33 лучших юмористических рассказа на английском = 33 Best Humorous Short Stories

© Поповец М. А., составление комментариев, 2015

© ООО «Издательство «Эксмо», 2015

John Kendrick Bangs

A Psychical Prank

I

Willis had met Miss Hollister but once, and that, for a certain purpose, was sufficient. He was smitten. She represented in every way his ideal, although until he had met her his ideal had been something radically different. She was not at all Junoesque, and the maiden of his dreams had been decidedly so. She had auburn hair, which hitherto Willis had detested. Indeed, if the same hirsute wealth had adorned some other woman’s head, Willis would have called it red. This shows how completely he was smitten. She changed his point of view entirely. She shattered his old ideal and set herself up in its stead, and she did most of it with a smile.

There was something, however, about Miss Hollister’s eyes that contributed to the smiting of Willis’s heart. They were great round lustrous orbs, and deep. So deep were they and so penetrating that Willis’s affections were away beyond their own depth the moment Miss Hollister’s eyes looked into his, and at the same time he had a dim and slightly uncomfortable notion that she could read every thought his mind held within its folds—or rather, that she could see how utterly devoid of thought that mind was upon this ecstatic occasion, for Willis’s brain was set all agog by the sensations of the moment.

‘By Jove!’ he said to himself afterwards – for Willis, wise man that he could be on occasions, was his own confidant, to the exclusion of all others – ‘by Jove! I believe she can peer into my very soul; and if she can, my hopes are blasted, for she must be able to see that a soul like mine is no more worthy to become the affinity of one like hers than a mountain rill can hope to rival the Amazon.’

Nevertheless, Willis did hope.

‘Something may turn up, and perhaps – perhaps I can devise some scheme by means of which my imperfections can be hidden from her. Maybe I can put stained glass over the windows of my soul, and keep her from looking through them at my shortcomings. Smoked glasses, perhaps – and why not? If smoked glasses can be used by mortals gazing at the sun, why may they not be used by me when gazing into those scarcely less glorious orbs of hers?’

Alas for Willis! The fates were against him. A far-off tribe of fates were in league to blast his chances of success forever, and this was how it happened:

Willis had occasion one afternoon to come up town early. At the corner of Broadway and Astor Place he entered a Madison Avenue car, paid his fare, and sat down in one of the corner seats at the rear end of the car. His mind was, as usual, intent upon the glorious Miss Hollister. Surely no one who had once met her could do otherwise than think of her constantly, he reflected; and the reflection made him a bit jealous. What business had others to think of her? Impertinent, grovelling mortals! No man was good enough to do that – no, not even himself. But he could change. He could at least try to be worthy of thinking about her, and he knew of no other man who could. He’d like to catch any one else doing so little as mentioning her name!

‘Impertinent, grovelling mortals!’ he repeated.

And then the car stopped at Seventeenth Street, and who should step on board but Miss Hollister herself!

‘The idea!’ thought Willis. ‘By Jove! there she is – on a horse-car, too! How atrocious! One might as well expect to see Minerva driving in a grocer’s wagon as Miss Hollister in a horse-car. Miserable, untactful world to compel Minerva to ride in a horse-cart, or rather Miss Hollister to ride in a grocer’s car! Absurdest of absurdities!’

Here he raised his hat, for Miss Hollister had bowed sweetly to him as she passed on to the far end of the car, where she stood hanging on to a strap.

‘I wonder why she doesn’t sit down?’ thought Willis; for as he looked about the car he observed that with the exception of the one he occupied all the seats were vacant. In fact, the only persons on board were Miss Hollister, the driver, the conductor, and himself.

‘I think I’ll go speak to her,’ he thought. And then he thought again: ‘No, I’d better not. She saw me when she entered, and if she had wished to speak to me she would have sat down here beside me, or opposite me perhaps. I shall show myself worthy of her by not thrusting my presence upon her. But I wonder why she stands? She looks tired enough.’

Here Miss Hollister indulged in a very singular performance. She bowed her head slightly at some one, apparently on the sidewalk, Willis thought, murmured something, the purport of which Willis could not catch, and sat down in the middle of the seat on the other side of the car, looking very much annoyed – in fact, almost unamiable.

Willis was more mystified than ever; but his mystification was as nothing compared to his anxiety when, on reaching Forty-second Street, Miss Hollister rose, and sweeping by him without a sign of recognition, left the car.

‘Cut, by thunder!’ ejaculated Willis, in consternation. ‘And why, I wonder? Most incomprehensible affair. Can she be a woman of whims – with eyes like those? Never. Impossible. And yet what else can be the matter?’

Try as he might, Willis could not solve the problem. It was utterly past solution as far as he was concerned.

‘I’ll find out, and I’ll find out like a brave man,’ he said, after racking his brains for an hour or two in a vain endeavor to get at the cause of Miss Hollister’s cut. ‘I’ll call upon her to-night and ask her.’

He was true to his first purpose, but not to his second. He called, but he did not ask her, for Miss Hollister did not give him the chance to do so. Upon receiving his card she sent down word that she was out. Two days later, meeting him face to face upon the street, she gazed coldly at him, and cut him once more. Six months later her engagement to a Boston man was announced, and in the autumn following Miss Hollister of New York became Mrs. Barrows of Boston. There were cards, but Willis did not receive one of them. The cut was indeed complete and final. But why? That had now become one of the great problems of Willis’s life. What had he done to be so badly treated?

II

A year passed by, and Willis recovered from the dreadful blow to his hopes, but he often puzzled over Miss Hollister’s singular behavior towards him. He had placed the matter before several of his friends, and, with the exception of one of them, none was more capable of solving his problem than he. This one had heard from his wife, a school friend and intimate acquaintance of Miss Hollister, now Mrs. Barrows, that Willis’s ideal had once expressed herself to the effect that she had admired Willis very much until she had discovered that he was not always as courteous as he should be.

‘Courteous? Not as courteous as I should be?’ retorted Willis. ‘When have I ever been anything else? Why, my dear Bronson,’ he added, ‘you know what my attitude towards womankind – as well as mankind – has always been. If there is a creature in the world whose politeness is his weakness, I am that creature. I’m the most courteous man living. When I play poker in my own rooms I lose money, because I’ve made it a rule never to beat my guests in cards or anything else.’

‘That isn’t politeness,’ said Bronson. ‘That’s idiocy.’

‘It proves my point,’ retorted Willis. ‘I’m polite to the verge of insanity. Not as courteous as I should be! Great Scott! What did I ever do or say to give her that idea?’

‘I don’t know,’ Bronson replied. ‘Better ask her. Maybe you overdid your politeness. Overdone courtesy is often worse than boorishness. You may have been so polite on some occasion that you made Miss Hollister think you considered her an inferior person. You know what the poet insinuated. Sorosis holds no fury like a woman condescended to by a man.’

‘I’ve half a mind to write to Mrs. Barrows and ask her what I did,’ said Willis.

‘That would be lovely,’ said Bronson. ‘Barrows would be pleased.’

‘True. I never thought of that,’ replied Willis.

‘You are not a thoughtful thinker,’ said Bronson, dryly. ‘If I were you I’d bide my time, and some day you may get an explanation. Stranger things have happened; and my wife tells me that the Barrowses are to spend the coming winter in New York. You’ll meet them out somewhere, no doubt.’

‘No; I shall decline to go where they are. No woman shall cut me a second time – not even Mrs. Barrows,’ said Willis, firmly.

‘Good! Stand by your colors,’ said Bronson, with an amused smile.

A week or two later Willis received an invitation from Mr. and Mrs. Bronson to dine with them informally. ‘I have some very clever friends I want you to meet,’ she wrote. ‘So be sure to come.’

Willis went. The clever friends were Mr. and Mrs. Barrows; and, to the surprise of Willis, he was received most effusively by the quondam Miss Hollister.

‘Why, Mr. Willis,’ she said, extending her hand to him. ‘How delightful to see you again!’

‘Thank you,’ said Willis, in some confusion. ‘I – er – I am sure it is a very pleasant surprise for me. I – er – had no idea —’

‘Nor I,’ returned Mrs. Barrows. ‘And really I should have been a little embarrassed, I think, had I known you were to be here. I – ha! ha! – it’s so very absurd that I almost hesitate to speak of it – but I feel I must. I’ve treated you very badly.’

‘Indeed!’ said Willis, with a smile. ‘How, pray?’

‘Well, it wasn’t my fault really,’ returned Mrs. Barrows; ‘but do you remember, a little over a year ago, my riding up-town on a horse-car – a Madison Avenue car – with you?’

‘H’m!’ said Willis, with an affectation of reflection. ‘Let me see; ah – yes – I think I do. We were the only ones on board, I believe, and – ah —’

Here Mrs. Barrows laughed outright. ‘You thought we were the only ones on board, but – we weren’t. The car was crowded,’ she said.

‘Then I don’t remember it,’ said Willis. ‘The only time I ever rode on a horse-car with you to my knowledge was—’

‘I know; this was the occasion,’ interrupted Mrs. Barrows. ‘You sat in a corner at the rear end of the car when I entered, and I was very much put out with you because it remained for a stranger, whom I had often seen and to whom I had, for reasons unknown even to myself, taken a deep aversion, to offer me his seat, and, what is more, compel me to take it.’

‘I don’t understand,’ said Willis. ‘We were alone on the car.’

‘To your eyes we were, although at the time I did not know it. To my eyes when I boarded it the car was occupied by enough people to fill all the seats. You returned my bow as I entered, but did not offer me your seat. The stranger did, and while I tried to decline it, I was unable to do so. He was a man of about my own age, and he had a most remarkable pair of eyes. There was no resisting them. His offer was a command; and as I rode along and thought of your sitting motionless at the end of the car, compelling me to stand, and being indirectly responsible for my acceptance of courtesies from a total and disagreeable stranger, I became so very indignant with you that I passed you without recognition as soon as I could summon up courage to leave. I could not understand why you, who had seemed to me to be the soul of politeness, should upon this occasion have failed to do not what I should exact from any man, but what I had reason to expect of you.’

‘But, Mrs. Barrows,’ remonstrated Willis, ‘why should I give up a seat to a lady when there were twenty other seats unoccupied on the same car?’

‘There is no reason in the world why you should,’ replied Mrs. Barrows. ‘But it was not until last winter that I discovered the trick that had been put upon us.’

‘Ah?’ said Willis. ‘Trick?’

‘Yes,’ said Mrs. Barrows. ‘It was a trick. The car was empty to your eyes, but crowded to mine with the astral bodies of the members of the Boston Theosophical Society.’

‘Wha-a-at?’ roared Willis.

‘It is just as I have said,’ replied Mrs. Barrows, with a silvery laugh. ‘They are all great friends of my husband’s, and one night last winter he dined them at our house, and who do you suppose walked in first?’

‘Madame Blavatsky’s ghost?’ suggested Willis, with a grin.

‘Not quite,’ returned Mrs. Barrows. ‘But the horrible stranger of the horse-car; and, do you know, he recalled the whole thing to my mind, assuring me that he and the others had projected their astral bodies over to New York for a week, and had a magnificent time unperceived by all save myself, who was unconsciously psychic, and so able to perceive them in their invisible forms.’

‘It was a mean trick on me, Mrs. Barrows,’ said Willis, ruefully, as soon as he had recovered sufficiently from his surprise to speak.

‘Oh no,’ she replied, with a repetition of her charming laugh, which rearoused in Willis’s breast all the regrets of a lost cause. ‘They didn’t intend it especially for you, anyhow.’

‘Well,’ said Willis, ‘I think they did. They were friends of your husband’s, and they wanted to ruin me.’

‘Ruin you? And why should the friends of Mr. Barrows have wished to do that?’ asked Mrs. Barrows, in astonishment.

‘Because,’ began Willis, slowly and softly – ‘because they probably knew that from the moment I met you, I – But that is a story with a disagreeable climax, Mrs. Barrows, so I shall not tell it. How do you like Boston?’

The Ghost Club

An unfortunate episode in the life of No. 5010

Number 5010 was at the time when I received the details of this story from his lips a stalwart man of thirty-eight, swart of hue, of pleasing address, and altogether the last person one would take for a convict serving a term for sneak-thieving. The only outer symptoms of his actual condition were the striped suit he wore, the style and cut of which are still in vogue at Sing Sing prison, and the closely cropped hair, which showed off the distinctly intellectual lines of his head to great advantage. He was engaged in making shoes when I first saw him, and so impressed was I with the contrast between his really refined features and grace of manner and those of his brutish-looking companions, that I asked my guide who he was, and what were the circumstances which had brought him to Sing Sing.

‘He pegs shoes like a gentleman,’ I said.

‘Yes,’ returned the keeper. ‘He’s werry troublesome that way. He thinks he’s too good for his position. We can’t never do nothing with the boots he makes.’

‘Why do you keep him at work in the shoe department?’ I queried.

‘We haven’t got no work to be done in his special line, so we have to put him at whatever we can. He pegs shoes less badly than he does anything else.’

‘What was his special line?’

‘He was a gentleman of leisure travellin’ for his health afore he got into the toils o’ the law. His real name is Marmaduke Fitztappington De Wolfe, of Pelhamhurst-by-the-Sea, Warwickshire. He landed in this country of a Tuesday, took to collectin’ souvenir spoons of a Friday, was jugged the same day, tried, convicted, and there he sets. In for two years more.’

‘How interesting!’ I said. ‘Was the evidence against him conclusive?’

‘Extremely. A half-dozen spoons was found on his person.’

‘He pleaded guilty, I suppose?’

‘Not him. He claimed to be as innocent as a new-born babe. Told a cock-and-bull story about havin’ been deluded by spirits, but the judge and jury wasn’t to be fooled. They gave him every chance, too. He even cabled himself, the judge did, to Pelhamhurst-by-the-Sea, Warwickshire, at his own expense, to see if the man was an impostor, but he never got no reply. There was them as said there wasn’t no such place as Pelhamhurst-by-the-Sea in Warwickshire, but they never proved it.’

‘I should like very much to interview him,’ said I.

‘It can’t be done, sir,’ said my guide. ‘The rules is very strict.’

‘You couldn’t er – arrange an interview for me,’ I asked, jingling a bunch of keys in my pocket.

He must have recognized the sound, for he colored and gruffly replied, ‘I has me orders, and I obeys ‘em.’

‘Just – er – add this to the pension fund,’ I put in, handing him a five-dollar bill. ‘An interview is impossible, eh?’

‘I didn’t say impossible,’ he answered, with a grateful smile. ‘I said against the rules, but we has been known to make exceptions. I think I can fix you up.’

Suffice it to say that he did ‘fix me up,’ and that two hours later 5010 and I sat down together in the cell of the former, a not too commodious stall, and had a pleasant chat, in the course of which he told me the story of his life, which, as I had surmised, was to me, at least, exceedingly interesting, and easily worth twice the amount of my contribution to the pension fund under the management of my guide of the morning.

‘My real name,’ said the unfortunate convict, ‘as you may already have guessed, is not 5010. That is an alias forced upon me by the State authorities. My name is really Austin Merton Surrennes.’

‘Ahem!’ I said. ‘Then my guide erred this morning when he told me that in reality you were Marmaduke Fitztappington De Wolfe, of Pelhamhurst-by-the-Sea, Warwickshire?’

Number 5010 laughed long and loud. ‘Of course he erred. You don’t suppose that I would give the authorities my real name, do you? Why, man, I am a nephew! I have an aged uncle – a rich millionaire uncle – whose heart and will it would break were he to hear of my present plight. Both the heart and will are in my favor, hence my tender solicitude for him. I am innocent, of course – convicts always are, you know – but that wouldn’t make any difference. He’d die of mortification just the same. It’s one of our family traits, that. So I gave a false name to the authorities, and secretly informed my uncle that I was about to set out for a walking trip across the great American desert, requesting him not to worry if he did not hear from me for a number of years, America being in a state of semi-civilization, to which mails outside of certain districts are entirely unknown. My uncle being an Englishman and a conservative gentleman, addicted more to reading than to travel, accepts the information as veracious and suspects nothing, and when I am liberated I shall return to him, and at his death shall become a conservative man of wealth myself. See?’

‘But if you are innocent and he rich and influential, why did you not appeal to him to save you?’ I asked.

‘Because I was afraid that he, like the rest of the world, would decline to believe my defence,’ sighed 5010. ‘It was a good defence, if the judge had only known it, and I’m proud of it.’

‘But ineffectual,’ I put in. ‘And so, not good.’

‘Alas, yes! This is an incredulous age. People, particularly judges, are hard-headed practical men of affairs. My defence was suited more for an age of mystical tendencies. Why, will you believe it, sir, my own lawyer, the man to whom I paid eighteen dollars and seventy-five cents for championing my cause, told me the defence was rubbish, devoid even of literary merit. What chance could a man have if his lawyer even didn’t believe in him?’

‘None,’ I answered, sadly. ‘And you had no chance at all, though innocent?’

‘Yes, I had one, and I chose not to take it. I might have proved myself non compos mentis; but that involved my making a fool of myself in public before a jury, and I have too much dignity for that, I can tell you. I told my lawyer that I should prefer a felon’s cell to the richly furnished flat of a wealthy lunatic, to which he replied, ‘Then all is lost!’ And so it was. I read my defence in court. The judge laughed, the jury whispered, and I was convicted instanter of stealing spoons, when murder itself was no further from my thoughts than theft.’

‘But they tell me you were caught red-handed,’ said I. ‘Were not a half-dozen spoons found upon your person?’

‘In my hand,’ returned the prisoner. ‘The spoons were in my hand when I was arrested, and they were seen there by the owner, by the police, and by the usual crowd of small boys that congregate at such embarrassing moments, springing up out of sidewalks, dropping down from the heavens, swarming in from everywhere. I had no idea there were so many small boys in the world until I was arrested, and found myself the cynosure of a million or more innocent blue eyes.’

‘Were they all blue-eyed?’ I queried, thinking the point interesting from a scientific point of view, hoping to discover that curiosity of a morbid character was always found in connection with eyes of a specified hue.

‘Oh no; I fancy not,’ returned my host. ‘But to a man with a load of another fellow’s spoons in his possession, and a pair of handcuffs on his wrists, everything looks blue.’

‘I don’t doubt it,’ I replied. ‘But – er – just how, now, could you defend yourself when every bit of evidence, and – you will excuse me for saying so – conclusive evidence at that, pointed to your guilt?’

‘The spoons were a gift,’ he answered.

‘But the owner denied that.’

‘I know it; that’s where the beastly part of it all came in. They were not given to me by the owner, but by a lot of mean, low-down, practical-joke-loving ghosts.’

Number 5010’s anger as he spoke these words was terrible to witness, and as he strode up and down the floor of his cell and dashed his arms right and left, I wished for a moment that I was elsewhere. I should not have flown, however, even had the cell door been open and my way clear, for his suggestion of a supernatural agency in connection with his crime whetted my curiosity until it was more keen than ever, and I made up my mind to hear the story to the end, if I had to commit a crime and get myself sentenced to confinement in that prison for life to do so.

Fortunately, extreme measures of this nature were unnecessary, for after a few moments Surrennes calmed down, and seating himself beside me on the cot, drained his water-pitcher to the dregs, and began.

‘Excuse me for not offering you a drink,’ he said, ‘but the wine they serve here while moist is hardly what a connoisseur would choose except for bathing purposes, and I compliment you by assuming that you do not wish to taste it.’

‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘I do not like to take water straight, exactly. I always dilute it, in fact, with a little of this.’

Here I extracted a small flask from my pocket and handed it to him.

‘Ah!’ he said, smacking his lips as he took a long pull at its contents, ‘that puts spirit into a man.’

‘Yes, it does,’ I replied, ruefully, as I noted that he had left me very little but the flask; ‘but I don’t think it was necessary for you to deprive me of all mine.’

‘No; that is, you can’t appreciate the necessity unless you – er – you have suffered in your life as I am suffering. You were never sent up yourself?’

I gave him a glance which was all indignation. ‘I guess not,’ I said. ‘I have led a life that is above reproach.’

‘Good!’ he replied. ‘And what a satisfaction that is, eh? I don’t believe I’d be able to stand this jail life if it wasn’t for my conscience, which is as clear and clean as it would be if I’d never used it.’

‘Would you mind telling me what your defence was?’ I asked.

‘Certainly not,’ said he, cheerfully. ‘I’d be very glad to give it to you. But you must remember one thing – it is copyrighted.’

‘Fire ahead!’ I said, with a smile. ‘I’ll respect your copyright. I’ll give you a royalty on what I get for the story.’

‘Very good,’ he answered. ‘It was like this. To begin, I must tell you that when I was a boy preparing for college I had for a chum a brilliant fun-loving fellow named Hawley Hicks, concerning whose future various prophecies had been made. His mother often asserted that he would be a great poet; his father thought he was born to be a great general; our head-master at the Scarberry Institute for Young Gentlemen prophesied the gallows. They were all wrong; though, for myself, I think that if he had lived long enough almost any one of the prophecies might have come true. The trouble was that Hawley died at the age of twenty-three. Fifteen years elapsed. I was graduated with high honors at Brazenose, lived a life of elegant leisure, and at the age of thirty-seven broke down in health. That was about a year ago. My uncle, whose heir and constant companion I was, gave me a liberal allowance, and sent me off to travel. I came to America, landed in New York early in September, and set about winning back the color which had departed from my cheeks by an assiduous devotion to such pleasures as New York affords. Two days after my arrival, I set out for an airing at Coney Island, leaving my hotel at four in the afternoon. On my way down Broadway I was suddenly startled at hearing my name spoken from behind me, and appalled, on turning, to see standing with outstretched hands no less a person than my defunct chum, Hawley Hicks.’

‘Impossible,’ said I.

‘Exactly my remark,’ returned Number 5010. ‘To which I added, “Hawley Hicks, it can’t be you”!’

‘“But it is me,” he replied.

‘And then I was convinced, for Hawley never was good on his grammar. I looked at him a minute, and then I said, “But, Hawley, I thought you were dead.”

‘“I am,” he answered. “But why should a little thing like that stand between friends?”

‘“It shouldn’t, Hawley,” I answered, meekly; “but it’s condemnedly unusual, you know, for a man to associate even with his best friends fifteen years after they’ve died and been buried.”

‘“Do you mean to say, Austin, that just because I was weak enough once to succumb to a bad cold, you, the dearest friend of my youth, the closest companion of my school-days, the partner of my childish joys, intend to go back on me here in a strange city?”

‘“Hawley,” I answered, huskily, “not a bit of it. My letter of credit, my room at the hotel, my dress suit, even my ticket to Coney Island, are at your disposal; but I think the partner of your childish joys ought first to be let in on the ground-floor of this enterprise, and informed how the deuce you manage to turn up in New York fifteen years subsequent to your obsequies. Is New York the hereafter for boys of your kind, or is this some freak of my imagination?”’

‘That was an eminently proper question,’ I put in, just to show that while the story I was hearing terrified me, I was not altogether speechless.

‘It was, indeed,’ said 5010; ‘and Hawley recognized it as such, for he replied at once.

‘“Neither,” said he. “Your imagination is all right, and New York is neither heaven nor the other place. The fact is, I’m spooking, and I can tell you, Austin, it’s just about the finest kind of work there is. If you could manage to shuffle off your mortal coil and get in with a lot of ghosts, the way I have, you’d be playing in great luck.”

‘“Thanks for the hint, Hawley,” I said, with a grateful smile; “but, to tell you the truth, I do not find that life is entirely bad. I get my three meals a day, keep my pocket full of coin, and sleep eight hours every night on a couch that couldn’t be more desirable if it were studded with jewels and had mineral springs.”

‘“That’s your mortal ignorance, Austin,” he retorted. “I lived long enough to appreciate the necessity of being ignorant, but your style of existence is really not to be mentioned in the same cycle with mine. You talk about three meals a day, as if that were an ideal; you forget that with the eating your labor is just begun; those meals have to be digested, every one of ’em, and if you could only understand it, it would appall you to see what a fearful wear and tear that act of digestion is. In my life you are feasting all the time, but with no need for digestion. You speak of money in your pockets; well, I have none, yet am I the richer of the two. I don’t need money. The world is mine. If I chose to I could pour the contents of that jeweller’s window into your lap in five seconds, but cui bono? The gems delight my eye quite as well where they are; and as for travel, Austin, of which you have always been fond, the spectral method beats all. Just watch me!”

‘I watched him as well as I could for a minute,’ said 5010; ‘and then he disappeared. In another minute he was before me again.

‘“Well,” I said, “I suppose you’ve been around the block in that time, eh?”

‘He roared with laughter. “Around the block?” he ejaculated. “I have done the Continent of Europe, taken a run through China, haunted the Emperor of Japan, and sailed around the Horn since I left you a minute ago.”

‘He was a truthful boy in spite of his peculiarities, Hawley was,’ said Surrennes, quietly, ‘so I had to believe what he said. He abhorred lies.’

‘That was pretty fast travelling, though,’ said I. ‘He’d make a fine messenger-boy.’

‘That’s so. I wish I’d suggested it to him,’ smiled my host. ‘But I can tell you, sir, I was astonished. “Hawley,” I said, “you always were a fast youth, but I never thought you would develop into this. I wonder you’re not out of breath after such a journey.”

‘“Another point, my dear Austin, in favor of my mode of existence. We spooks have no breath to begin with. Consequently, to get out of it is no deprivation. But, I say,” he added, “whither are you bound?”

‘“To Coney Island to see the sights,” I replied. “Won’t you join me?”

‘“Not I,” he replied. “Coney Island is tame. When I first joined the spectre band, it seemed to me that nothing could delight me more than an eternal round of gayety like that; but, Austin, I have changed. I have developed a good deal since you and I were parted at the grave.”

‘“I should say you had,” I answered. “I doubt if many of your old friends would know you.”

‘“You seem to have had difficulty in so doing yourself, Austin,” he replied, regretfully; “but see here, old chap, give up Coney Island, and spend the evening with me at the club. You’ll have a good time, I can assure you.”

‘“The club?” I said. “You don’t mean to say you visions have a club?”

‘“I do indeed; the Ghost Club is the most flourishing association of choice spirits in the world. We have rooms in every city in creation; and the finest part of it is there are no dues to be paid. The membership list holds some of the finest names in history – Shakespeare, Milton, Chaucer, Napoleon Bonaparte, Caesar, George Washington, Mozart, Frederick the Great, Marc Antony – Cassius was black-balled on Caesar’s account – Galileo, Confucius.”

‘“You admit the Chinese, eh?” I queried.

‘“Not always,” he replied. “But Con was such a good fellow they hadn’t the heart to keep him out; but you see, Austin, what a lot of fine fellows there are in it.”

‘“Yes, it’s a magnificent list, and I should say they made a pretty interesting set of fellows to hear talk,” I put in.

‘“Well, rather,” Hawley replied. “I wish you could have heard a debate between Shakespeare and Caesar on the resolution, ‘The Pen is mightier than the Sword;’ it was immense.”

‘“I should think it might have been,” I said. “Which won?”

‘“The sword party. They were the best fighters; though on the merits of the argument Shakespeare was ’way ahead.”

‘“If I thought I’d stand a chance of seeing spooks like that, I think I’d give up Coney Island and go with you,” I said.

‘“Well,” replied Hawley, “that’s just the kind of a chance you do stand. They’ll all be there to-night, and as this is ladies’ day, you might meet Lucretia Borgia, Cleopatra, and a few other feminine apparitions of considerable note.”

‘“That settles it. I am yours for the rest of the day,” I said, and so we adjourned to the rooms of the Ghost Club.

‘These rooms were in a beautiful house on Fifth Avenue; the number of the house you will find on consulting the court records. I have forgotten it. It was a large, broad, brown-stone structure, and must have been over one hundred and fifty feet in depth. Such fittings I never saw before; everything was in the height of luxury, and I am quite certain that among beings to whom money is a measure of possibility no such magnificence is attainable. The paintings on the walls were by the most famous artists of our own and other days. The rugs on the superbly polished floors were worth fortunes, not only for their exquisite beauty, but also for their extreme rarity. In keeping with these were the furniture and bric-a-brac. In short, my dear sir, I had never dreamed of anything so dazzlingly, so superbly magnificent as that apartment into which I was ushered by the ghost of my quondam friend Hawley Hicks.

‘At first I was speechless with wonder, which seemed to amuse Hicks very much.

‘“Pretty fine, eh?” he said, with a short laugh.

‘“Well,” I replied, in a moment, “considering that you can get along without money, and that all the resources of the world are at your disposal, it is not more than half bad. Have you a library?”

‘I was always fond of books,’ explained 5010 in parenthesis to me, ‘and so was quite anxious to see what the club of ghosts could show in the way of literary treasures. Imagine my surprise when Hawley informed me that the club had no collection of the sort to appeal to the bibliophile.

‘“No,” he answered, “we have no library.”

‘“Rather strange,” I said, “that a club to which men like Shakespeare, Milton, Edgar Allan Poe, and other deceased literati belong should be deficient in that respect.”

‘“Not at all,” said he. “Why should we want books when we have the men themselves to tell their tales to us? Would you give a rap to possess a set of Shakespeare if William himself would sit down and rattle off the whole business to you any time you chose to ask him to do it? Would you follow Scott’s printed narratives through their devious and tedious periods if Sir Walter in spirit would come to you on demand, and tell you all the old stories over again in a tenth part of the time it would take you to read the introduction to one of them?”

‘“I fancy not,” I said. “Are you in such luck?”

‘“I am,” said Hawley; “only personally I never send for Scott or Shakespeare. I prefer something lighter than either – Douglas Jerrold or Marryat. But best of all, I like to sit down and hear Noah swap animal stories with Davy Crockett. Noah’s the brightest man of his age in the club. Adam’s kind of slow.”

‘“How about Solomon?” I asked, more to be flippant than with any desire for information. I was much amused to hear Hawley speak of these great spirits as if he and they were chums of long standing.

‘“Solomon has resigned from the club,” he said, with a sad sigh. “He was a good fellow, Solomon was, but he thought he knew it all until old Doctor Johnson got hold of him, and then he knuckled under. It’s rather rough for a man to get firmly established in his belief that he is the wisest creature going, and then, after a couple of thousand years, have an Englishman come along and tell him things he never knew before, especially the way Sam Johnson delivers himself of his opinions. Johnson never cared whom he hurt, you know, and when he got after Solomon, he did it with all his might.”’

‘I wonder if Boswell was there?’ I ventured, interrupting 5010 in his extraordinary narrative for an instant.

‘Yes, he was there,’ returned the prisoner. ‘I met him later in the evening; but he isn’t the spook he might be. He never had much spirit anyhow, and when he died he had to leave his nose behind him, and that settled him.’

‘Of course,’ I answered. ‘Boswell with no nose to stick into other people’s affairs would have been like Othello with Desdemona left out. But go on. What did you do next?’

‘Well,’ 5010 resumed, ‘after I’d looked about me, and drunk my fill of the magnificence on every hand, Hawley took me into the music-room, and introduced me to Mozart and Wagner and a few other great composers. In response to my request, Wagner played an impromptu version of “Daisy Bell” on the organ. It was great; not much like “Daisy Bell,” of course; more like a collision between a cyclone and a simoom in a tin-plate mining camp, in fact, but, nevertheless, marvellous. I tried to remember it afterwards, and jotted down a few notes, but I found the first bar took up seven sheets of fool’s-cap, and so gave it up. Then Mozart tried his hand on a banjo for my amusement, Mendelssohn sang a half-dozen of his songs without words, and then Gottschalk played one of Poe’s weird stories on the piano.

‘Then Carlyle came in, and Hawley introduced me to him. He was a gruff old gentleman, and seemingly anxious to have Froude become an eligible, and I judged from the rather fierce manner in which he handled a club he had in his hand, that there were one or two other men of prominence still living he was anxious to meet. Dickens, too, was desirous of a two-minute interview with certain of his at present purely mortal critics; and, between you and me, if the wink that Bacon gave Shakespeare when I spoke of Ignatius Donnelly meant anything, the famous cryptogrammarian will do well to drink a bottle of the elixir of life every morning before breakfast, and stave off dissolution as long as he can. There’s no getting around the fact, sir,’ Surrennes added, with a significant shake of the head, ‘that the present leaders of literary thought with critical tendencies are going to have the hardest kind of a time when they cross the river and apply for admission to the Ghost Club. I don’t ask for any better fun than that of watching from a safe distance the initiation ceremonies of the next dozen who go over. And as an Englishman, sir, who thoroughly believes in and admires Lord Wolseley, if I were out of jail and able to do it, I’d write him a letter, and warn him that he would better revise his estimates of certain famous soldiers no longer living if he desires to find rest in that mysterious other world whither he must eventually betake himself. They’ve got their swords sharpened for him, and he’ll discover an instance when he gets over there in which the sword is mightier than the pen.

‘After that, Hawley took me up-stairs and introduced me to the spirit of Napoleon Bonaparte, with whom I passed about twenty-five minutes talking over his victories and defeats. He told me he never could understand how a man like Wellington came to defeat him at Waterloo, and added that he had sounded the Iron Duke on the subject, and found him equally ignorant.

‘So the afternoon and evening passed. I met quite a number of famous ladies – Catherine, Marie Louise, Josephine, Queen Elizabeth, and others. Talked architecture with Queen Anne, and was surprised to learn that she never saw a Queen Anne cottage. I took Peg Woffington down to supper, and altogether had a fine time of it.’

‘But, my dear Surrennes,’ I put in at this point, ‘I fail to see what this has to do with your defence in your trial for stealing spoons.’

‘I am coming to that,’ said 5010, sadly. ‘I dwell on the moments passed at the club because they were the happiest of my life, and am loath to speak of what followed, but I suppose I must. It was all due to Queen Isabella that I got into trouble. Peg Woffington presented me to Queen Isabella in the supper-room, and while her majesty and I were talking, I spoke of how beautiful everything in the club was, and admired especially a half-dozen old Spanish spoons upon the side-board. When I had done this, the Queen called to Ferdinand, who was chatting with Columbus on the other side of the room, to come to her, which he did with alacrity. I was presented to the King, and then my troubles began.

‘“Mr. Surrennes admires our spoons, Ferdinand,” said the Queen.

‘The King smiled, and turning to me observed, “Sir, they are yours. Er – waiter, just do these spoons up and give them to Mr. Surrennes.”

‘Of course,’ said 5010, ‘I protested against this; whereupon the King looked displeased.

‘“It is a rule of our club, sir, as well as an old Spanish custom, for us to present to our guests anything that they may happen openly to admire. You are surely sufficiently well acquainted with the etiquette of club life to know that guests may not with propriety decline to be governed by the regulations of the club whose hospitality they are enjoying.”

‘“I certainly am aware of that, my dear King,” I replied, “and of course I accept the spoons with exceeding deep gratitude. My remonstrance was prompted solely by my desire to explain to you that I was unaware of any such regulation, and to assure you that when I ventured to inform your good wife that the spoons had excited my sincerest admiration, I was not hinting that it would please me greatly to be accounted their possessor.”

‘“Your courtly speech, sir,” returned the King, with a low bow, “is ample assurance of your sincerity, and I beg that you will put the spoons in your pocket and say no more. They are yours. Verb. sap.”

‘I thanked the great Spaniard and said no more, pocketing the spoons with no little exultation, because, having always been a lover of the quaint and beautiful, I was glad to possess such treasures, though I must confess to some misgivings as to the possibility of their being unreal. Shortly after this episode I looked at my watch and discovered that it was getting well on towards eleven o’clock, and I sought out Hawley for the purpose of thanking him for a delightful evening and of taking my leave. I met him in the hall talking to Euripides on the subject of the amateur stage in the United States. What they said I did not stop to hear, but offering my hand to Hawley informed him of my intention to depart.

‘“Well, old chap,” he said, affectionately, “I’m glad you came. It’s always a pleasure to see you, and I hope we may meet again some time soon.” And then, catching sight of my bundle, he asked, “What have you there?”

‘I informed him of the episode in the supper-room, and fancied I perceived a look of annoyance on his countenance.

‘“I didn’t want to take them, Hawley,” I said; “but Ferdinand insisted.”

‘“Oh, it’s all right!” returned Hawley. “Only I’m sorry! You’d better get along home with them as quickly as you can and say nothing; and, above all, don’t try to sell them.”

‘“But why?” I asked. “I’d much prefer to leave them here if there is any question of the propriety of my —”

‘Here,’ continued 5010, ‘Hawley seemed to grow impatient, for he stamped his foot angrily, and bade me go at once or there might be trouble. I proceeded to obey him, and left the house instanter, slamming the door somewhat angrily behind me. Hawley’s unceremonious way of speeding his parting guest did not seem to me to be exactly what I had a right to expect at the time. I see now what his object was, and acquit him of any intention to be rude, though I must say if I ever catch him again, I’ll wring an explanation from him for having introduced me into such bad company.

‘As I walked down the steps,’ said 5010, ‘the chimes of the neighboring church were clanging out the hour of eleven. I stopped on the last step to look for a possible hansom-cab, when a portly gentleman accompanied by a lady started to mount the stoop. The man eyed me narrowly for a moment, and then, sending the lady up the steps, he turned to me and said,

‘“What are you doing here?”

‘“I’ve just left the club” I answered. “It’s all right. I was Hawley Hicks’s guest. Whose ghost are you?”

‘“What the deuce are you talking about?” he asked, rather gruffly, much to my surprise and discomfort.

‘“I tried to give you a civil answer to your question,” I returned, indignantly.

‘“I guess you’re crazy – or a thief,” he rejoined.

‘“See here, friend,” I put in, rather impressively, “just remember one thing. You are talking to a gentleman, and I don’t take remarks of that sort from anybody, spook or otherwise. I don’t care if you are the ghost of the Emperor Nero, if you give me any more of your impudence I’ll dissipate you to the four quarters of the universe – see?”

