefRuler, in subordination to her Majesty the Queen of Great Britain. " Itwas his province to make the laws, as well as execute them. His officewas elective; everybody over seventeen years old had a vote--no matterabout the sex. 

The sole occupations of the people were farming and fishing; theirsole recreation, religious services. There has never been a shop in theisland, nor any money. The habits and dress of the people have alwaysbeen primitive, and their laws simple to puerility. They have lived ina deep Sabbath tranquillity, far from the world and its ambitions andvexations, and neither knowing nor caring what was going on in themighty empires that lie beyond their limitless ocean solitudes. Once inthree or four years a ship touched there, moved them with aged newsof bloody battles, devastating epidemics, fallen thrones, and ruineddynasties, then traded them some soap and flannel for some yams andbreadfruit, and sailed away, leaving them to retire into their peacefuldreams and pious dissipations once more. 

On the 8th of last September, Admiral de Horsey, commander-in-chief ofthe British fleet in the Pacific, visited Pitcairn's Island, and speaksas follows in his official report to the admiralty:

 They have beans, carrots, turnips, cabbages, and a little maize; pineapples, fig trees, custard-apples, and oranges; lemons, and cocoanuts. Clothing is obtained alone from passing ships, in barter for refreshments. There are no springs on the island, but as it rains generally once a month they have plenty of water, although at times in former years they have suffered from drought. No alcoholic liquors, except for medicinal purposes, are used, and a drunkard is unknown. .. . 

 The necessary articles required by the islanders are best shown by those we furnished in barter for refreshments: namely, flannel, serge, drill, half-boots, combs, tobacco, and soap. They also stand much in need of maps and slates for their school, and tools of any kind are most acceptable. I caused them to be supplied from the public stores with a Union jack: for display on the arrival of ships, and a pit-saw, of which they were greatly in need. This, I trust, will meet the approval of their lordships. If the munificent people of England were only aware of the wants of this most deserving little colony, they would not long go unsupplied. .. . 

 Divine service is held every Sunday at 10. 30 A. M. And at 3 P. M. , in the house built and used by John Adams for that purpose until he died in 1829. It is conducted strictly in accordance with the liturgy of the Church of England, by Mr. Simon Young, their selected pastor, who is much respected. A Bible class is held every Wednesday, when all who conveniently can attend. There is also a general meeting for prayer on the first Friday in every month. Family prayers are said in every house the first thing in the morning and the last thing in the evening, and no food is partaken of without asking God's blessing before and afterward. Of these islanders' religious attributes no one can speak without deep respect. A people whose greatest pleasure and privilege is to commune in prayer with their God, and to join in hymns of praise, and who are, moreover, cheerful, diligent, and probably freer from vice than any other community, need no priest among them. 

Now I come to a sentence in the admiral's report which he droppedcarelessly from his pen, no doubt, and never gave the matter a secondthought. He little imagined what a freight of tragic prophecy it bore!This is the sentence:

 One stranger, an American, has settled on the island--a doubtful acquisition. 

A doubtful acquisition, indeed! Captain Ormsby, in the American shipHornet, touched at Pitcairn's nearly four months after the admiral'svisit, and from the facts which he gathered there we now know all aboutthat American. Let us put these facts together in historical form. TheAmerican's name was Butterworth Stavely. As soon as he had becomewell acquainted with all the people--and this took but a few days, ofcourse--he began to ingratiate himself with them by all the arts hecould command. He became exceedingly popular, and much looked up to; forone of the first things he did was to forsake his worldly way of life, and throw all his energies into religion. He was always reading hisBible, or praying, or singing hymns, or asking blessings. In prayer, noone had such "liberty" as he, no one could pray so long or so well. 

At last, when he considered the time to be ripe, he began secretly tosow the seeds of discontent among the people. It was his deliberatepurpose, from the beginning, to subvert the government, but of course hekept that to himself for a time. He used different arts with differentindividuals. He awakened dissatisfaction in one quarter by callingattention to the shortness of the Sunday services; he argued that thereshould be three three-hour services on Sunday instead of only two. Many had secretly held this opinion before; they now privately bandedthemselves into a party to work for it. He showed certain of the womenthat they were not allowed sufficient voice in the prayer-meetings;thus another party was formed. No weapon was beneath his notice; heeven descended to the children, and awoke discontent in their breastsbecause--as he discovered for them--they had not enough Sunday-school. This created a third party. 

Now, as the chief of these parties, he found himself the strongest powerin the community. So he proceeded to his next move--a no less importantone than the impeachment of the chief magistrate, James Russell Nickoy;a man of character and ability, and possessed of great wealth, he beingthe owner of a house with a parlor to it, three acres and a half ofyam-land, and the only boat in Pitcairn's, a whaleboat; and, mostunfortunately, a pretext for this impeachment offered itself at just theright time. 

One of the earliest and most precious laws of the island was the lawagainst trespass. It was held in great reverence, and was regardedas the palladium of the people's liberties. About thirty years ago animportant case came before the courts under this law, in this wise: achicken belonging to Elizabeth Young (aged, at that time, fifty-eight, a daughter of John Mills, one of the mutineers of the Bounty) trespassedupon the grounds of Thursday October Christian (aged twenty-nine, agrandson of Fletcher Christian, one of the mutineers). Christian killedthe chicken. According to the law, Christian could keep the chicken; or, if he preferred, he could restore its remains to the owner and receivedamages in "produce" to an amount equivalent to the waste and injurywrought by the trespasser. The court records set forth that "the saidChristian aforesaid did deliver the aforesaid remains to the said Elizabeth Young, and did demand one bushel of yams in satisfaction of thedamage done. " But Elizabeth Young considered the demand exorbitant; theparties could not agree; therefore Christian brought suit in the courts. He lost his case in the justice's court; at least, he was awarded onlya half-peck of yams, which he considered insufficient, and in thenature of a defeat. He appealed. The case lingered several years in anascending grade of courts, and always resulted in decrees sustaining theoriginal verdict; and finally the thing got into the supreme court, andthere it stuck for twenty years. But last summer, even the supreme courtmanaged to arrive at a decision at last. Once more the original verdictwas sustained. Christian then said he was satisfied; but Stavely waspresent, and whispered to him and to his lawyer, suggesting, "as a mereform, " that the original law be exhibited, in order to make sure thatit still existed. It seemed an odd idea, but an ingenious one. So thedemand was made. A messenger was sent to the magistrate's house; hepresently returned with the tidings that it had disappeared from amongthe state archives. 

The court now pronounced its late decision void, since it had been madeunder a law which had no actual existence. 

Great excitement ensued immediately. The news swept abroad over thewhole island that the palladium of the public liberties was lost--maybetreasonably destroyed. Within thirty minutes almost the entire nationwere in the court-room--that is to say, the church. The impeachment ofthe chief magistrate followed, upon Stavely's motion. The accused methis misfortune with the dignity which became his great office. He didnot plead, or even argue; he offered the simple defense that he had notmeddled with the missing law; that he had kept the state archives inthe same candle-box that had been used as their depository from thebeginning; and that he was innocent of the removal or destruction of thelost document. 

But nothing could save him; he was found guilty of misprision oftreason, and degraded from his office, and all his property wasconfiscated. 

The lamest part of the whole shameful matter was the reason suggestedby his enemies for his destruction of the law, to wit: that he did it tofavor Christian, because Christian was his cousin! Whereas Stavely wasthe only individual in the entire nation who was not his cousin. Thereader must remember that all these people are the descendants of halfa dozen men; that the first children intermarried together and boregrandchildren to the mutineers; that these grandchildren intermarried;after them, great and great-great-grandchildren intermarried; so thatto-day everybody is blood kin to everybody. Moreover, the relationshipsare wonderfully, even astoundingly, mixed up and complicated. Astranger, for instance, says to an islander:

"You speak of that young woman as your cousin; a while ago you calledher your aunt. "

"Well, she is my aunt, and my cousin, too. And also my stepsister, myniece, my fourth cousin, my thirty-third cousin, my forty-second cousin, my great-aunt, my grandmother, my widowed sister-in-law--and next weekshe will be my wife. "

So the charge of nepotism against the chief magistrate was weak. Butno matter; weak or strong, it suited Stavely. Stavely was immediatelyelected to the vacant magistracy, and, oozing reform from every pore, he went vigorously to work. In no long time religious services ragedeverywhere and unceasingly. By command, the second prayer of the Sundaymorning service, which had customarily endured some thirty-five or fortyminutes, and had pleaded for the world, first by continent and then bynational and tribal detail, was extended to an hour and a half, andmade to include supplications in behalf of the possible peoples in theseveral planets. Everybody was pleased with this; everybody said, "Nowthis is something like. " By command, the usual three-hour sermons weredoubled in length. The nation came in a body to testify their gratitudeto the new magistrate. The old law forbidding cooking on the Sabbath wasextended to the prohibition of eating, also. By command, Sunday-schoolwas privileged to spread over into the week. The joy of all classes wascomplete. In one short month the new magistrate had become the people'sidol!