‘Then he grabbed me and shouted for the police, and I was painfully surprised to find that instead of coping with a mysterious being from another world, I had two hundred and ten pounds of flesh and blood to handle. The populace began to gather. The million and a half of small boys of whom I have already spoken – mostly street gamins, owing to the lateness of the hour – sprang up from all about us. Hansom-cab drivers, attracted by the noise of our altercation, drew up to the sidewalk to watch developments, and then, after the usual fifteen or twenty minutes, the blue-coat emissary of justice appeared.

‘“Phat’s dthis?” he asked.

‘“I have detected this man leaving my house in a suspicious manner,” said my adversary. “I have reason to suspect him of thieving.”

‘“Your house!” I ejaculated, with fine scorn. “I’ve got you there; this is the house of the New York Branch of the Ghost Club. If you want it proved,” I added, turning to the policeman, “ring the bell, and ask.”

‘“Oi t’ink dthat’s a fair prophosition,” observed the policeman. “Is the motion siconded?”

‘“Oh, come now!” cried my captor. “Stop this nonsense, or I’ll report you to the department. This is my house, and has been for twenty years. I want this man searched.”

‘“Oi hov no warrant permithin’ me to invistigate the contints ov dthe gintlemon’s clothes,” returned the intelligent member of the force. “But av yez ‘ll take yer solemn alibi dthat yez hov rayson t’ belave the gintlemon has worked ony habeas corpush business on yure propherty, oi’ll jug dthe blag-yard.’

‘“I’ll be responsible,” said the alleged owner of the house. “Take him to the station.”

‘“I refuse to move,” I said.

‘“Oi’ll not carry yez,” said the policeman, “and oi’d advoise ye to furnish yure own locomotion. Av ye don’t, oi’ll use me club. Dthot’s th’ ounly waa yez ‘ll git dthe ambulanch.”

‘“Oh, well, if you insist,” I replied, “of course I’ll go. I have nothing to fear.”

‘You see,’ added 5010 to me, in parenthesis, ‘the thought suddenly flashed across my mind that if all was as my captor said, if the house was really his and not the Ghost Club’s, and if the whole thing was only my fancy, the spoons themselves would turn out to be entirely fanciful; so I was all right – or at least I thought I was. So we trotted along to the police station. On the way I told the policeman the whole story, which impressed him so that he crossed himself a half-dozen times, and uttered numerous ejaculatory prayers – “Maa dthe shaints presharve us,” and “Hivin hov mershy,” and others of a like import.

‘“Waz dthe ghosht ov Dan O’Connell dthere?” he asked.

‘“Yes,” I replied. “I shook hands with it.”

‘“Let me shaak dthot hand,” he said, his voice trembling with emotion, and then he whispered in my ear: “Oi belave yez to be innoshunt; but av yez ain’t, for the love of Dan, oi’ll let yez eshcape.”

‘“Thanks, old fellow,” I replied. “But I am innocent of wrong-doing, as I can prove.”

‘Alas!’ sighed the convict, ‘it was not to be so. When I arrived at the station-house, I was dumfounded to learn that the spoons were all too real. I told my story to the sergeant, and pointed to the monogram, “G.C.,” on the spoons as evidence that my story was correct; but even that told against me, for the alleged owner’s initials were G.C. – his name I withhold – and the monogram only served to substantiate his claim to the spoons. Worst of all, he claimed that he had been robbed on several occasions before this, and by midnight I found myself locked up in a dirty cell to await trial.

‘I got a lawyer, and, as I said before, even he declined to believe my story, and suggested the insanity dodge. Of course I wouldn’t agree to that. I tried to get him to subpoena Ferdinand and Isabella and Euripides and Hawley Hicks in my behalf, and all he’d do was to sit there and shake his head at me. Then I suggested going up to the Metropolitan Opera-house some fearful night as the clock struck twelve, and try to serve papers on Wagner’s spook – all of which he treated as unworthy of a moment’s consideration. Then I was tried, convicted, and sentenced to live in this beastly hole; but I have one strong hope to buoy me up, and if that is realized, I’ll be free to-morrow morning.’

‘What is that?’ I asked.

‘Why,’ he answered, with a sigh, as the bell rang summoning him to his supper – ‘why, the whole horrid business has been so weird and uncanny that I’m beginning to believe it’s all a dream. If it is, why, I’ll wake up, and find myself at home in bed; that’s all. I’ve clung to that hope for nearly a year now, but it’s getting weaker every minute.’

‘Yes, 5010,’ I answered, rising and shaking him by the hand in parting; ‘that’s a mighty forlorn hope, because I’m pretty wide awake myself at this moment, and can’t be a part of your dream. The great pity is you didn’t try the insanity dodge.’

‘Tut!’ he answered. ‘That is the last resource of a weak mind.’

Ambrose Bierce

Curried Cow

My Aunt Patience, who tilled a small farm in the state of Michigan, had a favorite cow. This creature was not a good cow, nor a profitable one, for instead of devoting a part of her leisure to secretion of milk and production of veal she concentrated all her faculties on the study of kicking. She would kick all day and get up in the middle of the night to kick. She would kick at anything – hens, pigs, posts, loose stones, birds in the air and fish leaping out of the water; to this impartial and catholic-minded beef, all were equal – all similarly undeserving. Like old Timotheus, who ‘raised a mortal to the skies,’ was my Aunt Patience’s cow; though, in the words of a later poet than Dryden, she did it ‘more harder and more frequently.’ It was pleasing to see her open a passage for herself through a populous barnyard. She would flash out, right and left, first with one hind-leg and then with the other, and would sometimes, under favoring conditions, have a considerable number of domestic animals in the air at once.

Her kicks, too, were as admirable in quality as inexhaustible in quantity. They were incomparably superior to those of the untutored kine that had not made the art a life study – mere amateurs that kicked ‘by ear,’ as they say in music. I saw her once standing in the road, professedly fast asleep, and mechanically munching her cud with a sort of Sunday morning lassitude, as one munches one’s cud in a dream. Snouting about at her side, blissfully unconscious of impending danger and wrapped up in thoughts of his sweetheart, was a gigantic black hog – a hog of about the size and general appearance of a yearling rhinoceros. Suddenly, while I looked – without a visible movement on the part of the cow – with never a perceptible tremor of her frame, nor a lapse in the placid regularity of her chewing – that hog had gone away from there – had utterly taken his leave. But away toward the pale horizon a minute black speck was traversing the empyrean with the speed of a meteor, and in a moment had disappeared, without audible report, beyond the distant hills. It may have been that hog.

Currying cows is not, I think, a common practice, even in Michigan; but as this one had never needed milking, of course she had to be subjected to some equivalent form of persecution; and irritating her skin with a currycomb was thought as disagreeable an attention as a thoughtful affection could devise. At least she thought it so; though I suspect her mistress really meant it for the good creature’s temporal advantage. Anyhow my aunt always made it a condition to the employment of a farm-servant that he should curry the cow every morning; but after just enough trials to convince himself that it was not a sudden spasm, nor a mere local disturbance, the man would always give notice of an intention to quit, by pounding the beast half-dead with some foreign body and then limping home to his couch. I don’t know how many men the creature removed from my aunt’s employ in this way, but judging from the number of lame persons in that part of the country, I should say a good many; though some of the lameness may have been taken at second-hand from the original sufferers by their descendants, and some may have come by contagion.

I think my aunt’s was a faulty system of agriculture. It is true her farm labor cost her nothing, for the laborers all left her service before any salary had accrued; but as the cow’s fame spread abroad through the several States and Territories, it became increasingly difficult to obtain hands; and, after all, the favorite was imperfectly curried. It was currently remarked that the cow had kicked the farm to pieces – a rude metaphor, implying that the land was not properly cultivated, nor the buildings and fences kept in adequate repair.

It was useless to remonstrate with my aunt: she would concede everything, amending nothing. Her late husband had attempted to reform the abuse in this manner, and had had the argument all his own way until he had remonstrated himself into an early grave; and the funeral was delayed all day, until a fresh undertaker could be procured, the one originally engaged having confidingly undertaken to curry the cow at the request of the widow.

Since that time my Aunt Patience had not been in the matrimonial market; the love of that cow had usurped in her heart the place of a more natural and profitable affection. But when she saw her seeds unsown, her harvests ungarnered, her fences overtopped with rank brambles and her meadows gorgeous with the towering Canada thistle she thought it best to take a partner.

When it transpired that my Aunt Patience intended wedlock there was intense popular excitement. Every adult single male became at once a marrying man. The criminal statistics of Badger county show that in that single year more marriages occurred than in any decade before or since. But none of them was my aunt’s. Men married their cooks, their laundresses, their deceased wives’ mothers, their enemies’ sisters – married whomsoever would wed; and any man who, by fair means or courtship, could not obtain a wife went before a justice of the peace and made an affidavit that he had some wives in Indiana. Such was the fear of being married alive by my Aunt Patience.

Now, where my aunt’s affection was concerned she was, as the reader will have already surmised, a rather determined woman; and the extraordinary marrying epidemic having left but one eligible male in all that county, she had set her heart upon that one eligible male; then she went and carted him to her home. He turned out to be a long Methodist parson, named Huggins.

Aside from his unconscionable length, the Rev. Berosus Huggins was not so bad a fellow, and was nobody’s fool. He was, I suppose, the most ill-favored mortal, however, in the whole northern half of America – thin, angular, cadaverous of visage and solemn out of all reason. He commonly wore a low-crowned black hat, set so far down upon his head as partly to eclipse his eyes and wholly obscure the ample glory of his ears. The only other visible article of his attire (except a brace of wrinkled cowskin boots, by which the word ‘polish’ would have been considered the meaningless fragment of a lost language) was a tight-fitting black frock-coat, preternaturally long in the waist, the skirts of which fell about his heels, sopping up the dew. This he always wore snugly buttoned from the throat downward. In this attire he cut a tolerably spectral figure. His aspect was so conspicuously unnatural and inhuman that whenever he went into a cornfield, the predatory crows would temporarily forsake their business to settle upon him in swarms, fighting for the best seats upon his person, by way of testifying their contempt for the weak inventions of the husbandman.

The day after the wedding my Aunt Patience summoned the Rev. Berosus to the council chamber, and uttered her mind to the following intent:

‘Now, Huggy, dear, I’ll tell you what there is to do about the place. First, you must repair all the fences, clearing out the weeds and repressing the brambles with a strong hand. Then you will have to exterminate the Canadian thistles, mend the wagon, rig up a plow or two, and get things into ship-shape generally. This will keep you out of mischief for the better part of two years; of course you will have to give up preaching, for the present. As soon as you have – O! I forgot poor Phœbe. She’ —

‘Mrs. Huggins,’ interrupted her solemn spouse, ‘I shall hope to be the means, under Providence, of effecting all needful reforms in the husbandry of this farm. But the sister you mention (I trust she is not of the world’s people) – have I the pleasure of knowing her? The name, indeed, sounds familiar, but’ —

‘Not know Phœbe!’ cried my aunt, with unfeigned astonishment; ‘I thought everybody in Badger knew Phœbe. Why, you will have to scratch her legs, every blessed morning of your natural life!’

‘I assure you, madam,’ rejoined the Rev. Berosus, with dignity, ‘it would yield me a hallowed pleasure to minister to the spiritual needs of sister Phœbe, to the extent of my feeble and unworthy ability; but, really, I fear the merely secular ministration of which you speak must be entrusted to abler and, I would respectfully suggest, female hands.’

‘Whyyy, youuu ooold, foooool!’ replied my aunt, spreading her eyes with unbounded amazement, ‘Phœbe is a cow!’

‘In that case,’ said the husband, with unruffled composure, ‘it will, of course, devolve upon me to see that her carnal welfare is properly attended to; and I shall be happy to bestow upon her legs such time as I may, without sin, snatch from my strife with Satan and the Canadian thistles.’

With that the Rev. Mr. Huggins crowded his hat upon his shoulders, pronounced a brief benediction upon his bride, and betook himself to the barn-yard.

Now, it is necessary to explain that he had known from the first who Phœbe was, and was familiar, from hearsay, with all her sinful traits. Moreover, he had already done himself the honor of making her a visit, remaining in the vicinity of her person, just out of range, for more than an hour and permitting her to survey him at her leisure from every point of the compass. In short, he and Phœbe had mutually reconnoitered and prepared for action.

Amongst the articles of comfort and luxury which went to make up the good parson’s dot, and which his wife had already caused to be conveyed to his new home, was a patent cast-iron pump, about seven feet high. This had been deposited near the barn-yard, preparatory to being set up on the planks above the barn-yard well. Mr. Huggins now sought out this invention and conveying it to its destination put it into position, screwing it firmly to the planks. He next divested himself of his long gaberdine and his hat, buttoning the former loosely about the pump, which it almost concealed, and hanging the latter upon the summit of the structure. The handle of the pump, when depressed, curved outwardly between the coat-skirts, singularly like a tail, but with this inconspicuous exception, any unprejudiced observer would have pronounced the thing Mr. Huggins, looking uncommonly well.

The preliminaries completed, the good man carefully closed the gate of the barnyard, knowing that as soon as Phœbe, who was campaigning in the kitchen garden, should note the precaution she would come and jump in to frustrate it, which eventually she did. Her master, meanwhile, had laid himself, coatless and hatless, along the outside of the close board fence, where he put in the time pleasantly, catching his death of cold and peering through a knot-hole.

At first, and for some time, the animal pretended not to see the figure on the platform. Indeed she had turned her back upon it directly she arrived, affecting a light sleep. Finding that this stratagem did not achieve the success that she had expected, she abandoned it and stood for several minutes irresolute, munching her cud in a half-hearted way, but obviously thinking very hard. Then she began nosing along the ground as if wholly absorbed in a search for something that she had lost, tacking about hither and thither, but all the time drawing nearer to the object of her wicked intention. Arrived within speaking distance, she stood for a little while confronting the fraudful figure, then put out her nose toward it, as if to be caressed, trying to create the impression that fondling and dalliance were more to her than wealth, power and the plaudits of the populace – that she had been accustomed to them all her sweet young life and could not get on without them. Then she approached a little nearer, as if to shake hands, all the while maintaining the most amiable expression of countenance and executing all manner of seductive nods and winks and smiles. Suddenly she wheeled about and with the rapidity of lightning dealt out a terrible kick – a kick of inconceivable force and fury, comparable to nothing in nature but a stroke of paralysis out of a clear sky!

The effect was magical! Cows kick, not backward but sidewise. The impact which was intended to project the counterfeit theologian into the middle of the succeeding conference week reacted upon the animal herself, and it and the pain together set her spinning like a top. Such was the velocity of her revolution that she looked like a dim, circular cow, surrounded by a continuous ring like that of the planet Saturn – the white tuft at the extremity of her sweeping tail! Presently, as the sustaining centrifugal force lessened and failed, she began to sway and wabble from side to side, and finally, toppling over on her side, rolled convulsively on her back and lay motionless with all her feet in the air, honestly believing that the world had somehow got atop of her and she was supporting it at a great sacrifice of personal comfort. Then she fainted.

How long she lay unconscious she knew not, but at last she unclosed her eyes, and catching sight of the open door of her stall, ‘more sweet than all the landscape smiling near,’ she struggled up, stood wavering upon three legs, rubbed her eyes, and was visibly bewildered as to the points of the compass. Observing the iron clergyman standing fast by its faith, she threw it a look of grieved reproach and hobbled heart-broken into her humble habitation, a subjugated cow.

For several weeks Phœbe’s right hind leg was swollen to a monstrous growth, but by a season of judicious nursing she was ‘brought round all right,’ as her sympathetic and puzzled mistress phrased it, or ‘made whole,’ as the reticent man of God preferred to say. She was now as tractable and inoffensive ‘in her daily walk and conversation’ (Huggins) as a little child. Her new master used to take her ailing leg trustfully into his lap, and for that matter, might have taken it into his mouth if he had so desired. Her entire character appeared to be radically changed – so altered that one day my Aunt Patience, who, fondly as she loved her, had never before so much as ventured to touch the hem of her garment, as it were, went confidently up to her to soothe her with a pan of turnips. Gad! how thinly she spread out that good old lady upon the face of an adjacent stone wall! You could not have done it so evenly with a trowel.

The Widower Turmore

The circumstances under which Joram Turmore became a widower have never been popularly understood. I know them, naturally, for I am Joram Turmore; and my wife, the late Elizabeth Mary Turmore, is by no means ignorant of them; but although she doubtless relates them, yet they remain a secret, for not a soul has ever believed her.

When I married Elizabeth Mary Johnin she was very wealthy, otherwise I could hardly have afforded to marry, for I had not a cent, and Heaven had not put into my heart any intention to earn one. I held the Professorship of Cats in the University of Graymaulkin, and scholastic pursuits had unfitted me for the heat and burden of business or labor. Moreover, I could not forget that I was a Turmore – a member of a family whose motto from the time of William of Normandy has been Laborare est errare. The only known infraction of the sacred family tradition occurred when Sir Aldebaran Turmore de Peters-Turmore, an illustrious master burglar of the seventeenth century, personally assisted at a difficult operation undertaken by some of his workmen. That blot upon our escutcheon cannot be contemplated without the most poignant mortification.

My incumbency of the Chair of Cats in the Graymaulkin University had not, of course, been marked by any instance of mean industry. There had never, at any one time, been more than two students of the Noble Science, and by merely repeating the manuscript lectures of my predecessor, which I had found among his effects (he died at sea on his way to Malta) I could sufficiently sate their famine for knowledge without really earning even the distinction which served in place of salary.

Naturally, under the straitened circumstances, I regarded Elizabeth Mary as a kind of special Providence. She unwisely refused to share her fortune with me, but for that I cared nothing; for, although by the laws of that country (as is well known) a wife has control of her separate property during her life, it passes to the husband at her death; nor can she dispose of it otherwise by will. The mortality among wives is considerable, but not excessive.

Having married Elizabeth Mary and, as it were, ennobled her by making her a Turmore, I felt that the manner of her death ought, in some sense, to match her social distinction. If I should remove her by any of the ordinary marital methods I should incur a just reproach, as one destitute of a proper family pride. Yet I could not hit upon a suitable plan.

In this emergency I decided to consult the Turmore archives, a priceless collection of documents, comprising the records of the family from the time of its founder in the seventh century of our era. I knew that among these sacred muniments I should find detailed accounts of all the principal murders committed by my sainted ancestors for forty generations. From that mass of papers I could hardly fail to derive the most valuable suggestions.

The collection contained also most interesting relics. There were patents of nobility granted to my forefathers for daring and ingenious removals of pretenders to thrones, or occupants of them; stars, crosses and other decorations attesting services of the most secret and unmentionable character; miscellaneous gifts from the world’s greatest conspirators, representing an intrinsic money value beyond computation. There were robes, jewels, swords of honor, and every kind of ‘testimonials of esteem’; a king’s skull fashioned into a wine cup; the title deeds to vast estates, long alienated by confiscation, sale, or abandonment; an illuminated breviary that had belonged to Sir Aldebaran Turmore de Peters-Turmore of accursed memory; embalmed ears of several of the family’s most renowned enemies; the small intestine of a certain unworthy Italian statesman inimical to Turmores, which, twisted into a jumping rope, had served the youth of six kindred generations – mementoes and souvenirs precious beyond the appraisals of imagination, but by the sacred mandates of tradition and sentiment forever inalienable by sale or gift.

As the head of the family, I was custodian of all these priceless heirlooms, and for their safe keeping had constructed in the basement of my dwelling a strong-room of massive masonry, whose solid stone walls and single iron door could defy alike the earthquake’s shock, the tireless assaults of Time, and Cupidity’s unholy hand.

To this thesaurus of the soul, redolent of sentiment and tenderness, and rich in suggestions of crime, I now repaired for hints upon assassination. To my unspeakable astonishment and grief I found it empty! Every shelf, every chest, every coffer had been rifled. Of that unique and incomparable collection not a vestige remained! Yet I proved that until I had myself unlocked the massive metal door, not a bolt nor bar had been disturbed; the seals upon the lock had been intact.

I passed the night in alternate lamentation and research, equally fruitless, the mystery was impenetrable to conjecture, the pain invincible to balm. But never once throughout that dreadful night did my firm spirit relinquish its high design against Elizabeth Mary, and daybreak found me more resolute than before to harvest the fruits of my marriage. My great loss seemed but to bring me into nearer spiritual relations with my dead ancestors, and to lay upon me a new and more inevitable obedience to the suasion that spoke in every globule of my blood.

My plan of action was soon formed, and procuring a stout cord I entered my wife’s bedroom finding her, as I expected, in a sound sleep. Before she was awake, I had her bound fast, hand and foot. She was greatly surprised and pained, but heedless of her remonstrances, delivered in a high key, I carried her into the now rifled strong-room, which I had never suffered her to enter, and of whose treasures I had not apprised her. Seating her, still bound, in an angle of the wall, I passed the next two days and nights in conveying bricks and mortar to the spot, and on the morning of the third day had her securely walled in, from floor to ceiling. All this time I gave no further heed to her pleas for mercy than (on her assurance of non-resistance, which I am bound to say she honorably observed) to grant her the freedom of her limbs. The space allowed her was about four feet by six. As I inserted the last bricks of the top course, in contact with the ceiling of the strong-room, she bade me farewell with what I deemed the composure of despair, and I rested from my work, feeling that I had faithfully observed the traditions of an ancient and illustrious family. My only bitter reflection, so far as my own conduct was concerned, came of the consciousness that in the performance of my design I had labored; but this no living soul would ever know.

After a night’s rest I went to the Judge of the Court of Successions and Inheritances and made a true and sworn relation of all that I had done – except that I ascribed to a servant the manual labor of building the wall. His honor appointed a court commissioner, who made a careful examination of the work, and upon his report Elizabeth Mary Turmore was, at the end of a week, formally pronounced dead. By due process of law I was put into possession of her estate, and although this was not by hundreds of thousands of dollars as valuable as my lost treasures, it raised me from poverty to affluence and brought me the respect of the great and good.

Some six months after these events strange rumors reached me that the ghost of my deceased wife had been seen in several places about the country, but always at a considerable distance from Graymaulkin. These rumors, which I was unable to trace to any authentic source, differed widely in many particulars, but were alike in ascribing to the apparition a certain high degree of apparent worldly prosperity combined with an audacity most uncommon in ghosts. Not only was the spirit attired in most costly raiment, but it walked at noonday, and even drove! I was inexpressibly annoyed by these reports, and thinking there might be something more than superstition in the popular belief that only the spirits of the unburied dead still walk the earth, I took some workmen equipped with picks and crowbars into the now long unentered strong-room, and ordered them to demolish the brick wall that I had built about the partner of my joys. I was resolved to give the body of Elizabeth Mary such burial as I thought her immortal part might be willing to accept as an equivalent to the privilege of ranging at will among the haunts of the living.

In a few minutes we had broken down the wall and, thrusting a lamp through the breach, I looked in. Nothing! Not a bone, not a lock of hair, not a shred of clothing—the narrow space which, upon my affidavit, had been legally declared to hold all that was mortal of the late Mrs. Turmore was absolutely empty! This amazing disclosure, coming upon a mind already overwrought with too much of mystery and excitement, was more than I could bear. I shrieked aloud and fell in a fit. For months afterward I lay between life and death, fevered and delirious; nor did I recover until my physician had had the providence to take a case of valuable jewels from my safe and leave the country.

The next summer I had occasion to visit my wine cellar, in one corner of which I had built the now long disused strong-room. In moving a cask of Madeira I struck it with considerable force against the partition wall, and was surprised to observe that it displaced two large square stones forming a part of the wall.

Applying my hands to these, I easily pushed them out entirely, and looking through saw that they had fallen into the niche in which I had immured my lamented wife; facing the opening which their fall left, and at a distance of four feet, was the brickwork which my own hands had made for that unfortunate gentlewoman’s restraint. At this significant revelation I began a search of the wine cellar. Behind a row of casks I found four historically interesting but intrinsically valueless objects:

First, the mildewed remains of a ducal robe of state (Florentine) of the eleventh century; second, an illuminated vellum breviary with the name of Sir Aldebaran Turmore de Peters-Turmore inscribed in colors on the title page; third, a human skull fashioned into a drinking cup and deeply stained with wine; fourth, the iron cross of a Knight Commander of the Imperial Austrian Order of Assassins by Poison.

That was all – not an object having commercial value, no papers – nothing. But this was enough to clear up the mystery of the strong-room. My wife had early divined the existence and purpose of that apartment, and with the skill amounting to genius had effected an entrance by loosening the two stones in the wall.

Through that opening she had at several times abstracted the entire collection, which doubtless she had succeeded in converting into coin of the realm. When with an unconscious justice which deprives me of all satisfaction in the memory I decided to build her into the wall, by some malign fatality I selected that part of it in which were these movable stones, and doubtless before I had fairly finished my bricklaying she had removed them and, slipping through into the wine cellar, replaced them as they were originally laid. From the cellar she had easily escaped unobserved, to enjoy her infamous gains in distant parts. I have endeavored to procure a warrant, but the Lord High Baron of the Court of Indictment and Conviction reminds me that she is legally dead, and says my only course is to go before the Master in Cadavery and move for a writ of disinterment and constructive revival. So it looks as if I must suffer without redress this great wrong at the hands of a woman devoid alike of principle and shame.

Bret Harte

The Stolen Cigar Case

I found Hemlock Jones in the old Brook Street lodgings, musing before the fire. With the freedom of an old friend I at once threw myself in my usual familiar attitude at his feet, and gently caressed his boot. I was induced to do this for two reasons: one, that it enabled me to get a good look at his bent, concentrated face, and the other, that it seemed to indicate my reverence for his superhuman insight. So absorbed was he even then, in tracking some mysterious clue, that he did not seem to notice me. But therein I was wrong – as I always was in my attempt to understand that powerful intellect.

‘It is raining,’ he said, without lifting his head.

‘You have been out, then?’ I said quickly.

‘No. But I see that your umbrella is wet, and that your overcoat has drops of water on it.’

I sat aghast at his penetration. After a pause he said carelessly, as if dismissing the subject: ‘Besides, I hear the rain on the window. Listen.’

I listened. I could scarcely credit my ears, but there was the soft pattering of drops on the panes. It was evident there was no deceiving this man!

‘Have you been busy lately?’ I asked, changing the subject. ‘What new problem – given up by Scotland Yard as inscrutable – has occupied that gigantic intellect?’

He drew back his foot slightly, and seemed to hesitate ere he returned it to its original position. Then he answered wearily: ‘Mere trifles – nothing to speak of. The Prince Kupoli has been here to get my advice regarding the disappearance of certain rubies from the Kremlin; the Rajah of Pootibad, after vainly beheading his entire bodyguard, has been obliged to seek my assistance to recover a jeweled sword. The Grand Duchess of Pretzel-Brauntswig is desirous of discovering where her husband was on the night of February 14; and last night’ – he lowered his voice slightly – ‘a lodger in this very house, meeting me on the stairs, wanted to know why they didn’t answer his bell.’

I could not help smiling – until I saw a frown gathering on his inscrutable forehead.

‘Pray remember,’ he said coldly, ‘that it was through such an apparently trivial question that I found out Why Paul Ferroll Killed His Wife, and What Happened to Jones!’

I became dumb at once. He paused for a moment, and then suddenly changing back to his usual pitiless, analytical style, he said: ‘When I say these are trifles, they are so in comparison to an affair that is now before me. A crime has been committed, – and, singularly enough, against myself. You start,’ he said. ‘You wonder who would have dared to attempt it. So did I; nevertheless, it has been done. I have been ROBBED!’

‘YOU robbed! You, Hemlock Jones, the Terror of Peculators!’ I gasped in amazement, arising and gripping the table as I faced him.

‘Yes! Listen. I would confess it to no other. But YOU who have followed my career, who know my methods; you, for whom I have partly lifted the veil that conceals my plans from ordinary humanity, – you, who have for years rapturously accepted my confidences, passionately admired my inductions and inferences, placed yourself at my beck and call, become my slave, groveled at my feet, given up your practice except those few unremunerative and rapidly decreasing patients to whom, in moments of abstraction over MY problems, you have administered strychnine for quinine and arsenic for Epsom salts; you, who have sacrificed anything and everybody to me, – YOU I make my confidant!’

I arose and embraced him warmly, yet he was already so engrossed in thought that at the same moment he mechanically placed his hand upon his watch chain as if to consult the time. ‘Sit down,’ he said. ‘Have a cigar?’

‘I have given up cigar smoking,’ I said.

‘Why?’ he asked.

I hesitated, and perhaps colored. I had really given it up because, with my diminished practice, it was too expensive. I could afford only a pipe. ‘I prefer a pipe,’ I said laughingly. ‘But tell me of this robbery. What have you lost?’

He arose, and planting himself before the fire with his hands under his coattails, looked down upon me reflectively for a moment. ‘Do you remember the cigar case presented to me by the Turkish Ambassador for discovering the missing favorite of the Grand Vizier in the fifth chorus girl at the Hilarity Theatre? It was that one. I mean the cigar case. It was incrusted with diamonds.’

‘And the largest one had been supplanted by paste,’ I said.

‘Ah,’ he said, with a reflective smile, ‘you know that?’

‘You told me yourself. I remember considering it a proof of your extraordinary perception. But, by Jove, you don’t mean to say you have lost it?’

He was silent for a moment. ‘No; it has been stolen, it is true, but I shall still find it. And by myself alone! In your profession, my dear fellow, when a member is seriously ill, he does not prescribe for himself, but calls in a brother doctor. Therein we differ. I shall take this matter in my own hands.’

‘And where could you find better?’ I said enthusiastically. ‘I should say the cigar case is as good as recovered already.’

‘I shall remind you of that again,’ he said lightly. ‘And now, to show you my confidence in your judgment, in spite of my determination to pursue this alone, I am willing to listen to any suggestions from you.’

He drew a memorandum book from his pocket and, with a grave smile, took up his pencil.

I could scarcely believe my senses. He, the great Hemlock Jones, accepting suggestions from a humble individual like myself! I kissed his hand reverently, and began in a joyous tone:

‘First, I should advertise, offering a reward; I should give the same intimation in hand-bills, distributed at the ‘pubs’ and the pastry-cooks’. I should next visit the different pawnbrokers; I should give notice at the police station. I should examine the servants. I should thoroughly search the house and my own pockets. I speak relatively,’ I added, with a laugh. ‘Of course I mean YOUR own.’

He gravely made an entry of these details.

‘Perhaps,’ I added, ‘you have already done this?’

‘Perhaps,’ he returned enigmatically. ‘Now, my dear friend,’ he continued, putting the note-book in his pocket and rising, ‘would you excuse me for a few moments? Make yourself perfectly at home until I return; there may be some things,’ he added with a sweep of his hand toward his heterogeneously filled shelves, ‘that may interest you and while away the time. There are pipes and tobacco in that corner.’

Then nodding to me with the same inscrutable face he left the room. I was too well accustomed to his methods to think much of his unceremonious withdrawal, and made no doubt he was off to investigate some clue which had suddenly occurred to his active intelligence.

Left to myself I cast a cursory glance over his shelves. There were a number of small glass jars containing earthy substances, labeled ‘Pavement and Road Sweepings,’ from the principal thoroughfares and suburbs of London, with the sub-directions ‘for identifying foot-tracks.’ There were several other jars, labeled ‘Fluff from Omnibus and Road Car Seats,’ ‘Cocoanut Fibre and Rope Strands from Mattings in Public Places,’ ‘Cigarette Stumps and Match Ends from Floor of Palace Theatre, Row A, 1 to 50.’ Everywhere were evidences of this wonderful man’s system and perspicacity.

I was thus engaged when I heard the slight creaking of a door, and I looked up as a stranger entered. He was a rough-looking man, with a shabby overcoat and a still more disreputable muffler around his throat and the lower part of his face. Considerably annoyed at his intrusion, I turned upon him rather sharply, when, with a mumbled, growling apology for mistaking the room, he shuffled out again and closed the door. I followed him quickly to the landing and saw that he disappeared down the stairs. With my mind full of the robbery, the incident made a singular impression upon me. I knew my friend’s habit of hasty absences from his room in his moments of deep inspiration; it was only too probable that, with his powerful intellect and magnificent perceptive genius concentrated on one subject, he should be careless of his own belongings, and no doubt even forget to take the ordinary precaution of locking up his drawers. I tried one or two and found that I was right, although for some reason I was unable to open one to its fullest extent. The handles were sticky, as if some one had opened them with dirty fingers. Knowing Hemlock’s fastidious cleanliness, I resolved to inform him of this circumstance, but I forgot it, alas! until – but I am anticipating my story.

His absence was strangely prolonged. I at last seated myself by the fire, and lulled by warmth and the patter of the rain on the window, I fell asleep. I may have dreamt, for during my sleep I had a vague semi-consciousness as of hands being softly pressed on my pockets – no doubt induced by the story of the robbery. When I came fully to my senses, I found Hemlock Jones sitting on the other side of the hearth, his deeply concentrated gaze fixed on the fire.

‘I found you so comfortably asleep that I could not bear to awaken you,’ he said, with a smile.

I rubbed my eyes. ‘And what news?’ I asked. ‘How have you succeeded?’

‘Better than I expected,’ he said, ‘and I think,’ he added, tapping his note-book, ‘I owe much to YOU.’

Deeply gratified, I awaited more. But in vain. I ought to have remembered that in his moods Hemlock Jones was reticence itself. I told him simply of the strange intrusion, but he only laughed.

Later, when I arose to go, he looked at me playfully. ‘If you were a married man,’ he said, ‘I would advise you not to go home until you had brushed your sleeve. There are a few short brown sealskin hairs on the inner side of your forearm, just where they would have adhered if your arm had encircled a seal-skin coat with some pressure!’

‘For once you are at fault,’ I said triumphantly; ‘the hair is my own, as you will perceive; I have just had it cut at the hairdresser’s, and no doubt this arm projected beyond the apron.’

He frowned slightly, yet, nevertheless, on my turning to go he embraced me warmly – a rare exhibition in that man of ice. He even helped me on with my overcoat and pulled out and smoothed down the flaps of my pockets. He was particular, too, in fitting my arm in my overcoat sleeve, shaking the sleeve down from the armhole to the cuff with his deft fingers. ‘Come again soon!’ he said, clapping me on the back.

‘At any and all times,’ I said enthusiastically; ‘I only ask ten minutes twice a day to eat a crust at my office, and four hours’ sleep at night, and the rest of my time is devoted to you always, as you know.’

‘It is indeed,’ he said, with his impenetrable smile.

Nevertheless, I did not find him at home when I next called. One afternoon, when nearing my own home, I met him in one of his favorite disguises, – a long blue swallow-tailed coat, striped cotton trousers, large turn-over collar, blacked face, and white hat, carrying a tambourine. Of course to others the disguise was perfect, although it was known to myself, and I passed him – according to an old understanding between us – without the slightest recognition, trusting to a later explanation. At another time, as I was making a professional visit to the wife of a publican at the East End, I saw him, in the disguise of a broken-down artisan, looking into the window of an adjacent pawnshop. I was delighted to see that he was evidently following my suggestions, and in my joy I ventured to tip him a wink; it was abstractedly returned.

Two days later I received a note appointing a meeting at his lodgings that night. That meeting, alas! was the one memorable occurrence of my life, and the last meeting I ever had with Hemlock Jones! I will try to set it down calmly, though my pulses still throb with the recollection of it.

I found him standing before the fire, with that look upon his face which I had seen only once or twice in our acquaintance – a look which I may call an absolute concatenation of inductive and deductive ratiocination – from which all that was human, tender, or sympathetic was absolutely discharged. He was simply an icy algebraic symbol! Indeed, his whole being was concentrated to that extent that his clothes fitted loosely, and his head was absolutely so much reduced in size by his mental compression that his hat tipped back from his forehead and literally hung on his massive ears.

After I had entered he locked the doors, fastened the windows, and even placed a chair before the chimney. As I watched these significant precautions with absorbing interest, he suddenly drew a revolver and, presenting it to my temple, said in low, icy tones:

‘Hand over that cigar case!’

Even in my bewilderment my reply was truthful, spontaneous, and involuntary. ‘I haven’t got it,’ I said.

He smiled bitterly, and threw down his revolver. ‘I expected that reply! Then let me now confront you with something more awful, more deadly, more relentless and convincing than that mere lethal weapon, – the damning inductive and deductive proofs of your guilt!’ He drew from his pocket a roll of paper and a note-book.

‘But surely,’ I gasped, ‘you are joking! You could not for a moment believe’ —

‘Silence! Sit down!’ I obeyed.

‘You have condemned yourself,’ he went on pitilessly. ‘Condemned yourself on my processes, – processes familiar to you, applauded by you, accepted by you for years! We will go back to the time when you first saw the cigar case. Your expressions,’ he said in cold, deliberate tones, consulting his paper, ‘were, “How beautiful! I wish it were mine.” This was your first step in crime – and my first indication. From “I WISH it were mine” to “I WILL have it mine,” and the mere detail, “HOW CAN I make it mine?” the advance was obvious. Silence! But as in my methods it was necessary that there should be an overwhelming inducement to the crime, that unholy admiration of yours for the mere trinket itself was not enough. You are a smoker of cigars.’

‘But,’ I burst out passionately, ‘I told you I had given up smoking cigars.’

‘Fool!’ he said coldly, ‘that is the SECOND time you have committed yourself. Of course you told me! What more natural than for you to blazon forth that prepared and unsolicited statement to PREVENT accusation. Yet, as I said before, even that wretched attempt to cover up your tracks was not enough. I still had to find that overwhelming, impelling motive necessary to affect a man like you. That motive I found in the strongest of all impulses – Love, I suppose you would call it,’ he added bitterly, ‘that night you called! You had brought the most conclusive proofs of it on your sleeve.’

‘But —’ I almost screamed.

‘Silence!’ he thundered. ‘I know what you would say. You would say that even if you had embraced some Young Person in a sealskin coat, what had that to do with the robbery? Let me tell you, then, that that sealskin coat represented the quality and character of your fatal entanglement! You bartered your honor for it – that stolen cigar case was the purchaser of the sealskin coat!

‘Silence! Having thoroughly established your motive, I now proceed to the commission of the crime itself. Ordinary people would have begun with that – with an attempt to discover the whereabouts of the missing object. These are not MY methods.’

So overpowering was his penetration that, although I knew myself innocent, I licked my lips with avidity to hear the further details of this lucid exposition of my crime.

‘You committed that theft the night I showed you the cigar case, and after I had carelessly thrown it in that drawer. You were sitting in that chair, and I had arisen to take something from that shelf. In that instant you secured your booty without rising. Silence! Do you remember when I helped you on with your overcoat the other night? I was particular about fitting your arm in. While doing so I measured your arm with a spring tape measure, from the shoulder to the cuff. A later visit to your tailor confirmed that measurement. It proved to be THE EXACT DISTANCE BETWEEN YOUR CHAIR AND THAT DRAWER!’

I sat stunned.

‘The rest are mere corroborative details! You were again tampering with the drawer when I discovered you doing so! Do not start! The stranger that blundered into the room with a muffler on – was myself! More, I had placed a little soap on the drawer handles when I purposely left you alone. The soap was on your hand when I shook it at parting. I softly felt your pockets, when you were asleep, for further developments. I embraced you when you left – that I might feel if you had the cigar case or any other articles hidden on your body. This confirmed me in the belief that you had already disposed of it in the manner and for the purpose I have shown you. As I still believed you capable of remorse and confession, I twice allowed you to see I was on your track: once in the garb of an itinerant negro minstrel, and the second time as a workman looking in the window of the pawnshop where you pledged your booty.’

‘But,’ I burst out, ‘if you had asked the pawnbroker, you would have seen how unjust’ —

‘Fool!’ he hissed, ‘that was one of YOUR suggestions – to search the pawnshops! Do you suppose I followed any of your suggestions, the suggestions of the thief? On the contrary, they told me what to avoid.’

‘And I suppose,’ I said bitterly, ‘you have not even searched your drawer?’

‘No,’ he said calmly.

I was for the first time really vexed. I went to the nearest drawer and pulled it out sharply. It stuck as it had before, leaving a part of the drawer unopened. By working it, however, I discovered that it was impeded by some obstacle that had slipped to the upper part of the drawer, and held it firmly fast. Inserting my hand, I pulled out the impeding object. It was the missing cigar case! I turned to him with a cry of joy.

But I was appalled at his expression. A look of contempt was now added to his acute, penetrating gaze. ‘I have been mistaken,’ he said slowly; ‘I had not allowed for your weakness and cowardice! I thought too highly of you even in your guilt! But I see now why you tampered with that drawer the other night. By some inexplicable means – possibly another theft – you took the cigar case out of pawn and, like a whipped hound, restored it to me in this feeble, clumsy fashion. You thought to deceive me, Hemlock Jones! More, you thought to destroy my infallibility. Go! I give you your liberty. I shall not summon the three policemen who wait in the adjoining room – but out of my sight forever!’

As I stood once more dazed and petrified, he took me firmly by the ear and led me into the hall, closing the door behind him. This reopened presently, wide enough to permit him to thrust out my hat, overcoat, umbrella, and overshoes, and then closed against me forever!

I never saw him again. I am bound to say, however, that thereafter my business increased, I recovered much of my old practice, and a few of my patients recovered also. I became rich. I had a brougham and a house in the West End. But I often wondered, pondering on that wonderful man’s penetration and insight, if, in some lapse of consciousness, I had not really stolen his cigar case!

Miss Mix

BY CH – L – TTE BR – NTE.

Chapter I

My earliest impressions are of a huge, misshapen rock, against which the hoarse waves beat unceasingly. On this rock three pelicans are standing in a defiant attitude. A dark sky lowers in the background, while two sea-gulls and a gigantic cormorant eye with extreme disfavor the floating corpse of a drowned woman in the foreground. A few bracelets, coral necklaces, and other articles of jewelry, scattered around loosely, complete this remarkable picture.

It is one which, in some vague, unconscious way, symbolizes, to my fancy, the character of a man. I have never been able to explain exactly why. I think I must have seen the picture in some illustrated volume, when a baby, or my mother may have dreamed it before I was born.

As a child I was not handsome. When I consulted the triangular bit of looking-glass which I always carried with me, it showed a pale, sandy, and freckled face, shaded by locks like the color of seaweed when the sun strikes it in deep water. My eyes were said to be indistinctive; they were a faint, ashen gray; but above them rose – my only beauty – a high, massive, domelike forehead, with polished temples, like door-knobs of the purest porcelain.

Our family was a family of governesses. My mother had been one, and my sisters had the same occupation. Consequently, when, at the age of thirteen, my eldest sister handed me the advertisement of Mr. Rawjester, clipped from that day’s ‘Times,’ I accepted it as my destiny. Nevertheless, a mysterious presentiment of an indefinite future haunted me in my dreams that night, as I lay upon my little snow-white bed. The next morning, with two bandboxes tied up in silk handkerchiefs, and a hair trunk, I turned my back upon Minerva Cottage forever.

Chapter II

Blunderbore Hall, the seat of James Rawjester, Esq., was encompassed by dark pines and funereal hemlocks on all sides. The wind sang weirdly in the turrets and moaned through the long-drawn avenues of the park. As I approached the house I saw several mysterious figures flit before the windows, and a yell of demoniac laughter answered my summons at the

bell. While I strove to repress my gloomy forebodings, the housekeeper, a timid, scared-looking old woman, showed me into the library.

I entered, overcome with conflicting emotions. I was dressed in a narrow gown of dark serge, trimmed with black bugles. A thick green shawl was pinned across my breast. My hands were encased with black half-mittens worked with steel beads; on my feet were large pattens, originally the property of my deceased grandmother. I carried a blue cotton umbrella. As I passed before a mirror, I could not help glancing at it, nor could I disguise from myself the fact that I was not handsome.

Drawing a chair into a recess, I sat down with folded hands, calmly awaiting the arrival of my master. Once or twice a fearful yell rang through the house, or the rattling of chains, and curses uttered in a deep, manly voice, broke upon the oppressive stillness. I began to feel my soul rising with the emergency of the moment.

‘You look alarmed, miss. You don’t hear anything, my dear, do you?’ asked the housekeeper nervously.

‘Nothing whatever,’ I remarked calmly, as a terrific scream, followed by the dragging of chairs and tables in the room above, drowned for a moment my reply. It is the silence, on the contrary, which has made me foolishly nervous.’

The housekeeper looked at me approvingly, and instantly made some tea for me.

I drank seven cups; as I was beginning the eighth, I heard a crash, and the next moment a man leaped into the room through the broken window.

Chapter III

The crash startled me from my self-control. The housekeeper bent toward me and whispered: —

‘Don’t be excited. It’s Mr. Rawjester, – he prefers to come in sometimes in this way. It’s his playfulness, ha! ha! ha!’

‘I perceive,’ I said calmly. ‘It’s the unfettered impulse of a lofty soul breaking the tyrannizing bonds of custom.’ And I turned toward him.

He had never once looked at me. He stood with his back to the fire, which set off the herculean breadth of his shoulders. His face was dark and expressive; his under jaw squarely formed, and remarkably heavy. was struck with his remarkable likeness to a Gorilla.

As he absently tied the poker into hard knots with his nervous fingers, I watched him with some interest. Suddenly he turned toward me: —

‘Do you think I’m handsome, young woman?’

‘Not classically beautiful,’ I returned calmly; ‘but you have, if I may so express myself, an abstract manliness, – a sincere and wholesome barbarity which, involving as it does the naturalness —’ But I stopped, for he yawned at that moment, – an action which singularly developed the immense breadth of his lower jaw, – and I saw he had forgotten me. Presently he turned to the housekeeper: —

‘Leave us.’

The old woman withdrew with a courtesy.

Mr. Rawjester deliberately turned his back upon me and remained silent for twenty minutes. I drew my shawl the more closely around my shoulders and closed my eyes.

‘You are the governess?’ at length he said.

‘I am, sir.’

‘A creature who teaches geography, arithmetic, and the use of the globes – ha! – a wretched remnant of femininity, – a skimp pattern of girlhood with a premature flavor of tea-leaves and morality. Ugh!’

I bowed my head silently.

‘Listen to me, girl!’ he said sternly; ‘this child you have come to teach – my ward – is not legitimate. She is the offspring of my mistress, – a common harlot. Ah! Miss Mix, what do you think of me now?’

‘I admire,’ I replied calmly, ‘your sincerity. A mawkish regard for delicacy might have kept this disclosure to yourself. I only recognize in your frankness that perfect community of thought and sentiment which should exist between original natures.’

I looked up; he had already forgotten my presence, and was engaged in pulling off his boots and coat. This done, he sank down in an arm-chair before the fire, and ran the poker wearily through his hair.

I could not help pitying him.

The wind howled dismally without, and the rain beat furiously against the windows. I crept toward him and seated myself on a low stool beside his chair.

Presently he turned, without seeing me, and placed his foot absently in my lap. I affected not to notice it. But he started and looked down.

‘You here yet – Carrothead? Ah, I forgot. Do you speak French?’

‘Oui, Monsieur.’

‘Taisez-vous!’ he said sharply, with singular purity of accent. I complied. The wind moaned fearfully in the chimney, and the light burned dimly. I shuddered in spite of myself. ‘Ah, you tremble, girl!’

‘It is a fearful night.’

‘Fearful! Call you this fearful, ha! ha! ha! Look! you wretched little atom, look!’ and he dashed forward, and, leaping out of the window, stood like a statue in the pelting storm, with folded arms. He did not stay long, but in a few minutes returned by way of the hall chimney. I saw from the way that he wiped his feet on my dress that he had again forgotten my presence.

‘You are a governess. What can you teach?’ he asked, suddenly and fiercely thrusting his face in mine.

‘Manners!’ I replied, calmly.

‘Ha! teach ME!’

‘You mistake yourself,’ I said, adjusting my mittens. ‘Your manners require not the artificial restraint of society. You are radically polite; this impetuosity and ferociousness is simply the sincerity which is the basis of a proper deportment. Your instincts are moral; your better nature, I see, is religious. As St. Paul justly remarks – see chap. 6, 8, 9, and 10 —’

He seized a heavy candlestick, and threw it at me. I dodged it submissively but firmly.

‘Excuse me,’ he remarked, as his under jaw slowly relaxed. ‘Excuse me, Miss Mix – but I can’t stand St. Paul! Enough – you are engaged.’

Chapter IV

I followed the housekeeper as she led the way timidly to my room. As we passed into a dark hall in the wing, I noticed that it was closed by an iron gate with a grating. Three of the doors on the corridor were likewise grated. A strange noise, as of shuffling feet and the howling of infuriated animals, rang through the hall. Bidding the housekeeper good night, and taking the candle, I entered my bedchamber.

I took off my dress, and, putting on a yellow flannel nightgown, which I could not help feeling did not agree with my complexion, I composed myself to rest by reading Blair’s Rhetoric and Paley’s Moral Philosophy. I had just put out the light, when I heard voices in the corridor. I listened attentively. I recognized Mr. Rawjester’s stern tones.

‘Have you fed No. 1?’ he asked.

‘Yes, sir,’ said a gruff voice, apparently belonging to a domestic.

‘How’s No. 2?’

‘She’s a little off her feed, just now, but will pick up in a day or two!’

‘And No. 3?’

‘Perfectly furious, sir. Her tantrums are ungovernable.’

‘Hush!’

The voices died away, and I sank into a fitful slumber.

I dreamed that I was wandering through a tropical forest. Suddenly I saw the figure of a gorilla approaching me. As it neared me, I recognized the features of Mr. Rawjester. He held his hand to his side as if in pain. I saw that he had been wounded. He recognized me and called me by name, but at the same moment the vision changed to an Ashantee village, where, around the fire, a group of negroes were dancing and participating in some wild Obi festival. I awoke with the strain still ringing in my ears.

‘Hokee-pokee wokee fum!’

Good Heavens! could I be dreaming? I heard the voice distinctly on the floor below, and smelt something burning. I arose, with an indistinct presentiment of evil, and hastily putting some cotton in my ears and tying a towel about my head, I wrapped myself in a shawl and rushed down stairs. The door of Mr. Rawjester’s room was open. I entered.

Mr. Rawjester lay apparently in a deep slumber, from which even the clouds of smoke that came from the burning curtains of his bed could not rouse him. Around the room a large and powerful negress, scantily attired, with her head adorned with feathers, was dancing wildly, accompanying herself with bone castanets. It looked like some terrible fetich.

I did not lose my calmness. After firmly emptying the pitcher, basin, and slop-jar on the burning bed, I proceeded cautiously to the garden, and, returning with the garden-engine, I directed a small stream at Mr. Rawjester.

At my entrance the gigantic negress fled. Mr. Rawjester yawned and woke. I explained to him, as he rose dripping from the bed, the reason of my presence. He did not seem to be excited, alarmed, or discomposed. He gazed at me curiously.

‘So you risked your life to save mine, eh? you canary-colored teacher of infants.’

I blushed modestly, and drew my shawl tightly over my yellow flannel nightgown.

‘You love me, Mary Jane, – don’t deny it! This trembling shows it!’ He drew me closely toward him, and said, with his deep voice tenderly modulated: —

‘How’s her pooty tootens, – did she get her ‘ittle tootens wet, – bess her?’

I understood his allusion to my feet. I glanced down and saw that in my hurry I had put on a pair of his old india-rubbers. My feet were not small or pretty, and the addition did not add to their beauty.

‘Let me go, sir,’ I remarked quietly. ‘This is entirely improper; it sets a bad example for your child.’ And I firmly but gently extricated myself from his grasp. I approached the door. He seemed for a moment buried in deep thought.

‘You say this was a negress?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Humph, No. 1, I suppose?’

‘Who is Number One, sir?’

‘My FIRST,’ he remarked, with a significant and sarcastic smile. Then, relapsing into his old manner, he threw his boots at my head, and bade me begone. I withdrew calmly.

Chapter V

My pupil was a bright little girl, who spoke French with a perfect accent. Her mother had been a French ballet-dancer, which probably accounted for it. Although she was only six years old, it was easy to perceive that she had been several times in love. She once said to me: —

‘Miss Mix, did you ever have the grande passion? Did you ever feel a fluttering here?’ and she placed her hand upon her small chest, and sighed quaintly, ‘a kind of distaste for bonbons and caromels, when the world seemed as tasteless and hollow as a broken cordial drop.’

‘Then you have felt it, Nina?’ I said quietly. ‘O dear, yes. There was Buttons, – that was our page, you know, – I loved him dearly, but papa sent him away. Then there was Dick, the groom, but he laughed at me, and I suffered misery!’ and she struck a tragic French attitude. ‘There is to be company here to-morrow,’ she added, rattling on with childish naiveté, ‘and papa’s sweetheart – Blanche Marabout – is to be here. You know they say she is to be my mamma.’

What thrill was this shot through me? But I rose calmly, and, administering a slight correction to the child, left the apartment.

Blunderbore House, for the next week, was the scene of gayety and merriment. That portion of the mansion closed with a grating was walled up, and the midnight shrieks no longer troubled me.

But I felt more keenly the degradation of my situation. I was obliged to help Lady Blanche at her toilet and help her to look beautiful. For what? To captivate him? O – no, no, – but why this sudden thrill and faintness? Did he really love her? I had seen him pinch and swear at her. But I reflected that he had thrown a candlestick at my head, and my foolish heart was reassured.

It was a night of festivity, when a sudden message obliged Mr. Rawjester to leave his guests for a few hours. ‘Make yourselves merry, idiots,’ he added, under his breath, as he passed me. The door closed and he was gone.

An half-hour passed. In the midst of the dancing a shriek was heard, and out of the swaying crowd of fainting women and excited men a wild figure strode into the room. One glance showed it to be a highwayman, heavily armed, holding a pistol in each hand.

‘Let no one pass out of this room!’ he said, in a voice of thunder. ‘The house is surrounded and you cannot escape. The first one who crosses yonder threshold will be shot like a dog. Gentlemen, I’ll trouble you to approach in single file, and hand me your purses and watches.’

Finding resistance useless, the order was ungraciously obeyed.

‘Now, ladies, please to pass up your jewelry and trinkets.’

This order was still more ungraciously complied with. As Blanche handed to the bandit captain her bracelet, she endeavored to conceal a diamond necklace, the gift of Mr. Rawjester, in her bosom. But, with a demoniac grin, the powerful brute tore it from its concealment, and, administering a hearty box on the ear of the young girl, flung her aside.

It was now my turn. With a beating heart I made my way to the robber chieftain, and sank at his feet. ‘O sir, I am nothing but a poor governess, pray let me go.’

‘O ho! A governess? Give me your last month’s wages, then. Give me what you have stolen from your master!’ and he laughed fiendishly.

I gazed at him quietly, and said, in a low voice: ‘I have stolen nothing from you, Mr. Rawjester!’

‘Ah, discovered! Hush! listen, girl!’ he hissed, in a fiercer whisper, ‘utter a syllable to frustrate my plans and you die; aid me, and —’ But he was gone.

In a few moments the party, with the exception of myself, were gagged and locked in the cellar. The next moment torches were applied to the rich hangings, and the house was in flames. I felt a strong hand seize me, and bear me out in the open air and place me upon the hillside, where I could overlook the burning mansion. It was Mr. Rawjester.

‘Burn!’ he said, as he shook his fist at the flames. Then sinking on his knees before me, he said hurriedly: —

‘Mary Jane, I love you; the obstacles to our union are or will be soon removed. In yonder mansion were confined my three crazy wives. One of them, as you know, attempted to kill me! Ha! this is vengeance! But will you be mine?’

I fell, without a word, upon his neck.

Washington Irving

The Legend of Sleepy Hollow

Found among the papers of the Late Diedrich Knickerbocker

A pleasing land of drowsy head it was,

Of dreams that wave before the half-shut eye;

And of gay castles in the clouds that pass,

Forever flushing round a summer sky.

– Castle of Indolence

In the bosom of one of those spacious coves which indent the eastern shore of the Hudson, at that broad expansion of the river denominated by the ancient Dutch navigators the Tappan Zee, and where they always prudently shortened sail and implored the protection of St. Nicholas when they crossed, there lies a small market town or rural port, which by some is called Greensburgh, but which is more generally and properly known by the name of Tarry Town. This name was given, we are told, in former days, by the good housewives of the adjacent country, from the inveterate propensity of their husbands to linger about the village tavern on market days. Be that as it may, I do not vouch for the fact, but merely advert to it, for the sake of being precise and authentic. Not far from this village, perhaps about two miles, there is a little valley or rather lap of land among high hills, which is one of the quietest places in the whole world. A small brook glides through it, with just murmur enough to lull one to repose; and the occasional whistle of a quail or tapping of a woodpecker is almost the only sound that ever breaks in upon the uniform tranquillity.

I recollect that, when a stripling, my first exploit in squirrel-shooting was in a grove of tall walnut-trees that shades one side of the valley. I had wandered into it at noontime, when all nature is peculiarly quiet, and was startled by the roar of my own gun, as it broke the Sabbath stillness around and was prolonged and reverberated by the angry echoes. If ever I should wish for a retreat whither I might steal from the world and its distractions, and dream quietly away the remnant of a troubled life, I know of none more promising than this little valley.

From the listless repose of the place, and the peculiar character of its inhabitants, who are descendants from the original Dutch settlers, this sequestered glen has long been known by the name of Sleepy Hollow, and its rustic lads are called the Sleepy Hollow Boys throughout all the neighboring country. A drowsy, dreamy influence seems to hang over the land, and to pervade the very atmosphere. Some say that the place was bewitched by a High German doctor, during the early days of the settlement; others, that an old Indian chief, the prophet or wizard of his tribe, held his powwows there before the country was discovered by Master Hendrick Hudson. Certain it is, the place still continues under the sway of some witching power, that holds a spell over the minds of the good people, causing them to walk in a continual reverie. They are given to all kinds of marvellous beliefs, are subject to trances and visions, and frequently see strange sights, and hear music and voices in the air. The whole neighborhood abounds with local tales, haunted spots, and twilight superstitions; stars shoot and meteors glare oftener across the valley than in any other part of the country, and the nightmare, with her whole ninefold, seems to make it the favorite scene of her gambols.

The dominant spirit, however, that haunts this enchanted region, and seems to be commander-in-chief of all the powers of the air, is the apparition of a figure on horseback, without a head. It is said by some to be the ghost of a Hessian trooper, whose head had been carried away by a cannon-ball, in some nameless battle during the Revolutionary War, and who is ever and anon seen by the country folk hurrying along in the gloom of night, as if on the wings of the wind. His haunts are not confined to the valley, but extend at times to the adjacent roads, and especially to the vicinity of a church at no great distance. Indeed, certain of the most authentic historians of those parts, who have been careful in collecting and collating the floating facts concerning this spectre, allege that the body of the trooper having been buried in the churchyard, the ghost rides forth to the scene of battle in nightly quest of his head, and that the rushing speed with which he sometimes passes along the Hollow, like a midnight blast, is owing to his being belated, and in a hurry to get back to the churchyard before daybreak.

Such is the general purport of this legendary superstition, which has furnished materials for many a wild story in that region of shadows; and the spectre is known at all the country firesides, by the name of the Headless Horseman of Sleepy Hollow.

It is remarkable that the visionary propensity I have mentioned is not confined to the native inhabitants of the valley, but is unconsciously imbibed by every one who resides there for a time. However wide awake they may have been before they entered that sleepy region, they are sure, in a little time, to inhale the witching influence of the air, and begin to grow imaginative, to dream dreams, and see apparitions.

I mention this peaceful spot with all possible laud, for it is in such little retired Dutch valleys, found here and there embosomed in the great State of New York, that population, manners, and customs remain fixed, while the great torrent of migration and improvement, which is making such incessant changes in other parts of this restless country, sweeps by them unobserved. They are like those little nooks of still water, which border a rapid stream, where we may see the straw and bubble riding quietly at anchor, or slowly revolving in their mimic harbor, undisturbed by the rush of the passing current. Though many years have elapsed since I trod the drowsy shades of Sleepy Hollow, yet I question whether I should not still find the same trees and the same families vegetating in its sheltered bosom.

In this by-place of nature there abode, in a remote period of American history, that is to say, some thirty years since, a worthy wight of the name of Ichabod Crane, who sojourned, or, as he expressed it, ‘tarried,’ in Sleepy Hollow, for the purpose of instructing the children of the vicinity. He was a native of Connecticut, a State which supplies the Union with pioneers for the mind as well as for the forest, and sends forth yearly its legions of frontier woodmen and country schoolmasters. The cognomen of Crane was not inapplicable to his person. He was tall, but exceedingly lank, with narrow shoulders, long arms and legs, hands that dangled a mile out of his sleeves, feet that might have served for shovels, and his whole frame most loosely hung together. His head was small, and flat at top, with huge ears, large green glassy eyes, and a long snipe nose, so that it looked like a weather-cock perched upon his spindle neck to tell which way the wind blew. To see him striding along the profile of a hill on a windy day, with his clothes bagging and fluttering about him, one might have mistaken him for the genius of famine descending upon the earth, or some scarecrow eloped from a cornfield.

His schoolhouse was a low building of one large room, rudely constructed of logs; the windows partly glazed, and partly patched with leaves of old copybooks. It was most ingeniously secured at vacant hours, by a withe twisted in the handle of the door, and stakes set against the window shutters; so that though a thief might get in with perfect ease, he would find some embarrassment in getting out, – an idea most probably borrowed by the architect, Yost Van Houten, from the mystery of an eelpot. The schoolhouse stood in a rather lonely but pleasant situation, just at the foot of a woody hill, with a brook running close by, and a formidable birch-tree growing at one end of it. From hence the low murmur of his pupils’ voices, conning over their lessons, might be heard in a drowsy summer’s day, like the hum of a beehive; interrupted now and then by the authoritative voice of the master, in the tone of menace or command, or, peradventure, by the appalling sound of the birch, as he urged some tardy loiterer along the flowery path of knowledge. Truth to say, he was a conscientious man, and ever bore in mind the golden maxim, ‘Spare the rod and spoil the child.’ Ichabod Crane’s scholars certainly were not spoiled.

I would not have it imagined, however, that he was one of those cruel potentates of the school who joy in the smart of their subjects; on the contrary, he administered justice with discrimination rather than severity; taking the burden off the backs of the weak, and laying it on those of the strong. Your mere puny stripling, that winced at the least flourish of the rod, was passed by with indulgence; but the claims of justice were satisfied by inflicting a double portion on some little tough wrong-headed, broad-skirted Dutch urchin, who sulked and swelled and grew dogged and sullen beneath the birch. All this he called ‘doing his duty by their parents;’ and he never inflicted a chastisement without following it by the assurance, so consolatory to the smarting urchin, that ‘he would remember it and thank him for it the longest day he had to live.’

When school hours were over, he was even the companion and playmate of the larger boys; and on holiday afternoons would convoy some of the smaller ones home, who happened to have pretty sisters, or good housewives for mothers, noted for the comforts of the cupboard. Indeed, it behooved him to keep on good terms with his pupils. The revenue arising from his school was small, and would have been scarcely sufficient to furnish him with daily bread, for he was a huge feeder, and, though lank, had the dilating powers of an anaconda; but to help out his maintenance, he was, according to country custom in those parts, boarded and lodged at the houses of the farmers whose children he instructed. With these he lived successively a week at a time, thus going the rounds of the neighborhood, with all his worldly effects tied up in a cotton handkerchief.

That all this might not be too onerous on the purses of his rustic patrons, who are apt to consider the costs of schooling a grievous burden, and schoolmasters as mere drones, he had various ways of rendering himself both useful and agreeable. He assisted the farmers occasionally in the lighter labors of their farms, helped to make hay, mended the fences, took the horses to water, drove the cows from pasture, and cut wood for the winter fire. He laid aside, too, all the dominant dignity and absolute sway with which he lorded it in his little empire, the school, and became wonderfully gentle and ingratiating. He found favor in the eyes of the mothers by petting the children, particularly the youngest; and like the lion bold, which whilom so magnanimously the lamb did hold, he would sit with a child on one knee, and rock a cradle with his foot for whole hours together.

In addition to his other vocations, he was the singing– master of the neighborhood, and picked up many bright shillings by instructing the young folks in psalmody. It was a matter of no little vanity to him on Sundays, to take his station in front of the church gallery, with a band of chosen singers; where, in his own mind, he completely carried away the palm from the parson. Certain it is, his voice resounded far above all the rest of the congregation; and there are peculiar quavers still to be heard in that church, and which may even be heard half a mile off, quite to the opposite side of the millpond, on a still Sunday morning, which are said to be legitimately descended from the nose of Ichabod Crane. Thus, by divers little makeshifts, in that ingenious way which is commonly denominated ‘by hook and by crook,’ the worthy pedagogue got on tolerably enough, and was thought, by all who understood nothing of the labor of headwork, to have a wonderfully easy life of it.

The schoolmaster is generally a man of some importance in the female circle of a rural neighborhood; being considered a kind of idle, gentlemanlike personage, of vastly superior taste and accomplishments to the rough country swains, and, indeed, inferior in learning only to the parson. His appearance, therefore, is apt to occasion some little stir at the tea-table of a farmhouse, and the addition of a supernumerary dish of cakes or sweetmeats, or, peradventure, the parade of a silver teapot. Our man of letters, therefore, was peculiarly happy in the smiles of all the country damsels. How he would figure among them in the churchyard, between services on Sundays; gathering grapes for them from the wild vines that overran the surrounding trees; reciting for their amusement all the epitaphs on the tombstones; or sauntering, with a whole bevy of them, along the banks of the adjacent millpond; while the more bashful country bumpkins hung sheepishly back, envying his superior elegance and address.

From his half-itinerant life, also, he was a kind of travelling gazette, carrying the whole budget of local gossip from house to house, so that his appearance was always greeted with satisfaction. He was, moreover, esteemed by the women as a man of great erudition, for he had read several books quite through, and was a perfect master of Cotton Mather’s History of New England Witchcraft, in which, by the way, he most firmly and potently believed.

He was, in fact, an odd mixture of small shrewdness and simple credulity. His appetite for the marvellous, and his powers of digesting it, were equally extraordinary; and both had been increased by his residence in this spell-bound region. No tale was too gross or monstrous for his capacious swallow. It was often his delight, after his school was dismissed in the afternoon, to stretch himself on the rich bed of clover bordering the little brook that whimpered by his schoolhouse, and there con over old Mather’s direful tales, until the gathering dusk of evening made the printed page a mere mist before his eyes. Then, as he wended his way by swamp and stream and awful woodland, to the farmhouse where he happened to be quartered, every sound of nature, at that witching hour, fluttered his excited imagination, – the moan of the whip-poor-will from the hillside, the boding cry of the tree toad, that harbinger of storm, the dreary hooting of the screech owl, or the sudden rustling in the thicket of birds frightened from their roost. The fireflies, too, which sparkled most vividly in the darkest places, now and then startled him, as one of uncommon brightness would stream across his path; and if, by chance, a huge blockhead of a beetle came winging his blundering flight against him, the poor varlet was ready to give up the ghost, with the idea that he was struck with a witch’s token. His only resource on such occasions, either to drown thought or drive away evil spirits, was to sing psalm tunes and the good people of Sleepy Hollow, as they sat by their doors of an evening, were often filled with awe at hearing his nasal melody, in linked sweetness long drawn out, floating from the distant hill, or along the dusky road.

Another of his sources of fearful pleasure was to pass long winter evenings with the old Dutch wives, as they sat spinning by the fire, with a row of apples roasting and spluttering along the hearth, and listen to their marvellous tales of ghosts and goblins, and haunted fields, and haunted brooks, and haunted bridges, and haunted houses, and particularly of the headless horseman, or Galloping Hessian of the Hollow, as they sometimes called him. He would delight them equally by his anecdotes of witchcraft, and of the direful omens and portentous sights and sounds in the air, which prevailed in the earlier times of Connecticut; and would frighten them woefully with speculations upon comets and shooting stars; and with the alarming fact that the world did absolutely turn round, and that they were half the time topsy-turvy!

But if there was a pleasure in all this, while snugly cuddling in the chimney corner of a chamber that was all of a ruddy glow from the crackling wood fire, and where, of course, no spectre dared to show its face, it was dearly purchased by the terrors of his subsequent walk homewards. What fearful shapes and shadows beset his path, amidst the dim and ghastly glare of a snowy night! With what wistful look did he eye every trembling ray of light streaming across the waste fields from some distant window! How often was he appalled by some shrub covered with snow, which, like a sheeted spectre, beset his very path! How often did he shrink with curdling awe at the sound of his own steps on the frosty crust beneath his feet; and dread to look over his shoulder, lest he should behold some uncouth being tramping close behind him! And how often was he thrown into complete dismay by some rushing blast, howling among the trees, in the idea that it was the Galloping Hessian on one of his nightly scourings!

All these, however, were mere terrors of the night, phantoms of the mind that walk in darkness; and though he had seen many spectres in his time, and been more than once beset by Satan in divers shapes, in his lonely perambulations, yet daylight put an end to all these evils; and he would have passed a pleasant life of it, in despite of the Devil and all his works, if his path had not been crossed by a being that causes more perplexity to mortal man than ghosts, goblins, and the whole race of witches put together, and that was – a woman.

Among the musical disciples who assembled, one evening in each week, to receive his instructions in psalmody, was Katrina Van Tassel, the daughter and only child of a substantial Dutch farmer. She was a blooming lass of fresh eighteen; plump as a partridge; ripe and melting and rosy-cheeked as one of her father’s peaches, and universally famed, not merely for her beauty, but her vast expectations. She was withal a little of a coquette, as might be perceived even in her dress, which was a mixture of ancient and modern fashions, as most suited to set off her charms. She wore the ornaments of pure yellow gold, which her great-great-grandmother had brought over from Saardam; the tempting stomacher of the olden time, and withal a provokingly short petticoat, to display the prettiest foot and ankle in the country round.

Ichabod Crane had a soft and foolish heart towards the sex; and it is not to be wondered at that so tempting a morsel soon found favor in his eyes, more especially after he had visited her in her paternal mansion. Old Baltus Van Tassel was a perfect picture of a thriving, contented, liberal-hearted farmer. He seldom, it is true, sent either his eyes or his thoughts beyond the boundaries of his own farm; but within those everything was snug, happy and well-conditioned. He was satisfied with his wealth, but not proud of it; and piqued himself upon the hearty abundance, rather than the style in which he lived. His stronghold was situated on the banks of the Hudson, in one of those green, sheltered, fertile nooks in which the Dutch farmers are so fond of nestling. A great elm tree spread its broad branches over it, at the foot of which bubbled up a spring of the softest and sweetest water, in a little well formed of a barrel; and then stole sparkling away through the grass, to a neighboring brook, that babbled along among alders and dwarf willows. Hard by the farmhouse was a vast barn, that might have served for a church; every window and crevice of which seemed bursting forth with the treasures of the farm; the flail was busily resounding within it from morning to night; swallows and martins skimmed twittering about the eaves; and rows of pigeons, some with one eye turned up, as if watching the weather, some with their heads under their wings or buried in their bosoms, and others swelling, and cooing, and bowing about their dames, were enjoying the sunshine on the roof. Sleek unwieldy porkers were grunting in the repose and abundance of their pens, from whence sallied forth, now and then, troops of sucking pigs, as if to snuff the air. A stately squadron of snowy geese were riding in an adjoining pond, convoying whole fleets of ducks; regiments of turkeys were gobbling through the farmyard, and Guinea fowls fretting about it, like ill-tempered housewives, with their peevish, discontented cry. Before the barn door strutted the gallant cock, that pattern of a husband, a warrior and a fine gentleman, clapping his burnished wings and crowing in the pride and gladness of his heart, – sometimes tearing up the earth with his feet, and then generously calling his ever-hungry family of wives and children to enjoy the rich morsel which he had discovered.

The pedagogue’s mouth watered as he looked upon this sumptuous promise of luxurious winter fare. In his devouring mind’s eye, he pictured to himself every roasting-pig running about with a pudding in his belly, and an apple in his mouth; the pigeons were snugly put to bed in a comfortable pie, and tucked in with a coverlet of crust; the geese were swimming in their own gravy; and the ducks pairing cosily in dishes, like snug married couples, with a decent competency of onion sauce. In the porkers he saw carved out the future sleek side of bacon, and juicy relishing ham; not a turkey but he beheld daintily trussed up, with its gizzard under its wing, and, peradventure, a necklace of savory sausages; and even bright chanticleer himself lay sprawling on his back, in a side dish, with uplifted claws, as if craving that quarter which his chivalrous spirit disdained to ask while living.

As the enraptured Ichabod fancied all this, and as he rolled his great green eyes over the fat meadow lands, the rich fields of wheat, of rye, of buckwheat, and Indian corn, and the orchards burdened with ruddy fruit, which surrounded the warm tenement of Van Tassel, his heart yearned after the damsel who was to inherit these domains, and his imagination expanded with the idea, how they might be readily turned into cash, and the money invested in immense tracts of wild land, and shingle palaces in the wilderness. Nay, his busy fancy already realized his hopes, and presented to him the blooming Katrina, with a whole family of children, mounted on the top of a wagon loaded with household trumpery, with pots and kettles dangling beneath; and he beheld himself bestriding a pacing mare, with a colt at her heels, setting out for Kentucky, Tennessee, – or the Lord knows where!

When he entered the house, the conquest of his heart was complete. It was one of those spacious farmhouses, with high– ridged but lowly sloping roofs, built in the style handed down from the first Dutch settlers; the low projecting eaves forming a piazza along the front, capable of being closed up in bad weather. Under this were hung flails, harness, various utensils of husbandry, and nets for fishing in the neighboring river. Benches were built along the sides for summer use; and a great spinning-wheel at one end, and a churn at the other, showed the various uses to which this important porch might be devoted. From this piazza the wondering Ichabod entered the hall, which formed the centre of the mansion, and the place of usual residence. Here rows of resplendent pewter, ranged on a long dresser, dazzled his eyes. In one corner stood a huge bag of wool, ready to be spun; in another, a quantity of linsey-woolsey just from the loom; ears of Indian corn, and strings of dried apples and peaches, hung in gay festoons along the walls, mingled with the gaud of red peppers; and a door left ajar gave him a peep into the best parlor, where the claw-footed chairs and dark mahogany tables shone like mirrors; andirons, with their accompanying shovel and tongs, glistened from their covert of asparagus tops; mock– oranges and conch-shells decorated the mantelpiece; strings of various-colored birds eggs were suspended above it; a great ostrich egg was hung from the centre of the room, and a corner cupboard, knowingly left open, displayed immense treasures of old silver and well-mended china.

From the moment Ichabod laid his eyes upon these regions of delight, the peace of his mind was at an end, and his only study was how to gain the affections of the peerless daughter of Van Tassel. In this enterprise, however, he had more real difficulties than generally fell to the lot of a knight-errant of yore, who seldom had anything but giants, enchanters, fiery dragons, and such like easily conquered adversaries, to contend with and had to make his way merely through gates of iron and brass, and walls of adamant to the castle keep, where the lady of his heart was confined; all which he achieved as easily as a man would carve his way to the centre of a Christmas pie; and then the lady gave him her hand as a matter of course. Ichabod, on the contrary, had to win his way to the heart of a country coquette, beset with a labyrinth of whims and caprices, which were forever presenting new difficulties and impediments; and he had to encounter a host of fearful adversaries of real flesh and blood, the numerous rustic admirers, who beset every portal to her heart, keeping a watchful and angry eye upon each other, but ready to fly out in the common cause against any new competitor.