The time was ripe for this man's next move. He began, cautiously atfirst, to poison the public mind against England. He took the chiefcitizens aside, one by one, and conversed with them on this topic. Presently he grew bolder, and spoke out. He said the nation owed it toitself, to its honor, to its great traditions, to rise in its might andthrow off "this galling English yoke. "

But the simple islanders answered:

"We had not noticed that it galled. How does it gall? England sendsa ship once in three or four years to give us soap and clothing, andthings which we sorely need and gratefully receive; but she nevertroubles us; she lets us go our own way. "

"She lets you go your own way! So slaves have felt and spoken in all theages! This speech shows how fallen you are, how base, how brutalizedyou have become, under this grinding tyranny! What! has all manly prideforsaken you? Is liberty nothing? Are you content to be a mere appendageto a foreign and hateful sovereignty, when you might rise up and takeyour rightful place in the august family of nations, great, free, enlightened, independent, the minion of no sceptered master, but thearbiter of your own destiny, and a voice and a power in decreeing thedestinies of your sister-sovereignties of the world?"

Speeches like this produced an effect by and by. Citizens began to feelthe English yoke; they did not know exactly how or whereabouts theyfelt it, but they were perfectly certain they did feel it. They got togrumbling a good deal, and chafing under their chains, and longing forrelief and release. They presently fell to hating the English flag, thatsign and symbol of their nation's degradation; they ceased to glanceup at it as they passed the capitol, but averted their eyes and gratedtheir teeth; and one morning, when it was found trampled into the mud atthe foot of the staff, they left it there, and no man put his hand toit to hoist it again. A certain thing which was sure to happen sooner orlater happened now. Some of the chief citizens went to the magistrate bynight, and said:

"We can endure this hated tyranny no longer. How can we cast it off?"

"By a coup d'etat. "

"How?"

"A coup d'etat. It is like this: everything is got ready, and at theappointed moment I, as the official head of the nation, publicly andsolemnly proclaim its independence, and absolve it from allegiance toany and all other powers whatsoever. "

"That sounds simple and easy. We can do that right away. Then what willbe the next thing to do?"

"Seize all the defenses and public properties of all kinds, establishmartial law, put the army and navy on a war footing, and proclaim theempire!"

This fine program dazzled these innocents. They said:

"This is grand--this is splendid; but will not England resist?"

"Let her. This rock is a Gibraltar. "

"True. But about the empire? Do we need an empire and an emperor?"

"What you need, my friends, is unification. Look at Germany; look atItaly. They are unified. Unification is the thing. It makes living dear. That constitutes progress. We must have a standing army and a navy. Taxes follow, as a matter of course. All these things summed up makegrandeur. With unification and grandeur, what more can you want? Verywell--only the empire can confer these boons. "

So on the 8th day of December Pitcairn's Island was proclaimed a freeand independent nation; and on the same day the solemn coronation ofButterworth I, Emperor of Pitcairn's Island, took place, amid greatrejoicings and festivities. The entire nation, with the exception offourteen persons, mainly little children, marched past the throne insingle file, with banners and music, the procession being upward ofninety feet long; and some said it was as much as three-quarters of aminute passing a given point. Nothing like it had ever been seen in thehistory of the island before. Public enthusiasm was measureless. 

Now straightway imperial reforms began. Orders of nobility wereinstituted. A minister of the navy was appointed, and the whale-boat putin commission. A minister of war was created, and ordered to proceed atonce with the formation of a standing army. A first lord of the treasurywas named, and commanded to get up a taxation scheme, and also opennegotiations for treaties, offensive, defensive, and commercial, withforeign powers. Some generals and admirals were appointed; alsosome chamberlains, some equerries in waiting, and some lords of thebedchamber. 

At this point all the material was used up. The Grand Duke of Galilee, minister of war, complained that all the sixteen grown men in the empirehad been given great offices, and consequently would not consent toserve in the ranks; wherefore his standing army was at a standstill. TheMarquis of Ararat, minister of the navy, made a similar complaint. Hesaid he was willing to steer the whale-boat himself, but he must havesomebody to man her. 

The emperor did the best he could in the circumstances: he took all theboys above the age of ten years away from their mothers, and pressedthem into the army, thus constructing a corps of seventeen privates, officered by one lieutenant-general and two major-generals. This pleasedthe minister of war, but procured the enmity of all the mothers in theland; for they said their precious ones must now find bloody graves inthe fields of war, and he would be answerable for it. Some of the moreheartbroken and unappeasable among them lay constantly wait for theemperor and threw yams at him, unmindful of the body-guard. 

On account of the extreme scarcity of material, it was found necessaryto require the Duke of Bethany postmaster-general, to pull stroke-oarin the navy and thus sit in the rear of a noble of lower degree namely, Viscount Canaan, lord justice of the common pleas. This turned the Dukeof Bethany into tolerably open malcontent and a secret conspirator--athing which the emperor foresaw, but could not help. 

Things went from bad to worse. The emperor raised Nancy Peters to thepeerage on one day, and married her the next, notwithstanding, forreasons of state, the cabinet had strenuously advised him to marryEmmeline, eldest daughter of the Archbishop of Bethlehem. This causedtrouble in a powerful quarter--the church. The new empress secured thesupport and friendship of two-thirds of the thirty-six grown women inthe nation by absorbing them into her court as maids of honor; but thismade deadly enemies of the remaining twelve. The families of the maidsof honor soon began to rebel, because there was nobody at home to keephouse. The twelve snubbed women refused to enter the imperial kitchenas servants; so the empress had to require the Countess of Jericho andother great court dames to fetch water, sweep the palace, and performother menial and equally distasteful services. This made bad blood inthat department. 

Everybody fell to complaining that the taxes levied for the supportof the army, the navy, and the rest of the imperial establishment wereintolerably burdensome, and were reducing the nation to beggary. Theemperor's reply--"Look--Look at Germany; look at Italy. Are you betterthan they? and haven't you unification?"---did not satisfy them. Theysaid, "People can't eat unification, and we are starving. Agriculturehas ceased. Everybody is in the army, everybody is in the navy, everybody is in the public service, standing around in a uniform, withnothing whatever to do, nothing to eat, and nobody to till the fields--"

"Look at Germany; look at Italy. It is the same there. Such isunification, and there's no other way to get it--no other way to keep itafter you've got it, " said the poor emperor always. 

But the grumblers only replied, "We can't stand the taxes--we can'tstand them. "

Now right on top of this the cabinet reported a national debt amountingto upward of forty-five dollars--half a dollar to every individual inthe nation. And they proposed to fund something. They had heard thatthis was always done in such emergencies. They proposed duties onexports; also on imports. And they wanted to issue bonds; also papermoney, redeemable in yams and cabbages in fifty years. They said the payof the army and of the navy and of the whole governmental machine wasfar in arrears, and unless something was done, and done immediately, national bankruptcy must ensue, and possibly insurrection andrevolution. The emperor at once resolved upon a high-handed measure, andone of a nature never before heard of in Pitcairn's Island. He went instate to the church on Sunday morning, with the army at his back, andcommanded the minister of the treasury to take up a collection. 

That was the feather that broke the camel's back. First one citizen, andthen another, rose and refused to submit to this unheard-of outrage--andeach refusal was followed by the immediate confiscation of themalcontent's property. This vigor soon stopped the refusals, and thecollection proceeded amid a sullen and ominous silence. As the emperorwithdrew with the troops, he said, "I will teach you who is masterhere. " Several persons shouted, "Down with unification!" They were atonce arrested and torn from the arms of their weeping friends by thesoldiery. 

But in the mean time, as any prophet might have foreseen, a SocialDemocrat had been developed. As the emperor stepped into the gildedimperial wheelbarrow at the church door, the social democrat stabbed athim fifteen or sixteen times with a harpoon, but fortunately with such apeculiarly social democratic unprecision of aim as to do no damage. 

That very night the convulsion came. The nation rose as one man--thoughforty-nine of the revolutionists were of the other sex. The infantrythrew down their pitchforks; the artillery cast aside their cocoanuts;the navy revolted; the emperor was seized, and bound hand and foot inhis palace. He was very much depressed. He said:

"I freed you from a grinding tyranny; I lifted you up out of yourdegradation, and made you a nation among nations; I gave you a strong, compact, centralized government; and, more than all, I gave you theblessing of blessings--unification. I have done all this, and my rewardis hatred, insult, and these bonds. Take me; do with me as you will. I here resign my crown and all my dignities, and gladly do I releasemyself from their too heavy burden. For your sake I took them up; foryour sake I lay them down. The imperial jewel is no more; now bruise anddefile as ye will the useless setting. "

By a unanimous voice the people condemned the ex-emperor and the socialdemocrat to perpetual banishment from church services, or to perpetuallabor as galley-slaves in the whale-boat--whichever they might prefer. The next day the nation assembled again, and rehoisted the British flag, reinstated the British tyranny, reduced the nobility to the condition ofcommoners again, and then straightway turned their diligent attentionto the weeding of the ruined and neglected yam patches, and therehabilitation of the old useful industries and the old healing andsolacing pieties. The ex-emperor restored the lost trespass law, andexplained that he had stolen it not to injure any one, but to furtherhis political projects. Therefore the nation gave the late chiefmagistrate his office again, and also his alienated Property. 

Upon reflection, the ex-emperor and the social democrat chose perpetualbanishment from religious services in preference to perpetual labor asgalley slaves "with perpetual religious services, " as they phrasedit; wherefore the people believed that the poor fellows' troubles hadunseated their reason, and so they judged it best to confine them forthe present. Which they did. 

Such is the history of Pitcairn's "doubtful acquisition. "

THE CANVASSER'S TALE

Poor, sad-eyed stranger! There was that about his humble mien, his tiredlook, his decayed-gentility clothes, that almost reached the mustard, seed of charity that still remained, remote and lonely, in the emptyvastness of my heart, notwithstanding I observed a portfolio under hisarm, and said to myself, Behold, Providence hath delivered his servantinto the hands of another canvasser. 