Among these, the most formidable was a burly, roaring, roystering blade, of the name of Abraham, or, according to the Dutch abbreviation, Brom Van Brunt, the hero of the country round, which rang with his feats of strength and hardihood. He was broad-shouldered and double-jointed, with short curly black hair, and a bluff but not unpleasant countenance, having a mingled air of fun and arrogance. From his Herculean frame and great powers of limb he had received the nickname of Brom Bones, by which he was universally known. He was famed for great knowledge and skill in horsemanship, being as dexterous on horseback as a Tartar. He was foremost at all races and cock fights; and, with the ascendancy which bodily strength always acquires in rustic life, was the umpire in all disputes, setting his hat on one side, and giving his decisions with an air and tone that admitted of no gainsay or appeal. He was always ready for either a fight or a frolic; but had more mischief than ill-will in his composition; and with all his overbearing roughness, there was a strong dash of waggish good humor at bottom. He had three or four boon companions, who regarded him as their model, and at the head of whom he scoured the country, attending every scene of feud or merriment for miles round. In cold weather he was distinguished by a fur cap, surmounted with a flaunting fox’s tail; and when the folks at a country gathering descried this well-known crest at a distance, whisking about among a squad of hard riders, they always stood by for a squall. Sometimes his crew would be heard dashing along past the farmhouses at midnight, with whoop and halloo, like a troop of Don Cossacks; and the old dames, startled out of their sleep, would listen for a moment till the hurry-scurry had clattered by, and then exclaim, ‘Ay, there goes Brom Bones and his gang!’ The neighbors looked upon him with a mixture of awe, admiration, and good-will; and, when any madcap prank or rustic brawl occurred in the vicinity, always shook their heads, and warranted Brom Bones was at the bottom of it.

This rantipole hero had for some time singled out the blooming Katrina for the object of his uncouth gallantries, and though his amorous toyings were something like the gentle caresses and endearments of a bear, yet it was whispered that she did not altogether discourage his hopes. Certain it is, his advances were signals for rival candidates to retire, who felt no inclination to cross a lion in his amours; insomuch, that when his horse was seen tied to Van Tassel’s paling, on a Sunday night, a sure sign that his master was courting, or, as it is termed, ‘sparking,’ within, all other suitors passed by in despair, and carried the war into other quarters.

Such was the formidable rival with whom Ichabod Crane had to contend, and, considering all things, a stouter man than he would have shrunk from the competition, and a wiser man would have despaired. He had, however, a happy mixture of pliability and perseverance in his nature; he was in form and spirit like a supple-jack – yielding, but tough; though he bent, he never broke; and though he bowed beneath the slightest pressure, yet, the moment it was away – jerk! – he was as erect, and carried his head as high as ever.

To have taken the field openly against his rival would have been madness; for he was not a man to be thwarted in his amours, any more than that stormy lover, Achilles. Ichabod, therefore, made his advances in a quiet and gently insinuating manner. Under cover of his character of singing-master, he made frequent visits at the farmhouse; not that he had anything to apprehend from the meddlesome interference of parents, which is so often a stumbling-block in the path of lovers. Balt Van Tassel was an easy indulgent soul; he loved his daughter better even than his pipe, and, like a reasonable man and an excellent father, let her have her way in everything. His notable little wife, too, had enough to do to attend to her housekeeping and manage her poultry; for, as she sagely observed, ducks and geese are foolish things, and must be looked after, but girls can take care of themselves. Thus, while the busy dame bustled about the house, or plied her spinning-wheel at one end of the piazza, honest Balt would sit smoking his evening pipe at the other, watching the achievements of a little wooden warrior, who, armed with a sword in each hand, was most valiantly fighting the wind on the pinnacle of the barn. In the mean time, Ichabod would carry on his suit with the daughter by the side of the spring under the great elm, or sauntering along in the twilight, that hour so favorable to the lover’s eloquence.

I profess not to know how women’s hearts are wooed and won. To me they have always been matters of riddle and admiration. Some seem to have but one vulnerable point, or door of access; while others have a thousand avenues, and may be captured in a thousand different ways. It is a great triumph of skill to gain the former, but a still greater proof of generalship to maintain possession of the latter, for man must battle for his fortress at every door and window. He who wins a thousand common hearts is therefore entitled to some renown; but he who keeps undisputed sway over the heart of a coquette is indeed a hero. Certain it is, this was not the case with the redoubtable Brom Bones; and from the moment Ichabod Crane made his advances, the interests of the former evidently declined: his horse was no longer seen tied to the palings on Sunday nights, and a deadly feud gradually arose between him and the preceptor of Sleepy Hollow.

Brom, who had a degree of rough chivalry in his nature, would fain have carried matters to open warfare and have settled their pretensions to the lady, according to the mode of those most concise and simple reasoners, the knights-errant of yore, – by single combat; but Ichabod was too conscious of the superior might of his adversary to enter the lists against him; he had overheard a boast of Bones, that he would ‘double the schoolmaster up, and lay him on a shelf of his own schoolhouse;’ and he was too wary to give him an opportunity. There was something extremely provoking in this obstinately pacific system; it left Brom no alternative but to draw upon the funds of rustic waggery in his disposition, and to play off boorish practical jokes upon his rival. Ichabod became the object of whimsical persecution to Bones and his gang of rough riders. They harried his hitherto peaceful domains; smoked out his singing school by stopping up the chimney; broke into the schoolhouse at night, in spite of its formidable fastenings of withe and window stakes, and turned everything topsy-turvy, so that the poor schoolmaster began to think all the witches in the country held their meetings there. But what was still more annoying, Brom took all opportunities of turning him into ridicule in presence of his mistress, and had a scoundrel dog whom he taught to whine in the most ludicrous manner, and introduced as a rival of Ichabod’s, to instruct her in psalmody.

In this way matters went on for some time, without producing any material effect on the relative situations of the contending powers. On a fine autumnal afternoon, Ichabod, in pensive mood, sat enthroned on the lofty stool from whence he usually watched all the concerns of his little literary realm. In his hand he swayed a ferule, that sceptre of despotic power; the birch of justice reposed on three nails behind the throne, a constant terror to evil doers, while on the desk before him might be seen sundry contraband articles and prohibited weapons, detected upon the persons of idle urchins, such as half-munched apples, popguns, whirligigs, fly-cages, and whole legions of rampant little paper gamecocks. Apparently there had been some appalling act of justice recently inflicted, for his scholars were all busily intent upon their books, or slyly whispering behind them with one eye kept upon the master; and a kind of buzzing stillness reigned throughout the schoolroom. It was suddenly interrupted by the appearance of a negro in tow-cloth jacket and trowsers, a round-crowned fragment of a hat, like the cap of Mercury, and mounted on the back of a ragged, wild, half-broken colt, which he managed with a rope by way of halter. He came clattering up to the school door with an invitation to Ichabod to attend a merry-making or ‘quilting frolic,’ to be held that evening at Mynheer Van Tassel’s; and having delivered his message with that air of importance, and effort at fine language, which a negro is apt to display on petty embassies of the kind, he dashed over the brook, and was seen scampering away up the hollow, full of the importance and hurry of his mission.

All was now bustle and hubbub in the late quiet schoolroom. The scholars were hurried through their lessons without stopping at trifles; those who were nimble skipped over half with impunity, and those who were tardy had a smart application now and then in the rear, to quicken their speed or help them over a tall word. Books were flung aside without being put away on the shelves, inkstands were overturned, benches thrown down, and the whole school was turned loose an hour before the usual time, bursting forth like a legion of young imps, yelping and racketing about the green in joy at their early emancipation.

The gallant Ichabod now spent at least an extra half hour at his toilet, brushing and furbishing up his best, and indeed only suit of rusty black, and arranging his locks by a bit of broken looking-glass that hung up in the schoolhouse. That he might make his appearance before his mistress in the true style of a cavalier, he borrowed a horse from the farmer with whom he was domiciliated, a choleric old Dutchman of the name of Hans Van Ripper, and, thus gallantly mounted, issued forth like a knight– errant in quest of adventures. But it is meet I should, in the true spirit of romantic story, give some account of the looks and equipments of my hero and his steed. The animal he bestrode was a broken-down plow-horse, that had outlived almost everything but its viciousness. He was gaunt and shagged, with a ewe neck, and a head like a hammer; his rusty mane and tail were tangled and knotted with burs; one eye had lost its pupil, and was glaring and spectral, but the other had the gleam of a genuine devil in it. Still he must have had fire and mettle in his day, if we may judge from the name he bore of Gunpowder. He had, in fact, been a favorite steed of his master’s, the choleric Van Ripper, who was a furious rider, and had infused, very probably, some of his own spirit into the animal; for, old and broken-down as he looked, there was more of the lurking devil in him than in any young filly in the country.

Ichabod was a suitable figure for such a steed. He rode with short stirrups, which brought his knees nearly up to the pommel of the saddle; his sharp elbows stuck out like grasshoppers’; he carried his whip perpendicularly in his hand, like a sceptre, and as his horse jogged on, the motion of his arms was not unlike the flapping of a pair of wings. A small wool hat rested on the top of his nose, for so his scanty strip of forehead might be called, and the skirts of his black coat fluttered out almost to the horses tail. Such was the appearance of Ichabod and his steed as they shambled out of the gate of Hans Van Ripper, and it was altogether such an apparition as is seldom to be met with in broad daylight.

It was, as I have said, a fine autumnal day; the sky was clear and serene, and nature wore that rich and golden livery which we always associate with the idea of abundance. The forests had put on their sober brown and yellow, while some trees of the tenderer kind had been nipped by the frosts into brilliant dyes of orange, purple, and scarlet. Streaming files of wild ducks began to make their appearance high in the air; the bark of the squirrel might be heard from the groves of beech and hickory– nuts, and the pensive whistle of the quail at intervals from the neighboring stubble field.

The small birds were taking their farewell banquets. In the fullness of their revelry, they fluttered, chirping and frolicking from bush to bush, and tree to tree, capricious from the very profusion and variety around them. There was the honest cock robin, the favorite game of stripling sportsmen, with its loud querulous note; and the twittering blackbirds flying in sable clouds; and the golden-winged woodpecker with his crimson crest, his broad black gorget, and splendid plumage; and the cedar bird, with its red-tipt wings and yellow-tipt tail and its little monteiro cap of feathers; and the blue jay, that noisy coxcomb, in his gay light blue coat and white underclothes, screaming and chattering, nodding and bobbing and bowing, and pretending to be on good terms with every songster of the grove.

As Ichabod jogged slowly on his way, his eye, ever open to every symptom of culinary abundance, ranged with delight over the treasures of jolly autumn. On all sides he beheld vast store of apples; some hanging in oppressive opulence on the trees; some gathered into baskets and barrels for the market; others heaped up in rich piles for the cider-press. Farther on he beheld great fields of Indian corn, with its golden ears peeping from their leafy coverts, and holding out the promise of cakes and hasty– pudding; and the yellow pumpkins lying beneath them, turning up their fair round bellies to the sun, and giving ample prospects of the most luxurious of pies; and anon he passed the fragrant buckwheat fields breathing the odor of the beehive, and as he beheld them, soft anticipations stole over his mind of dainty slapjacks, well buttered, and garnished with honey or treacle, by the delicate little dimpled hand of Katrina Van Tassel.

Thus feeding his mind with many sweet thoughts and ‘sugared suppositions,’ he journeyed along the sides of a range of hills which look out upon some of the goodliest scenes of the mighty Hudson. The sun gradually wheeled his broad disk down in the west. The wide bosom of the Tappan Zee lay motionless and glassy, excepting that here and there a gentle undulation waved and prolonged the blue shadow of the distant mountain. A few amber clouds floated in the sky, without a breath of air to move them. The horizon was of a fine golden tint, changing gradually into a pure apple green, and from that into the deep blue of the mid– heaven. A slanting ray lingered on the woody crests of the precipices that overhung some parts of the river, giving greater depth to the dark gray and purple of their rocky sides. A sloop was loitering in the distance, dropping slowly down with the tide, her sail hanging uselessly against the mast; and as the reflection of the sky gleamed along the still water, it seemed as if the vessel was suspended in the air.

It was toward evening that Ichabod arrived at the castle of the Heer Van Tassel, which he found thronged with the pride and flower of the adjacent country. Old farmers, a spare leathern– faced race, in homespun coats and breeches, blue stockings, huge shoes, and magnificent pewter buckles. Their brisk, withered little dames, in close-crimped caps, long-waisted short gowns, homespun petticoats, with scissors and pincushions, and gay calico pockets hanging on the outside. Buxom lasses, almost as antiquated as their mothers, excepting where a straw hat, a fine ribbon, or perhaps a white frock, gave symptoms of city innovation. The sons, in short square-skirted coats, with rows of stupendous brass buttons, and their hair generally queued in the fashion of the times, especially if they could procure an eel-skin for the purpose, it being esteemed throughout the country as a potent nourisher and strengthener of the hair.

Brom Bones, however, was the hero of the scene, having come to the gathering on his favorite steed Daredevil, a creature, like himself, full of mettle and mischief, and which no one but himself could manage. He was, in fact, noted for preferring vicious animals, given to all kinds of tricks which kept the rider in constant risk of his neck, for he held a tractable, well-broken horse as unworthy of a lad of spirit.

Fain would I pause to dwell upon the world of charms that burst upon the enraptured gaze of my hero, as he entered the state parlor of Van Tassel’s mansion. Not those of the bevy of buxom lasses, with their luxurious display of red and white; but the ample charms of a genuine Dutch country tea-table, in the sumptuous time of autumn. Such heaped up platters of cakes of various and almost indescribable kinds, known only to experienced Dutch housewives! There was the doughty doughnut, the tender oly koek, and the crisp and crumbling cruller; sweet cakes and short cakes, ginger cakes and honey cakes, and the whole family of cakes. And then there were apple pies, and peach pies, and pumpkin pies; besides slices of ham and smoked beef; and moreover delectable dishes of preserved plums, and peaches, and pears, and quinces; not to mention broiled shad and roasted chickens; together with bowls of milk and cream, all mingled higgledy– piggledy, pretty much as I have enumerated them, with the motherly teapot sending up its clouds of vapor from the midst – Heaven bless the mark! I want breath and time to discuss this banquet as it deserves, and am too eager to get on with my story. Happily, Ichabod Crane was not in so great a hurry as his historian, but did ample justice to every dainty.

He was a kind and thankful creature, whose heart dilated in proportion as his skin was filled with good cheer, and whose spirits rose with eating, as some men’s do with drink. He could not help, too, rolling his large eyes round him as he ate, and chuckling with the possibility that he might one day be lord of all this scene of almost unimaginable luxury and splendor. Then, he thought, how soon he’d turn his back upon the old schoolhouse; snap his fingers in the face of Hans Van Ripper, and every other niggardly patron, and kick any itinerant pedagogue out of doors that should dare to call him comrade!

Old Baltus Van Tassel moved about among his guests with a face dilated with content and good humor, round and jolly as the harvest moon. His hospitable attentions were brief, but expressive, being confined to a shake of the hand, a slap on the shoulder, a loud laugh, and a pressing invitation to ‘fall to, and help themselves.’

And now the sound of the music from the common room, or hall, summoned to the dance. The musician was an old gray-headed negro, who had been the itinerant orchestra of the neighborhood for more than half a century. His instrument was as old and battered as himself. The greater part of the time he scraped on two or three strings, accompanying every movement of the bow with a motion of the head; bowing almost to the ground, and stamping with his foot whenever a fresh couple were to start.

Ichabod prided himself upon his dancing as much as upon his vocal powers. Not a limb, not a fibre about him was idle; and to have seen his loosely hung frame in full motion, and clattering about the room, you would have thought St. Vitus himself, that blessed patron of the dance, was figuring before you in person. He was the admiration of all the negroes; who, having gathered, of all ages and sizes, from the farm and the neighborhood, stood forming a pyramid of shining black faces at every door and window, gazing with delight at the scene, rolling their white eyeballs, and showing grinning rows of ivory from ear to ear. How could the flogger of urchins be otherwise than animated and joyous? The lady of his heart was his partner in the dance, and smiling graciously in reply to all his amorous oglings; while Brom Bones, sorely smitten with love and jealousy, sat brooding by himself in one corner.

When the dance was at an end, Ichabod was attracted to a knot of the sager folks, who, with Old Van Tassel, sat smoking at one end of the piazza, gossiping over former times, and drawing out long stories about the war.

This neighborhood, at the time of which I am speaking, was one of those highly favored places which abound with chronicle and great men. The British and American line had run near it during the war; it had, therefore, been the scene of marauding and infested with refugees, cowboys, and all kinds of border chivalry. Just sufficient time had elapsed to enable each storyteller to dress up his tale with a little becoming fiction, and, in the indistinctness of his recollection, to make himself the hero of every exploit.

There was the story of Doffue Martling, a large blue-bearded Dutchman, who had nearly taken a British frigate with an old iron nine-pounder from a mud breastwork only that his gun burst at the sixth discharge. And there was an old gentleman who shall be nameless, being too rich a mynheer to be lightly mentioned, who, in the battle of White Plains, being an excellent master of defence, parried a musket-ball with a small sword, insomuch that he absolutely felt it whiz round the blade, and glance off at the hilt; in proof of which he was ready at any time to show the sword, with the hilt a little bent. There were several more that had been equally great in the field, not one of whom but was persuaded that he had a considerable hand in bringing the war to a happy termination.

But all these were nothing to the tales of ghosts and apparitions that succeeded. The neighborhood is rich in legendary treasures of the kind. Local tales and superstitions thrive best in these sheltered, long-settled retreats; but are trampled under foot by the shifting throng that forms the population of most of our country places. Besides, there is no encouragement for ghosts in most of our villages, for they have scarcely had time to finish their first nap and turn themselves in their graves, before their surviving friends have travelled away from the neighborhood; so that when they turn out at night to walk their rounds, they have no acquaintance left to call upon. This is perhaps the reason why we so seldom hear of ghosts except in our long-established Dutch communities.

The immediate cause, however, of the prevalence of supernatural stories in these parts, was doubtless owing to the vicinity of Sleepy Hollow. There was a contagion in the very air that blew from that haunted region; it breathed forth an atmosphere of dreams and fancies infecting all the land. Several of the Sleepy Hollow people were present at Van Tassel’s, and, as usual, were doling out their wild and wonderful legends. Many dismal tales were told about funeral trains, and mourning cries and wailings heard and seen about the great tree where the unfortunate Major Andrй was taken, and which stood in the neighborhood. Some mention was made also of the woman in white, that haunted the dark glen at Raven Rock, and was often heard to shriek on winter nights before a storm, having perished there in the snow. The chief part of the stories, however, turned upon the favorite spectre of Sleepy Hollow, the Headless Horseman, who had been heard several times of late, patrolling the country; and, it was said, tethered his horse nightly among the graves in the churchyard.

The sequestered situation of this church seems always to have made it a favorite haunt of troubled spirits. It stands on a knoll, surrounded by locust-trees and lofty elms, from among which its decent, whitewashed walls shine modestly forth, like Christian purity beaming through the shades of retirement. A gentle slope descends from it to a silver sheet of water, bordered by high trees, between which, peeps may be caught at the blue hills of the Hudson. To look upon its grass-grown yard, where the sunbeams seem to sleep so quietly, one would think that there at least the dead might rest in peace. On one side of the church extends a wide woody dell, along which raves a large brook among broken rocks and trunks of fallen trees. Over a deep black part of the stream, not far from the church, was formerly thrown a wooden bridge; the road that led to it, and the bridge itself, were thickly shaded by overhanging trees, which cast a gloom about it, even in the daytime; but occasioned a fearful darkness at night. Such was one of the favorite haunts of the Headless Horseman, and the place where he was most frequently encountered. The tale was told of old Brouwer, a most heretical disbeliever in ghosts, how he met the Horseman returning from his foray into Sleepy Hollow, and was obliged to get up behind him; how they galloped over bush and brake, over hill and swamp, until they reached the bridge; when the Horseman suddenly turned into a skeleton, threw old Brouwer into the brook, and sprang away over the tree-tops with a clap of thunder.

This story was immediately matched by a thrice marvellous adventure of Brom Bones, who made light of the Galloping Hessian as an arrant jockey. He affirmed that on returning one night from the neighboring village of Sing Sing, he had been overtaken by this midnight trooper; that he had offered to race with him for a bowl of punch, and should have won it too, for Daredevil beat the goblin horse all hollow, but just as they came to the church bridge, the Hessian bolted, and vanished in a flash of fire.

All these tales, told in that drowsy undertone with which men talk in the dark, the countenances of the listeners only now and then receiving a casual gleam from the glare of a pipe, sank deep in the mind of Ichabod. He repaid them in kind with large extracts from his invaluable author, Cotton Mather, and added many marvellous events that had taken place in his native State of Connecticut, and fearful sights which he had seen in his nightly walks about Sleepy Hollow.

The revel now gradually broke up. The old farmers gathered together their families in their wagons, and were heard for some time rattling along the hollow roads, and over the distant hills. Some of the damsels mounted on pillions behind their favorite swains, and their light-hearted laughter, mingling with the clatter of hoofs, echoed along the silent woodlands, sounding fainter and fainter, until they gradually died away, – and the late scene of noise and frolic was all silent and deserted. Ichabod only lingered behind, according to the custom of country lovers, to have a tête-à-tête with the heiress; fully convinced that he was now on the high road to success. What passed at this interview I will not pretend to say, for in fact I do not know. Something, however, I fear me, must have gone wrong, for he certainly sallied forth, after no very great interval, with an air quite desolate and chapfallen. Oh, these women! these women! Could that girl have been playing off any of her coquettish tricks? Was her encouragement of the poor pedagogue all a mere sham to secure her conquest of his rival? Heaven only knows, not I! Let it suffice to say, Ichabod stole forth with the air of one who had been sacking a henroost, rather than a fair lady’s heart. Without looking to the right or left to notice the scene of rural wealth, on which he had so often gloated, he went straight to the stable, and with several hearty cuffs and kicks roused his steed most uncourteously from the comfortable quarters in which he was soundly sleeping, dreaming of mountains of corn and oats, and whole valleys of timothy and clover.

It was the very witching time of night that Ichabod, heavy-hearted and crestfallen, pursued his travels homewards, along the sides of the lofty hills which rise above Tarry Town, and which he had traversed so cheerily in the afternoon. The hour was as dismal as himself. Far below him the Tappan Zee spread its dusky and indistinct waste of waters, with here and there the tall mast of a sloop, riding quietly at anchor under the land. In the dead hush of midnight, he could even hear the barking of the watchdog from the opposite shore of the Hudson; but it was so vague and faint as only to give an idea of his distance from this faithful companion of man. Now and then, too, the long-drawn crowing of a cock, accidentally awakened, would sound far, far off, from some farmhouse away among the hills – but it was like a dreaming sound in his ear. No signs of life occurred near him, but occasionally the melancholy chirp of a cricket, or perhaps the guttural twang of a bullfrog from a neighboring marsh, as if sleeping uncomfortably and turning suddenly in his bed.

All the stories of ghosts and goblins that he had heard in the afternoon now came crowding upon his recollection. The night grew darker and darker; the stars seemed to sink deeper in the sky, and driving clouds occasionally hid them from his sight. He had never felt so lonely and dismal. He was, moreover, approaching the very place where many of the scenes of the ghost stories had been laid. In the centre of the road stood an enormous tulip-tree, which towered like a giant above all the other trees of the neighborhood, and formed a kind of landmark. Its limbs were gnarled and fantastic, large enough to form trunks for ordinary trees, twisting down almost to the earth, and rising again into the air. It was connected with the tragical story of the unfortunate André, who had been taken prisoner hard by; and was universally known by the name of Major André’s tree. The common people regarded it with a mixture of respect and superstition, partly out of sympathy for the fate of its ill– starred namesake, and partly from the tales of strange sights, and doleful lamentations, told concerning it.

As Ichabod approached this fearful tree, he began to whistle; he thought his whistle was answered; it was but a blast sweeping sharply through the dry branches. As he approached a little nearer, he thought he saw something white, hanging in the midst of the tree: he paused and ceased whistling but, on looking more narrowly, perceived that it was a place where the tree had been scathed by lightning, and the white wood laid bare. Suddenly he heard a groan – his teeth chattered, and his knees smote against the saddle: it was but the rubbing of one huge bough upon another, as they were swayed about by the breeze. He passed the tree in safety, but new perils lay before him.

About two hundred yards from the tree, a small brook crossed the road, and ran into a marshy and thickly-wooded glen, known by the name of Wiley’s Swamp. A few rough logs, laid side by side, served for a bridge over this stream. On that side of the road where the brook entered the wood, a group of oaks and chestnuts, matted thick with wild grape-vines, threw a cavernous gloom over it. To pass this bridge was the severest trial. It was at this identical spot that the unfortunate Andrй was captured, and under the covert of those chestnuts and vines were the sturdy yeomen concealed who surprised him. This has ever since been considered a haunted stream, and fearful are the feelings of the schoolboy who has to pass it alone after dark.

As he approached the stream, his heart began to thump; he summoned up, however, all his resolution, gave his horse half a score of kicks in the ribs, and attempted to dash briskly across the bridge; but instead of starting forward, the perverse old animal made a lateral movement, and ran broadside against the fence. Ichabod, whose fears increased with the delay, jerked the reins on the other side, and kicked lustily with the contrary foot: it was all in vain; his steed started, it is true, but it was only to plunge to the opposite side of the road into a thicket of brambles and alder bushes. The schoolmaster now bestowed both whip and heel upon the starveling ribs of old Gunpowder, who dashed forward, snuffling and snorting, but came to a stand just by the bridge, with a suddenness that had nearly sent his rider sprawling over his head. Just at this moment a plashy tramp by the side of the bridge caught the sensitive ear of Ichabod. In the dark shadow of the grove, on the margin of the brook, he beheld something huge, misshapen and towering. It stirred not, but seemed gathered up in the gloom, like some gigantic monster ready to spring upon the traveller.

The hair of the affrighted pedagogue rose upon his head with terror. What was to be done? To turn and fly was now too late; and besides, what chance was there of escaping ghost or goblin, if such it was, which could ride upon the wings of the wind? Summoning up, therefore, a show of courage, he demanded in stammering accents, ‘Who are you?’ He received no reply. He repeated his demand in a still more agitated voice. Still there was no answer. Once more he cudgelled the sides of the inflexible Gunpowder, and, shutting his eyes, broke forth with involuntary fervor into a psalm tune. Just then the shadowy object of alarm put itself in motion, and with a scramble and a bound stood at once in the middle of the road. Though the night was dark and dismal, yet the form of the unknown might now in some degree be ascertained. He appeared to be a horseman of large dimensions, and mounted on a black horse of powerful frame. He made no offer of molestation or sociability, but kept aloof on one side of the road, jogging along on the blind side of old Gunpowder, who had now got over his fright and waywardness.

Ichabod, who had no relish for this strange midnight companion, and bethought himself of the adventure of Brom Bones with the Galloping Hessian, now quickened his steed in hopes of leaving him behind. The stranger, however, quickened his horse to an equal pace. Ichabod pulled up, and fell into a walk, thinking to lag behind, – the other did the same. His heart began to sink within him; he endeavored to resume his psalm tune, but his parched tongue clove to the roof of his mouth, and he could not utter a stave. There was something in the moody and dogged silence of this pertinacious companion that was mysterious and appalling. It was soon fearfully accounted for. On mounting a rising ground, which brought the figure of his fellow-traveller in relief against the sky, gigantic in height, and muffled in a cloak, Ichabod was horror-struck on perceiving that he was headless! – but his horror was still more increased on observing that the head, which should have rested on his shoulders, was carried before him on the pommel of his saddle! His terror rose to desperation; he rained a shower of kicks and blows upon Gunpowder, hoping by a sudden movement to give his companion the slip; but the spectre started full jump with him. Away, then, they dashed through thick and thin; stones flying and sparks flashing at every bound. Ichabod’s flimsy garments fluttered in the air, as he stretched his long lank body away over his horse’s head, in the eagerness of his flight.

They had now reached the road which turns off to Sleepy Hollow; but Gunpowder, who seemed possessed with a demon, instead of keeping up it, made an opposite turn, and plunged headlong downhill to the left. This road leads through a sandy hollow shaded by trees for about a quarter of a mile, where it crosses the bridge famous in goblin story; and just beyond swells the green knoll on which stands the whitewashed church.

As yet the panic of the steed had given his unskilful rider an apparent advantage in the chase, but just as he had got half way through the hollow, the girths of the saddle gave way, and he felt it slipping from under him. He seized it by the pommel, and endeavored to hold it firm, but in vain; and had just time to save himself by clasping old Gunpowder round the neck, when the saddle fell to the earth, and he heard it trampled under foot by his pursuer. For a moment the terror of Hans Van Ripper’s wrath passed across his mind, – for it was his Sunday saddle; but this was no time for petty fears; the goblin was hard on his haunches; and (unskilful rider that he was!) he had much ado to maintain his seat; sometimes slipping on one side, sometimes on another, and sometimes jolted on the high ridge of his horse’s backbone, with a violence that he verily feared would cleave him asunder.

An opening in the trees now cheered him with the hopes that the church bridge was at hand. The wavering reflection of a silver star in the bosom of the brook told him that he was not mistaken. He saw the walls of the church dimly glaring under the trees beyond. He recollected the place where Brom Bones’s ghostly competitor had disappeared. ‘If I can but reach that bridge,’ thought Ichabod, ‘I am safe.’ Just then he heard the black steed panting and blowing close behind him; he even fancied that he felt his hot breath. Another convulsive kick in the ribs, and old Gunpowder sprang upon the bridge; he thundered over the resounding planks; he gained the opposite side; and now Ichabod cast a look behind to see if his pursuer should vanish, according to rule, in a flash of fire and brimstone. Just then he saw the goblin rising in his stirrups, and in the very act of hurling his head at him. Ichabod endeavored to dodge the horrible missile, but too late. It encountered his cranium with a tremendous crash, – he was tumbled headlong into the dust, and Gunpowder, the black steed, and the goblin rider, passed by like a whirlwind.

The next morning the old horse was found without his saddle, and with the bridle under his feet, soberly cropping the grass at his master’s gate. Ichabod did not make his appearance at breakfast; dinner-hour came, but no Ichabod. The boys assembled at the schoolhouse, and strolled idly about the banks of the brook; but no schoolmaster. Hans Van Ripper now began to feel some uneasiness about the fate of poor Ichabod, and his saddle. An inquiry was set on foot, and after diligent investigation they came upon his traces. In one part of the road leading to the church was found the saddle trampled in the dirt; the tracks of horses’ hoofs deeply dented in the road, and evidently at furious speed, were traced to the bridge, beyond which, on the bank of a broad part of the brook, where the water ran deep and black, was found the hat of the unfortunate Ichabod, and close beside it a shattered pumpkin.

The brook was searched, but the body of the schoolmaster was not to be discovered. Hans Van Ripper as executor of his estate, examined the bundle which contained all his worldly effects. They consisted of two shirts and a half; two stocks for the neck; a pair or two of worsted stockings; an old pair of corduroy small-clothes; a rusty razor; a book of psalm tunes full of dog’s-ears; and a broken pitch-pipe. As to the books and furniture of the schoolhouse, they belonged to the community, excepting Cotton Mather’s History of Witchcraft, a New England Almanac, and a book of dreams and fortune-telling; in which last was a sheet of foolscap much scribbled and blotted in several fruitless attempts to make a copy of verses in honor of the heiress of Van Tassel. These magic books and the poetic scrawl were forthwith consigned to the flames by Hans Van Ripper; who, from that time forward, determined to send his children no more to school, observing that he never knew any good come of this same reading and writing. Whatever money the schoolmaster possessed, and he had received his quarter’s pay but a day or two before, he must have had about his person at the time of his disappearance.

The mysterious event caused much speculation at the church on the following Sunday. Knots of gazers and gossips were collected in the churchyard, at the bridge, and at the spot where the hat and pumpkin had been found. The stories of Brouwer, of Bones, and a whole budget of others were called to mind; and when they had diligently considered them all, and compared them with the symptoms of the present case, they shook their heads, and came to the conclusion that Ichabod had been carried off by the Galloping Hessian. As he was a bachelor, and in nobody’s debt, nobody troubled his head any more about him; the school was removed to a different quarter of the hollow, and another pedagogue reigned in his stead.

It is true, an old farmer, who had been down to New York on a visit several years after, and from whom this account of the ghostly adventure was received, brought home the intelligence that Ichabod Crane was still alive; that he had left the neighborhood partly through fear of the goblin and Hans Van Ripper, and partly in mortification at having been suddenly dismissed by the heiress; that he had changed his quarters to a distant part of the country; had kept school and studied law at the same time; had been admitted to the bar; turned politician; electioneered; written for the newspapers; and finally had been made a justice of the Ten Pound Court. Brom Bones, too, who, shortly after his rival’s disappearance conducted the blooming Katrina in triumph to the altar, was observed to look exceedingly knowing whenever the story of Ichabod was related, and always burst into a hearty laugh at the mention of the pumpkin; which led some to suspect that he knew more about the matter than he chose to tell.

The old country wives, however, who are the best judges of these matters, maintain to this day that Ichabod was spirited away by supernatural means; and it is a favorite story often told about the neighborhood round the winter evening fire. The bridge became more than ever an object of superstitious awe; and that may be the reason why the road has been altered of late years, so as to approach the church by the border of the millpond. The schoolhouse being deserted soon fell to decay, and was reported to be haunted by the ghost of the unfortunate pedagogue and the plowboy, loitering homeward of a still summer evening, has often fancied his voice at a distance, chanting a melancholy psalm tune among the tranquil solitudes of Sleepy Hollow.

Stephen Leacock

Nonsense Novels

Maddened by Mystery: or, The Defective Detective

The great detective sat in his office. He wore a long green gown and half a dozen secret badges pinned to the outside of it.

Three or four pairs of false whiskers hung on a whisker-stand beside him.

Goggles, blue spectacles and motor glasses lay within easy reach.

He could completely disguise himself at a second’s notice.

Half a bucket of cocaine and a dipper stood on a chair at his elbow.

His face was absolutely impenetrable.

A pile of cryptograms lay on the desk. The Great Detective hastily tore them open one after the other, solved them, and threw them down the cryptogram-shute at his side.

There was a rap at the door.

The Great Detective hurriedly wrapped himself in a pink domino, adjusted a pair of false black whiskers and cried,

‘Come in.’

His secretary entered. ‘Ha,’ said the detective, ‘it is you!’

He laid aside his disguise.

‘Sir,’ said the young man in intense excitement, ‘a mystery has been committed!’

‘Ha!’ said the Great Detective, his eye kindling, ‘is it such as to completely baffle the police of the entire continent?’

‘They are so completely baffled with it,’ said the secretary, ‘that they are lying collapsed in heaps; many of them have committed suicide.’

‘So,’ said the detective, ‘and is the mystery one that is absolutely unparalleled in the whole recorded annals of the London police?’

‘It is.’

‘And I suppose,’ said the detective, ‘that it involves names which you would scarcely dare to breathe, at least without first using some kind of atomiser or throat-gargle.’

‘Exactly.’

‘And it is connected, I presume, with the highest diplomatic consequences, so that if we fail to solve it England will be at war with the whole world in sixteen minutes?’

His secretary, still quivering with excitement, again answered yes.

‘And finally,’ said the Great Detective, ‘I presume that it was committed in broad daylight, in some such place as the entrance of the Bank of England, or in the cloak-room of the House of Commons, and under the very eyes of the police?’

‘Those,’ said the secretary, ‘are the very conditions of the mystery.’

‘Good,’ said the Great Detective, ‘now wrap yourself in this disguise, put on these brown whiskers and tell me what it is.’

The secretary wrapped himself in a blue domino with lace insertions, then, bending over, he whispered in the ear of the Great Detective:

‘The Prince of Wurttemberg has been kidnapped.’

The Great Detective bounded from his chair as if he had been kicked from below.

A prince stolen! Evidently a Bourbon! The scion of one of the oldest families in Europe kidnapped. Here was a mystery indeed worthy of his analytical brain.

His mind began to move like lightning.

‘Stop!’ he said, ‘how do you know this?’

The secretary handed him a telegram. It was from the Prefect of Police of Paris. It read: ‘The Prince of Wurttemberg stolen. Probably forwarded to London. Must have him here for the opening day of Exhibition. 1,000 pounds reward.’

So! The Prince had been kidnapped out of Paris at the very time when his appearance at the International Exposition would have been a political event of the first magnitude.

With the Great Detective to think was to act, and to act was to think.

Frequently he could do both together.

‘Wire to Paris for a description of the Prince.’

The secretary bowed and left.

At the same moment there was slight scratching at the door.

A visitor entered. He crawled stealthily on his hands and knees. A hearthrug thrown over his head and shoulders disguised his identity.

He crawled to the middle of the room.

Then he rose.

Great Heaven!

It was the Prime Minister of England.

‘You!’ said the detective.

‘Me,’ said the Prime Minister.

‘You have come in regard the kidnapping of the Prince of Wurttemberg?’

The Prime Minister started.

‘How do you know?’ he said.

The Great Detective smiled his inscrutable smile.

‘Yes,’ said the Prime Minister. ‘I will use no concealment. I am interested, deeply interested. Find the Prince of Wurttemberg, get him safe back to Paris and I will add 500 pounds to the reward already offered. But listen,’ he said impressively as he left the room, ‘see to it that no attempt is made to alter the marking of the prince, or to clip his tail.’

So! To clip the Prince’s tail! The brain of the Great Detective reeled. So! a gang of miscreants had conspired to – but no! the thing was not possible.

There was another rap at the door.