Well, these people always get one interested. Before I well knew how itcame about, this one was telling me his history, and I was all attentionand sympathy. He told it something like this:

My parents died, alas, when I was a little, sinless child. My uncleIthuriel took me to his heart and reared me as his own. He was my onlyrelative in the wide world; but he was good and rich and generous. Hereared me in the lap of luxury. I knew no want that money could satisfy. 

In the fullness of time I was graduated, and went with two of myservants--my chamberlain and my valet--to travel in foreign countries. During four years I flitted upon careless wing amid the beauteousgardens of the distant strand, if you will permit this form of speech inone whose tongue was ever attuned to poesy; and indeed I so speak withconfidence, as one unto his kind, for I perceive by your eyes that youtoo, sir, are gifted with the divine inflation. In those far lands Ireveled in the ambrosial food that fructifies the soul, the mind, theheart. But of all things, that which most appealed to my inborn esthetictaste was the prevailing custom there, among the rich, of makingcollections of elegant and costly rarities, dainty objets de vertu, and in an evil hour I tried to uplift my uncle Ithuriel to a plane ofsympathy with this exquisite employment. 

I wrote and told him of one gentleman's vast collection of shells;another's noble collection of meerschaum pipes; another's elevating andrefining collection of undecipherable autographs; another'spriceless collection of old china; another's enchanting collection ofpostage-stamps--and so forth and so on. Soon my letters yielded fruit. My uncle began to look about for something to make a collection of. You may know, perhaps, how fleetly a taste like this dilates. His soonbecame a raging fever, though I knew it not. He began to neglect hisgreat pork business; presently he wholly retired and turned an elegantleisure into a rabid search for curious things. His wealth was vast, andhe spared it not. First he tried cow-bells. He made a collection whichfilled five large salons, and comprehended all the different sorts ofcow-bells that ever had been contrived, save one. That one--an antique, and the only specimen extant--was possessed by another collector. Myuncle offered enormous sums for it, but the gentleman would not sell. Doubtless you know what necessarily resulted. A true collector attachesno value to a collection that is not complete. His great heartbreaks, he sells his hoard, he turns his mind to some field that seemsunoccupied. 

Thus did my uncle. He next tried brickbats. After piling up a vast andintensely interesting collection, the former difficulty supervened;his great heart broke again; he sold out his soul's idol to the retiredbrewer who possessed the missing brick. Then he tried flint hatchetsand other implements of Primeval Man, but by and by discovered that thefactory where they were made was supplying other collectors as wellas himself. He tried Aztec inscriptions and stuffed whales--anotherfailure, after incredible labor and expense. When his collection seemedat last perfect, a stuffed whale arrived from Greenland and an Aztecinscription from the Cundurango regions of Central America that made allformer specimens insignificant. My uncle hastened to secure thesenoble gems. He got the stuffed whale, but another collector got theinscription. A real Cundurango, as possibly you know, is a possession ofsuch supreme value that, when once a collector gets it, he will ratherpart with his family than with it. So my uncle sold out, and saw hisdarlings go forth, never more to return; and his coal-black hair turnedwhite as snow in a single night. 

Now he waited, and thought. He knew another disappointment might killhim. He was resolved that he would choose things next time that no otherman was collecting. He carefully made up his mind, and once more enteredthe field-this time to make a collection of echoes. 

"Of what?" said I. 

Echoes, sir. His first purchase was an echo in Georgia that repeatedfour times; his next was a six-repeater in Maryland; his next was athirteen-repeater in Maine; his next was a nine-repeater in Kansas;his next was a twelve-repeater in Tennessee, which he got cheap, soto speak, because it was out of repair, a portion of the crag whichreflected it having tumbled down. He believed he could repair it at acost of a few thousand dollars, and, by increasing the elevation withmasonry, treble the repeating capacity; but the architect who undertookthe job had never built an echo before, and so he utterly spoiledthis one. Before he meddled with it, it used to talk back like amother-in-law, but now it was only fit for the deaf-and-dumb asylum. Well, next he bought a lot of cheap little double-barreled echoes, scattered around over various states and territories; he got themat twenty per cent. Off by taking the lot. Next he bought a perfectGatling-gun of an echo in Oregon, and it cost a fortune, I can tellyou. You may know, sir, that in the echo market the scale of pricesis cumulative, like the carat-scale in diamonds; in fact, the samephraseology is used. A single-carat echo is worth but ten dollars overand above the value of the land it is on; a two-carat or double-barreledecho is worth thirty dollars; a five-carat is worth nine hundred andfifty; a ten-carat is worth thirteen thousand. My uncle's Oregon-echo, which he called the Great Pitt Echo, was a twenty-two carat gem, andcost two hundred and sixteen thousand dollars--they threw the land in, for it was four hundred miles from a settlement. 

Well, in the mean time my path was a path of roses. I was the acceptedsuitor of the only and lovely daughter of an English earl, and wasbeloved to distraction. In that dear presence I swam in seas of bliss. The family were content, for it was known that I was sole heir to anuncle held to be worth five millions of dollars. However, none of usknew that my uncle had become a collector, at least in anything morethan a small way, for esthetic amusement. 

Now gathered the clouds above my unconscious head. That divine echo, since known throughout the world as the Great Koh-i-noor, or Mountainof Repetitions, was discovered. It was a sixty-five carat gem. You couldutter a word and it would talk back at you for fifteen minutes, when theday was otherwise quiet. But behold, another fact came to light at thesame time: another echo-collector was in the field. The two rushed tomake the peerless purchase. The property consisted of a couple ofsmall hills with a shallow swale between, out yonder among the backsettlements of New York State. Both men arrived on the ground at thesame time, and neither knew the other was there. The echo was not allowned by one man; a person by the name of Williamson Bolivar Jarvisowned the east hill, and a person by the name of Harbison J. Bledsoowned the west hill; the swale between was the dividing-line. So whilemy uncle was buying Jarvis's hill for three million two hundred andeighty-five thousand dollars, the other party was buying Bledso's hillfor a shade over three million. 

Now, do you perceive the natural result? Why, the noblest collection ofechoes on earth was forever and ever incomplete, since it possessed butthe one-half of the king echo of the universe. Neither man was contentwith this divided ownership, yet neither would sell to the other. There were jawings, bickerings, heart-burnings. And at last that othercollector, with a malignity which only a collector can ever feel towarda man and a brother, proceeded to cut down his hill!

You see, as long as he could not have the echo, he was resolved thatnobody should have it. He would remove his hill, and then there would benothing to reflect my uncle's echo. My uncle remonstrated with him, butthe man said, "I own one end of this echo; I choose to kill my end; youmust take care of your own end yourself. "

Well, my uncle got an injunction put an him. The other man appealed andfought it in a higher court. They carried it on up, clear to the SupremeCourt of the United States. It made no end of trouble there. Two ofthe judges believed that an echo was personal property, because it wasimpalpable to sight and touch, and yet was purchasable, salable, andconsequently taxable; two others believed that an echo was real estate, because it was manifestly attached to the land, and was not removablefrom place to place; other of the judges contended that an echo was notproperty at all. 

It was finally decided that the echo was property; that the hills wereproperty; that the two men were separate and independent owners of thetwo hills, but tenants in common in the echo; therefore defendant was atfull liberty to cut down his hill, since it belonged solely to him, butmust give bonds in three million dollars as indemnity for damages whichmight result to my uncle's half of the echo. This decision also debarredmy uncle from using defendant's hill to reflect his part of the echo, without defendant's consent; he must use only his own hill; if his partof the echo would not go, under these circumstances, it was sad, ofcourse, but the court could find no remedy. The court also debarreddefendant from using my uncle's hill to reflect his end of the echo, without consent. You see the grand result! Neither man would giveconsent, and so that astonishing and most noble echo had to cease fromits great powers; and since that day that magnificent property is tiedup and unsalable. 

A week before my wedding-day, while I was still swimming in bliss andthe nobility were gathering from far and near to honor our espousals, came news of my uncle's death, and also a copy of his will, making mehis sole heir. He was gone; alas, my dear benefactor was no more. Thethought surcharges my heart even at this remote day. I handed the willto the earl; I could not read it for the blinding tears. The earl readit; then he sternly said, "Sir, do you call this wealth?--but doubtlessyou do in your inflated country. Sir, you are left sole heir to a vastcollection of echoes--if a thing can be called a collection that isscattered far and wide over the huge length and breadth of the Americancontinent; sir, this is not all; you are head and ears in debt; thereis not an echo in the lot but has a mortgage on it; sir, I am not a hardman, but I must look to my child's interest; if you had but one echowhich you could honestly call your own, if you had but one echo whichwas free from incumbrance, so that you could retire to it with my child, and by humble, painstaking industry cultivate and improve it, and thuswrest from it a maintenance, I would not say you nay; but I cannot marrymy child to a beggar. Leave his side, my darling; go, sir, take yourmortgage-ridden echoes and quit my sight forever. "

My noble Celestine clung to me in tears, with loving arms, and swore shewould willingly, nay gladly, marry me, though I had not an echo in theworld. But it could not be. We were torn asunder, she to pine and diewithin the twelvemonth, I to toil life's long journey sad and alone, praying daily, hourly, for that release which shall join us togetheragain in that dear realm where the wicked cease from troubling and theweary are at rest. Now, sir, if you will be so kind as to look at thesemaps and plans in my portfolio, I am sure I can sell you an echo forless money than any man in the trade. Now this one, which cost my uncleten dollars, thirty years ago, and is one of the sweetest things inTexas, I will let you have for--

"Let me interrupt you, " I said. "My friend, I have not had a moment'srespite from canvassers this day. I have bought a sewing-machine which Idid not want; I have bought a map which is mistaken in all its details;I have bought a clock which will not go; I have bought a moth poisonwhich the moths prefer to any other beverage; I have bought no end ofuseless inventions, and now I have had enough of this foolishness. Iwould not have one of your echoes if you were even to give it to me. Iwould not let it stay on the place. I always hate a man that tries tosell me echoes. You see this gun? Now take your collection and move on;let us not have bloodshed. "

But he only smiled a sad, sweet smile, and got out some more diagrams. You know the result perfectly well, because you know that when you haveonce opened the door to a canvasser, the trouble is done and you havegot to suffer defeat. 