A second visitor was seen. He wormed his way in, lying almost prone upon his stomach, and wriggling across the floor. He was enveloped in a long purple cloak. He stood up and peeped over the top of it.

Great Heaven!

It was the Archbishop of Canterbury!

‘Your Grace!’ exclaimed the detective in amazement – ‘pray do not stand, I beg you. Sit down, lie down, anything rather than stand.’

The Archbishop took off his mitre and laid it wearily on the whisker-stand.

‘You are here in regard to the Prince of Wurttemberg.’

The Archbishop started and crossed himself. Was the man a magician?

‘Yes,’ he said, ‘much depends on getting him back. But I have only come to say this: my sister is desirous of seeing you. She is coming here. She has been extremely indiscreet and her fortune hangs upon the Prince. Get him back to Paris or I fear she will be ruined.’

The Archbishop regained his mitre, uncrossed himself, wrapped his cloak about him, and crawled stealthily out on his hands and knees, purring like a cat.

The face of the Great Detective showed the most profound sympathy. It ran up and down in furrows. ‘So,’ he muttered, ‘the sister of the Archbishop, the Countess of Dashleigh!’ Accustomed as he was to the life of the aristocracy, even the Great Detective felt that there was here intrigue of more than customary complexity.

There was a loud rapping at the door.

There entered the Countess of Dashleigh. She was all in furs.

She was the most beautiful woman in England. She strode imperiously into the room. She seized a chair imperiously and seated herself on it, imperial side up.

She took off her tiara of diamonds and put it on the tiara-holder beside her and uncoiled her boa of pearls and put it on the pearl-stand.

‘You have come,’ said the Great Detective, ‘about the Prince of Wurttemberg.’

‘Wretched little pup!’ said the Countess of Dashleigh in disgust.

So! A further complication! Far from being in love with the Prince, the Countess denounced the young Bourbon as a pup!

‘You are interested in him, I believe.’

‘Interested!’ said the Countess. ‘I should rather say so. Why, I bred him!’

‘You which?’ gasped the Great Detective, his usually impassive features suffused with a carmine blush.

‘I bred him,’ said the Countess, ‘and I’ve got 10,000 pounds upon his chances, so no wonder I want him back in Paris. Only listen,’ she said, ‘if they’ve got hold of the Prince and cut his tail or spoiled the markings of his stomach it would be far better to have him quietly put out of the way here.’

The Great Detective reeled and leaned up against the side of the room. So! The cold-blooded admission of the beautiful woman for the moment took away his breath! Herself the mother of the young Bourbon, misallied with one of the greatest families of Europe, staking her fortune on a Royalist plot, and yet with so instinctive a knowledge of European politics as to know that any removal of the hereditary birth-marks of the Prince would forfeit for him the sympathy of the French populace.

The Countess resumed her tiara.

She left.

The secretary re-entered.

‘I have three telegrams from Paris,’ he said, ‘they are completely baffling.’

He handed over the first telegram.

It read:

‘The Prince of Wurttemberg has a long, wet snout, broad ears, very long body, and short hind legs.’

The Great Detective looked puzzled.

He read the second telegram.

‘The Prince of Wurttemberg is easily recognised by his deep bark.’

And then the third.

‘The Prince of Wurttemberg can be recognised by a patch of white hair across the centre of his back.’

The two men looked at one another. The mystery was maddening, impenetrable.

The Great Detective spoke.

‘Give me my domino,’ he said. ‘These clues must be followed up,’ then pausing, while his quick brain analysed and summed up the evidence before him – ‘a young man,’ he muttered, ‘evidently young since described as a “pup,” with a long, wet snout (ha! addicted obviously to drinking), a streak of white hair across his back (a first sign of the results of his abandoned life) – yes, yes,’ he continued, ‘with this clue I shall find him easily.’

The Great Detective rose.

He wrapped himself in a long black cloak with white whiskers and blue spectacles attached.

Completely disguised, he issued forth.

He began the search.

For four days he visited every corner of London.

He entered every saloon in the city. In each of them he drank a glass of rum. In some of them he assumed the disguise of a sailor. In others he entered as a solider. Into others he penetrated as a clergyman. His disguise was perfect. Nobody paid any attention to him as long as he had the price of a drink.

The search proved fruitless.

Two young men were arrested under suspicion of being the Prince, only to be released.

The identification was incomplete in each case.

One had a long wet snout but no hair on his back.

The other had hair on his back but couldn’t bark.

Neither of them was the young Bourbon.

The Great Detective continued his search.

He stopped at nothing.

Secretly, after nightfall, he visited the home of the Prime Minister. He examined it from top to bottom. He measured all the doors and windows. He took up the flooring. He inspected the plumbing. He examined the furniture. He found nothing.

With equal secrecy he penetrated into the palace of the Archbishop. He examined it from top to bottom. Disguised as a choir-boy he took part in the offices of the church. He found nothing.

Still undismayed, the Great Detective made his way into the home of the Countess of Dashleigh. Disguised as a housemaid, he entered the service of the Countess.

Then at last a clue came which gave him a solution of the mystery.

On the wall of the Countess’s boudoir was a large framed engraving.

It was a portrait.

Under it was a printed legend:

THE PRINCE OF WURTTEMBERG

The portrait was that of a Dachshund.

The long body, the broad ears, the unclipped tail, the short hind legs – all was there.

In a fraction of a second the lightning mind of the Great Detective had penetrated the whole mystery.

THE PRINCE WAS A DOG!!!!

Hastily throwing a domino over his housemaid’s dress, he rushed to the street. He summoned a passing hansom, and in a few moments was at his house.

‘I have it,’ he gasped to his secretary. ‘The mystery is solved.

I have pieced it together. By sheer analysis I have reasoned it out.

Listen – hind legs, hair on back, wet snout, pup – eh, what? does thatsuggest nothing to you?’

‘Nothing,’ said the secretary; ‘it seems perfectly hopeless.’

The Great Detective, now recovered from his excitement, smiled faintly.

‘It means simply this, my dear fellow. The Prince of Wurttemberg is a dog, a prize Dachshund. The Countess of Dashleigh bred him, and he is worth some 25,000 pounds in addition to the prize of 10,000 pounds offered at the Paris dog show. Can you wonder that —’

At that moment the Great Detective was interrupted by the scream of a woman.

‘Great Heaven!’

The Countess of Dashleigh dashed into the room.

Her face was wild.

Her tiara was in disorder.

Her pearls were dripping all over the place.

She wrung her hands and moaned.

‘They have cut his tail,’ she gasped, ‘and taken all the hair off his back. What can I do? I am undone!!’

‘Madame,’ said the Great Detective, calm as bronze, ‘do yourself up. I can save you yet.’

‘You!’

‘Me!’

‘How?’

‘Listen. This is how. The Prince was to have been shown at Paris.’

The Countess nodded.

‘Your fortune was staked on him?’

The Countess nodded again.

‘The dog was stolen, carried to London, his tail cut and his marks disfigured.’

Amazed at the quiet penetration of the Great Detective, the Countess kept on nodding and nodding.

‘And you are ruined?’

‘I am,’ she gasped, and sank to the floor in a heap of pearls.

‘Madame,’ said the Great Detective, ‘all is not lost.’

He straightened himself up to his full height. A look of inflinchable unflexibility flickered over his features.

The honour of England, the fortune of the most beautiful woman in England was at stake.

‘I will do it,’ he murmured.

‘Rise dear lady,’ he continued. ‘Fear nothing. I WILL IMPERSONATE THE DOG!!!’

That night the Great Detective might have been seen on the deck of the Calais packet boat with his secretary. He was on his hands and knees in a long black cloak, and his secretary had him on a short chain.

He barked at the waves exultingly and licked the secretary’s hand.

‘What a beautiful dog,’ said the passengers.

The disguise was absolutely complete.

The Great Detective had been coated over with mucilage to which dog hairs had been applied. The markings on his back were perfect. His tail, adjusted with an automatic coupler, moved up and down responsive to every thought. His deep eyes were full of intelligence.

Next day he was exhibited in the Dachshund class at the International show.

He won all hearts.

‘Quel beau chien!’ cried the French people.

‘Ach! was ein Dog!’ cried the Spanish.

The Great Detective took the first prize!

The fortune of the Countess was saved.

Unfortunately as the Great Detective had neglected to pay the dog tax, he was caught and destroyed by the dog-catchers. But that is, of course, quite outside of the present narrative, and is only mentioned as an odd fact in conclusion.

‘Q.’ A Psychic Pstory of the Psupernatural

I cannot expect that any of my readers will believe the story which I am about to narrate. Looking back upon it, I scarcely believe it myself. Yet my narrative is so extraordinary and throws such light upon the nature of our communications with beings of another world, that I feel I am not entitled to withhold it from the public.

I had gone over to visit Annerly at his rooms. It was Saturday, October 31. I remember the date so precisely because it was my pay day, and I had received six sovereigns and ten shillings. I remembered the sum so exactly because I had put the money into my pocket, and I remember into which pocket I had put it because I had no money in any other pocket. My mind is perfectly clear on all these points.

Annerly and I sat smoking for some time.

Then quite suddenly —

‘Do you believe in the supernatural?’ he asked.

I started as if I had been struck.

At the moment when Annerly spoke of the supernatural I had been thinking of something entirely different. The fact that he should speak of it at the very instant when I was thinking of something else, struck me as at least a very singular coincidence.

For a moment I could only stare.

‘What I mean is,’ said Annerly, ‘do you believe in phantasms of the dead?’

‘Phantasms?’ I repeated.

‘Yes, phantasms, or if you prefer the word, phanograms, or say if you will phanogrammatical manifestations, or more simply psychophantasmal phenomena?’

I looked at Annerly with a keener sense of interest than I had ever felt in him before. I felt that he was about to deal with events and experiences of which in the two or three months that I had known him he had never seen fit to speak.

I wondered now that it had never occurred to me that a man whose hair at fifty-five was already streaked with grey, must have passed through some terrible ordeal.

Presently Annerly spoke again.

‘Last night I saw Q,’ he said.

‘Good heavens!’ I ejaculated. I did not in the least know who Q was, but it struck me with a thrill of indescribable terror that Annerly had seen Q. In my own quiet and measured existence such a thing had never happened.

‘Yes,’ said Annerly, ‘I saw Q as plainly as if he were standing here. But perhaps I had better tell you something of my past relationship with Q, and you will understand exactly what the present situation is.’

Annerly seated himself in a chair on the other side of the fire from me, lighted a pipe and continued.

‘When first I knew Q he lived not very far from a small town in the south of England, which I will call X, and was betrothed to a beautiful and accomplished girl whom I will name M.’

Annerly had hardly begun to speak before I found myself listening with riveted attention. I realised that it was no ordinary experience that he was about to narrate. I more than suspected that Q and M were not the real names of his unfortunate acquaintances, but were in reality two letters of the alphabet selected almost at random to disguise the names of his friends. I was still pondering over the ingenuity of the thing when Annerly went on:

‘When Q and I first became friends, he had a favourite dog, which, if necessary, I might name Z, and which followed him in and out of X on his daily walk.’

‘In and out of X,’ I repeated in astonishment.

‘Yes,’ said Annerly, ‘in and out.’

My senses were now fully alert. That Z should have followed Q out of X, I could readily understand, but that he should first have followed him in seemed to pass the bounds of comprehension.

‘Well,’ said Annerly, ‘Q and Miss M were to be married. Everything was arranged. The wedding was to take place on the last day of the year. Exactly six months and four days before the appointed day (I remember the date because the coincidence struck me as peculiar at the time) Q came to me late in the evening in great distress. He had just had, he said, a premonition of his own death. That evening, while sitting with Miss M on the verandah of her house, he had distinctly seen a projection of the dog R pass along the road.’

‘Stop a moment,’ I said. ‘Did you not say that the dog’s name was Z?’

Annerly frowned slightly.

‘Quite so,’ he replied. ‘Z, or more correctly Z R, since Q was in the habit, perhaps from motives of affection, of calling him R as well as Z. Well, then, the projection, or phanogram, of the dog passed in front of them so plainly that Miss M swore that she could have believed that it was the dog himself. Opposite the house the phantasm stopped for a moment and wagged its tail. Then it passed on, and quite suddenly disappeared around the corner of a stone wall, as if hidden by the bricks. What made the thing still more mysterious was that Miss M’s mother, who is partially blind, had only partially seen the dog.’

Annerly paused a moment. Then he went on:

‘This singular occurrence was interpreted by Q, no doubt correctly, to indicate his own approaching death. I did what I could to remove this feeling, but it was impossible to do so, and he presently wrung my hand and left me, firmly convinced that he would not live till morning.’

‘Good heavens!’ I exclaimed, ‘and he died that night?’

‘No, he did not,’ said Annerly quietly, ‘that is the inexplicable part of it.’

‘Tell me about it,’ I said.

‘He rose that morning as usual, dressed himself with his customary care, omitting none of his clothes, and walked down to his office at the usual hour. He told me afterwards that he remembered the circumstances so clearly from the fact that he had gone to the office by the usual route instead of taking any other direction.’

‘Stop a moment,’ I said. ‘Did anything unusual happen to mark that particular day?’

‘I anticipated that you would ask that question,’ said Annerly, ‘but as far as I can gather, absolutely nothing happened. Q returned from his work, and ate his dinner apparently much as usual, and presently went to bed complaining of a slight feeling of drowsiness, but nothing more. His stepmother, with whom he lived, said afterwards that she could hear the sound of his breathing quite distinctly during the night.’

‘And did he die that night?’ I asked, breathless with excitement.

‘No,’ said Annerly, ‘he did not. He rose next morning feeling about as before except that the sense of drowsiness had apparently passed, and that the sound of his breathing was no longer audible.’

Annerly again fell into silence. Anxious as I was to hear the rest of his astounding narrative, I did not like to press him with questions. The fact that our relations had hitherto been only of a formal character, and that this was the first occasion on which he had invited me to visit him at his rooms, prevented me from assuming too great an intimacy.

‘Well,’ he continued, ‘Q went to his office each day after that with absolute regularity. As far as I can gather there was nothing either in his surroundings or his conduct to indicate that any peculiar fate was impending over him. He saw Miss M regularly, and the time fixed for their marriage drew nearer each day.’

‘Each day?’ I repeated in astonishment.

‘Yes,’ said Annerly, ‘every day. For some time before his marriage I saw but little of him. But two weeks before that event was due to happen, I passed Q one day in the street. He seemed for a moment about to stop, then he raised his hat, smiled and passed on.’

‘One moment,’ I said, ‘if you will allow me a question that seems of importance – did he pass on and then smile and raise his hat, or did he smile into his hat, raise it, and then pass on afterwards?’

‘Your question is quite justified,’ said Annerly, ‘though I think I can answer with perfect accuracy that he first smiled, then stopped smiling and raised his hat, and then stopped raising his hat and passed on.’

‘However,’ he continued, ‘the essential fact is this: on the day appointed for the wedding, Q and Miss M were duly married.’

‘Impossible!’ I gasped; ‘duly married, both of them?’

‘Yes,’ said Annerly, ‘both at the same time. After the wedding Mr. and Mrs. Q—’

‘Mr. and Mrs. Q,’ I repeated in perplexity.

‘Yes,’ he answered, ‘Mr. and Mrs. Q – for after the wedding Miss M. took the name of Q – left England and went out to Australia, where they were to reside.’

‘Stop one moment,’ I said, ‘and let me be quite clear – in going out to settle in Australia it was their intention to reside there?’

‘Yes,’ said Annerly, ‘that at any rate was generally understood. I myself saw them off on the steamer, and shook hands with Q, standing at the same time quite close to him.’

‘Well,’ I said, ‘and since the two Q’s, as I suppose one might almost call them, went to Australia, have you heard anything from them?’

‘That,’ replied Annerly, ‘is a matter that has shown the same singularity as the rest of my experience. It is now four years since Q and his wife went to Australia. At first I heard from him quite regularly, and received two letters each month. Presently I only received one letter every two months, and later two letters every six months, and then only one letter every twelve months. Then until last night I heard nothing whatever of Q for a year and a half.’

I was now on the tiptoe of expectancy.

‘Last night,’ said Annerly very quietly, ‘Q appeared in this room, or rather, a phantasm or psychic manifestation of him. He seemed in great distress, made gestures which I could not understand, and kept turning his trouser pockets inside out. I was too spellbound to question him, and tried in vain to divine his meaning. Presently the phantasm seized a pencil from the table, and wrote the words, “Two sovereigns, to-morrow night, urgent.”’

Annerly was again silent. I sat in deep thought. ‘How do you interpret the meaning which Q’s phanogram meant to convey?’

‘I think,’ he announced, ‘it means this. Q, who is evidently dead, meant to visualise that fact, meant, so to speak, to deatomise the idea that he was demonetised, and that he wanted two sovereigns to-night.’

‘And how,’ I asked, amazed at Annerly’s instinctive penetration into the mysteries of the psychic world, ‘how do you intend to get it to him?’

‘I intend,’ he announced, ‘to try a bold, a daring experiment, which, if it succeeds, will bring us into immediate connection with the world of spirits. My plan is to leave two sovereigns here upon the edge of the table during the night. If they are gone in the morning, I shall know that Q has contrived to de-astralise himself, and has taken the sovereigns. The only question is, do you happen to have two sovereigns? I myself, unfortunately, have nothing but small change about me.’

Here was a piece of rare good fortune, the coincidence of which seemed to add another link to the chain of circumstance. As it happened I had with me the six sovereigns which I had just drawn as my week’s pay.

‘Luckily,’ I said, ‘I am able to arrange that. I happen to have money with me.’ And I took two sovereigns from my pocket.

Annerly was delighted at our good luck. Our preparations for the experiment were soon made.

We placed the table in the middle of the room in such a way that there could be no fear of contact or collision with any of the furniture. The chairs were carefully set against the wall, and so placed that no two of them occupied the same place as any other two, while the pictures and ornaments about the room were left entirely undisturbed. We were careful not to remove any of the wall-paper from the wall, nor to detach any of the window-panes from the window. When all was ready the two sovereigns were laid side by side upon the table, with the heads up in such a way that the lower sides or tails were supported by only the table itself. We then extinguished the light. I said ‘Good night’ to Annerly, and groped my way out into the dark, feverish with excitement.

My readers may well imagine my state of eagerness to know the result of the experiment. I could scarcely sleep for anxiety to know the issue. I had, of course, every faith in the completeness of our preparations, but was not without misgivings that the experiment might fail, as my own mental temperament and disposition might not be of the precise kind needed for the success of these experiments.

On this score, however, I need have had no alarm. The event showed that my mind was a media, or if the word is better, a transparency, of the very first order for psychic work of this character.

In the morning Annerly came rushing over to my lodgings, his face beaming with excitement.

‘Glorious, glorious,’ he almost shouted, ‘we have succeeded! The sovereigns are gone. We are in direct monetary communication with Q.’

I need not dwell on the exquisite thrill of happiness which went through me. All that day and all the following day, the sense that I was in communication with Q was ever present with me.

My only hope was that an opportunity might offer for the renewal of our inter-communication with the spirit world.

The following night my wishes were gratified. Late in the evening Annerly called me up on the telephone.

‘Come over at once to my lodgings,’ he said. ‘Q’s phanogram is communicating with us.’

I hastened over, and arrived almost breathless. ‘Q has been here again,’ said Annerly, ‘and appeared in the same distress as before. A projection of him stood in the room, and kept writing with its finger on the table. I could distinguish the word ‘sovereigns,’ but nothing more.’

‘Do you not suppose,’ I said, ‘that Q for some reason which we cannot fathom, wishes us to again leave two sovereigns for him?’

‘By Jove!’ said Annerly enthusiastically, ‘I believe you’ve hit it.At any rate, let us try; we can but fail.’

That night we placed again two of my sovereigns on the table, and arranged the furniture with the same scrupulous care as before.

Still somewhat doubtful of my own psychic fitness for the work in which I was engaged, I endeavoured to keep my mind so poised as to readily offer a mark for any astral disturbance that might be about. The result showed that it had offered just such a mark. Our experiment succeeded completely. The two coins had vanished in the morning.

For nearly two months we continued our experiments on these lines. At times Annerly himself, so he told me, would leave money, often considerable sums, within reach of the phantasm, which never failed to remove them during the night. But Annerly, being a man of strict honour, never carried on these experiments alone except when it proved impossible to communicate with me in time for me to come.

At other times he would call me up with the simple message, ‘Q is here,’ or would send me a telegram, or a written note saying, ‘Q needs money; bring any that you have, but no more.’

On my own part, I was extremely anxious to bring our experiments prominently before the public, or to interest the Society for Psychic Research, and similar bodies, in the daring transit which we had effected between the world of sentience and the psycho-astric, or pseudo-ethereal existence. It seemed to me that we alone had succeeded in thus conveying money directly and without mediation, from one world to another. Others, indeed, had done so by the interposition of a medium, or by subscription to an occult magazine, but we had performed the feat with such simplicity that I was anxious to make our experience public, for the benefit of others like myself.

Annerly, however, was averse from this course, being fearful that it might break off our relations with Q.

It was some three months after our first inter-astral psycho-monetary experiment, that there came the culmination of my experiences – so mysterious as to leave me still lost in perplexity.

Annerly had come in to see me one afternoon. He looked nervous and depressed.

‘I have just had a psychic communication from Q,’ he said in answer to my inquiries, ‘which I can hardly fathom. As far as I can judge, Q has formed some plan for interesting other phantasms in the kind of work that we are doing. He proposes to form, on his side of the gulf, an association that is to work in harmony with us, for monetary dealings on a large scale, between the two worlds.’

My reader may well imagine that my eyes almost blazed with excitement at the magnitude of the prospect opened up.

‘Q wishes us to gather together all the capital that we can, and to send it across to him, in order that he may be able to organise with him a corporate association of phanograms, or perhaps in this case, one would more correctly call them phantoids.’

I had no sooner grasped Annerly’s meaning than I became enthusiastic over it.

We decided to try the great experiment that night.

My own worldly capital was, unfortunately, no great amount. I had, however, some 500 pounds in bank stock left to me at my father’s decease, which I could, of course, realise within a few hours. I was fearful, however, lest it might prove too small to enable Q to organise his fellow phantoids with it.

I carried the money in notes and sovereigns to Annerly’s room, where it was laid on the table. Annerly was fortunately able to contribute a larger sum, which, however, he was not to place beside mine until after I had withdrawn, in order that conjunction of our monetary personalities might not dematerialise the astral phenomenon.

We made our preparations this time with exceptional care, Annerly quietly confident, I, it must be confessed, extremely nervous and fearful of failure. We removed our boots, and walked about on our stockinged feet, and at Annerly’s suggestion, not only placed the furniture as before, but turned the coal-scuttle upside down, and laid a wet towel over the top of the wastepaper basket.

All complete, I wrung Annerly’s hand, and went out into the darkness.

I waited next morning in vain. Nine o’clock came, ten o’clock, and finally eleven, and still no word of him. Then feverish with anxiety, I sought his lodgings.

Judge of my utter consternation to find that Annerly had disappeared. He had vanished as if off the face of the earth. By what awful error in our preparations, by what neglect of some necessary psychic precautions, he had met his fate, I cannot tell. But the evidence was only too clear, that Annerly had been engulfed into the astral world, carrying with him the money for the transfer of which he had risked his mundane existence.

The proof of his disappearance was easy to find. As soon as I dared do so with discretion I ventured upon a few inquiries. The fact that he had been engulfed while still owing four months’ rent for his rooms, and that he had vanished without even having time to pay such bills as he had outstanding with local tradesmen, showed that he must have been devisualised at a moment’s notice.

The awful fear that I might be held accountable for his death, prevented me from making the affair public.

Till that moment I had not realised the risks that he had incurred in our reckless dealing with the world of spirits. Annerly fell a victim to the great cause of psychic science, and the record of our experiments remains in the face of prejudice as a witness to its truth.

Guido the Gimlet of Ghent: A Romance of Chivalry

It was in the flood-tide of chivalry. Knighthood was in the pod.

The sun was slowly setting in the east, rising and falling occasionally as it subsided, and illuminating with its dying beams the towers of the grim castle of Buggensberg.

Isolde the Slender stood upon an embattled turret of the castle. Her arms were outstretched to the empty air, and her face, upturned as if in colloquy with heaven, was distraught with yearning.

Anon she murmured, ‘Guido’ – and bewhiles a deep sigh rent her breast.

Sylph-like and ethereal in her beauty, she scarcely seemed to breathe.

In fact she hardly did.

Willowy and slender in form, she was as graceful as a meridian of longitude. Her body seemed almost too frail for motion, while her features were of a mould so delicate as to preclude all thought of intellectual operation.

She was begirt with a flowing kirtle of deep blue, bebound with a belt bebuckled with a silvern clasp, while about her waist a stomacher of point lace ended in the ruffled farthingale at her throat. On her head she bore a sugar-loaf hat shaped like an extinguisher and pointing backward at an angle of 45 degrees.

‘Guido,’ she murmured, ‘Guido.’

And erstwhile she would wring her hands as one distraught and mutter, ‘He cometh not.’

The sun sank and night fell, enwrapping in shadow the frowning castle of Buggensberg, and the ancient city of Ghent at its foot. And as the darkness gathered, the windows of the castle shone out with fiery red, for it was Yuletide, and it was wassail all in the Great Hall of the castle, and this night the Margrave of Buggensberg made him a feast, and celebrated the betrothal of Isolde, his daughter, with Tancred the Tenspot.

And to the feast he had bidden all his liege lords and vassals – Hubert the Husky, Edward the Earwig, Rollo the Rumbottle, and many others.

In the meantime the Lady Isolde stood upon the battlements and mourned for the absent Guido.

The love of Guido and Isolde was of that pure and almost divine type, found only in the middle ages.

They had never seen one another. Guido had never seen Isolde, Isolde had never seen Guido. They had never heard one another speak. They had never been together. They did not know one another.

Yet they loved.

Their love had sprung into being suddenly and romantically, with all the mystic charm which is love’s greatest happiness.

Years before, Guido had seen the name of Isolde the Slender painted on a fence.

He had turned pale, fallen into a swoon and started at once for Jerusalem.

On the very same day Isolde in passing through the streets of Ghent had seen the coat of arms of Guido hanging on a clothes line.

She had fallen back into the arms of her tire-women more dead than alive.

Since that day they had loved.

Isolde would wander forth from the castle at earliest morn, with the name of Guido on her lips. She told his name to the trees. She whispered it to the flowers. She breathed it to the birds. Quite a lot of them knew it. At times she would ride her palfrey along the sands of the sea and call ‘Guido’ to the waves! At other times she would tell it to the grass or even to a stick of cordwood or a ton of coal.

Guido and Isolde, though they had never met, cherished each the features of the other. Beneath his coat of mail Guido carried a miniature of Isolde, carven on ivory. He had found it at the bottom of the castle crag, between the castle and the old town of Ghent at its foot.

How did he know that it was Isolde?

There was no need for him to ask.

His heart had spoken.

The eye of love cannot be deceived.

And Isolde? She, too, cherished beneath her stomacher a miniature of Guido the Gimlet. She had it of a travelling chapman in whose pack she had discovered it, and had paid its price in pearls. How had she known that he it was, that is, that it was he? Because of the Coat of Arms emblazoned beneath the miniature. The same heraldic design that had first shaken her to the heart. Sleeping or waking it was ever before her eyes: A lion, proper, quartered in a field of gules, and a dog, improper, three-quarters in a field of buckwheat.

And if the love of Isolde burned thus purely for Guido, the love of Guido burned for Isolde with a flame no less pure.

No sooner had love entered Guido’s heart than he had determined to do some great feat of emprise or adventure, some high achievement of deringdo which should make him worthy to woo her.

He placed himself under a vow that he would eat nothing, save only food, and drink nothing, save only liquor, till such season as he should have performed his feat.

For this cause he had at once set out for Jerusalem to kill a Saracen for her. He killed one, quite a large one. Still under his vow, he set out again at once to the very confines of Pannonia determined to kill a Turk for her. From Pannonia he passed into the Highlands of Britain, where he killed her a Caledonian.

Every year and every month Guido performed for Isolde some new achievement of emprise.

And in the meantime Isolde waited.

It was not that suitors were lacking. Isolde the Slender had suitors in plenty ready to do her lightest hest.

Feats of arms were done daily for her sake. To win her love suitors were willing to vow themselves to perdition. For Isolde’s sake, Otto the Otter had cast himself into the sea. Conrad the Cocoanut had hurled himself from the highest battlement of the castle head first into the mud. Hugo the Hopeless had hanged himself by the waistband to a hickory tree and had refused all efforts to dislodge him. For her sake Sickfried the Susceptible had swallowed sulphuric acid.

But Isolde the Slender was heedless of the court thus paid to her.

In vain her stepmother, Agatha the Angular, urged her to marry. In vain her father, the Margrave of Buggensberg, commanded her to choose the one or the other of the suitors.

Her heart remained unswervingly true to the Gimlet.

From time to time love tokens passed between the lovers. From Jerusalem Guido had sent to her a stick with a notch in it to signify his undying constancy. From Pannonia he sent a piece of board, and from Venetia about two feet of scantling. All these Isolde treasured. At night they lay beneath her pillow.

Then, after years of wandering, Guido had determined to crown his love with a final achievement for Isolde’s sake.

It was his design to return to Ghent, to scale by night the castle cliff and to prove his love for Isolde by killing her father for her, casting her stepmother from the battlements, burning the castle, and carrying her away.

This design he was now hastening to put into execution. Attended by fifty trusty followers under the lead of Carlo the Corkscrew and Beowulf the Bradawl, he had made his way to Ghent. Under cover of night they had reached the foot of the castle cliff; and now, on their hands and knees in single file, they were crawling round and round the spiral path that led up to the gate of the fortress. At six of the clock they had spiralled once. At seven of the clock they had reappeared at the second round, and as the feast in the hall reached its height, they reappeared on the fourth lap.

Guido the Gimlet was in the lead. His coat of mail was hidden beneath a parti-coloured cloak and he bore in his hand a horn.

By arrangement he was to penetrate into the castle by the postern gate in disguise, steal from the Margrave by artifice the key of the great door, and then by a blast of his horn summon his followers to the assault. Alas! there was need for haste, for at this very Yuletide, on this very night, the Margrave, wearied of Isolde’s resistance, had determined to bestow her hand upon Tancred the Tenspot.

It was wassail all in the great hall. The huge Margrave, seated at the head of the board, drained flagon after flagon of wine, and pledged deep the health of Tancred the Tenspot, who sat plumed and armoured beside him.

Great was the merriment of the Margrave, for beside him, crouched upon the floor, was a new jester, whom the seneschal had just admitted by the postern gate, and the novelty of whose jests made the huge sides of the Margrave shake and shake again.

‘Odds Bodikins!’ he roared, ‘but the tale is as rare as it is new! and so the wagoner said to the Pilgrim that sith he had asked him to put him off the wagon at that town, put him off he must, albeit it was but the small of the night – by St. Pancras! whence hath the fellow so novel a tale? – nay, tell it me but once more, haply I may remember it’ – and the Baron fell back in a perfect paroxysm of merriment.

As he fell back, Guido – for the disguised jester was none other than he, that is, than him – sprang forward and seized from the girdle of the Margrave the key of the great door that dangled at his waist.

Then, casting aside the jester’s cloak and cap, he rose to his full height, standing in his coat of mail.

In one hand he brandished the double-headed mace of the Crusader, and in the other a horn.

The guests sprang to their feet, their hands upon their daggers.

‘Guido the Gimlet!’ they cried.

‘Hold,’ said Guido, ‘I have you in my power!!’

Then placing the horn to his lips and drawing a deep breath, he blew with his utmost force.

And then again he blew – blew like anything.

Not a sound came.

The horn wouldn’t blow!

‘Seize him!’ cried the Baron.

‘Stop,’ said Guido, ‘I claim the laws of chivalry. I am here to seek the Lady Isolde, betrothed by you to Tancred. Let me fight Tancred in single combat, man to man.’

A shout of approbation gave consent.

The combat that followed was terrific.

First Guido, raising his mace high in the air with both hands, brought it down with terrible force on Tancred’s mailed head. Then Guido stood still, and Tancred raising his mace in the air brought it down upon Guido’s head. Then Tancred stood still and turned his back, and Guido, swinging his mace sideways, gave him a terrific blow from behind, midway, right centre. Tancred returned the blow. Then Tancred knelt down on his hands and knees and Guido brought the mace down on his back. It was a sheer contest of skill and agility. For a time the issue was doubtful. Then Tancred’s armour began to bend, his blows weakened, he fell prone. Guido pressed his advantage and hammered him out as flat as a sardine can. Then placing his foot on Tancred’s chest, he lowered his vizor and looked around about him.

At this second there was a resounding shriek.

Isolde the Slender, alarmed by the sound of the blows, precipitated herself into the room.

For a moment the lovers looked into each other’s faces.

Then with their countenances distraught with agony they fell swooning in different directions.

There had been a mistake!

Guido was not Guido, and Isolde was not Isolde. They were wrong about the miniatures. Each of them was a picture of somebody else.

Torrents of remorse flooded over the lovers’ hearts.

Isolde thought of the unhappy Tancred, hammered out as flat as a picture-card and hopelessly spoilt; of Conrad the Cocoanut head first in the mud, and Sickfried the Susceptible coiled up with agonies of sulphuric acid.

Guido thought of the dead Saracens and the slaughtered Turks.

And all for nothing!

The guerdon of their love had proved vain. Each of them was not what the other had thought. So it is ever with the loves of this world, and herein is the medieval allegory of this tale.

The hearts of the two lovers broke together.

They expired.

Meantime Carlo the Corkscrew and Beowulf the Bradawl, and their forty followers, were hustling down the spirals as fast as they could crawl, hind end uppermost.

Gertrude the Governess: or, Simple Seventeen

Synopsis of Previous Chapters: There are no Previous Chapters.

It was a wild and stormy night on the West Coast of Scotland. This, however, is immaterial to the present story, as the scene is not laid in the West of Scotland. For the matter of that the weather was just as bad on the East Coast of Ireland.

But the scene of this narrative is laid in the South of England and takes place in and around Knotacentinum Towers (pronounced as if written Nosham Taws), the seat of Lord Knotacent (pronounced as if written Nosh).

But it is not necessary to pronounce either of these names in reading them.

Nosham Taws was a typical English home. The main part of the house was an Elizabethan structure of warm red brick, while the elder portion, of which the Earl was inordinately proud, still showed the outlines of a Norman Keep, to which had been added a Lancastrian Jail and a Plantagenet Orphan Asylum. From the house in all directions stretched magnificent woodland and park with oaks and elms of immemorial antiquity, while nearer the house stood raspberry bushes and geranium plants which had been set out by the Crusaders.

About the grand old mansion the air was loud with the chirping of thrushes, the cawing of partridges and the clear sweet note of the rook, while deer, antelope and other quadrupeds strutted about the lawn so tame as to eat off the sun-dial. In fact, the place was a regular menagerie.

From the house downwards through the park stretched a beautiful broad avenue laid out by Henry VII.

Lord Nosh stood upon the hearthrug of the library. Trained diplomat and statesman as he was, his stern aristocratic face was upside down with fury.

‘Boy,’ he said, ‘you shall marry this girl or I disinherit you. You are no son of mine.’

Young Lord Ronald, erect before him, flung back a glance as defiant as his own.

‘I defy you,’ he said. ‘Henceforth you are no father of mine. I will get another. I will marry none but a woman I can love. This girl that we have never seen —’

‘Fool,’ said the Earl, ‘would you throw aside our estate and name of a thousand years? The girl, I am told, is beautiful; her aunt is willing; they are French; pah! they understand such things in France.’

‘But your reason —’

‘I give no reason,’ said the Earl. ‘Listen, Ronald, I give one month. For that time you remain here. If at the end of it you refuse me, I cut you off with a shilling.’

Lord Ronald said nothing; he flung himself from the room, flung himself upon his horse and rode madly off in all directions.

As the door of the library closed upon Ronald the Earl sank into a chair. His face changed. It was no longer that of the haughty nobleman, but of the hunted criminal. ‘He must marry the girl,’ he muttered. ‘Soon she will know all. Tutchemoff has escaped from Siberia. He knows and will tell. The whole of the mines pass to her, this property with it, and I – but enough.’ He rose, walked to the sideboard, drained a dipper full of gin and bitters, and became again a high-bred English gentleman.

It was at this moment that a high dogcart, driven by a groom in the livery of Earl Nosh, might have been seen entering the avenue of Nosham Taws. Beside him sat a young girl, scarce more than a child, in fact not nearly so big as the groom.

The apple-pie hat which she wore, surmounted with black willow plumes, concealed from view a face so face-like in its appearance as to be positively facial.

It was – need we say it – Gertrude the Governess, who was this day to enter upon her duties at Nosham Taws.

At the same time that the dogcart entered the avenue at one end there might have been seen riding down it from the other a tall young man, whose long, aristocratic face proclaimed his birth and who was mounted upon a horse with a face even longer than his own.

And who is this tall young man who draws nearer to Gertrude with every revolution of the horse? Ah, who, indeed? Ah, who, who? I wonder if any of my readers could guess that this was none other than Lord Ronald.

The two were destined to meet. Nearer and nearer they came. And then still nearer. Then for one brief moment they met. As they passed Gertrude raised her head and directed towards the young nobleman two eyes so eye-like in their expression as to be absolutely circular, while Lord Ronald directed towards the occupant of the dogcart a gaze so gaze-like that nothing but a gazelle, or a gas-pipe, could have emulated its intensity.

Was this the dawn of love? Wait and see. Do not spoil the story.

Let us speak of Gertrude. Gertrude DeMongmorenci McFiggin had known neither father nor mother. They had both died years before she was born. Of her mother she knew nothing, save that she was French, was extremely beautiful, and that all her ancestors and even her business acquaintances had perished in the Revolution.