I compromised with this man at the end of an intolerable hour. I boughttwo double-barreled echoes in good condition, and he threw in another, which he said was not salable because it only spoke German. He said, "She was a perfect polyglot once, but somehow her palate got down. "

AN ENCOUNTER WITH AN INTERVIEWER

The nervous, dapper, "peart" young man took the chair I offered him, andsaid he was connected with the Daily Thunderstorm, and added:

"Hoping it's no harm, I've come to interview you. "

"Come to what?"

"Interview you. "

"Ah! I see. Yes--yes. Um! Yes--yes. "

I was not feeling bright that morning. Indeed, my powers seemed a bitunder a cloud. However, I went to the bookcase, and when I had beenlooking six or seven minutes I found I was obliged to refer to the youngman. I said:

"How do you spell it?"

"Spell what?"

"Interview. "

"Oh, my goodness! what do you want to spell it for?"

"I don't want to spell it; I want to see what it means. "

"Well, this is astonishing, I must say. I can tell you what it means, ifyou--if you--"

"Oh, all right! That will answer, and much obliged to you, too. "

"In, in, ter, ter, inter--"

"Then you spell it with an h?"

"Why certainly!"

"Oh, that is what took me so long. "

"Why, my dear sir, what did you propose to spell it with?"

"Well, I--I--hardly know. I had the Unabridged, and I was cipheringaround in the back end, hoping I might tree her among the pictures. Butit's a very old edition. "

"Why, my friend, they wouldn't have a picture of it in even the lateste---- My dear sir, I beg your pardon, I mean no harm in the world, butyou do not look as--as--intelligent as I had expected you would. Noharm--I mean no harm at all. "

"Oh, don't mention it! It has often been said, and by people who wouldnot flatter and who could have no inducement to flatter, that I am quiteremarkable in that way. Yes--yes; they always speak of it with rapture. "

"I can easily imagine it. But about this interview. You know it is thecustom, now, to interview any man who has become notorious. "

"Indeed, I had not heard of it before. It must be very interesting. Whatdo you do it with?"

"Ah, well--well--well--this is disheartening. It ought to be done witha club in some cases; but customarily it consists in the interviewerasking questions and the interviewed answering them. It is all the ragenow. Will you let me ask you certain questions calculated to bring outthe salient points of your public and private history?"

"Oh, with pleasure--with pleasure. I have a very bad memory, but Ihope you will not mind that. That is to say, it is an irregularmemory--singularly irregular. Sometimes it goes in a gallop, and thenagain it will be as much as a fortnight passing a given point. This is agreat grief to me. "

"Oh, it is no matter, so you will try to do the best you can. "

"I will. I will put my whole mind on it. "

"Thanks. Are you ready to begin?"

"Ready. "

Q. How old are you?

A. Nineteen, in June. 

Q. Indeed. I would have taken you to be thirty-five or six. Where wereyou born?

A. In Missouri. 

Q. When did you begin to write?

A. In 1836. 

Q. Why, how could that be, if you are only nineteen now?

A. I don't know. It does seem curious, somehow. 

Q. It does, indeed. Whom do you consider the most remarkable man youever met?

A. Aaron Burr. 

Q. But you never could have met Aaron Burr, if you are only nineteenyears!

A. Now, if you know more about me than I do, what do you ask me for?

Q. Well, it was only a suggestion; nothing more. How did you happen tomeet Burr?

A. Well, I happened to be at his funeral one day, and he asked me tomake less noise, and--

Q. But, good heavens! if you were at his funeral, he must have beendead, and if he was dead how could he care whether you made a noise ornot?

A. I don't know. He was always a particular kind of a man that way. 

Q. Still, I don't understand it at all, You say he spoke to you, andthat he was dead. 

A. I didn't say he was dead. 

Q. But wasn't he dead?

A. Well, some said he was, some said he wasn't. 

Q. What did you think?

A. Oh, it was none of my business! It wasn't any of my funeral. 

Q. Did you--However, we can never get this matter straight. Let me askabout something else. What was the date of your birth?

A. Monday, October 31, 1693. 

Q. What! Impossible! That would make you a hundred and eighty years old. How do you account for that?

A. I don't account for it at all. 

Q. But you said at first you were only nineteen, and now you makeyourself out to be one hundred and eighty. It is an awful discrepancy. 

A. Why, have you noticed that? (Shaking hands. ) Many a time it hasseemed to me like a discrepancy, but somehow I couldn't make up my mind. How quick you notice a thing!

Q. Thank you for the compliment, as far as it goes. Had you, or haveyou, any brothers or sisters?

A. Eh! I--I--I think so--yes--but I don't remember. 

Q. Well, that is the most extraordinary statement I ever heard!

A. Why, what makes you think that?

Q. How could I think otherwise? Why, look here! Who is this a picture ofon the wall? Isn't that a brother of yours?

A. Oh, yes, yes, yes! Now you remind me of it; that was a brother ofmine. That's William--Bill we called him. Poor old Bill!

Q. Why? Is he dead, then?

A. Ah! well, I suppose so. We never could tell. There was a greatmystery about it. 

Q. That is sad, very sad. He disappeared, then?

A. Well, yes, in a sort of general way. We buried him. 

Q. Buried him! Buried him, without knowing whether he was dead or not?

A. Oh, no! Not that. He was dead enough. 

Q. Well, I confess that I can't understand this. If you buried him, andyou knew he was dead. 

A. No! no! We only thought he was. 

Q. Oh, I see! He came to life again?

A. I bet he didn't. 

Q. Well, I never heard anything like this. Somebody was dead. Somebodywas buried. Now, where was the mystery?

A. Ah! that's just it! That's it exactly. You see, we weretwins--defunct--and I--and we got mixed in the bathtub when we were onlytwo weeks old, and one of us was drowned. But we didn't know which. Somethink it was Bill. Some think it was me. 

Q. Well, that is remarkable. What do you think?

A. Goodness knows! I would give whole worlds to know. This solemn, thisawful mystery has cast a gloom over my whole life. But I will tell youa secret now, which I never have revealed to any creature before. One ofus had a peculiar mark--a large mole on the back of his left hand; thatwas me. That child was the one that was drowned!

Q. Very well, then, I don't see that there is any mystery about it, after all. 

A. You don't? Well, I do. Anyway, I don't see how they could ever havebeen such a blundering lot as to go and bury the wrong child. But, 'sh!--don't mention it where the family can hear of it. Heaven knowsthey have heartbreaking troubles enough without adding this. 

Q. Well, I believe I have got material enough for the present, and I amvery much obliged to you for the pains you have taken. But I was a gooddeal interested in that account of Aaron Burr's funeral. Would you mindtelling me what particular circumstance it was that made you think Burrwas such a remarkable man?

A. Oh! it was a mere trifle! Not one man in fifty would have noticed itat all. When the sermon was over, and the procession all ready to startfor the cemetery, and the body all arranged nice in the hearse, he saidhe wanted to take a last look at the scenery, and so he got up and rodewith the driver. 

Then the young man reverently withdrew. He was very pleasant company, and I was sorry to see him go. 

PARIS NOTES --[Crowded out of "A Tramp Abroad" to make room for morevital statistics. --M. T. ]

The Parisian travels but little, he knows no language but his own, readsno literature but his own, and consequently he is pretty narrow andpretty self-sufficient. However, let us not be too sweeping; there areFrenchmen who know languages not their own: these are the waiters. Among the rest, they know English; that is, they know it on the Europeanplan--which is to say, they can speak it, but can't understand it. Theyeasily make themselves understood, but it is next to impossible to wordan English sentence in such away as to enable them to comprehend it. They think they comprehend it; they pretend they do; but they don't. Here is a conversation which I had with one of these beings; I wrote itdown at the time, in order to have it exactly correct. 

I. These are fine oranges. Where are they grown?

He. More? Yes, I will bring them. 

I. No, do not bring any more; I only want to know where they are fromwhere they are raised. 

He. Yes? (with imperturbable mien and rising inflection. )

I. Yes. Can you tell me what country they are from?

He. Yes? (blandly, with rising inflection. )

I. (disheartened). They are very nice. 

He. Good night. (Bows, and retires, quite satisfied with himself. )

That young man could have become a good English scholar by takingthe right sort of pains, but he was French, and wouldn't do that. Howdifferent is the case with our people; they utilize every means thatoffers. There are some alleged French Protestants in Paris, and theybuilt a nice little church on one of the great avenues that lead awayfrom the Arch of Triumph, and proposed to listen to the correct thing, preached in the correct way, there, in their precious French tongue, andbe happy. But their little game does not succeed. Our people are alwaysthere ahead of them Sundays, and take up all the room. When the ministergets up to preach, he finds his house full of devout foreigners, eachready and waiting, with his little book in his hand--a morocco-boundTestament, apparently. But only apparently; it is Mr. Bellows'sadmirable and exhaustive little French-English dictionary, which in lookand binding and size is just like a Testament and those people are thereto study French. The building has been nicknamed "The Church of theGratis French Lesson. "

These students probably acquire more language than general information, for I am told that a French sermon is like a French speech--it nevernames a historical event, but only the date of it; if you are not up indates, you get left. A French speech is something like this:

 Comrades, citizens, brothers, noble parts of the only sublime and perfect nation, let us not forget that the 21st January cast off our chains; that the 10th August relieved us of the shameful presence of foreign spies; that the 5th September was its own justification before heaven and humanity; that the 18th Brumaire contained the seeds of its own punishment; that the 14th July was the mighty voice of liberty proclaiming the resurrection, the new day, and inviting the oppressed peoples of the earth to look upon the divine face of France and live; and let us here record our everlasting curse against the man of the 2d December, and declare in thunder tones, the native tones of France, that but for him there had been no 17th March in history, no 12th October, no 19th January, no 22d April, no 16th November, no 30th September, no 2d July, no 14th February, no 29th June, no 15th August, no 31st May--that but for him, France the pure, the grand, the peerless, had had a serene and vacant almanac today!

I have heard of one French sermon which closed in this odd yet eloquentway:

 My hearers, we have sad cause to remember the man of the 13th January. The results of the vast crime of the 13th January have been in just proportion to the magnitude of the set itself. But for it there had been no 30 November--sorrowful spectacle! The grisly deed of the 16th June had not been done but for it, nor had the man of the 16th June known existence; to it alone the 3d September was due, also the fatal 12th October. Shall we, then, be grateful for the 13th January, with its freight of death for you and me and all that breathe? Yes, my friends, for it gave us also that which had never come but for it, and it atone--the blessed 25th December. 

It may be well enough to explain, though in the case of many of myreaders this will hardly be necessary. The man of the 13th January isAdam; the crime of that date was the eating of the apple; the sorrowfulspectacle of the 30th November was the expulsion from Eden; thegrisly deed of the 16th June was the murder of Abel; the act of the 3dSeptember was the beginning of the journey to the land of Nod; the 12thday of October, the last mountain-tops disappeared under the flood. When you go to church in France, you want to take your almanac withyou--annotated. 

LEGEND OF SAGENFELD, IN GERMANY --[Left out of "A Tramp Abroad"because its authenticity seemed doubtful, and could not at that time beproved. --M. T. ]

More than a thousand years ago this small district was a kingdom--alittle bit of a kingdom, a sort of dainty little toy kingdom, as onemight say. It was far removed from the jealousies, strifes, and turmoilsof that old warlike day, and so its life was a simple life, its peoplea gentle and guileless race; it lay always in a deep dream of peace, asoft Sabbath tranquillity; there was no malice, there was no envy, therewas no ambition, consequently there were no heart-burnings, there was nounhappiness in the land. 

In the course of time the old king died and his little son Hubert cameto the throne. The people's love for him grew daily; he was so good andso pure and so noble, that by and by his love became a passion, almosta worship. Now at his birth the soothsayers had diligently studied thestars and found something written in that shining book to this effect:

 In Hubert's fourteenth year a pregnant event will happen; the animal whose singing shall sound sweetest in Hubert's ear shall save Hubert's life. So long as the king and the nation shall honor this animal's race for this good deed, the ancient dynasty shall not fail of an heir, nor the nation know war or pestilence or poverty. But beware an erring choice!

All through the king's thirteenth year but one thing was talked of bythe soothsayers, the statesmen, the little parliament, and the generalpeople. That one thing was this: How is the last sentence of theprophecy to be understood? What goes before seems to mean that thesaving animal will choose itself at the proper time; but the closingsentence seems to mean that the king must choose beforehand, and saywhat singer among the animals pleases him best, and that if he choosewisely the chosen animal will save his life, his dynasty, his people, but that if he should make "an erring choice"--beware!

By the end of the year there were as many opinions about this matteras there had been in the beginning; but a majority of the wise and thesimple were agreed that the safest plan would be for the little king tomake choice beforehand, and the earlier the better. So an edict was sentforth commanding all persons who owned singing creatures to bring themto the great hall of the palace in the morning of the first day of thenew year. This command was obeyed. When everything was in readiness forthe trial, the king made his solemn entry with the great officers of thecrown, all clothed in their robes of state. The king mounted his goldenthrone and prepared to give judgment. But he presently said:

"These creatures all sing at once; the noise is unendurable; no one canchoose in such a turmoil. Take them all away, and bring back one at atime. "

This was done. One sweet warbler after another charmed the young king'sear and was removed to make way for another candidate. The preciousminutes slipped by; among so many bewitching songsters he found it hardto choose, and all the harder because the promised penalty for an errorwas so terrible that it unsettled his judgment and made him afraid totrust his own ears. He grew nervous and his face showed distress. Hisministers saw this, for they never took their eyes from him a moment. Now they began to say in their hearts:

"He has lost courage--the cool head is gone--he will err--he and hisdynasty and his people are doomed!"

At the end of an hour the king sat silent awhile, and then said:

"Bring back the linnet. "

The linnet trilled forth her jubilant music. In the midst of it the kingwas about to uplift his scepter in sign of choice, but checked himselfand said:

"But let us be sure. Bring back the thrush; let them sing together. "

The thrush was brought, and the two birds poured out their marvels ofsong together. The king wavered, then his inclination began to settleand strengthen--one could see it in his countenance. Hope budded in thehearts of the old ministers, their pulses began to beat quicker, thescepter began to rise slowly, when: There was a hideous interruption! Itwas a sound like this--just at the door:

"Waw. .. He! waw. .. He! waw-he!-waw he!-waw-he!"

Everybody was sorely startled--and enraged at himself for showing it. 

The next instant the dearest, sweetest, prettiest little peasant-maidof nine years came tripping in, her brown eyes glowing with childisheagerness; but when she saw that august company and those angry facesshe stopped and hung her head and put her poor coarse apron to hereyes. Nobody gave her welcome, none pitied her. Presently she looked uptimidly through her tears, and said:

"My lord the king, I pray you pardon me, for I meant no wrong. I have nofather and no mother, but I have a goat and a donkey, and they are allin all to me. My goat gives me the sweetest milk, and when my dear gooddonkey brays it seems to me there is no music like to it. So when mylord the king's jester said the sweetest singer among all the animalsshould save the crown and nation, and moved me to bring him here--"

All the court burst into a rude laugh, and the child fled away crying, without trying to finish her speech. The chief minister gave a privateorder that she and her disastrous donkey be flogged beyond the precinctsof the palace and commanded to come within them no more. 

Then the trial of the birds was resumed. The two birds sang their best, but the scepter lay motionless in the king's hand. Hope died slowly outin the breasts of all. An hour went by; two hours, still no decision. The day waned to its close, and the waiting multitudes outside thepalace grew crazed with anxiety and apprehension. The twilight cameon, the shadows fell deeper and deeper. The king and his court could nolonger see each other's faces. No one spoke--none called for lights. Thegreat trial had been made; it had failed; each and all wished to hidetheir faces from the light and cover up their deep trouble in their ownhearts. 

Finally-hark! A rich, full strain of the divinest melody streamed forthfrom a remote part of the hall the nightingale's voice!

"Up!" shouted the king, "let all the bells make proclamation to thepeople, for the choice is made and we have not erred. King, dynasty, and nation are saved. From henceforth let the nightingale be honoredthroughout the land forever. And publish it among all the people thatwhosoever shall insult a nightingale, or injure it, shall suffer death. The king hath spoken. "

All that little world was drunk with joy. The castle and the city blazedwith bonfires all night long, the people danced and drank and sang; andthe triumphant clamor of the bells never ceased. 

From that day the nightingale was a sacred bird. Its song was heard inevery house; the poets wrote its praises; the painters painted it; itssculptured image adorned every arch and turret and fountain and publicbuilding. It was even taken into the king's councils; and no gravematter of state was decided until the soothsayers had laid the thingbefore the state nightingale and translated to the ministry what it wasthat the bird had sung about it. 

II

The young king was very fond of the chase. When the summer was come herode forth with hawk and hound, one day, in a brilliant company of hisnobles. He got separated from them by and by, in a great forest, andtook what he imagined a neat cut, to find them again; but it was amistake. He rode on and on, hopefully at first, but with sinking couragefinally. Twilight came on, and still he was plunging through a lonelyand unknown land. Then came a catastrophe. In the dim light he forcedhis horse through a tangled thicket overhanging a steep and rockydeclivity. When horse and rider reached the bottom, the former had abroken neck and the latter a broken leg. The poor little king lay theresuffering agonies of pain, and each hour seemed a long month to him. He kept his ear strained to hear any sound that might promise hope ofrescue; but he heard no voice, no sound of horn or bay of hound. So atlast he gave up all hope, and said, "Let death come, for come it must. "

Just then the deep, sweet song of a nightingale swept across the stillwastes of the night. 

"Saved!" the king said. "Saved! It is the sacred bird, and the prophecyis come true. The gods themselves protected me from error in thechoice. "

He could hardly contain his joy; he could not word his gratitude. Everyfew moments, now he thought he caught the sound of approaching succor. But each time it was a disappointment; no succor came. The dull hoursdrifted on. Still no help came--but still the sacred bird sang on. Hebegan to have misgivings about his choice, but he stifled them. Towarddawn the bird ceased. The morning came, and with it thirst and hunger;but no succor. The day waxed and waned. At last the king cursed thenightingale. 