Yet Gertrude cherished the memory of her parents. On her breast the girl wore a locket in which was enshrined a miniature of her mother, while down her neck inside at the back hung a daguerreotype of her father. She carried a portrait of her grandmother up her sleeve and had pictures of her cousins tucked inside her boot, while beneath her – but enough, quite enough.

Of her father Gertrude knew even less. That he was a high-born English gentleman who had lived as a wanderer in many lands, this was all she knew. His only legacy to Gertrude had been a Russian grammar, a Roumanian phrase-book, a theodolite, and a work on mining engineering.

From her earliest infancy Gertrude had been brought up by her aunt. Her aunt had carefully instructed her in Christian principles. She had also taught her Mohammedanism to make sure.

When Gertrude was seventeen her aunt had died of hydrophobia.

The circumstances were mysterious. There had called upon her that day a strange bearded man in the costume of the Russians. After he had left, Gertrude had found her aunt in a syncope from which she passed into an apostrophe and never recovered.

To avoid scandal it was called hydrophobia. Gertrude was thus thrown upon the world. What to do? That was the problem that confronted her.

It was while musing one day upon her fate that Gertrude’s eye was struck with an advertisement.

‘Wanted a governess; must possess a knowledge of French, Italian, Russian, and Roumanian, Music, and Mining Engineering. Salary 1 pound, 4 shillings and 4 pence halfpenny per annum.

Apply between half-past eleven and twenty-five minutes to twelve at No. 41 A Decimal Six, Belgravia Terrace. The Countess of Nosh.’

Gertrude was a girl of great natural quickness of apprehension, and she had not pondered over this announcement more than half an hour before she was struck with the extraordinary coincidence between the list of items desired and the things that she herself knew.

She duly presented herself at Belgravia Terrace before the Countess, who advanced to meet her with a charm which at once placed the girl at her ease.

‘You are proficient in French,’ she asked.

‘Oh, oui,’ said Gertrude modestly.

‘And Italian,’ continued the Countess.

‘Oh, sì,’ said Gertrude.

‘And German,’ said the Countess in delight.

‘Ah, ja,’ said Gertrude.

‘And Russian?’

‘Yaw.’

‘And Roumanian?’

‘Jep.’

Amazed at the girl’s extraordinary proficiency in modern languages, the Countess looked at her narrowly. Where had she seen those lineaments before? She passed her hand over her brow in thought, and spit upon the floor, but no, the face baffled her.

‘Enough,’ she said, ‘I engage you on the spot; to-morrow you go down to Nosham Taws and begin teaching the children. I must add that in addition you will be expected to aid the Earl with his Russian correspondence. He has large mining interests at Tschminsk.’

Tschminsk! why did the simple word reverberate upon Gertrude’s ears? Why? Because it was the name written in her father’s hand on the title page of his book on mining. What mystery was here?

It was on the following day that Gertrude had driven up the avenue.

She descended from the dogcart, passed through a phalanx of liveried servants drawn up seven-deep, to each of whom she gave a sovereign as she passed and entered Nosham Taws.

‘Welcome,’ said the Countess, as she aided Gertrude to carry her trunk upstairs.

The girl presently descended and was ushered into the library, where she was presented to the Earl. As soon as the Earl’s eye fell upon the face of the new governess he started visibly. Where had he seen those lineaments? Where was it? At the races, or the theatre – on a bus – no. Some subtler thread of memory was stirring in his mind. He strode hastily to the sideboard, drained a dipper and a half of brandy, and became again the perfect English gentleman.

While Gertrude has gone to the nursery to make the acquaintance of the two tiny golden-haired children who are to be her charges, let us say something here of the Earl and his son.

Lord Nosh was the perfect type of the English nobleman and statesman. The years that he had spent in the diplomatic service at Constantinople, St. Petersburg, and Salt Lake City had given to him a peculiar finesse and noblesse, while his long residence at St. Helena, Pitcairn Island, and Hamilton, Ontario, had rendered him impervious to external impressions. As deputy-paymaster of the militia of the county he had seen something of the sterner side of military life, while his hereditary office of Groom of the Sunday Breeches had brought him into direct contact with Royalty itself.

His passion for outdoor sports endeared him to his tenants. A keen sportsman, he excelled in fox-hunting, dog-hunting, pig-killing, bat-catching and the pastimes of his class.

In this latter respect Lord Ronald took after his father. From the start the lad had shown the greatest promise. At Eton he had made a splendid showing at battledore and shuttlecock, and at Cambridge had been first in his class at needlework. Already his name was whispered in connection with the All-England ping-pong championship, a triumph which would undoubtedly carry with it a seat in Parliament.

Thus was Gertrude the Governess installed at Nosham Taws.

The days and the weeks sped past.

The simple charm of the beautiful orphan girl attracted all hearts. Her two little pupils became her slaves. ‘Me loves oo,’ the little Rasehellfrida would say, leaning her golden head in Gertrude’s lap. Even the servants loved her. The head gardener would bring a bouquet of beautiful roses to her room before she was up, the second gardener a bunch of early cauliflowers, the third a spray of late asparagus, and even the tenth and eleventh a sprig of mangel-wurzel of an armful of hay. Her room was full of gardeners all the time, while at evening the aged butler, touched at the friendless girl’s loneliness, would tap softly at her door to bring her a rye whiskey and seltzer or a box of Pittsburg Stogies. Even the dumb creatures seemed to admire her in their own dumb way. The dumb rooks settled on her shoulder and every dumb dog around the place followed her.

And Ronald! ah, Ronald! Yes, indeed! They had met. They had spoken.

‘What a dull morning,’ Gertrude had said. ‘Quelle triste matin! Was fur ein allerverdamnter Tag!’

‘Beastly,’ Ronald had answered.

‘Beastly!!’ The word rang in Gertrude’s ears all day.

After that they were constantly together. They played tennis and ping-pong in the day, and in the evening, in accordance with the stiff routine of the place, they sat down with the Earl and Countess to twenty-five-cent poker, and later still they sat together on the verandah and watched the moon sweeping in great circles around the horizon.

It was not long before Gertrude realised that Lord Ronald felt towards her a warmer feeling than that of mere ping-pong. At times in her presence he would fall, especially after dinner, into a fit of profound subtraction.

Once at night, when Gertrude withdrew to her chamber and before seeking her pillow, prepared to retire as a preliminary to disrobing – in other words, before going to bed, she flung wide the casement (opened the window) and perceived (saw) the face of Lord Ronald. He was sitting on a thorn bush beneath her, and his upturned face wore an expression of agonised pallor.

Meanwhile the days passed. Life at the Taws moved in the ordinary routine of a great English household. At 7 a gong sounded for rising, at 8 a horn blew for breakfast, at 8.30 a whistle sounded for prayers, at 1 a flag was run up at half-mast for lunch, at 4 a gun was fired for afternoon tea, at 9 a first bell sounded for dressing, at 9.15 a second bell for going on dressing, while at 9.30 a rocket was sent up to indicate that dinner was ready. At midnight dinner was over, and at 1 a.m. the tolling of a bell summoned the domestics to evening prayers.

Meanwhile the month allotted by the Earl to Lord Ronald was passing away. It was already July 15, then within a day or two it was July 17, and, almost immediately afterwards, July 18.

At times the Earl, in passing Ronald in the hall, would say sternly, ‘Remember, boy, your consent, or I disinherit you.’

And what were the Earl’s thoughts of Gertrude? Here was the one drop of bitterness in the girl’s cup of happiness. For some reason that she could not divine the Earl showed signs of marked antipathy.

Once as she passed the door of the library he threw a bootjack at her. On another occasion at lunch alone with her he struck her savagely across the face with a sausage.

It was her duty to translate to the Earl his Russian correspondence. She sought in it in vain for the mystery. One day a Russian telegram was handed to the Earl. Gertrude translated it to him aloud.

‘Tutchemoff went to the woman. She is dead.’

On hearing this the Earl became livid with fury, in fact this was the day that he struck her with the sausage.

Then one day while the Earl was absent on a bat hunt, Gertrude, who was turning over his correspondence, with that sweet feminine instinct of interest that rose superior to ill-treatment, suddenly found the key to the mystery.

Lord Nosh was not the rightful owner of the Taws. His distant cousin of the older line, the true heir, had died in a Russian prison to which the machinations of the Earl, while Ambassador at Tschminsk, had consigned him. The daughter of this cousin was the true owner of Nosham Taws.

The family story, save only that the documents before her withheld the name of the rightful heir, lay bare to Gertrude’s eye.

Strange is the heart of woman. Did Gertrude turn from the Earl with spurning? No. Her own sad fate had taught her sympathy.

Yet still the mystery remained! Why did the Earl start perceptibly each time that he looked into her face? Sometimes he started as much as four centimetres, so that one could distinctly see him do it. On such occasions he would hastily drain a dipper of rum and vichy water and become again the correct English gentleman.

The denouement came swiftly. Gertrude never forgot it.

It was the night of the great ball at Nosham Taws. The whole neighbourhood was invited. How Gertrude’s heart had beat with anticipation, and with what trepidation she had overhauled her scant wardrobe in order to appear not unworthy in Lord Ronald’s eyes. Her resources were poor indeed, yet the inborn genius for dress that she inherited from her French mother stood her in good stead. She twined a single rose in her hair and contrived herself a dress out of a few old newspapers and the inside of an umbrella that would have graced a court. Round her waist she bound a single braid of bagstring, while a piece of old lace that had been her mother’s was suspended to her ear by a thread.

Gertrude was the cynosure of all eyes. Floating to the strains of the music she presented a picture of bright girlish innocence that no one could see undisenraptured.

The ball was at its height. It was away up!

Ronald stood with Gertrude in the shrubbery. They looked into one another’s eyes.

‘Gertrude,’ he said, ‘I love you.’

Simple words, and yet they thrilled every fibre in the girl’s costume.

‘Ronald!’ she said, and cast herself about his neck.

At this moment the Earl appeared standing beside them in the moonlight. His stern face was distorted with indignation.

‘So!’ he said, turning to Ronald, ‘it appears that you have chosen!’

‘I have,’ said Ronald with hauteur.

‘You prefer to marry this penniless girl rather than the heiress I have selected for you.’

Gertrude looked from father to son in amazement.

‘Yes,’ said Ronald.

‘Be it so,’ said the Earl, draining a dipper of gin which he carried, and resuming his calm. ‘Then I disinherit you. Leave this place, and never return to it.’

‘Come, Gertrude,’ said Ronald tenderly, ‘let us flee together.’

Gertrude stood before them. The rose had fallen from her head. The lace had fallen from her ear and the bagstring had come undone from her waist. Her newspapers were crumpled beyond recognition. But dishevelled and illegible as she was, she was still mistress of herself.

‘Never,’ she said firmly. ‘Ronald, you shall never make this sacrifice for me.’ Then to the Earl, in tones of ice, ‘There is a pride, sir, as great even as yours. The daughter of Metschnikoff McFiggin need crave a boon from no one.’

With that she hauled from her bosom the daguerreotype of her father and pressed it to her lips.

The earl started as if shot. ‘That name!’ he cried, ‘that face! that photograph! stop!’

There! There is no need to finish; my readers have long since divined it. Gertrude was the heiress.

The lovers fell into one another’s arms. The Earl’s proud face relaxed. ‘God bless you,’ he said. The Countess and the guests came pouring out upon the lawn. The breaking day illuminated a scene of gay congratulations.

Gertrude and Ronald were wed. Their happiness was complete. Need we say more? Yes, only this. The Earl was killed in the hunting-field a few days after. The Countess was struck by lightning. The two children fell down a well. Thus the happiness of Gertrude and Ronald was complete.

A Hero in Homespun: or, The Life Struggle of Hezekiah Hayloft

‘Can you give me a job?’

The foreman of the bricklayers looked down from the scaffold to the speaker below. Something in the lad’s upturned face appealed to the man. He threw a brick at him.

It was Hezekiah Hayloft. He was all in homespun. He carried a carpet-bag in each hand. He had come to New York, the cruel city, looking for work.

Hezekiah moved on. Presently he stopped in front of a policeman.

‘Sir,’ he said, ‘can you tell me the way to —’

The policeman struck him savagely across the side of the head.

‘I’ll learn you,’ he said, ‘to ask damn fool questions —’

Again Hezekiah moved on. In a few moments he met a man whose tall black hat, black waistcoat and white tie proclaimed him a clergyman.

‘Good sir,’ said Hezekiah, ‘can you tell me —’

The clergyman pounced upon him with a growl of a hyena, and bit a piece out of his ear. Yes, he did, reader. Just imagine a clergyman biting a boy in open daylight! Yet that happens in New York every minute.

Such is the great cruel city, and imagine looking for work in it. You and I who spend our time in trying to avoid work can hardly realise what it must mean. Think how it must feel to be alone in New York, without a friend or a relation at hand, with no one to know or care what you do. It must be great!

For a few moments Hezekiah stood irresolute. He looked about him. He looked up at the top of the Metropolitan Tower. He saw no work there. He looked across at the skyscrapers on Madison Square, but his eye detected no work in any of them. He stood on his head and looked up at the flat-iron building. Still no work in sight.

All that day and the next Hezekiah looked for work.

A Wall Street firm had advertised for a stenographer.

‘Can you write shorthand?’ they said.

‘No,’ said the boy in homespun, ‘but I can try.’

They threw him down the elevator.

Hezekiah was not discouraged. That day he applied for fourteen jobs.

The Waldorf Astoria was in need of a chef. Hezekiah applied for the place.

‘Can you cook?’ they said.

‘No,’ said Hezekiah, ‘but oh, sir, give me a trial, give me an egg and let me try – I will try so hard.’ Great tears rolled down the boy’s face.

They rolled him out into the corridor.

Next he applied for a job as a telegrapher. His mere ignorance of telegraphy was made the ground of refusal.

At nightfall Hezekiah Hayloft grew hungry. He entered again the portico of the Waldorf Astoria. Within it stood a tall man in uniform.

‘Boss,’ said the boy hero, ‘will you trust me for the price of a square meal?’

They set the dog on him.

Such, reader, is the hardness and bitterness of the Great City.

For fourteen weeks Hezekiah Hayloft looked for work. Once or twice he obtained temporary employment only to lose it again.

For a few days he was made accountant in a trust company. He was discharged because he would not tell a lie. For about a week he held a position as cashier in a bank. They discharged the lad because he refused to forge a cheque. For three days he held a conductorship on a Broadway surface car. He was dismissed from this business for refusing to steal a nickel.

Such, reader, is the horrid degradation of business life in New York.

Meantime the days passed and still Hayloft found no work. His stock of money was exhausted. He had not had any money anyway. For food he ate grass in Central Park and drank the water from the Cruelty to Animals horse-trough.

Gradually a change came over the lad; his face grew hard and stern, the great city was setting its mark upon him.

One night Hezekiah stood upon the sidewalk. It was late, long after ten o’clock. Only a few chance pedestrians passed.

‘By Heaven!’ said Hezekiah, shaking his fist at the lights of the cruel city, ‘I have exhausted fair means, I will try foul. I will beg. No Hayloft has been a beggar yet,’ he added with a bitter laugh, ‘but I will begin.’

A well-dressed man passed along.

Hezekiah seized him by the throat.

‘What do you want?’ cried the man in sudden terror. ‘Don’t ask me for work. I tell you I have no work to give.’

‘I don’t want work,’ said Hezekiah grimly. ‘I am a beggar.’

‘Oh! is that all,’ said the man, relieved. ‘Here, take this ten dollars and go and buy a drink with it.’

Money! money! and with it a new sense of power that rushed like an intoxicant to Hezekiah’s brain.

‘Drink,’ he muttered hoarsely, ‘yes, drink.’

The lights of a soda-water fountain struck his eye.

‘Give me an egg phosphate,’ he said as he dashed his money on the counter. He drank phosphate after phosphate till his brain reeled. Mad with the liquor, he staggered to and fro in the shop, weighed himself recklessly on the slot machine three or four times, tore out chewing gum and matches from the automatic nickel boxes, and finally staggered on to the street, reeling from the effects of thirteen phosphates and a sarsaparilla soda.

‘Crime,’ he hissed. ‘Crime, crime, that’s what I want.’

He noticed that the passers-by made way for him now with respect. On the corner of the street a policeman was standing.

Hezekiah picked up a cobblestone, threw it, and struck the man full on the ear.

The policeman smiled at him roguishly, and then gently wagged his finger in reproof. It was the same policeman who had struck him fourteen weeks before for asking the way.

Hezekiah moved on, still full of his new idea of crime. Down the street was a novelty shop, the window decked with New Year’s gifts.

‘Sell me a revolver,’ he said.

‘Yes, sir,’ said the salesman. ‘Would you like something for evening wear, or a plain kind for home use. Here is a very good family revolver, or would you like a roof garden size?’

Hezekiah selected a revolver and went out.

‘Now, then,’ he muttered, ‘I will burglarise a house and get money.’

Walking across to Fifth Avenue he selected one of the finest residences and rang the bell.

A man in livery appeared in the brightly lighted hall.

‘Where is your master?’ Hezekiah asked, showing his revolver.

‘He is upstairs, sir, counting his money,’ the man answered, ‘but he dislikes being disturbed.’

‘Show me to him,’ said Hezekiah, ‘I wish to shoot him and take his money.’

‘Very good, sir,’ said the man deferentially. ‘You will find him on the first floor.’

Hezekiah turned and shot the footman twice through the livery and went upstairs.

In an upper room was a man sitting at a desk under a reading-lamp. In front of him was a pile of gold.

‘What are you doing?’ said Hezekiah.

‘I am counting my money,’ said the man.

‘What are you?’ asked Hezekiah sternly.

‘I am a philanthropist,’ said the man. ‘I give my money to deserving objects. I establish medals for heroes. I give prizes for ship captains who jump into the sea, and for firemen who throw people from the windows of upper stories at the risk of their own; I send American missionaries to China, Chinese missionaries to India, and Indian missionaries to Chicago. I set aside money to keep college professors from starving to death when they deserve it.’

‘Stop!’ said Hezekiah, ‘you deserve to die. Stand up. Open your mouth and shut your eyes.’

The old man stood up.

There was a loud report. The philanthropist fell. He was shot through the waistcoat and his suspenders were cut to ribbons.

Hezekiah, his eyes glittering with the mania of crime, crammed his pockets with gold pieces.

There was a roar and hubbub in the street below.

‘The police!’ Hezekiah muttered. ‘I must set fire to the house and escape in the confusion.’

He struck a safety match and held it to the leg of the table.

It was a fireproof table and refused to burn. He held it to the door. The door was fireproof. He applied it to the bookcase. He ran the match along the books. They were all fireproof. Everything was fireproof.

Frenzied with rage, he tore off his celluloid collar and set fire to it. He waved it above his head. Great tongues of flame swept from the windows.

‘Fire! Fire!’ was the cry.

Hezekiah rushed to the door and threw the blazing collar down the elevator shaft. In a moment the iron elevator, with its steel ropes, burst into a mass of flame; then the brass fittings of the door took fire, and in a moment the cement floor of the elevator was one roaring mass of flame. Great columns of smoke burst from the building.

‘Fire! Fire!’ shouted the crowd.

Reader, have you ever seen a fire in a great city? The sight is a wondrous one. One realises that, vast and horrible as the city is, it nevertheless shows its human organisation in its most perfect form.

Scarcely had the fire broken out before resolute efforts were made to stay its progress. Long lines of men passed buckets of water from hand to hand.

The water was dashed on the fronts of the neighbouring houses, thrown all over the street, splashed against the telegraph poles, and poured in torrents over the excited crowd. Every place in the neighbourhood of the fire was literally soaked. The man worked with a will. A derrick rapidly erected in the street reared itself to the height of sixteen or seventeen feet. A daring man mounted on the top of it, hauled bucket after bucket of water on the pulley. Balancing himself with the cool daring of the trained fireman, he threw the water in all directions over the crowd.

The fire raged for an hour. Hezekiah, standing at an empty window amid the flames, rapidly filled his revolver and emptied it into the crowd.

From one hundred revolvers in the street a fusillade was kept up in return.

This lasted for an hour. Several persons were almost hit by the rain of bullets, which would have proved fatal had they struck anyone.

Meantime, as the flames died down, a squad of policemen rushed into the doomed building.

Hezekiah threw aside his revolver and received them with folded arms.

‘Hayloft,’ said the chief of police, ‘I arrest you for murder, burglary, arson, and conspiracy. You put up a splendid fight, old man, and I am only sorry that it is our painful duty to arrest you.’

As Hayloft appeared below a great cheer went up from the crowd. True courage always appeals to the heart of the people.

Hayloft was put in a motor and whirled rapidly to the police station.

On the way the chief handed him a flask and a cigar.

They chatted over the events of the evening.

Hayloft realised that a new life had opened for him. He was no longer a despised outcast. He had entered the American criminal class.

At the police station the chief showed Hezekiah to his room.

‘I hope you will like this room,’ he said a little anxiously. ‘It is the best that I can give you to-night. To-morrow I can give you a room with a bath, but at such short notice I am sure you will not mind putting up with this.’

He said good night and shut the door. In a moment he reappeared.

‘About breakfast?’ he said. ‘Would you rather have it in your room, or will you join us at our table d’hôte? The force are most anxious to meet you.’

Next morning, before Hezekiah was up, the chief brought to his room a new outfit of clothes—a silk hat, frock-coat, shepherd’s-plaid trousers and varnished boots with spats.

‘You won’t mind accepting these things, Mr. Hayloft. Our force would like very much to enable you to make a suitable appearance in the court.’

Carefully dressed and shaved, Hezekiah descended. He was introduced to the leading officials of the force, and spent a pleasant hour of chat over a cigar, discussing the incidents of the night before.

In the course of the morning a number of persons called to meet and congratulate Hezekiah.

‘I want to tell you, sir,’ said the editor of a great American daily, ‘that your work of last night will be known and commented on all over the States. Your shooting of the footman was a splendid piece of nerve, sir, and will do much in defence of the unwritten law.’

‘Mr. Hayloft,’ said another caller, ‘I am sorry not to have met you sooner. Our friends here tell me that you have been in New York for some months. I regret, sir, that we did not know you. This is the name of my firm, Mr. Hayloft. We are leading lawyers here, and we want the honour of defending you. We may! Thank you, sir. And now, as we have still an hour or two before the court, I want to run you up to my house in my motor. My wife is very anxious to have a little luncheon with you.’

The court met that afternoon. There was a cheer as Hezekiah entered.

‘Mr. Hayloft,’ said the judge, ‘I am adjourning this court for a few days. From what I hear the nerve strain that you have undergone must have been most severe. Your friends tell me that you can hardly be in a state to take a proper interest in the case till you have had a thorough rest.’

As Hayloft left the court a cheer went up from the crowd, in which the judge joined.

The next few days were busy days for Hezekiah. Filled with receptions, civic committees, and the preparation of the brief, in which Hezekiah’s native intelligence excited the admiration of the lawyers.

Newspaper men sought for interviews. Business promoters called upon Hezekiah. His name was put down as a director of several leading companies, and it was rumoured that in the event of his acquittal he would undertake a merger of all the great burglar protection corporations of the United States.

The trial opened a week later, and lasted two months. Hezekiah was indicted on five charges – arson, for having burned the steel cage of the elevator; misdemeanour, for shooting the footman; the theft of the money, petty larceny; the killing of the philanthropist, infanticide; and the shooting at the police without hitting them, aggravated felony.

The proceedings were very complicated—expert evidence was taken from all over the United States. An analytical examination was made of the brain of the philanthropist. Nothing was found.

The entire jury were dismissed three times on the grounds of prejudice, twice on the ground of ignorance, and finally disbanded on the ground of insanity.

The proceedings dragged on.

Meanwhile Hezekiah’s business interests accumulated.

At length, at Hezekiah’s own suggestion, it was necessary to abandon the case.

‘Gentlemen,’ he said, in his final speech to the court, ‘I feel that I owe an apology for not being able to attend these proceedings any further. At any time, when I can snatch an hour or two from my business, you may always count on my attendance. In the meantime, rest assured that I shall follow your proceedings with the greatest interest.’

He left the room amid three cheers and the singing of ‘Auld Lang Syne.’

After that the case dragged hopeless on from stage to stage.

The charge of arson was met by a nolle prosequi. The accusation of theft was stopped by a nec plus ultra. The killing of the footman was pronounced justifiable insanity.

The accusation of murder for the death of the philanthropist was withdrawn by common consent. Damages in error were awarded to Hayloft for the loss of his revolver and cartridges. The main body of the case was carried on a writ of certiorari to the Federal Courts and appealed to the Supreme Court of the United States.

It is there still.

Meantime, Hezekiah, as managing director of the Burglars’ Security Corporation, remains one of the rising generation of financiers in New York, with every prospect of election to the State Senate.

Sorrows of a Super Soul: or, The Memoirs of Marie Mushenough

(Translated, by Machinery, out of the Original Russian.)

Do you ever look at your face in the glass?

I do.

Sometimes I stand for hours and peer at my face and wonder at it. At times I turn it upside down and gaze intently at it. I try to think what it means. It seems to look back at me with its great brown eyes as if it knew me and wanted to speak to me.

Why was I born?

I do not know.

I ask my face a thousand times a day and find no answer.

At times when people pass my room – my maid Nitnitzka, or Jakub, the serving-man – and see me talking to my face, they think I am foolish.

But I am not.

At times I cast myself on the sofa and bury my head in the cushions.

Even then I cannot find out why I was born.

I am seventeen.

Shall I ever be seventy-seven? Ah!

Shall I ever be even sixty-seven, or sixty-seven even? Oh!

And if I am both of these, shall I ever be eighty-seven?

I cannot tell.

Often I start up in the night with wild eyes and wonder if I shall be eighty-seven.

* * *

Next Day.

I passed a flower in my walk to-day. It grew in the meadow beside the river bank.

It stood dreaming on a long stem.

I knew its name. It was a Tchupvskja. I love beautiful names.

I leaned over and spoke to it. I asked it if my heart would ever know love. It said it thought so.

On the way home I passed an onion.

It lay upon the road.

Someone had stepped upon its stem and crushed it. How it must have suffered. I placed it in my bosom. All night it lay beside my pillow.

* * *

Another Day.

My heart is yearning for love! How is it that I can love no one?

I have tried and I cannot. My father – Ivan Ivanovitch – he is so big and so kind, and yet I cannot love him; and my mother, Katoosha Katooshavitch, she is just as big, and yet I cannot love her. And my brother, Dimitri Dimitrivitch, I cannot love him.

And Alexis Alexovitch!

I cannot love him. And yet I am to marry him. They have set the day. It is a month from to-day. One month. Thirty days. Why cannot I love Alexis? He is tall and strong. He is a soldier. He is in the Guard of the Czar, Nicholas Romanoff, and yet I cannot love him.

* * *

Next Day but one.

How they cramp and confine me here – Ivan Ivanovitch my father, and my mother (I forget her name for the minute), and all the rest.

I cannot breathe.

They will not let me.

Every time I try to commit suicide they hinder me.

Last night I tried again.

I placed a phial of sulphuric acid on the table beside my bed.

In the morning it was still there.

It had not killed me.

They have forbidden me to drown myself.

Why!

I do not know why? In vain I ask the air and the trees why I should not drown myself? They do not see any reason why.

And yet I long to be free, free as the young birds, as the very youngest of them.

I watch the leaves blowing in the wind and I want to be a leaf.

Yet here they want to make me eat!

Yesterday I ate a banana! Ugh!

* * *

Next Day.

To-day in my walk I found a cabbage.

It lay in a corner of the hedge. Cruel boys had chased it there with stones.

It was dead when I lifted it up.

Beside it was an egg.

It too was dead. Ah, how I wept —

* * *

This Morning.

How my heart beats. To-day A MAN passed. He passed: actually passed.

From my window I saw him go by the garden gate and out into the meadow beside the river where my Tchupvskja flower is growing!

How beautiful he looked! Not tall like Alexis Alexovitch, ah, no! but so short and wide and round – shaped like the beautiful cabbage that died last week.

He wore a velvet jacket and he carried a camp stool and an easel on his back, and in his face was a curved pipe with a long stem, and his face was not red and rough like the face of Alexis, but mild and beautiful and with a smile that played on it like moonlight over putty.

Do I love him? I cannot tell. Not yet. Love is a gentle plant. You cannot force its growth.

As he passed I leaned from the window and threw a rosebud at him.

But he did not see it.

Then I threw a cake of soap and a toothbrush at him. But I missed him, and he passed on.

* * *

Another Day.

Love has come into my life. It fills it. I have seen HIM again. I have spoken with him. He sat beside the river on his camp stool. How beautiful he looked, sitting on it: how strong he seemed and how frail the little stool on which he sat.

Before him was the easel and he was painting. I spoke to him.

I know his name now.

His name—. How my heart beats as I write it – no, I cannot write it, I will whisper it – it is Otto Dinkelspiel.

Is it not a beautiful name? Ah!

He was painting on a canvas – beautiful colours, red and gold and white, in glorious opalescent streaks in all directions.

I looked at it in wonder.

Instinctively I spoke to him. ‘What are you painting?’ I said.

‘Is it the Heavenly Child?’

‘No,’ he said, ‘it is a cow!’

Then I looked again and I could see that it was a cow.

I looked straight into his eyes.

‘It shall be our secret,’ I said; ‘no one else shall know.’

And I knew that I loved him.

* * *

A Week Later.

Each morning I go to see Otto beside the river in the meadow.

He sits and paints, and I sit with my hands clasped about my knees and talk to him. I tell him all that I think, all that I read, all that I know, all that I feel, all that I do not feel.

He listens to me with that far-away look that I have learned to love and that means that he is thinking deeply; at times he almost seems not to hear.

The intercourse of our minds is wonderful.

We stimulate one another’s thought.

Otto is my master. I am his disciple!

Yesterday I asked him if Hegel or Schlegel or Whegel gives the truest view of life.

He said he didn’t know! My Otto!

* * *

To-day.

Otto touched me! He touched me!

How the recollection of it thrills me!

I stood beside him on the river bank, and as we talked the handle of my parasol touched the bottom button of his waistcoat.

It seemed to burn me like fire!

To-morrow I am to bring Otto to see my father.

But to-night I can think of nothing else but that Otto has touched me.

* * *

Next Day.

Otto has touched father! He touched him for ten roubles. My father is furious. I cannot tell what it means.

I brought Otto to our home. He spoke with my father, Ivan Ivanovitch. They sat together in the evening. And now my father is angry. He says that Otto wanted to touch him.

Why should he be angry?

But Otto is forbidden the house, and I can see him only in the meadow.

* * *

Two Days Later.

To-day Otto asked me for a keepsake.

I offered him one of my hatpins. But he said no. He has taken instead the diamond buckle from my belt.

I read his meaning.

He means that I am to him as a diamond is to lesser natures.

* * *

This Morning.

Yesterday Otto asked me for another keepsake. I took a gold rouble from my bag and said that he should break it in half and that each should keep one of the halves.

But Otto said no. I divined his thought. It would violate our love to break the coin.

He is to keep it for both of us, and it is to remain unbroken like our love.

Is it not a sweet thought?

Otto is so thoughtful. He thinks of everything.

To-day he asked me if I had another gold rouble.

* * *

Next Day.

To-day I brought Otto another gold rouble.

His eyes shone with love when he saw it.

He has given me for it a bronze kopek. Our love is to be as pure as gold and as strong as bronze.

Is it not beautiful?

* * *

Later.

I am so fearful that Alexis Alexovitch may return.

I fear that if he comes Otto might kill him. Otto is so calm, I dread to think of what would happen if he were aroused.

* * *

Next Day.

I have told Otto about Alexis. I have told him that Alexis is a soldier, that he is in the Guards of the Czar, and that I am betrothed to him. At first Otto would not listen to me. He feared that his anger might overmaster him. He began folding up his camp-stool.

Then I told him that Alexis would not come for some time yet, and he grew calmer.

I have begged him for my sake not to kill Alexis. He has given me his promise.

* * *

Another Day.

Ivan Ivanovitch, my father, has heard from Alexis. He will return in fourteen days. The day after his return I am to marry him.

And meantime I have still fourteen days to love Otto.

My love is perfect. It makes me want to die. Last night I tried again to commit suicide. Why should I live now that I have known a perfect love? I placed a box of cartridges beside my bed. I awoke unharmed. They did not kill me. But I know what it means. It means that Otto and I are to die together. I must tell Otto.

* * *

Later.

To-day I told Otto that we must kill ourselves, that our love is so perfect that we have no right to live.

At first he looked so strange.

He suggested that I should kill myself first and that he should starve himself beside my grave.

But I could not accept the sacrifice.

I offered instead to help him to hang himself beside the river.

He is to think it over. If he does not hang himself, he is to shoot himself. I have lent him my father’s revolver. How grateful he looked when he took it.

* * *

Next Day.

Why does Otto seem to avoid me? Has he some secret sorrow that I cannot share? To-day he moved his camp-stool to the other side of the meadow. He was in the long grass behind an elderberry bush. At first I did not see him. I thought that he had hanged himself. But he said no. He had forgotten to get a rope. He had tried, he said, to shoot himself. But he had missed himself.

* * *

Five Days Later.

Otto and I are not to die. We are to live; to live and love one another for ever! We are going away, out into the world together! How happy I am!

Otto and I are to flee together.

When Alexis comes we shall be gone; we shall be far away.

I have said to Otto that I will fly with him, and he has said yes.

I told him that we would go out into the world together; empty-handed we would fare forth together and defy the world. I said that he should be my knight-errant, my paladin!

Otto said he would be it.

He has consented. But he says we must not fare forth empty-handed. I do not know why he thinks this, but he is firm, and I yield to my lord. He is making all our preparations.

Each morning I bring to the meadow a little bundle of my things and give them to my knight-errant and he takes them to the inn where he is staying.

Last week I brought my jewel-case, and yesterday, at his request, I took my money from the bank and brought it to my paladin. It will be so safe with him.

To-day he said that I shall need some little things to remember my father and mother by when we are gone. So I am to take my father’s gold watch while he is asleep. My hero! How thoughtful he is of my happiness.

* * *

Next Day.

All is ready. To-morrow I am to meet Otto at the meadow with the watch and the rest of the things.

To-morrow night we are to flee together. I am to go down to the little gate at the foot of the garden, and Otto will be there.

To-day I have wandered about the house and garden and have said good-bye. I have said good-bye to my Tchupvskja flower, and to the birds and the bees.

To-morrow it will be all over.

* * *

Next Evening.

How can I write what has happened! My soul is shattered to its depths.

All that I dreaded most has happened. How can I live!

Alexis has come back. He and Otto have fought.

Ah God! it has been terrible.

I stood with Otto in the meadow. I had brought him the watch, and I gave it to him, and all my love and my life with it.

Then, as we stood, I turned and saw Alexis Alexovitch striding towards us through the grass.

How tall and soldierly he looked! And the thought flashed through my mind that if Otto killed him he would be lying there a dead, inanimate thing.

‘Go, Otto,’ I cried, ‘go, if you stay you will kill him.’

Otto looked and saw Alexis coming. He turned one glance at me: his face was full of infinite meaning.

Then, for my sake, he ran. How noble he looked as he ran. Brave heart! he dared not stay and risk the outburst of his anger.

But Alexis overtook him.

Then beside the river-bank they fought. Ah! but it was terrible to see them fight. Is it not awful when men fight together?

I could only stand and wring my hands and look on in agony!

First, Alexis seized Otto by the waistband of his trousers and swung him round and round in the air. I could see Otto’s face as he went round: the same mute courage was written on it as when he turned to run. Alexis swung Otto round and round until his waistband broke, and he was thrown into the grass.

That was the first part of the fight.

Then Alexis stood beside Otto and kicked him from behind as he lay in the grass, and they fought like that for some time. That was the second part of the fight. Then came the third and last part. Alexis picked up the easel and smashed the picture over Otto’s head. It fastened itself like a collar about his neck. Then Alexis picked Otto up with the picture round his neck and threw him into the stream.

He floated!

My paladin!

He floated!

I could see his upturned face as he floated onwards down the stream, through the meadow! It was full of deep resignation.

Then Alexis Alexovitch came to me and gathered me up in his arms and carried me thus across the meadow – he is so tall and strong – and whispered that he loved me, and that to-morrow he would shield me from the world. He carried me thus to the house in his arms among the grass and flowers; and there was my father, Ivan Ivanovitch, and my mother, Katoosha Katooshavitch. And to-morrow I am to marry Alexis. He had brought back from the inn my jewels and my money, and he gave me again the diamond clasp that Otto had taken from my waist.

How can I bear it? Alexis is to take me to Petersburg, and he has bought a beautiful house in the Prospekt, and I am to live in it with him, and we are to be rich, and I am to be presented at the Court of Nicholas Romanoff and his wife. Ah! Is it not dreadful?

And I can only think of Otto floating down the stream with the easel about his neck. From the little river he will float into the Dnieper, and from the Dnieper into the Bug, and from the Bug he will float down the Volga, and from the Volga into the Caspian Sea. And from the Caspian Sea there is no outlet, and Otto will float round and round it for ever.

Is it not dreadful?

Hannah of the Highlands: or, The Laird of Loch Aucherlocherty

’Sair maun ye greet, but hoot awa!

There’s muckle yet, love isna’ a’—

Nae more ye’ll see, howe’er ye whine

The bonnie breeks of Auld Lang Syne!

The simple words rang out fresh and sweet upon the morning air.

It was Hannah of the Highlands. She was gathering lobsters in the burn that ran through the glen.

The scene about her was typically Highland. Wild hills rose on both sides of the burn to a height of seventy-five feet, covered with a dense Highland forest that stretched a hundred yards in either direction. At the foot of the burn a beautiful Scotch loch lay in the hollow of the hills. Beyond it again, through the gap of the hills, was the sea. Through the Glen, and close beside the burn where Hannah stood, wound the road that rose again to follow the cliffs along the shore.