Immediately the song of the thrush came from out the wood. The king saidin his heart, "This was the true-bird--my choice was false--succor willcome now. "

But it did not come. Then he lay many hours insensible. When he came tohimself, a linnet was singing. He listened with apathy. His faith wasgone. "These birds, " he said, "can bring no help; I and my house and mypeople are doomed. " He turned him about to die; for he was grown veryfeeble from hunger and thirst and suffering, and felt that his end wasnear. In truth, he wanted to die, and be released from pain. For longhours he lay without thought or feeling or motion. Then his sensesreturned. The dawn of the third morning was breaking. Ah, the worldseemed very beautiful to those worn eyes. Suddenly a great longing tolive rose up in the lad's heart, and from his soul welled a deep andfervent prayer that Heaven would have mercy upon him and let him seehis home and his friends once more. In that instant a soft, a faint, afar-off sound, but oh, how inexpressibly sweet to his waiting ear, camefloating out of the distance:

"Waw. .. He! waw. .. He! waw-he!--waw-he!--waw-he!"

"That, oh, that song is sweeter, a thousand times sweeter than the voiceof the nightingale, thrush, or linnet, for it brings not mere hope, butcertainty of succor; and now, indeed, am I saved! The sacred singer haschosen itself, as the oracle intended; the prophecy is fulfilled, and mylife, my house, and my people are redeemed. The ass shall be sacred fromthis day!"

The divine music grew nearer and nearer, stronger and stronger and eversweeter and sweeter to the perishing sufferer's ear. Down the declivitythe docile little donkey wandered, cropping herbage and singing as hewent; and when at last he saw the dead horse and the wounded king, hecame and snuffed at them with simple and marveling curiosity. The kingpetted him, and he knelt down as had been his wont when his littlemistress desired to mount. With great labor and pain the lad drewhimself upon the creature's back, and held himself there by aid of thegenerous ears. The ass went singing forth from the place and carriedthe king to the little peasant-maid's hut. She gave him her pallet fora bed, refreshed him with goat's milk, and then flew to tell the greatnews to the first scouting-party of searchers she might meet. 

The king got well. His first act was to proclaim the sacredness andinviolability of the ass; his second was to add this particular ass tohis cabinet and make him chief minister of the crown; his third was tohave all the statues and effigies of nightingales throughout his kingdomdestroyed, and replaced by statues and effigies of the sacred donkey;and, his fourth was to announce that when the little peasant maid shouldreach her fifteenth year he would make her his queen and he kept hisword. 

Such is the legend. This explains why the moldering image of the assadorns all these old crumbling walls and arches; and it explains why, during many centuries, an ass was always the chief minister in thatroyal cabinet, just as is still the case in most cabinets to this day;and it also explains why, in that little kingdom, during many centuries, all great poems, all great speeches, all great books, all publicsolemnities, and all royal proclamations, always began with thesestirring words:

"Waw. .. He! waw. .. He!--waw he! Waw-he!"

SPEECH ON THE BABIES

AT THE BANQUET, IN CHICAGO, GIVEN BY THE ARMY OF THE TENNESSEE TO THEIRFIRST COMMANDER, GENERAL U. S. GRANT, NOVEMBER, 1879

 The fifteenth regular toast was "The Babies--as they comfort us in our sorrows, let us not forget them in our festivities. "

I like that. We have not all had the good fortune to be ladies. We havenot all been generals, or poets, or statesmen; but when the toast worksdown to the babies, we stand on common ground. It is a shame that for athousand years the world's banquets have utterly ignored the baby, asif he didn't amount to anything. If you will stop and think a minute--ifyou will go back fifty or one hundred years to your early married lifeand recontemplate your first baby--you will remember that he amounted toa great deal, and even something over. You soldiers all know that whenthe little fellow arrived at family headquarters you had to hand in yourresignation. He took entire command. You became his lackey, his merebody servant, and you had to stand around, too. He was not a commanderwho made allowances for time, distance, weather, or anything else. Youhad to execute his order whether it was possible or not. And there wasonly one form of marching in his manual of tactics, and that wasthe double-quick. He treated you with every sort of insolence anddisrespect, and the bravest of you didn't dare to say a word. You couldface the death-storm at Donelson and Vicksburg, and give back blowfor blow; but when he clawed your whiskers, and pulled your hair, andtwisted your nose, you had to take it. When the thunders of war weresounding in your ears you set your faces toward the batteries, andadvanced with steady tread; but when he turned on the terrors of hiswar-whoop you advanced in the other direction, and mighty glad of thechance, too. When he called for soothing-syrup, did you venture to throwout any side remarks about certain services being unbecoming anofficer and a gentleman? No. You got up and got it. When he ordered hispap-bottle and it was not warm, did you talk back? Not you. You went towork and warmed it. You even descended so far in your menial office asto take a suck at that warm, insipid stuff yourself, to see if it wasright--three parts water to one of milk, a touch of sugar to modify thecolic, and a drop of peppermint to kill those hiccoughs. I can tastethat stuff yet. And how many things you learned as you went along!Sentimental young folks still take stock in that beautiful old sayingthat when the baby smiles in his sleep, it is because the angelsare whispering to him. Very pretty, but too thin--simply wind on thestomach, my friends. If the baby proposed to take a walk at his usualhour, two o'clock in the morning, didn't you rise up promptly andremark, with a mental addition which would not improve a Sunday-schoolbook much, that that was the very thing you were about to proposeyourself? Oh! you were under good discipline, and as you went flutteringup and down the room in your undress uniform, you not only prattledundignified baby-talk, but even tuned up your martial voices andtried to sing!--"Rock-a-by baby in the treetop, " for instance. What aspectacle for an Army of the Tennessee! And what an affliction for theneighbors, too; for it is not everybody within a mile around that likesmilitary music at three in the morning. And when you had been keepingthis sort of thing up two or three hours, and your little velvet-headintimated that nothing suited him like exercise and noise, what did youdo? ["Go on!"] You simply went on until you dropped in the last ditch. The idea that a baby doesn't amount to anything! Why, one baby is justa house and a front yard full by itself. One baby can furnish morebusiness than you and your whole Interior Department can attend to. Heis enterprising, irrepressible, brimful of lawless activities. Do whatyou please, you can't make him stay on the reservation. Sufficient untothe day is one baby. As long as you are in your right mind don't youever pray for twins. Twins amount to a permanent riot. And there ain'tany real difference between triplets and an insurrection. 

Yes, it was high time for a toast-master to recognize the importanceof the babies. Think what is in store for the present crop! Fifty yearsfrom now we shall all be dead, I trust, and then this flag, if it stillsurvive (and let us hope it may), will be floating over a Republicnumbering 200, 000, 000 souls, according to the settled laws of ourincrease. Our present schooner of State will have grown into a politicalleviathan--a Great Eastern. The cradled babies of to-day will be ondeck. Let them be well trained, for we are going to leave a big contracton their hands. Among the three or four million cradles now rocking inthe land are some which this nation would preserve for ages as sacredthings, if we could know which ones they are. In one of them cradles theunconscious Farragut of the future is at this moment teething--thinkof it!--and putting in a world of dead earnest, unarticulated, butperfectly justifiable profanity over it, too. In another the futurerenowned astronomer is blinking at the shining Milky Way with but alanguid interest--poor little chap!--and wondering what has become ofthat other one they call the wet-nurse. In another the future greathistorian is lying--and doubtless will continue to lie until his earthlymission is ended. In another the future President is busying himselfwith no profounder problem of state than what the mischief has become ofhis hair so early; and in a mighty array of other cradles there are nowsome 60, 000 future office-seekers, getting ready to furnish him occasionto grapple with that same old problem a second time. And in stillone more cradle, somewhere under the flag, the future illustriouscommander-in-chief of the American armies is so little burdened withhis approaching grandeurs and responsibilities as to be giving his wholestrategic mind at this moment to trying to find out some way to get hisbig toe into his mouth--an achievement which, meaning no disrespect, theillustrious guest of this evening turned his entire attention to somefifty-six years ago; and if the child is but a prophecy of the man, there are mighty few who will doubt that he succeeded. 

SPEECH ON THE WEATHER

AT THE NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY'S SEVENTY-FIRST ANNUAL DINNER, NEW YORK CITY

 The next toast was: "The Oldest Inhabitant--The Weather of New England. "

 Who can lose it and forget it? Who can have it and regret it?

 Be interposes 'twixt us Twain. Merchant of Venice. 

 To this Samuel L. Clemens (Mark Twain) replied as follows:--

I reverently believe that the Maker who made us all makes everything inNew England but the weather. I don't know who makes that, but I thinkit must be raw apprentices in the weather-clerk's factory who experimentand learn how, in New England, for board and clothes, and then arepromoted to make weather for countries that require a good article, and will take their custom elsewhere if they don't get it. There isa sumptuous variety about the New England weather that compels thestranger's admiration--and regret. The weather is always doing somethingthere; always attending strictly to business; always getting up newdesigns and trying them on the people to see how they will go. But itgets through more business in spring than in any other season. In thespring I have counted one hundred and thirty-six different kinds ofweather inside of four-and-twenty hours. It was I that made the fameand fortune of that man that had that marvelous collection of weather onexhibition at the Centennial, that so astounded the foreigners. Hewas going to travel all over the world and get specimens from all theclimes. I said, "Don't you do it; you come to New England on a favorablespring day. " I told him what we could do in the way of style, variety, and quantity. Well, he came and he made his collection in four days. Asto variety, why, he confessed that he got hundreds of kinds of weatherthat he had never heard of before. And as to quantity--well, after hehad picked out and discarded all that was blemished in any way, he notonly had weather enough, but weather to spare; weather to hire out;weather to sell; to deposit; weather to invest; weather to give to thepoor. The people of New England are by nature patient and forbearing, but there are some things which they will not stand. Every year theykill a lot of poets for writing about "Beautiful Spring. " These aregenerally casual visitors, who bring their notions of spring fromsomewhere else, and cannot, of course, know how the natives feel aboutspring. And so the first thing they know the opportunity to inquirehow they feel has permanently gone by. Old Probabilities has a mightyreputation for accurate prophecy, and thoroughly well deserves it. Youtake up the paper and observe how crisply and confidently he checks offwhat to-day's weather is going to be on the Pacific, down South, in theMiddle States, in the Wisconsin region. See him sail along in the joyand pride of his power till he gets to New England, and then see histail drop. He doesn't know what the weather is going to be in NewEngland. Well, he mulls over it, and by and by he gets out somethingabout like this: Probable northeast to southwest minds, varying to thesouthward and westward and eastward, and points between, high and lowbarometer swapping around from place to place; probable areas of rain, snow, hail, and drought, succeeded or preceded by earthquakes, withthunder and lightning. Then he jots down this postscript from hiswandering mind, to cover accidents: "But it is possible that the programmay be wholly changed in the mean time. " Yes, one of the brightest gemsin the New England weather is the dazzling uncertainty of it. There isonly one thing certain about it: you are certain there is going to beplenty of it--a perfect grand review; but you never can tell which endof the procession is going to move first. You fix up for the drought;you leave your umbrella in the house and sally out, and two to one youget drowned. You make up your mind that the earthquake is due; you standfrom under, and take hold of something to steady yourself, and thefirst thing you know you get struck by lightning. These are greatdisappointments; but they can't be helped. The lightning there ispeculiar; it is so convincing, that when it strikes a thing it doesn'tleave enough of that thing behind for you to tell whether--Well, you'dthink it was something valuable, and a Congressman had been there. Andthe thunder. When the thunder begins to merely tune up and scrape andsaw, and key up the instruments for the performance, strangers say, "Why, what awful thunder you have here!" But when the baton is raisedand the real concert begins, you'll find that stranger down in thecellar with his head in the ash-barrel. Now as to the size of theweather in New England lengthways, I mean. It is utterly disproportionedto the size of that little country. Half the time, when it is packed asfull as it can stick, you will see that New England weather sticking outbeyond the edges and projecting around hundreds and hundreds of milesover the neighboring states. She can't hold a tenth part of her weather. You can see cracks all about where she has strained herself trying todo it. I could speak volumes about the inhuman perversity of the NewEngland weather, but I will give but a single specimen. I like to hearrain on a tin roof. So I covered part of my roof with tin, with an eyeto that luxury. Well, sir, do you think it ever rains on that tin? No, sir; skips it every time. Mind, in this speech I have been trying merelyto do honor to the New England weather--no language could do it justice. But, after all, there is at least one or two things about that weather(or, if you please, effects produced, by it) which we residents wouldnot like to part with. If we hadn't our bewitching autumn foliage, we should still have to credit the weather with one feature whichcompensates for all its bullying vagaries--the ice-storm: when aleafless tree is clothed with ice from the bottom to the top--ice thatis as bright and clear as crystal; when every bough and twig is strungwith ice-beads, frozen dewdrops, and the whole tree sparkles cold andwhite, like the Shah of Persia's diamond plume. Then the wind waves thebranches and the sun comes out and turns all those myriads of beads anddrops to prisms that glow and burn and flash with all manner of coloredfires, which change and change again with inconceivable rapidity fromblue to red, from red to green, and green to gold--the tree becomes aspraying fountain, a very explosion of dazzling jewels; and it standsthere the acme, the climax, the supremest possibility in art or nature, of bewildering, intoxicating, intolerable magnificence. One cannot makethe words too strong. 

CONCERNING THE AMERICAN LANGUAGE --[Being part of a chapter which wascrowded out of "A Tramp Abroad. "--M. T. ]

There was as Englishman in our compartment, and he complimented meon--on what? But you would never guess. He complimented me on myEnglish. He said Americans in general did not speak the English languageas correctly as I did. I said I was obliged to him for his compliment, since I knew he meant it for one, but that I was not fairly entitled toit, for I did not speak English at all--I only spoke American. 

He laughed, and said it was a distinction without a difference. I saidno, the difference was not prodigious, but still it was considerable. Wefell into a friendly dispute over the matter. I put my case as well as Icould, and said:

"The languages were identical several generations ago, but our changedconditions and the spread of our people far to the south and far tothe west have made many alterations in our pronunciation, and haveintroduced new words among us and changed the meanings of many old ones. English people talk through their noses; we do not. We say know, Englishpeople say nao; we say cow, the Briton says kaow; we--"

"Oh, come! that is pure Yankee; everybody knows that. "

"Yes, it is pure Yankee; that is true. One cannot hear it in Americaoutside of the little corner called New England, which is Yankee land. The English themselves planted it there, two hundred and fifty yearsago, and there it remains; it has never spread. But England talksthrough her nose yet; the Londoner and the backwoods New-Englanderpronounce 'know' and 'cow' alike, and then the Briton unconsciouslysatirizes himself by making fun of the Yankee's pronunciation. "

We argued this point at some length; nobody won; but no matter, the factremains Englishmen say nao and kaow for "know" and "cow, " and that iswhat the rustic inhabitant of a very small section of America does. 

"You conferred your 'a' upon New England, too, and there it remains; ithas not traveled out of the narrow limits of those six little statesin all these two hundred and fifty years. All England uses it, NewEngland's small population--say four millions--use it, but we haveforty-five millions who do not use it. You say 'glahs of wawtah, ' sodoes New England; at least, New England says 'glahs. ' America at largeflattens the 'a', and says 'glass of water. ' These sounds are pleasanterthan yours; you may think they are not right--well, in English they arenot right, but 'American' they are. You say 'flahsk' and 'bahsket, ' and'jackahss'; we say 'flask, ' 'basket, ' 'jackass'--sounding the 'a' as itis in 'tallow, ' 'fallow, ' and so on. Up to as late as 1847 Mr. Webster'sDictionary had the impudence to still pronounce 'basket' bahsket, whenhe knew that outside of his little New England all America shortened the'a' and paid no attention to his English broadening of it. However, itcalled itself an English Dictionary, so it was proper enough that itshould stick to English forms, perhaps. It still calls itself an EnglishDictionary today, but it has quietly ceased to pronounce 'basket' as ifit were spelt 'bahsket. ' In the American language the 'h' is respected;the 'h' is not dropped or added improperly. "

"The same is the case in England--I mean among the educated classes, ofcourse. "

"Yes, that is true; but a nation's language is a very large matter. Itis not simply a manner of speech obtaining among the educated handful;the manner obtaining among the vast uneducated multitude must beconsidered also. Your uneducated masses speak English, you will not denythat; our uneducated masses speak American it won't be fair for you todeny that, for you can see, yourself, that when your stable-boy says, 'It isn't the 'unting that 'urts the 'orse, but the 'ammer, 'ammer, 'ammer on the 'ard 'ighway, ' and our stable-boy makes the same remarkwithout suffocating a single h, these two people are manifestly talkingtwo different languages. But if the signs are to be trusted, even youreducated classes used to drop the 'h. ' They say humble, now, and heroic, and historic etc. , but I judge that they used to drop those h's becauseyour writers still keep up the fashion of patting an before those wordsinstead of a. This is what Mr. Darwin might call a 'rudimentary' signthat as an was justifiable once, and useful when your educated classesused to say 'umble, and 'eroic, and 'istorical. Correct writers of theAmerican language do not put an before three words. "

The English gentleman had something to say upon this matter, butnever mind what he said--I'm not arguing his case. I have him at adisadvantage, now. I proceeded:

"In England you encourage an orator by exclaiming, 'H'yaah! 'yaah!' Wepronounce it heer in some sections, 'h'yer' in others, and so on; butour whites do not say 'h'yaah, ' pronouncing the a's like the a in ah. I have heard English ladies say 'don't you'--making two separate anddistinct words of it; your Mr. Burnand has satirized it. But we alwayssay 'dontchu. ' This is much better. Your ladies say, 'Oh, it's ofulnice!' Ours say, 'Oh, it's awful nice!' We say, 'Four hundred, ' you say'For'--as in the word or. Your clergymen speak of 'the Lawd, ' ours of'the Lord'; yours speak of 'the gawds of the heathen, ' ours of 'the godsof the heathen. ' When you are exhausted, you say you are 'knockedup. ' We don't. When you say you will do a thing 'directly, ' you mean'immediately'; in the American language--generally speaking--the wordsignifies 'after a little. ' When you say 'clever, ' you mean 'capable';with us the word used to mean 'accommodating, ' but I don't know what itmeans now. Your word 'stout' means 'fleshy'; our word 'stout' usuallymeans 'strong. ' Your words 'gentleman' and 'lady' have a very restrictedmeaning; with us they include the barmaid, butcher, burglar, harlot, andhorse-thief. You say, 'I haven't got any stockings on, ' 'I haven't gotany memory, ' 'I haven't got any money in my purse; we usually say, 'Ihaven't any stockings on, ' 'I haven't any memory!' 'I haven't any moneyin my purse. ' You say 'out of window'; we always put in a the. Ifone asks 'How old is that man?' the Briton answers, 'He will be aboutforty'; in the American language we should say, 'He is about forty. 'However, I won't tire you, sir; but if I wanted to, I could pileup differences here until I not only convinced you that English andAmerican are separate languages, but that when I speak my native tonguein its utmost purity an Englishman can't understand me at all. "

"I don't wish to flatter you, but it is about all I can do to understandyou now. "

That was a very pretty compliment, and it put us on the pleasantestterms directly--I use the word in the English sense. 