The tourists in the Highlands will find no more beautiful spot than the Glen of Aucherlocherty.

Nor is there any spot which can more justly claim to be historic ground.

It was here in the glen that Bonnie Prince Charlie had lain and hidden after the defeat of Culloden. Almost in the same spot the great boulder still stands behind which the Bruce had laid hidden after Bannockburn; while behind a number of lesser stones the Covenanters had concealed themselves during the height of the Stuart persecution.

Through the Glen Montrose had passed on his fateful ride to Killiecrankie; while at the lower end of it the rock was still pointed out behind which William Wallace had paused to change his breeches while flying from the wrath of Rob Roy.

Grim memories such as these gave character to the spot.

Indeed, most of the great events of Scotch history had taken place in the Glen, while the little loch had been the scene of some of the most stirring naval combats in the history of the Grampian Hills.

But there was little in the scene which lay so peaceful on this April morning to recall the sanguinary history of the Glen. Its sides at present were covered with a thick growth of gorse, elderberry, egg-plants, and ghillie flower, while the woods about it were loud with the voice of the throstle, the linnet, the magpie, the jackdaw, and other song-birds of the Highlands.

It was a gloriously beautiful Scotch morning. The rain fell softly and quietly, bringing dampness and moisture, and almost a sense of wetness to the soft moss underfoot. Grey mists flew hither and thither, carrying with them an invigorating rawness that had almost a feeling of dampness.

It is the memory of such a morning that draws a tear from the eye of Scotchmen after years of exile. The Scotch heart, reader, can be moved to its depths by the sight of a raindrop or the sound of a wet rag.

And meantime Hannah, the beautiful Highland girl, was singing. The fresh young voice rose high above the rain. Even the birds seemed to pause to listen, and as they listened to the simple words of the Gaelic folk-song, fell off the bough with a thud on the grass.

The Highland girl made a beautiful picture as she stood.

Her bare feet were in the burn, the rippling water of which laved her ankles. The lobsters played about her feet, or clung affectionately to her toes, as if loath to leave the water and be gathered in the folds of her blue apron.

It was a scene to charm the heart of a Burne-Jones, or an Alma Tadema, or of anybody fond of lobsters.

The girl’s golden hair flowed widely behind her, gathered in a single braid with a piece of stovepipe wire.

‘Will you sell me one of your lobsters?’

Hannah looked up. There, standing in the burn a few yards above her, was the vision of a young man.

The beautiful Highland girl gazed at him fascinated.

He seemed a higher order of being.

He carried a fishing-rod and basket in his hand. He was dressed in a salmon-fishing costume of an English gentleman. Salmon-fishing boots reached to his thighs, while above them he wore a fishing-jacket fastened loosely with a fishing-belt about his waist. He wore a small fishing-cap on his head.

There were no fish in his basket.

He drew near to the Highland girl.

Hannah knew as she looked at him that it must be Ian McWhinus, the new laird.

At sight she loved him.

‘Ye’re sair welcome,’ she said, as she handed to the young man the finest of her lobsters.

He put it in his basket.

Then he felt in the pocket of his jacket and brought out a sixpenny-piece.

‘You must let me pay for it,’ he said.

Hannah took the sixpence and held it a moment, flushing with true Highland pride.

‘I’ll no be selling the fush for money,’ she said.

Something in the girl’s speech went straight to the young man’s heart. He handed her half a crown. Whistling lightly, he strode off up the side of the burn. Hannah stood gazing after him spell-bound. She was aroused from her reverie by an angry voice calling her name.

‘Hannah, Hannah,’ cried the voice, ‘come away ben; are ye daft, lass, that ye stand there keeking at a McWhinus?’

Then Hannah realised what she had done.

She had spoken with a McWhinus, a thing that no McShamus had done for a hundred and fifty years. For nearly two centuries the McShamuses and the McWhinuses, albeit both dwellers in the Glen, had been torn asunder by one of those painful divisions by which the life of the Scotch people is broken into fragments.

It had arisen out of a point of spiritual belief.

It had been six generations agone at a Highland banquet, in the days when the unrestrained temper of the time gave way to wild orgies, during which theological discussions raged with unrestrained fury. Shamus McShamus, an embittered Calvinist, half crazed perhaps with liquor, had maintained that damnation could be achieved only by faith. Whimper McWhinus had held that damnation could be achieved also by good works. Inflamed with drink, McShamus had struck McWhinus across the temple with an oatcake and killed him. McShamus had been brought to trial. Although defended by some of the most skilled lawyers of Aucherlocherty, he had been acquitted. On the very night of his acquittal, Whangus McWhinus, the son of the murdered man, had lain in wait for Shamus McShamus, in the hollow of the Glen road where it rises to the cliff, and had shot him through the bagpipes. Since then the feud had raged with unquenched bitterness for a century and a half.

With each generation the difference between the two families became more acute. They differed on every possible point. They wore different tartans, sat under different ministers, drank different brands of whisky, and upheld different doctrines in regard to eternal punishment.

To add to the feud the McWhinuses had grown rich, while the McShamuses had become poor.

At least once in every generation a McWhinus or a McShamus had been shot, and always at the turn of the Glen road where it rose to the edge of the cliff. Finally, two generations gone, the McWhinuses had been raised to sudden wealth by the discovery of a coal mine on their land. To show their contempt for the McShamuses they had left the Glen to live in America. The McShamuses, to show their contempt for the McWhinuses, had remained in the Glen. The feud was kept alive in their memory.

And now the descendant of the McWhinuses had come back, and bought out the property of the Laird of Aucherlocherty beside the Glen. Ian McWhinus knew nothing of the feud. Reared in another atmosphere, the traditions of Scotland had no meaning for him. He had entirely degenerated. To him the tartan had become only a piece of coloured cloth. He wore a kilt as a masquerade costume for a Hallowe’en dance, and when it rained he put on a raincoat. He was no longer Scotch. More than that, he had married a beautiful American wife, a talcum-powder blonde with a dough face and the exquisite rotundity of the packing-house district of the Middle-West. Ian McWhinus was her slave. For her sake he had bought the lobster from Hannah. For her sake, too, he had scrutinised closely the beautiful Highland girl, for his wife was anxious to bring back a Scotch housemaid with her to Chicago.

And meantime Hannah, with the rapture of a new love in her heart, followed her father, Oyster McOyster McShamus, to the cottage. Oyster McOyster, even in advancing age, was a fine specimen of Scotch manhood. Ninety-seven years of age, he was approaching the time when many of his countrymen begin to show the ravages of time. But he bore himself straight as a lath, while his tall stature and his native Highland costume accentuated the fine outline of his form. This costume consisted of a black velvet beetle-shell jacket, which extended from the shoulder half-way down the back, and was continued in a short kilt of the tartan of the McShamuses, which extended from the waist half-way to the thigh. The costume reappeared again after an interval in the form of rolled golf stockings, which extended half-way up to the knee, while on his feet a pair of half shoes were buckled half-way up with a Highland clasp. On his head half-way between the ear and the upper superficies of the skull he wore half a Scotch cap, from which a tall rhinoceros feather extended half-way into the air.

A pair of bagpipes were beneath his arm, from which, as he walked, he blew those deep and plaintive sounds which have done much to imprint upon the characters of those who hear them a melancholy and resigned despair.

At the door of the cottage he turned and faced his daughter.

‘What said Ian McWhinus to you i’ the burnside?’ he said fiercely.

‘’Twas nae muckle,’ said Hannah, and she added, for the truth was ever more to her than her father’s wrath, ‘he gi’ed me saxpence for a fush.’

‘Siller!’ shrieked the Highlander. ‘Siller from a McWhinus!’

Hannah handed him the sixpence. Oyster McOyster dashed it fiercely on the ground, then picking it up he dashed it with full force against the wall of the cottage. Then, seizing it again he dashed it angrily into the pocket of his kilt.

They entered the cottage.

Hannah had never seen her father’s face so dour as it looked that night.

Their home seemed changed.

Hannah and her mother and father sat down that night in silence to their simple meal of oatmeal porridge and Scotch whisky. In the evening the mother sat to her spinning. Busily she plied her work, for it was a task of love. Her eldest born, Jamie, was away at college at Edinburgh, preparing for the ministry. His graduation day was approaching, and Jamie’s mother was spinning him a pair of breeches against the day. The breeches were to be a surprise. Already they were shaping that way. Oyster McShamus sat reading the Old Testament in silence, while Hannah looked into the peat fire and thought of the beautiful young Laird. Only once the Highlander spoke.

‘The McWhinus is back,’ he said, and his glance turned towards the old flint-lock musket on the wall. That night Hannah dreamed of the feud, of the Glen and the burn, of love, of lobsters, and of the Laird of Loch Aucherlocherty. And when she rose in the morning there was a wistful look in her eyes, and there came no song from her throat.

The days passed.

Each day the beautiful Highland girl saw the young Laird, though her father knew it not.

In the mornings she would see him as he came fishing to the burn. At times he wore his fishing-suit, at other times he had on a knickerbocker suit of shepherd’s plaid with a domino pattern negligée shirt. For his sake the beautiful Highland girl made herself more beautiful still. Each morning she would twine a Scotch thistle in her hair, and pin a spray of burdock at her heart.

And at times he spoke to her. How Hannah treasured his words. Once, catching sight of her father in the distance, he had asked her who was the old sardine in the petticoats, and the girl had answered gladly that it was her father, for, as a fisherman’s daughter, she was proud to have her father mistaken for a sardine.

At another time he had asked her if she was handy about the work of the house. How Hannah’s heart had beat at the question. She made up her mind to spin him a pair of breeches like the ones now finishing for her brother Jamie.

And every evening as the sun set Hannah would watch in secret from the window of the cottage waiting for the young Laird to come past in his motor-car, down the Glen road to the sea. Always he would slacken the car at the sharp turn at the top of the cliff. For six generations no McWhinus had passed that spot after nightfall with his life. But Ian McWhinus knew nothing of the feud.

At times Oyster McOyster would see him pass, and standing at the roadside would call down Gaelic curses on his head.

Once, when her father was from home, Hannah had stood on the roadside, and Ian had stopped the machine and had taken her with him in the car for a ride. Hannah, her heart beating with delight, had listened to him as he explained how the car was worked. Had her father know that she had sat thus beside a McWhinus, he would have slain her where she sat.

The tragedy of Hannah’s love ran swiftly to its close.

Each day she met the young Laird at the burn.

Each day she gave him the finest of her lobsters. She wore a new thistle every day.

And every night, in secret as her mother slept, she span a new concentric section of his breeches.

And the young Laird, when he went home, said to the talcum blonde, that the Highland fisher-girl was not half such a damn fool as she seemed.

Then came the fateful afternoon.

He stood beside her at the burn.

‘Hannah,’ he said, as he bent towards her, ‘I want to take you to America.’

Hannah had fallen fainting in his arms.

Ian propped her against a tree, and went home.

An hour later, when Hannah entered her home, her father was standing behind the fireplace. He was staring fixedly into the fire, with the flint-lock musket in his hands. There was the old dour look of the feud upon his face, and there were muttered curses on his lips. His wife Ellen clung to his arm and vainly sought to quiet him.

‘Curse him,’ he muttered, ‘I’ll e’en kill him the night as he passes in his deil machine.’

Then Hannah knew that Oyster McShamus had seen her with Ian beside the burn. She turned and fled from the house. Straight up the road she ran across towards the manor-house of Aucherlocherty to warn Ian. To save him from her father’s wrath, that was her one thought. Night gathered about the Highland girl as she ran. The rain clouds and the gathering storm hung low with fitful lightning overhead. She still ran on. About her was the rolling of the thunder and the angry roaring of the swollen burn. Then the storm broke upon the darkness with all the fury of the Highland gale. They sky was rent with the fierce play of the elements. Yet on Hannah ran. Again and again the lightning hit her, but she ran on still. She fell over the stones, tripped and stumbled in the ruts, butted into the hedges, cannoned off against the stone walls. But she never stopped. She went quicker and quicker. The storm was awful. Lightning, fire, flame, and thunder were all about her. Trees were falling, hurdles were flying, birds were being struck by lightning. Dogs, sheep and even cattle were hurled through the air.

She reached the manor-house, and stood a moment at the door. The storm had lulled, the rain ceased, and for a brief moment there was quiet. The light was streaming from the windows of the house. Hannah paused. Suddenly her heart misgave her. Her quick ear had caught the sound of a woman’s voice within. She approached the window and looked in. Then, as if rooted to the spot, the Highland girl gazed and listened at the pane.

Ian lay upon a sofa. The negligé dressing-gown that he wore enhanced the pallid beauty of his face. Beside him sat the talcum-powder blonde. She was feeding him with chocolates. Hannah understood. Ian had trifled with her love. He had bought her lobsters to win her heart, only to cast it aside.

Hannah turned from the window. She plucked the thistle from her throat and flung it on the ground. Then, as she turned her eye, she caught sight of the motor standing in the shed.

‘The deil machine!’ she muttered, while the wild light of Highland frenzy gathered in her eye; then, as she rushed to it and tore the tarpaulin from off it, ‘Ye’ll no be wanting of a mark the night, Oyster McShamus,’ she cried.

A moment later, the motor, with Hannah at the wheel, was thundering down the road to the Glen. The power was on to the full, and the demented girl clung tight to the steering-gear as the machine rocked and thundered down the descent. The storm was raging again, and the thunder mingled with the roar of the machine as it coursed madly towards the sea. The great eye of the motor blazed in front. The lurid light of it flashed a second on the trees and the burn as it passed, and flashed blinding on the eyes of Oyster as he stood erect on the cliff-side below, musket in hand, and faced the blazing apparition that charged upon him with the old Highland blood surging in his veins.

It was all over in a moment – a blinding flash of lightning, the report of a musket, a great peal of thunder, and the motor bearing the devoted girl hurled headlong over the cliff.

They found her there in the morning. She lay on her side motionless, half buried in the sand, upturned towards the blue Highland sky, serene now after the passing of the storm. Quiet and still she lay. The sea-birds seemed to pause in their flight to look down on her. The little group of Scotch people that had gathered stood and gazed at her with reverential awe. They made no attempt to put her together. It would have been useless. Her gasoline tubes were twisted and bent, her tank burst, her sprockets broken from their sides, and her steering-gear an utter wreck. The motor would never run again.

After a time they roused themselves from their grief and looked about for Hannah. They found her. She lay among the sand and seaweed, her fair hair soaked in gasoline. Then they looked about for Oyster McShamus. Him, too, they found, lying half buried in the grass and soaked in whisky. Then they looked about for Ellen. They found her lying across the door of the cottage half buried in Jamie’s breeches.

Then they gathered them up. Life was not extinct. They chafed their hands. They rubbed their feet. They put hot bricks upon their stomachs. They poured hot whisky down their throats. That brought them to.

Of course.

It always does.

They all lived.

But the feud was done for. That was the end of it. Hannah had put it to the bad.

Soaked in Seaweed: or, Upset in the Ocean (An Old-fashioned Sea Story.)

It was in August in 1867 that I stepped on board the deck of the Saucy Sally, lying in dock at Gravesend, to fill the berth of second mate.

Let me first say a word about myself.

I was a tall, handsome young fellow, squarely and powerfully built, bronzed by the sun and the moon (and even copper-coloured in spots from the effect of the stars), and with a face in which honesty, intelligence, and exceptional brain power were combined with Christianity, simplicity, and modesty.

As I stepped on the deck I could not help a slight feeling of triumph, as I caught sight of my sailor-like features reflected in a tar-barrel that stood beside the mast, while a little later I could scarcely repress a sense of gratification as I noticed them reflected again in a bucket of bilge water.

‘Welcome on board, Mr. Blowhard,’ called out Captain Bilge, stepping out of the binnacle and shaking hands across the taffrail.

I saw before me a fine sailor-like man of from thirty to sixty, clean-shaven, except for an enormous pair of whiskers, a heavy beard, and a thick moustache, powerful in build, and carrying his beam well aft, in a pair of broad duck trousers across the back of which there would have been room to write a history of the British Navy.

Beside him were the first and third mates, both of them being quiet men of poor stature, who looked at Captain Bilge with what seemed to me an apprehensive expression in their eyes.

The vessel was on the eve of departure. Her deck presented that scene of bustle and alacrity dear to the sailor’s heart. Men were busy nailing up the masts, hanging the bowsprit over the side, varnishing the lee-scuppers and pouring hot tar down the companion-way.

Captain Bilge, with a megaphone to his lips, kept calling out to the men in his rough sailor fashion:

‘Now, then, don’t over-exert yourselves, gentlemen. Remember, please, that we have plenty of time. Keep out of the sun as much as you can. Step carefully in the rigging there, Jones; I fear it’s just a little high for you. Tut, tut, Williams, don’t get yourself so dirty with that tar, you won’t look fit to be seen.’

I stood leaning over the gaff of the mainsail and thinking – yes, thinking, dear reader, of my mother. I hope that you will think none the less of me for that. Whenever things look dark, I lean up against something and think of mother. If they get positively black, I stand on one leg and think of father. After that I can face anything.

Did I think, too, of another, younger than mother and fairer than father? Yes, I did. ‘Bear up, darling,’ I had whispered as she nestled her head beneath my oilskins and kicked out backward with one heel in the agony of her girlish grief, ‘in five years the voyage will be over, and after three more like it, I shall come back with money enough to buy a second-hand fishing-net and settle down on shore.’

Meantime the ship’s preparations were complete. The masts were all in position, the sails nailed up, and men with axes were busily chopping away the gangway.

‘All ready?’ called the Captain.

‘Aye, aye, sir.’

‘Then hoist the anchor in board and send a man down with the key to open the bar.’

Opening the bar! the last sad rite of departure. How often in my voyages have I seen it; the little group of men soon to be exiled from their home, standing about with saddened faces, waiting to see the man with the key open the bar – held there by some strange fascination.

* * *

Next morning with a fair wind astern we had buzzed around the corner of England and were running down the Channel.

I know no finer sight, for those who have never seen it, than the English Channel. It is the highway of the world. Ships of all nations are passing up and down, Dutch, Scotch, Venezuelan, and even American.

Chinese junks rush to and fro. Warships, motor yachts, icebergs, and lumber rafts are everywhere. If I add to this fact that so thick a fog hangs over it that it is entirely hidden from sight, my readers can form some idea of the majesty of the scene.

* * *

We had now been three days at sea. My first sea-sickness was wearing off, and I thought less of father.

On the third morning Captain Bilge descended to my cabin.

‘Mr. Blowhard,’ he said, ‘I must ask you to stand double watches.’

‘What is the matter?’ I inquired.

‘The two other mates have fallen overboard,’ he said uneasily, and avoiding my eye.

I contented myself with saying ‘Very good, sir,’ but I could not help thinking it a trifle odd that both the mates should have fallen overboard in the same night.

Surely there was some mystery in this.

Two mornings later the Captain appeared at the breakfast-table with the same shifting and uneasy look in his eye.

‘Anything wrong, sir?’ I asked.

‘Yes,’ he answered, trying to appear at ease and twisting a fried egg to and fro between his fingers with such nervous force as almost to break it in two – ’I regret to say that we have lost the bosun.’

‘The bosun!’ I cried.

‘Yes,’ said Captain Bilge more quietly, ‘he is overboard. I blame myself for it, partly. It was early this morning. I was holding him up in my arms to look at an iceberg and, quite accidentally I assure you – I dropped him overboard.’

‘Captain Bilge,’ I asked, ‘have you taken any steps to recover him?’

‘Not as yet,’ he replied uneasily.

I looked at him fixedly, but said nothing.

Ten days passed.

The mystery thickened. On Thursday two men of the starboard watch were reported missing. On Friday the carpenter’s assistant disappeared. On the night of Saturday a circumstance occurred which, slight as it was, gave me some clue as to what was happening.

As I stood at the wheel about midnight, I saw the Captain approach in the darkness carrying the cabin-boy by the hind leg. The lad was a bright little fellow, whose merry disposition had already endeared him to me, and I watched with some interest to see what the Captain would do to him. Arrived at the stern of the vessel, Captain Bilge looked cautiously around a moment and then dropped the boy into the sea. For a brief instant the lad’s head appeared in the phosphorus of the waves. The Captain threw a boot at him, sighed deeply, and went below.

Here then was the key to the mystery! The Captain was throwing the crew overboard. Next morning we met at breakfast as usual.

‘Poor little Williams has fallen overboard,’ said the Captain, seizing a strip of ship’s bacon and tearing at it with his teeth as if he almost meant to eat it.

‘Captain,’ I said, greatly excited, stabbing at a ship’s loaf in my agitation with such ferocity as almost to drive my knife into it – ‘You threw that boy overboard!’

‘I did,’ said Captain Bilge, grown suddenly quiet, ‘I threw them all over and intend to throw the rest. Listen, Blowhard, you are young, ambitious, and trustworthy. I will confide in you.’

Perfectly calm now, he stepped to a locker, rummaged in it a moment, and drew out a faded piece of yellow parchment, which he spread on the table. It was a map or chart. In the centre of it was a circle. In the middle of the circle was a small dot and a letter T, while at one side of the map was a letter N, and against it on the other side a letter S.

‘What is this?’ I asked.

‘Can you not guess?’ queried Captain Bilge. ‘It is a desert island.’

‘Ah!’ I rejoined with a sudden flash of intuition, ‘and N is for North and S is for South.’

‘Blowhard,’ said the Captain, striking the table with such force as to cause a loaf of ship’s bread to bounce up and down three or four times, ‘you’ve struck it. That part of it had not yet occurred to me.’

‘And the letter T?’ I asked.

‘The treasure, the buried treasure,’ said the Captain, and turning the map over he read from the back of it – ‘The point T indicates the spot where the treasure is buried under the sand; it consists of half a million Spanish dollars, and is buried in a brown leather dress-suit case.’

‘And where is the island?’ I inquired, mad with excitement.

‘That I do not know,’ said the Captain. ‘I intend to sail up and down the parallels of latitude until I find it.’

‘And meantime?’

‘Meantime, the first thing to do is to reduce the number of the crew so as to have fewer hands to divide among. Come, come,’ he added in a burst of frankness which made me love the man in spite of his shortcomings, ‘will you join me in this? We’ll throw them all over, keeping the cook to the last, dig up the treasure, and be rich for the rest of our lives.’

Reader, do you blame me if I said yes? I was young, ardent, ambitious, full of bright hopes and boyish enthusiasm.

‘Captain Bilge,’ I said, putting my hand in his, ‘I am yours.’

‘Good,’ he said, ‘now go forward to the forecastle and get an idea what the men are thinking.’

I went forward to the men’s quarters – a plain room in the front of the ship, with only a rough carpet on the floor, a few simple arm-chairs, writing-desks, spittoons of a plain pattern, and small brass beds with blue-and-green screens. It was Sunday morning, and the men were mostly sitting about in their dressing-gowns.

They rose as I entered and curtseyed.

‘Sir,’ said Tompkins, the bosun’s mate, ‘I think it my duty to tell you that there is a great deal of dissatisfaction among the men.’

Several of the men nodded.

‘They don’t like the way the men keep going overboard,’ he continued, his voice rising to a tone of uncontrolled passion. ‘It is positively absurd, sir, and if you will allow me to say so, the men are far from pleased.’

‘Tompkins,’ I said sternly, ‘you must understand that my position will not allow me to listen to mutinous language of this sort.’

I returned to the Captain. ‘I think the men mean mutiny,’ I said.

‘Good,’ said Captain Bilge, rubbing his hands, ‘that will get rid of a lot of them, and of course,’ he added musingly, looking out of the broad old-fashioned port-hole at the stern of the cabin, at the heaving waves of the South Atlantic, ‘I am expecting pirates at any time, and that will take out quite a few of them. However’ – and here he pressed the bell for a cabin-boy – ‘kindly ask Mr. Tompkins to step this way.’

‘Tompkins,’ said the Captain as the bosun’s mate entered, ‘be good enough to stand on the locker and stick your head through the stern port-hole, and tell me what you think of the weather.’

‘Aye, aye, sir,’ replied the tar with a simplicity which caused us to exchange a quiet smile.

Tompkins stood on the locker and put his head and shoulders out of the port.

Taking a leg each we pushed him through. We heard him plump into the sea.

‘Tompkins was easy,’ said Captain Bilge. ‘Excuse me as I enter his death in the log.’

‘Yes,’ he continued presently, ‘it will be a great help if they mutiny. I suppose they will, sooner or later. It’s customary to do so. But I shall take no step to precipitate it until we have first fallen in with pirates. I am expecting them in these latitudes at any time. Meantime, Mr. Blowhard,’ he said, rising, ‘if you can continue to drop overboard one or two more each week, I shall feel extremely grateful.’

Three days later we rounded the Cape of Good Hope and entered upon the inky waters of the Indian Ocean. Our course lay now in zigzags and, the weather being favourable, we sailed up and down at a furious rate over a sea as calm as glass.

On the fourth day a pirate ship appeared. Reader, I do not know if you have ever seen a pirate ship. The sight was one to appal the stoutest heart. The entire ship was painted black, a black flag hung at the masthead, the sails were black, and on the deck people dressed all in black walked up and down arm-in-arm. The words ‘Pirate Ship’ were painted in white letters on the bow. At the sight of it our crew were visibly cowed. It was a spectacle that would have cowed a dog.

The two ships were brought side by side. They were then lashed tightly together with bag string and binder twine, and a gang plank laid between them. In a moment the pirates swarmed upon our deck, rolling their eyes, gnashing their teeth and filing their nails.

Then the fight began. It lasted two hours – with fifteen minutes off for lunch. It was awful. The men grappled with one another, kicked one another from behind, slapped one another across the face, and in many cases completely lost their temper and tried to bite one another. I noticed one gigantic fellow brandishing a knotted towel, and striking right and left among our men, until Captain Bilge rushed at him and struck him flat across the mouth with a banana skin.

At the end of two hours, by mutual consent, the fight was declared a draw. The points standing at sixty-one and a half against sixty-two.

The ships were unlashed, and with three cheers from each crew, were headed on their way.

‘Now, then,’ said the Captain to me aside, ‘let us see how many of the crew are sufficiently exhausted to be thrown overboard.’

He went below. In a few minutes he re-appeared, his face deadly pale. ‘Blowhard,’ he said, ‘the ship is sinking. One of the pirates (sheer accident, of course, I blame no one) has kicked a hole in the side. Let us sound the well.’

We put our ear to the ship’s well. It sounded like water.

The men were put to the pumps and worked with the frenzied effort which only those who have been drowned in a sinking ship can understand.

At six p.m. the well marked one half an inch of water, at nightfall three-quarters of an inch, and at daybreak, after a night of unremitting toil, seven-eighths of an inch.

By noon of the next day the water had risen to fifteen-sixteenths of an inch, and on the next night the sounding showed thirty-one thirty-seconds of an inch of water in the hold. The situation was desperate. At this rate of increase few, if any, could tell where it would rise to in a few days.

That night the Captain called me to his cabin. He had a book of mathematical tables in front of him, and great sheets of vulgar fractions littered the floor on all sides.

‘The ship is bound to sink,’ he said, ‘in fact, Blowhard, she is sinking. I can prove it. It may be six months or it may take years, but if she goes on like this, sink she must. There is nothing for it but to abandon her.’

That night, in the dead of darkness, while the crew were busy at the pumps, the Captain and I built a raft.

Unobserved we cut down the masts, chopped them into suitable lengths, laid them crosswise in a pile and lashed them tightly together with bootlaces.

Hastily we threw on board a couple of boxes of food and bottles of drinking fluid, a sextant, a cronometer, a gas-meter, a bicycle pump and a few other scientific instruments. Then taking advantage of a roll in the motion of the ship, we launched the raft, lowered ourselves upon a line, and under cover of the heavy dark of a tropical night, we paddled away from the doomed vessel.

The break of day found us a tiny speck on the Indian Ocean. We looked about as big as this (.).

In the morning, after dressing, and shaving as best we could, we opened our box of food and drink.

Then came the awful horror of our situation.

One by one the Captain took from the box the square blue tins of canned beef which it contained. We counted fifty-two in all. Anxiously and with drawn faces we watched until the last can was lifted from the box. A single thought was in our minds. When the end came the Captain stood up on the raft with wild eyes staring at the sky.

‘The can-opener!’ he shrieked, ‘just Heaven, the can-opener.’ He fell prostrate.

Meantime, with trembling hands, I opened the box of bottles. It contained lager beer bottles, each with a patent tin top. One by one I took them out. There were fifty-two in all. As I withdrew the last one and saw the empty box before me, I shroke out – ‘The thing! the thing! oh, merciful Heaven! The thing you open them with!’

I fell prostrate upon the Captain.

We awoke to find ourselves still a mere speck upon the ocean. We felt even smaller than before.

Over us was the burnished copper sky of the tropics. The heavy, leaden sea lapped the sides of the raft. All about us was a litter of corn beef cans and lager beer bottles. Our sufferings in the ensuing days were indescribable. We beat and thumped at the cans with our fists. Even at the risk of spoiling the tins for ever we hammered them fiercely against the raft. We stamped on them, bit at them and swore at them. We pulled and clawed at the bottles with our hands, and chipped and knocked them against the cans, regardless even of breaking the glass and ruining the bottles.

It was futile.

Then day after day we sat in moody silence, gnawed with hunger, with nothing to read, nothing to smoke, and practically nothing to talk about.

On the tenth day the Captain broke silence.

‘Get ready the lots, Blowhard,’ he said. ‘It’s got to come to that.’

‘Yes,’ I answered drearily, ‘we’re getting thinner every day.’

Then, with the awful prospect of cannibalism before us, we drew lots.

I prepared the lots and held them to the Captain. He drew the longer one.

‘Which does that mean,’ he asked, trembling between hope and despair. ‘Do I win?’

‘No, Bilge,’ I said sadly, ‘you lose.’

* * *

But I mustn’t dwell on the days that followed – the long quiet days of lazy dreaming on the raft, during which I slowly built up my strength, which had been shattered by privation. They were days, dear reader, of deep and quiet peace, and yet I cannot recall them without shedding a tear for the brave man who made them what they were.

It was on the fifth day after that I was awakened from a sound sleep by the bumping of the raft against the shore. I had eaten perhaps overheartily, and had not observed the vicinity of land.

Before me was an island, the circular shape of which, with its low, sandy shore, recalled at once its identity.

‘The treasure island,’ I cried, ‘at last I am rewarded for all my heroism.’

In a fever of haste I rushed to the centre of the island. What was the sight that confronted me? A great hollow scooped in the sand, an empty dress-suit case lying beside it, and on a ship’s plank driven deep into the sand, the legend, ‘Saucy Sally, October, 1867.’ So! the miscreants had made good the vessel, headed it for the island of whose existence they must have learned from the chart we so carelessly left upon the cabin table, and had plundered poor Bilge and me of our well-earned treasure!

Sick with the sense of human ingratitude I sank upon the sand.

The island became my home.

There I eked out a miserable existence, feeding on sand and gravel and dressing myself in cactus plants. Years passed. Eating sand and mud slowly undermined my robust constitution. I fell ill. I died. I buried myself.

Would that others who write sea stories would do as much.

Caroline’s Christmas: or, The Inexplicable Infant

It was Xmas – Xmas with its mantle of white snow, scintillating from a thousand diamond points, Xmas with its good cheer, its peace on earth – Xmas with its feasting and merriment, Xmas with its – well, anyway, it was Xmas.

Or no, that’s a slight slip; it wasn’t exactly Xmas, it was Xmas Eve, Xmas Eve with its mantle of white snow lying beneath the calm moonlight – and, in fact, with practically the above list of accompanying circumstances with a few obvious emendations.

Yes, it was Xmas Eve.

And more than that!

Listen to where it was Xmas.

It was Xmas Eve on the Old Homestead. Reader, do you know, by sight, the Old Homestead? In the pauses of your work at your city desk, where you have grown rich and avaricious, does it never rise before your mind’s eye, the quiet old homestead that knew you as a boy before your greed of gold tore you away from it? The Old Homestead that stands beside the road just on the rise of the hill, with its dark spruce trees wrapped in snow, the snug barns and the straw stacks behind it; while from its windows there streams a shaft of light from a coal-oil lamp, about as thick as a slate pencil that you can see four miles away, from the other side of the cedar swamp in the hollow. Don’t talk to me of your modern searchlights and your incandescent arcs, beside that gleam of light from the coal-oil lamp in the farmhouse window. It will shine clear to the heart across thirty years of distance. Do you not turn, I say, sometimes, reader, from the roar and hustle of the city with its ill-gotten wealth and its godless creed of mammon, to think of the quiet homestead under the brow of the hill? You don’t! Well, you skunk!

It was Xmas Eve.

The light shone from the windows of the homestead farm. The light of the log fire rose and flickered and mingled its red glare on the windows with the calm yellow of the lamplight.

John Enderby and his wife sat in the kitchen room of the farmstead. Do you know it, reader, the room called the kitchen? – with the open fire on its old brick hearth, and the cook stove in the corner. It is the room of the farm where people cook and eat and live. It is the living-room. The only other room beside the bedroom is the small room in front, chill-cold in winter, with an organ in it for playing ‘Rock of Ages’ on, when company came. But this room is only used for music and funerals. The real room of the old farm is the kitchen. Does it not rise up before you, reader? It doesn’t? Well, you darn fool!

At any rate there sat old John Enderby beside the plain deal table, his head bowed upon his hands, his grizzled face with its unshorn stubble stricken down with the lines of devastating trouble. From time to time he rose and cast a fresh stick of tamarack into the fire with a savage thud that sent a shower of sparks up the chimney. Across the fireplace sat his wife Anna on a straight-backed chair, looking into the fire with the mute resignation of her sex.

What was wrong with them anyway? Ah, reader, can you ask? Do you know or remember so little of the life of the old homestead? When I have said that it is the Old Homestead and Xmas Eve, and that the farmer is in great trouble and throwing tamarack at the fire, surely you ought to guess!

The Old Homestead was mortgaged! Ten years ago, reckless with debt, crazed with remorse, mad with despair and persecuted with rheumatism, John Enderby had mortgaged his farmstead for twenty-four dollars and thirty cents.

To-night the mortgage fell due, to-night at midnight, Xmas night. Such is the way in which mortgages of this kind are always drawn. Yes, sir, it was drawn with such diabolical skill that on this night of all nights the mortgage would be foreclosed. At midnight the men would come with hammer and nails and foreclose it, nail it up tight.

So the afflicted couple sat.

Anna, with the patient resignation of her sex, sat silent or at times endeavoured to read. She had taken down from the little wall-shelf Bunyan’s Holy Living and Holy Dying. She tried to read it. She could not. Then she had taken Dante’s Inferno. She could not read it. Then she had selected Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason. But she could not read it either. Lastly, she had taken the Farmer’s Almanac for 1911. The books lay littered about her as she sat in patient despair.

John Enderby showed all the passion of an uncontrolled nature. At times he would reach out for the crock of buttermilk that stood beside him and drained a draught of the maddening liquid, till his brain glowed like the coals of the tamarack fire before him.

‘John,’ pleaded Anna, ‘leave alone the buttermilk. It only maddens you. No good ever came of that.’

‘Aye, lass,’ said the farmer, with a bitter laugh, as he buried his head again in the crock, ‘what care I if it maddens me.’

‘Ah, John, you’d better be employed in reading the Good Book than in your wild courses. Here take it, father, and read it’ – and she handed to him the well-worn black volume from the shelf. Enderby paused a moment and held the volume in his hand. He and his wife had known nothing of religious teaching in the public schools of their day, but the first-class non-sectarian education that the farmer had received had stood him in good stead.

‘Take the book,’ she said. ‘Read, John, in this hour of affliction; it brings comfort.’

The farmer took from her hand the well-worn copy of Euclid’s Elements, and laying aside his hat with reverence, he read aloud: ‘The angles at the base of an isoceles triangle are equal, and whosoever shall produce the sides, lo, the same also shall be equal each unto each.’

The farmer put the book aside.

‘It’s no use, Anna. I can’t read the good words to-night.’

He rose, staggered to the crock of buttermilk, and before his wife could stay his hand, drained it to the last drop.

Then he sank heavily to his chair.

‘Let them foreclose it, if they will,’ he said; ‘I am past caring.’

The woman looked sadly into the fire.

Ah, if only her son Henry had been here. Henry, who had left them three years agone, and whose bright letters still brought from time to time the gleam of hope to the stricken farmhouse.

Henry was in Sing Sing. His letters brought news to his mother of his steady success; first in the baseball nine of the prison, a favourite with his wardens and the chaplain, the best bridge player of the corridor. Henry was pushing his way to the front with the old-time spirit of the Enderbys.

His mother had hoped that he might have been with her at Xmas, but Henry had written that it was practically impossible for him to leave Sing Sing. He could not see his way out. The authorities were arranging a dance and sleighing party for the Xmas celebration. He had some hope, he said, of slipping away unnoticed, but his doing so might excite attention.

Of the trouble at home Anna had told her son nothing.

No, Henry could not come. There was no help there. And William, the other son, ten years older than Henry. Alas, William had gone forth from the homestead to fight his way in the great city! ‘Mother,’ he had said, ‘when I make a million dollars I’ll come home. Till then good-bye,’ and he had gone.

How Anna’s heart had beat for him. Would he make that million dollars? Would she ever live to see it? And as the years passed she and John had often sat in the evenings picturing William at home again, bringing with him a million dollars, or picturing the million dollars sent by express with love. But the years had passed. William came not. He did not come. The great city had swallowed him up as it has many another lad from the old homestead.

Anna started from her musing —

What was that at the door? The sound of a soft and timid rapping, and through the glass of the door-pane, a face, a woman’s face looking into the fire-lit room with pleading eyes. What was it she bore in her arms, the little bundle that she held tight to her breast to shield it from the falling snow? Can you guess, reader? Try three guesses and see. Right you are. That’s what it was.