[Later--1882. Esthetes in many of our schools are now beginning to teachthe pupils to broaden the 'a, ' and to say "don't you, " in the elegantforeign way. ]

ROGERS

This Man Rogers happened upon me and introduced himself at the town of-----, in the South of England, where I stayed awhile. His stepfatherhad married a distant relative of mine who was afterward hanged; and sohe seemed to think a blood relationship existed between us. He camein every day and sat down and talked. Of all the bland, serene humancuriosities I ever saw, I think he was the chiefest. He desired to lookat my new chimney-pot hat. I was very willing, for I thought he wouldnotice the name of the great Oxford Street hatter in it, and respectme accordingly. But he turned it about with a sort of grave compassion, pointed out two or three blemishes, and said that I, being so recentlyarrived, could not be expected to know where to supply myself. Said hewould send me the address of his hatter. Then he said, "Pardon me, " andproceeded to cut a neat circle of red tissue paper; daintily notched theedges of it; took the mucilage and pasted it in my hat so as to coverthe manufacturer's name. He said, "No one will know now where you gotit. I will send you a hat-tip of my hatter, and you can paste it overthis tissue circle. " It was the calmest, coolest thing--I never admireda man so much in my life. Mind, he did this while his own hat satoffensively near our noses, on the table--an ancient extinguisher ofthe "slouch" pattern, limp and shapeless with age, discolored byvicissitudes of the weather, and banded by an equator of bear's greasethat had stewed through. 

Another time he examined my coat. I had no terrors, for over my tailor'sdoor was the legend, "By Special Appointment Tailor to H. R. H. ThePrince of Wales, " etc. I did not know at the time that the most ofthe tailor shops had the same sign out, and that whereas it takes ninetailors to make an ordinary man, it takes a hundred and fifty to make aprince. He was full of compassion for my coat. Wrote down the addressof his tailor for me. Did not tell me to mention my nom de plume and thetailor would put his best work on my garment, as complimentary peoplesometimes do, but said his tailor would hardly trouble himself for anunknown person (unknown person, when I thought I was so celebrated inEngland!--that was the cruelest cut), but cautioned me to mention hisname, and it would be all right. Thinking to be facetious, I said:

"But he might sit up all night and injure his health. "

"Well, let him, " said Rogers; "I've done enough for him, for him to showsome appreciation of it. "

I might as well have tried to disconcert a mummy with my facetiousness. Said Rogers: "I get all my coats there--they're the only coats fit to beseen in. "

I made one more attempt. I said, "I wish you had brought one with you--Iwould like to look at it. "

"Bless your heart, haven't I got one on?--this article is Morgan'smake. "

I examined it. The coat had been bought ready-made, of a Chatham StreetJew, without any question--about 1848. It probably cost four dollarswhen it was new. It was ripped, it was frayed, it was napless andgreasy. I could not resist showing him where it was ripped. It soaffected him that I was almost sorry I had done it. First he seemedplunged into a bottomless abyss of grief. Then he roused himself, madea feint with his hands as if waving off the pity of a nation, andsaid--with what seemed to me a manufactured emotion--"No matter; nomatter; don't mind me; do not bother about it. I can get another. "

When he was thoroughly restored, so that he could examine the rip andcommand his feelings, he said, ah, now he understood it--his servantmust have done it while dressing him that morning. 

His servant! There was something awe-inspiring in effrontery like this. 

Nearly every day he interested himself in some article of my clothing. One would hardly have expected this sort of infatuation in a man whoalways wore the same suit, and it a suit that seemed coeval with theConquest. 

It was an unworthy ambition, perhaps, but I did wish I could make thisman admire something about me or something I did--you would have feltthe same way. I saw my opportunity: I was about to return to London, and had "listed" my soiled linen for the wash. It made quite an imposingmountain in the corner of the room--fifty-four pieces. I hoped he wouldfancy it was the accumulation of a single week. I took up the wash-list, as if to see that it was all right, and then tossed it on the table, with pretended forgetfulness. Sure enough, he took it up and ran hiseye along down to the grand total. Then he said, "You get off easy, " andlaid it down again. 

His gloves were the saddest ruin, but he told me where I could get somelike them. His shoes would hardly hold walnuts without leaking, but heliked to put his feet up on the mantelpiece and contemplate them. He wore a dim glass breastpin, which he called a "morphyliticdiamond"--whatever that may mean--and said only two of them had everbeen found--the Emperor of China had the other one. 

Afterward, in London, it was a pleasure to me to see this fantasticvagabond come marching into the lobby of the hotel in his grand-ducalway, for he always had some new imaginary grandeur to develop--therewas nothing stale about him but his clothes. If he addressed me whenstrangers were about, he always raised his voice a little and called me"Sir Richard, " or "General, " or "Your Lordship"--and when people beganto stare and look deferential, he would fall to inquiring in a casualway why I disappointed the Duke of Argyll the night before; and thenremind me of our engagement at the Duke of Westminster's for thefollowing day. I think that for the time being these things wererealities to him. He once came and invited me to go with him and spendthe evening with the Earl of Warwick at his town house. I said I hadreceived no formal invitation. He said that that was of no consequence, the Earl had no formalities for him or his friends. I asked if I couldgo just as I was. He said no, that would hardly do; evening dress wasrequisite at night in any gentleman's house. He said he would wait whileI dressed, and then we would go to his apartments and I could take abottle of champagne and a cigar while he dressed. I was very willing tosee how this enterprise would turn out, so I dressed, and we started tohis lodgings. He said if I didn't mind we would walk. So we tramped somefour miles through the mud and fog, and finally found his "apartments";they consisted of a single room over a barber's shop in a back street. Two chairs, a small table, an ancient valise, a wash-basin and pitcher(both on the floor in a corner), an unmade bed, a fragment of alooking-glass, and a flower-pot, with a perishing little rose geraniumin it, which he called a century plant, and said it had not bloomed nowfor upward of two centuries--given to him by the late Lord Palmerston(been offered a prodigious sum for it)--these were the contents of theroom. Also a brass candlestick and a part of a candle. Rogers lit thecandle, and told me to sit down and make myself at home. He said hehoped I was thirsty, because he would surprise my palate with an articleof champagne that seldom got into a commoner's system; or would Iprefer sherry, or port? Said he had port in bottles that were swathed instratified cobwebs, every stratum representing a generation. And as forhis cigars--well, I should judge of them myself. Then he put his headout at the door and called:

"Sackville!" No answer. 

"Hi-Sackville!" No answer. 

"Now what the devil can have become of that butler? I never allow aservant to--Oh, confound that idiot, he's got the keys. Can't get intothe other rooms without the keys. "

(I was just wondering at his intrepidity in still keeping up thedelusion of the champagne, and trying to imagine how he was going to getout of the difficulty. )

Now he stopped calling Sackville and began to call "Anglesy. " ButAnglesy didn't come. He said, "This is the second time that that equerryhas been absent without leave. To-morrow I'll discharge him. " Nowhe began to whoop for "Thomas, " but Thomas didn't answer. Then for"Theodore, " but no Theodore replied. 

"Well, I give it up, " said Rogers. "The servants never expect me atthis hour, and so they're all off on a lark. Might get along withoutthe equerry and the page, but can't have any wine or cigars without thebutler, and can't dress without my valet. "

I offered to help him dress, but he would not hear of it; and besides, he said he would not feel comfortable unless dressed by a practisedhand. However, he finally concluded that he was such old friends withthe Earl that it would not make any difference how he was dressed. So wetook a cab, he gave the driver some directions, and we started. By andby we stopped before a large house and got out. I never had seen thisman with a collar on. He now stepped under a lamp and got a venerablepaper collar out of his coat pocket, along with a hoary cravat, and putthem on. He ascended the stoop, and entered. Presently he reappeared, descended rapidly, and said:

"Come--quick!"

We hurried away, and turned the corner. 

"Now we're safe, " he said, and took off his collar and cravat andreturned them to his pocket. 

"Made a mighty narrow escape, " said he. 

"How?" said I. 

"B' George, the Countess was there!"

"Well, what of that?--don't she know you?"

"Know me? Absolutely worships me. I just did happen to catch a glimpseof her before she saw me--and out I shot. Haven't seen her for twomonths--to rush in on her without any warning might have been fatal. Shecould not have stood it. I didn't know she was in town--thought shewas at the castle. Let me lean on you--just a moment--there; now Iam better--thank you; thank you ever so much. Lord bless me, what anescape!"

So I never got to call on the Earl, after all. But I marked the housefor future reference. It proved to be an ordinary family hotel, withabout a thousand plebeians roosting in it. 

In most things Rogers was by no means a fool. In some things it wasplain enough that he was a fool, but he certainly did not know it. Hewas in the "deadest" earnest in these matters. He died at sea, lastsummer, as the "Earl of Ramsgate. "