The farmer’s wife went hastily to the door.

‘Lord’s mercy!’ she cried, ‘what are you doing out on such a night? Come in, child, to the fire!’

The woman entered, carrying the little bundle with her, and looking with wide eyes (they were at least an inch and a half across) at Enderby and his wife. Anna could see that there was no wedding-ring on her hand.

‘Your name?’ said the farmer’s wife.

‘My name is Caroline,’ the girl whispered. The rest was lost in the low tones of her voice. ‘I want shelter,’ she paused, ‘I want you to take the child.’

Anna took the baby and laid it carefully on the top shelf of the cupboard, then she hastened to bring a glass of water and a dough-nut, and set it before the half-frozen girl.

‘Eat,’ she said, ‘and warm yourself.’

John rose from his seat.

‘I’ll have no child of that sort here,’ he said.

‘John, John,’ pleaded Anna, ‘remember what the Good Book says: “Things which are equal to the same thing are equal to one another!”’

John sank back in his chair.

And why had Caroline no wedding-ring? Ah, reader, can you not guess. Well, you can’t. It wasn’t what you think at all; so there. Caroline had no wedding-ring because she had thrown it away in bitterness, as she tramped the streets of the great city. ‘Why,’ she cried, ‘should the wife of a man in the penitentiary wear a ring.’

Then she had gone forth with the child from what had been her home.

It was the old sad story.

She had taken the baby and laid it tenderly, gently on a seat in the park. Then she walked rapidly away. A few minutes after a man had chased after Caroline with the little bundle in his arms. ‘I beg your pardon,’ he said, panting, ‘I think you left your baby in the park.’ Caroline thanked him.

Next she took the baby to the Grand Central Waiting-room, kissed it tenderly, and laid it on a shelf behind the lunch-counter.

A few minutes an official, beaming with satisfaction, had brought it back to her.

‘Yours, I think, madame,’ he said, as he handed it to her. Caroline thanked him.

Then she had left it at the desk of the Waldorf Astoria, and at the ticket-office of the subway.

It always came back.

Once or twice she took it to the Brooklyn Bridge and threw it into the river, but perhaps something in the way it fell through the air touched the mother’s heart and smote her, and she had descended to the river and fished it out.

Then Caroline had taken the child to the country. At first she thought to leave it on the wayside and she had put it down in the snow, and standing a little distance off had thrown mullein stalks at it, but something in the way the little bundle lay covered in the snow appealed to the mother’s heart.

She picked it up and went on. ‘Somewhere,’ she murmured, ‘I shall find a door of kindness open to it.’ Soon after she had staggered into the homestead.

Anna, with true woman’s kindness, asked no questions. She put the baby carefully away in a trunk, saw Caroline safely to bed in the best room, and returned to her seat by the fire.

The old clock struck twenty minutes past eight.

Again a knock sounded at the door.

There entered the familiar figure of the village lawyer. His astrachan coat of yellow dogskin, his celluloid collar, and boots which reached no higher than the ankle, contrasted with the rude surroundings of the little room.

‘Enderby,’ he said, ‘can you pay?’

‘Lawyer Perkins,’ said the farmer, ‘give me time and I will; so help me, give me five years more and I’ll clear this debt to the last cent.’

‘John,’ said the lawyer, touched in spite of his rough (dogskin) exterior, ‘I couldn’t, if I would. These things are not what they were. It’s a big New York corporation, Pinchem & Company, that makes these loans now, and they take their money on the day, or they sell you up. I can’t help it. So there’s your notice, John, and I am sorry! No, I’ll take no buttermilk, I must keep a clear head to work,’ and with that he hurried out into the snow again.

John sat brooding in his chair.

The fire flickered down.

The old clock struck half-past eight, then it half struck a quarter to nine, then slowly it struck striking.

Presently Enderby rose, picked a lantern from its hook, ‘Mortgage or no mortgage,’ he said, ‘I must see to the stock.’

He passed out of the house, and standing in the yard, looked over the snow to the cedar swamp beyond with the snow winding through it, far in the distance the lights of the village far away.

He thought of the forty years he had spent here on the homestead—the rude, pioneer days – the house he had built for himself, with its plain furniture, the old-fashioned spinning-wheel on which Anna had spun his trousers, the wooden telephone and the rude skidway on which he ate his meals.

He looked out over the swamp and sighed.

Down in the swamp, two miles away, could he have but seen it, there moved a sleigh, and in it a man dressed in a sealskin coat and silk hat, whose face beamed in the moonlight as he turned to and fro and stared at each object by the roadside as at an old familiar scene. Round his waist was a belt containing a million dollars in gold coin, and as he halted his horse in an opening of the road he unstrapped the belt and counted the coins.

Beside him there crouched in the bushes at the dark edge of the swamp road, with eyes that watched every glitter of the coins, and a hand that grasped a heavy cudgel of blackthorn, a man whose close-cropped hair and hard lined face belonged nowhere but within the walls of Sing Sing.

When the sleigh started again the man in the bushes followed doggedly in its track.

Meanwhile John Enderby had made the rounds of his outbuildings. He bedded the fat cattle that blinked in the flashing light of the lantern. He stood a moment among his hogs, and, farmer as he was, forgot his troubles a moment to speak to each, calling them by name. It smote him to think how at times he had been tempted to sell one of the hogs, or even to sell the cattle to clear the mortgage off the place. Thank God, however, he had put that temptation behind him.

As he reached the house a sleigh was standing on the roadway. Anna met him at the door. ‘John,’ she said, ‘there was a stranger came while you were in the barn, and wanted a lodging for the night; a city man, I reckon, by his clothes. I hated to refuse him, and I put him in Willie’s room. We’ll never want it again, and he’s gone to sleep.’

‘Ay, we can’t refuse.’

John Enderby took out the horse to the barn, and then returned to his vigil with Anna beside the fire.

The fumes of the buttermilk had died out of his brain. He was thinking, as he sat there, of midnight and what it would bring.

In the room above, the man in the sealskin coat had thrown himself down, clothes and all, upon the bed, tired with his drive.

‘How it all comes back to me,’ he muttered as he fell asleep, ‘the same old room, nothing changed – except them – how worn they look,’ and a tear started to his eyes. He thought of his leaving his home fifteen years ago, of his struggle in the great city, of the great idea he had conceived of making money, and of the Farm Investment Company he had instituted – the simple system of applying the crushing power of capital to exact the uttermost penny from the farm loans. And now here he was back again, true to his word, with a million dollars in his belt. ‘To-morrow,’ he had murmured, ‘I will tell them. It will be Xmas.’ Then William – yes, reader, it was William (see line 503 above) had fallen asleep.

The hours passed, and kept passing.

It was 11.30.

Then suddenly Anna started from her place.

‘Henry!’ she cried as the door opened and a man entered. He advanced gladly to meet her, and in a moment mother and son were folded in a close embrace. It was Henry, the man from Sing Sing. True to his word, he had slipped away unostentatiously at the height of the festivities.

‘Alas, Henry,’ said the mother after the warmth of the first greetings had passed, ‘you come at an unlucky hour.’ They told him of the mortgage on the farm and the ruin of his home.

‘Yes,’ said Anna, ‘not even a bed to offer you,’ and she spoke of the strangers who had arrived; of the stricken woman and the child, and the rich man in the sealskin coat who had asked for a night’s shelter.

Henry listened intently while they told him of the man, and a sudden light of intelligence flashed into his eye.

‘By Heaven, father, I have it!’ he cried. Then, dropping his voice, he said, ‘Speak low, father. This man upstairs, he had a sealskin coat and silk hat?’

‘Yes,’ said the father.

‘Father,’ said Henry, ‘I saw a man sitting in a sleigh in the cedar swamp. He had money in his hand, and he counted it, and chuckled, – five dollar gold pieces – in all, 1,125,465 dollars and a quarter.’

The father and son looked at one another.

‘I see your idea,’ said Enderby sternly.

‘We’ll choke him,’ said Henry.

‘Or club him,’ said the farmer, ‘and pay the mortgage.’

Anna looked from one to the other, joy and hope struggling with the sorrow in her face. ‘Henry, my Henry,’ she said proudly, ‘I knew he would find a way.’

‘Come on,’ said Henry; ‘bring the lamp, mother, take the club, father,’ and gaily, but with hushed voices, the three stole up the stairs.

The stranger lay sunk in sleep. The back of his head was turned to them as they came in.

‘Now, mother,’ said the farmer firmly, ‘hold the lamp a little nearer; just behind the ear, I think, Henry.’

‘No,’ said Henry, rolling back his sleeve and speaking with the quick authority that sat well upon him, ‘across the jaw, father, it’s quicker and neater.’

‘Well, well,’ said the farmer, smiling proudly, ‘have your own way, lad, you know best.’

Henry raised the club.

But as he did so – stay, what was that? Far away behind the cedar swamp the deep booming of the bell of the village church began to strike out midnight. One, two, three, its tones came clear across the crisp air. Almost at the same moment the clock below began with deep strokes to mark the midnight hour; from the farmyard chicken coop a rooster began to crow twelve times, while the loud lowing of the cattle and the soft cooing of the hogs seemed to usher in the morning of Christmas with its message of peace and goodwill.

The club fell from Henry’s hand and rattled on the floor.

The sleeper woke, and sat up.

‘Father! Mother!’ he cried.

‘My son, my son,’ sobbed the father, ‘we had guessed it was you. We had come to wake you.’

‘Yes, it is I,’ said William, smiling to his parents, ‘and I have brought the million dollars. Here it is,’ and with that he unstrapped the belt from his waist and laid a million dollars on the table.

‘Thank Heaven!’ cried Anna, ‘our troubles are at an end. This money will help clear the mortgage – and the greed of Pinchem & Co. cannot harm us now.’

‘The farm was mortgaged!’ said William, aghast.

‘Ay,’ said the farmer, ‘mortgaged to men who have no conscience, whose greedy hand has nearly brought us to the grave. See how she has aged, my boy,’ and he pointed to Anna.

‘Father,’ said William, in deep tones of contrition, ‘I am Pinchem & Co. Heaven help me! I see it now. I see at what expense of suffering my fortune was made. I will restore it all, these million dollars, to those I have wronged.’

‘No,’ said his mother softly. ‘You repent, dear son, with true Christian repentance. That is enough. You may keep the money. We will look upon it as a trust, a sacred trust, and every time we spend a dollar of it on ourselves we will think of it as a trust.’

‘Yes,’ said the farmer softly, ‘your mother is right, the money is a trust, and we will restock the farm with it, buy out the Jones’s property, and regard the whole thing as a trust.’

At this moment the door of the room opened. A woman’s form appeared. It was Caroline, robed in one of Anna’s directoire nightgowns.

‘I heard your voices,’ she said, and then, as she caught sight of Henry, she gave a great cry.

‘My husband!’

‘My wife,’ said Henry, and folded her to his heart.

‘You have left Sing Sing?’ cried Caroline with joy.

‘Yes, Caroline,’ said Henry. ‘I shall never go back.’

Gaily the reunited family descended. Anna carried the lamp, Henry carried the club. William carried the million dollars.

The tamarack fire roared again upon the hearth. The buttermilk circulated from hand to hand. William and Henry told and retold the story of their adventures. The first streak of the Christmas morn fell through the door-pane.

‘Ah, my sons,’ said John Enderby, ‘henceforth let us stick to the narrow path. What is it that the Good Book says: “A straight line is that which lies evenly between its extreme points.”’

The Man in Asbestos: An Allegory of the Future

To begin with let me admit that I did it on purpose. Perhaps it was partly from jealousy.

It seemed unfair that other writers should be able at will to drop into a sleep of four or five hundred years, and to plunge head-first into a distant future and be a witness of its marvels.

I wanted to do that too.

I always had been, I still am, a passionate student of social problems. The world of to-day with its roaring machinery, the unceasing toil of its working classes, its strife, its poverty, its war, its cruelty, appals me as I look at it. I love to think of the time that must come some day when man will have conquered nature, and the toil-worn human race enter upon an era of peace.

I loved to think of it, and I longed to see it.

So I set about the thing deliberately.

What I wanted to do was to fall asleep after the customary fashion, for two or three hundred years at least, and wake and find myself in the marvel world of the future.

I made my preparations for the sleep.

I bought all the comic papers that I could find, even the illustrated ones. I carried them up to my room in my hotel: with them I brought up a pork pie and dozens and dozens of doughnuts. I ate the pie and the doughnuts, then sat back in the bed and read the comic papers one after the other. Finally, as I felt the awful lethargy stealing upon me, I reached out my hand for the London Weekly Times, and held up the editorial page before my eye.

It was, in a way, clear, straight suicide, but I did it.

I could feel my senses leaving me. In the room across the hall there was a man singing. His voice, that had been loud, came fainter and fainter through the transom. I fell into a sleep, the deep immeasurable sleep in which the very existence of the outer world was hushed. Dimly I could feel the days go past, then the years, and then the long passage of the centuries.

Then, not as it were gradually, but quite suddenly, I woke up, sat up, and looked about me.

Where was I?

Well might I ask myself.

I found myself lying, or rather sitting up, on a broad couch. I was in a great room, dim, gloomy, and dilapidated in its general appearance, and apparently, from its glass cases and the stuffed figures that they contained, some kind of museum.

Beside me sat a man. His face was hairless, but neither old nor young. He wore clothes that looked like the grey ashes of paper that had burned and kept its shape. He was looking at me quietly, but with no particular surprise or interest.

‘Quick,’ I said, eager to begin; ‘where am I? Who are you? What year is this; is it the year 3000, or what is it?’

He drew in his breath with a look of annoyance on his face.

‘What a queer, excited way you have of speaking,’ he said.

‘Tell me,’ I said again, ‘is this the year 3000?’

‘I think I know what you mean,’ he said; ‘but really I haven’t the faintest idea. I should think it must be at least that, within a hundred years or so; but nobody has kept track of them for so long, it’s hard to say.’

‘Don’t you keep track of them any more?’ I gasped.

‘We used to,’ said the man. ‘I myself can remember that a century or two ago there were still a number of people who used to try to keep track of the year, but it died out along with so many other faddish things of that kind. Why,’ he continued, showing for the first time a sort of animation in his talk, ‘what was the use of it? You see, after we eliminated death —’

‘Eliminated death!’ I cried, sitting upright. ‘Good God!’

‘What was that expression you used?’ queried the man.

‘Good God!’ I repeated.

‘Ah,’ he said, ‘never heard it before. But I was saying that after we had eliminated Death, and Food, and Change, we had practically got rid of Events, and —’

‘Stop!’ I said, my brain reeling. ‘Tell me one thing at a time.’

‘Humph!’ he ejaculated. ‘I see, you must have been asleep a long time. Go on then and ask questions. Only, if you don’t mind, just as few as possible, and please don’t get interested or excited.’

Oddly enough the first question that sprang to my lips was—

‘What are those clothes made of?’

‘Asbestos,’ answered the man. ‘They last hundreds of years. We have one suit each, and there are billions of them piled up, if anybody wants a new one.’

‘Thank you,’ I answered. ‘Now tell me where I am?’

‘You are in a museum. The figures in the cases are specimens like yourself. But here,’ he said, ‘if you want really to find out about what is evidently a new epoch to you, get off your platform and come out on Broadway and sit on a bench.’

I got down.

As we passed through the dim and dust-covered buildings I looked curiously at the figures in the cases.

‘By Jove!’ I said looking at one figure in blue clothes with a belt and baton, ‘that’s a policeman!’

‘Really,’ said my new acquaintance, ‘is that what a policeman was? I’ve often wondered. What used they to be used for?’

‘Used for?’ I repeated in perplexity. ‘Why, they stood at the corner of the street.’

‘Ah, yes, I see,’ he said, ‘so as to shoot at the people. You must excuse my ignorance,’ he continued, ‘as to some of your social customs in the past. When I took my education I was operated upon for social history, but the stuff they used was very inferior.’

I didn’t in the least understand what the man meant, but had no time to question him, for at that moment we came out upon the street, and I stood riveted in astonishment.

Broadway! Was it possible? The change was absolutely appalling! In place of the roaring thoroughfare that I had known, this silent, moss-grown desolation. Great buildings fallen into ruin through the sheer stress of centuries of wind and weather, the sides of them coated over with a growth of fungus and moss! The place was soundless. Not a vehicle moved. There were no wires overhead – no sound of life or movement except, here and there, there passed slowly to and fro human figures dressed in the same asbestos clothes as my acquaintance, with the same hairless faces, and the same look of infinite age upon them.

Good heavens! And was this the era of the Conquest that I had hoped to see! I had always taken for granted, I do not know why, that humanity was destined to move forward. This picture of what seemed desolation on the ruins of our civilisation rendered me almost speechless.

There were little benches placed here and there on the street. We sat down.

‘Improved, isn’t it,’ said man in asbestos, ‘since the days when you remember it?’

He seemed to speak quite proudly.

I gasped out a question.

‘Where are the street cars and the motors?’

‘Oh, done away with long ago,’ he said; ‘how awful they must have been. The noise of them!’ and his asbestos clothes rustled with a shudder.

‘But how do you get about?’

‘We don’t,’ he answered. ‘Why should we? It’s just the same being here as being anywhere else.’ He looked at me with an infinity of dreariness in his face.

A thousand questions surged into my mind at once. I asked one of the simplest.

‘But how do you get back and forwards to your work?’

‘Work!’ he said. ‘There isn’t any work. It’s finished. The last of it was all done centuries ago.’

I looked at him a moment open-mouthed. Then I turned and looked again at the grey desolation of the street with the asbestos figures moving here and there.

I tried to pull my senses together. I realised that if I was to unravel this new and undreamed-of future, I must go at it systematically and step by step.

‘I see,’ I said after a pause, ‘that momentous things have happened since my time. I wish you would let me ask you about it all systematically, and would explain it to me bit by bit. First, what do you mean by saying that there is no work?’

‘Why,’ answered my strange acquaintance, ‘it died out of itself. Machinery killed it. If I remember rightly, you had a certain amount of machinery even in your time. You had done very well with steam, made a good beginning with electricity, though I think radial energy had hardly as yet been put to use.’

I nodded assent.

‘But you found it did you no good. The better your machines, the harder you worked. The more things you had the more you wanted. The pace of life grew swifter and swifter. You cried out, but it would not stop. You were all caught in the cogs of your own machine. None of you could see the end.’

‘That is quite true,’ I said. ‘How do you know it all?’

‘Oh,’ answered the Man in Asbestos, ‘that part of my education was very well operated – I see you do not know what I mean. Never mind, I can tell you that later. Well, then, there came, probably almost two hundred years after your time, the Era of the Great Conquest of Nature, the final victory of Man and Machinery.’

‘They did conquer it?’ I asked quickly, with a thrill of the old hope in my veins again.

‘Conquered it,’ he said, ‘beat it out! Fought it to a standstill! Things came one by one, then faster and faster, in a hundred years it was all done. In fact, just as soon as mankind turned its energy to decreasing its needs instead of increasing its desires, the whole thing was easy. Chemical Food came first. Heavens! the simplicity of it. And in your time thousands of millions of people tilled and grubbed at the soil from morning till night. I’ve seen specimens of them – farmers, they called them. There’s one in the museum. After the invention of Chemical Food we piled up enough in the emporiums in a year to last for centuries. Agriculture went overboard. Eating and all that goes with it, domestic labour, housework – all ended. Nowadays one takes a concentrated pill every year or so, that’s all. The whole digestive apparatus, as you knew it, was a clumsy thing that had been bloated up like a set of bagpipes through the evolution of its use!’

I could not forbear to interrupt. ‘Have you and these people,’ I said, ‘no stomachs – no apparatus?’

‘Of course we have,’ he answered, ‘but we use it to some purpose. Mine is largely filled with my education – but there! I am anticipating again. Better let me go on as I was. Chemical Food came first: that cut off almost one-third of the work, and then came Asbestos Clothes. That was wonderful! In one year humanity made enough suits to last for ever and ever. That, of course, could never have been if it hadn’t been connected with the revolt of women and the fall of Fashion.’

‘Have the Fashions gone,’ I asked, ‘that insane, extravagant idea of —’ I was about to launch into one of my old-time harangues about the sheer vanity of decorative dress, when my eye rested on the moving figures in asbestos, and I stopped.

‘All gone,’ said the Man in Asbestos. ‘Then next to that we killed, or practically killed, the changes of climate. I don’t think that in your day you properly understood how much of your work was due to the shifts of what you called the weather. It meant the need of all kinds of special clothes and houses and shelters, a wilderness of work. How dreadful it must have been in your day – wind and storms, great wet masses – what did you call them? – clouds – flying through the air, the ocean full of salt, was it not? – tossed and torn by the wind, snow thrown all over everything, hail, rain – how awful!’

‘Sometimes,’ I said, ‘it was very beautiful. But how did you alter it?’

‘Killed the weather!’ answered the Man in Asbestos. ‘Simple as anything – turned its forces loose one against the other, altered the composition of the sea so that the top became all more or less gelatinous. I really can’t explain it, as it is an operation that I never took at school, but it made the sky grey, as you see it, and the sea gum-coloured, the weather all the same. It cut out fuel and houses and an infinity of work with them!’

He paused a moment. I began to realise something of the course of evolution that had happened.

‘So,’ I said, ‘the conquest of nature meant that presently there was no more work to do?’

‘Exactly,’ he said, ‘nothing left.’

‘Food enough for all?’

‘Too much,’ he answered.

‘Houses and clothes?’

‘All you like,’ said the Man in Asbestos, waving his hand. ‘There they are. Go out and take them. Of course, they’re falling down – slowly, very slowly. But they’ll last for centuries yet, nobody need bother.’

Then I realised, I think for the first time, just what work had meant in the old life, and how much of the texture of life itself had been bound up in the keen effort of it.

Presently my eyes looked upward: dangling at the top of a moss-grown building I saw what seemed to be the remains of telephone wires.

‘What became of all that,’ I said, ‘the telegraph and the telephone and all the system of communication?’

‘Ah,’ said the Man in Asbestos, ‘that was what a telephone meant, was it? I knew that it had been suppressed centuries ago. Just what was it for?’

‘Why,’ I said with enthusiasm, ‘by means of the telephone we could talk to anybody, call up anybody, and talk at any distance.’

‘And anybody could call you up at any time and talk?’ said the Man in Asbestos, with something like horror. ‘How awful! What a dreadful age yours was, to be sure. No, the telephone and all the rest of it, all the transportation and intercommunication was cut out and forbidden. There was no sense in it. You see,’ he added, ‘what you don’t realise is that people after your day became gradually more and more reasonable. Take the railroad, what good was that? It brought into every town a lot of people from every other town. Who wanted them? Nobody. When work stopped and commerce ended, and food was needless, and the weather killed, it was foolish to move about. So it was all terminated. Anyway,’ he said, with a quick look of apprehension and a change in his voice, ‘it was dangerous!’

‘So!’ I said. ‘Dangerous! You still have danger?’

‘Why, yes,’ he said, ‘there’s always the danger of getting broken.’

‘What do you mean,’ I asked.

‘Why,’ said the Man in Asbestos, ‘I suppose it’s what you would call being dead. Of course, in one sense there’s been no death for centuries past; we cut that out. Disease and death were simply a matter of germs. We found them one by one. I think that even in your day you had found one or two of the easier, the bigger ones?’

I nodded.

‘Yes, you had found diphtheria and typhoid and, if I am right, there were some outstanding, like scarlet fever and smallpox, that you called ultra-microscopic, and which you were still hunting for, and others that you didn’t even suspect. Well, we hunted them down one by one and destroyed them. Strange that it never occurred to any of you that Old Age was only a germ! It turned out to be quite a simple one, but it was so distributed in its action that you never even thought of it.’

‘And you mean to say,’ I ejaculated in amazement, looking at the Man in Asbestos, ‘that nowadays you live for ever?’

‘I wish,’ he said, ‘that you hadn’t that peculiar, excitable way of talking; you speak as if everything mattered so tremendously. Yes,’ he continued, ‘we live for ever, unless, of course, we get broken. That happens sometimes. I mean that we may fall over a high place or bump on something, and snap ourselves. You see, we’re just a little brittle still—some remnant, I suppose, of the Old Age germ – and we have to be careful. In fact,’ he continued, ‘I don’t mind saying that accidents of this sort were the most distressing feature of our civilisation till we took steps to cut out all accidents. We forbid all street cars, street traffic, aeroplanes, and so on. The risks of your time,’ he said, with a shiver of his asbestos clothes, ‘must have been awful.’

‘They were,’ I answered, with a new kind of pride in my generation that I had never felt before, ‘but we thought it part of the duty of brave people to —’

‘Yes, yes,’ said the Man in Asbestos impatiently, ‘please don’t get excited. I know what you mean. It was quite irrational.’

We sat silent for a long time. I looked about me at the crumbling buildings, the monotone, unchanging sky, and the dreary, empty street. Here, then, was the fruit of the Conquest, here was the elimination of work, the end of hunger and of cold, the cessation of the hard struggle, the downfall of change and death – nay, the very millennium of happiness. And yet, somehow, there seemed something wrong with it all. I pondered, then I put two or three rapid questions, hardly waiting to reflect upon the answers.

‘Is there any war now?’

‘Done with centuries ago. They took to settling international disputes with a slot machine. After that all foreign dealings were given up. Why have them? Everybody thinks foreigners awful.’

‘Are there any newspapers now?’

‘Newspapers! What on earth would we want them for? If we should need them at any time there are thousands of old ones piled up. But what is in them, anyway; only things that happen, wars and accidents and work and death. When these went newspapers went too. Listen,’ continued the Man in Asbestos, ‘you seem to have been something of a social reformer, and yet you don’t understand the new life at all. You don’t understand how completely all our burdens have disappeared. Look at it this way. How used your people to spend all the early part of their lives?’

‘Why,’ I said, ‘our first fifteen years or so were spent in getting education.’

‘Exactly,’ he answered; ‘now notice how we improved on all that. Education in our day is done by surgery. Strange that in your time nobody realised that education was simply a surgical operation. You hadn’t the sense to see that what you really did was to slowly remodel, curve and convolute the inside of the brain by a long and painful mental operation. Everything learned was reproduced in a physical difference to the brain. You knew that, but you didn’t see the full consequences. Then came the invention of surgical education – the simple system of opening the side of the skull and engrafting into it a piece of prepared brain. At first, of course, they had to use, I suppose, the brains of dead people, and that was ghastly’ – here the Man in Asbestos shuddered like a leaf—’but very soon they found how to make moulds that did just as well. After that it was a mere nothing; an operation of a few minutes would suffice to let in poetry or foreign languages or history or anything else that one cared to have. Here, for instance,’ he added, pushing back the hair at the side of his head and showing a scar beneath it, ‘is the mark where I had my spherical trigonometry let in. That was, I admit, rather painful, but other things, such as English poetry or history, can be inserted absolutely without the least suffering. When I think of your painful, barbarous methods of education through the ear, I shudder at it. Oddly enough, we have found lately that for a great many things there is no need to use the head. We lodge them – things like philosophy and metaphysics, and so on – in what used to be the digestive apparatus. They fill it admirably.’

He paused a moment. Then went on:

‘Well, then, to continue, what used to occupy your time and effort after your education?’

‘Why,’ I said, ‘one had, of course, to work, and then, to tell the truth, a great part of one’s time and feeling was devoted toward the other sex, towards falling in love and finding some woman to share one’s life.’

‘Ah,’ said the Man in Asbestos, with real interest. ‘I’ve heard about your arrangements with the women, but never quite understood them. Tell me; you say you selected some woman?’

‘Yes.’

‘And she became what you called your wife?’

‘Yes, of course.’

‘And you worked for her?’ asked the Man in Asbestos in astonishment.

‘Yes.’

‘And she did not work?’

‘No,’ I answered, ‘of course not.’

‘And half of what you had was hers?’

‘Yes.’

‘And she had the right to live in your house and use your things?’

‘Of course,’ I answered.

‘How dreadful!’ said the Man in Asbestos. ‘I hadn’t realised the horrors of your age till now.’

He sat shivering slightly, with the same timid look in his face as before.

Then it suddenly struck me that of the figures on the street, all had looked alike.

‘Tell me,’ I said, ‘are there no women now? Are they gone too?’

‘Oh, no,’ answered the Man in Asbestos, ‘they’re here just the same. Some of those are women. Only, you see, everything has been changed now. It all came as part of their great revolt, their desire to be like the men. Had that begun in your time?’

‘Only a little.’ I answered; ‘they were beginning to ask for votes and equality.’

‘That’s it,’ said my acquaintance, ‘I couldn’t think of the word. Your women, I believe, were something awful, were they not? Covered with feathers and skins and dazzling colours made of dead things all over them? And they laughed, did they not, and had foolish teeth, and at any moment they could inveigle you into one of those contracts! Ugh!’

He shuddered.

‘Asbestos,’ I said (I knew no other name to call him), as I turned on him in wrath, ‘Asbestos, do you think that those jelly-bag Equalities out on the street there, with their ash-barrel suits, can be compared for one moment with our unredeemed, unreformed, heaven-created, hobble-skirted women of the twentieth century?’

Then, suddenly, another thought flashed into my mind —

‘The children,’ I said, ‘where are the children? Are there any?’

‘Children,’ he said, ‘no! I have never heard of there being any such things for at least a century. Horrible little hobgoblins they must have been! Great big faces, and cried constantly! And grew, did they not? Like funguses! I believe they were longer each year than they had been the last, and —’

I rose.

‘Asbestos!’ I said, ‘this, then, is your coming Civilisation, your millennium. This dull, dead thing, with the work and the burden gone out of life, and with them all the joy and sweetness of it. For the old struggle—mere stagnation, and in place of danger and death, the dull monotony of security and the horror of an unending decay! Give me back,’ I cried, and I flung wide my arms to the dull air, ‘the old life of danger and stress, with its hard toil and its bitter chances, and its heartbreaks. I see its value! I know its worth! Give me no rest,’ I cried aloud —

* * *

‘Yes, but give a rest to the rest of the corridor!’ cried an angered voice that broke in upon my exultation.

Suddenly my sleep had gone.

I was back again in the room of my hotel, with the hum of the wicked, busy old world all about me, and loud in my ears the voice of the indignant man across the corridor.

‘Quit your blatting, you infernal blatherskite,’ he was calling. ‘Come down to earth.’

I came.

The Old, Old Story of How Five Men Went Fishing

This is a plain account of a fishing party. It is not a story. There is no plot. Nothing happens in it and nobody is hurt. The only point of this narrative is its peculiar truth. It not only tells what happened to us – the five people concerned in it – but what has happened and is happening to all the other fishing parties that at the season of the year, from Halifax to Idaho, go gliding out on the unruffled surface of our Canadian and American lakes in the still cool of early summer morning.

We decided to go in the early morning because there is a popular belief that the early morning is the right time for bass fishing. The bass is said to bite in the early morning. Perhaps it does. In fact the thing is almost capable of scientific proof. The bass does NOT bite between eight and twelve. It does NOT bite between twelve and six in the afternoon. Nor does it bite between six o’clock and midnight. All these things are known facts. The inference is that the bass bites furiously at about daybreak.

At any rate our party were unanimous about starting early.

‘Better make an early start,’ said the Colonel, when the idea of the party was suggested. ‘Oh, yes,’ said George Popley, the bank manager, ‘we want to get right out on the shoal while the fish are biting.’

When he said this all our eyes glistened. Everybody’s do. There’s a thrill in the words. To ‘get right out on the shoal at daybreak when the fish are biting,’ is an idea that goes to any man’s brain.

If you listen to the men talking in a Pullman car, or an hotel corridor, or, better still, at the little tables in a first-class bar, you will not listen long before you hear one say: ‘Well, we got out early, just after sunrise, right on the shoal.’ And presently, even if you can’t hear him, you will see him reach out his two hands and hold them about two feet apart for the other man to admire. He is measuring the fish. No, not the fish they caught; this was the big one that they lost. But they had him right up to the top of the water. Oh, yes, he was up to the top of the water all right. The number of huge fish that have been heaved up to the top of the water in our lakes is almost incredible. Or at least it used to be when we still had bar rooms and little tables for serving that vile stuff Scotch whisky and such foul things as gin Rickeys and John Collinses. It makes one sick to think of it, doesn’t it? But there was good fishing in the bars, all the winter.

But, as I say, we decided to go early in the morning. Charlie Jones, the railroad man, said that he remembered how when he was a boy, up in Wisconsin, they used to get out at five in the morning – not get up at five but be on the shoal at five. It appears that there is a shoal somewhere in Wisconsin where the bass lie in thousands. Kernin, the lawyer, said that when he was a boy – this was on Lake Rosseau – they used to get out at four. It seems there is a shoal in Lake Rosseau where you can haul up the bass as fast as you can drop your line. The shoal is hard to find – very hard. Kernin can find it, but it is doubtful – so I gather – if any other living man can. The Wisconsin shoal, too, is very difficult to find. Once you find it, you are all right; but it’s hard to find. Charlie Jones can find it. If you were in Wisconsin right now he’d take you straight to it, but probably no other person now alive could reach that shoal. In the same way Colonel Morse knows of a shoal in Lake Simcoe where he used to fish years and years ago and which, I understand, he can still find.

I have mentioned that Kernin is a lawyer, and Jones a railroad man and Popley a banker. But I needn’t have. Any reader would take it for granted. In any fishing party there is always a lawyer. You can tell him at sight. He is the one of the party that has a landing net and a steel rod in sections with a wheel that is used to wind the fish to the top of the water.

And there is always a banker. You can tell him by his good clothes. Popley, in the bank, wears his banking suit. When he goes fishing he wears his fishing suit. It is much the better of the two, because his banking suit has ink marks on it, and his fishing suit has no fish marks on it.

As for the railroad man – quite so, the reader knows it as well as I do – you can tell him because he carries a pole that he cut in the bush himself, with a ten-cent line wrapped round the end of it. Jones says he can catch as many fish with this kind of line as Kernin can with his patent rod and wheel. So he can too. Just the same number.

But Kernin says that with his patent apparatus if you get a fish on you can PLAY him. Jones says to Hades with PLAYING him: give him a fish on his line and he’ll haul him in all right. Kernin says he’d lose him. But Jones says HE wouldn’t. In fact he GUARANTEES to haul the fish in. Kernin says that more than once – in Lake Rosseau – he has played a fish for over half an hour. I forget now why he stopped; I think the fish quit playing.

I have heard Kernin and Jones argue this question of their two rods, as to which rod can best pull in the fish, for half an hour. Others may have heard the same question debated. I know no way by which it could be settled.

Our arrangement to go fishing was made at the little golf club of our summer town on the veranda where we sit in the evening. Oh, it’s just a little place, nothing pretentious: the links are not much good for GOLF; in fact we don’t play much GOLF there, so far as golf goes, and of course, we don’t serve meals at the club, it’s not like that – and no, we’ve nothing to drink there because of prohibition. But we go and SIT there. It is a good place to SIT, and, after all, what else can you do in the present state of the law?

So it was there that we arranged the party.

The thing somehow seemed to fall into the mood of each of us. Jones said he had been hoping that some of the boys would get up a fishing party. It was apparently the one kind of pleasure that he really cared for. For myself I was delighted to get in with a crowd of regular fishermen like these four, especially as I hadn’t been out fishing for nearly ten years, though fishing is a thing I am passionately fond of. I know no pleasure in life like the sensation of getting a four-pound bass on the hook and hauling him up to the top of the water, to weigh him. But, as I say, I hadn’t been out for ten years. Oh, yes, I live right beside the water every summer, and yes, certainly – I am saying so – I am passionately fond of fishing, but still somehow I hadn’t been OUT. Every fisherman knows just how that happens. The years have a way of slipping by. Yet I must say I was surprised to find that so keen a sport as Jones hadn’t been out – so it presently appeared – for eight years. I had imagined he practically lived on the water. And Colonel Morse and Kernin, I was amazed to find, hadn’t been out for twelve years, not since the day – so it came out in conversation – when they went out together in Lake Rosseau and Kernin landed a perfect monster, a regular corker, five pounds and a half, they said; or no, I don’t think he LANDED him. No, I remember, he didn’t LAND him. He caught him – and he COULD have landed him, he should have landed him – but he DIDN’T land him. That was it. Yes, I remember Kernin and Morse had a slight discussion about it – oh, perfectly amicable – as to whether Morse had fumbled with the net or whether Kernin – the whole argument was perfectly friendly – had made an ass of himself by not ‘striking’ soon enough. Of course the whole thing was so long ago that both of them could look back on it without any bitterness or ill nature. In fact it amused them. Kernin said it was the most laughable thing he ever saw in his life to see poor old Jack – that’s Morse’s name – shoving away with the landing net wrong side up. And Morse said he’d never forget seeing poor old Kernin yanking his line first this way and then that and not knowing where to try to haul it. It made him laugh to look back at it.

They might have gone on laughing for quite a time, but Charlie Jones interrupted by saying that in his opinion a landing net is a piece of darned foolishness. Here Popley agrees with him. Kernin objects that if you don’t use a net you’ll lose your fish at the side of the boat. Jones says no: give him a hook well through the fish and a stout line in his hand and that fish has GOT to come in. Popley says so too. He says let him have his hook fast through the fish’s head with a short stout line, and put him (Popley) at the other end of that line and that fish will come in. It’s GOT to. Otherwise Popley will know why. That’s the alternative. Either the fish must come in or Popley must know why. There’s no escape from the logic of it.

But perhaps some of my readers have heard the thing discussed before.

So, as I say, we decided to go the next morning and to make an early start. All of the boys were at one about that. When I say ‘boys,’ I use the word, as it is used in fishing, to mean people from say forty-five to sixty-five. There is something about fishing that keeps men young. If a fellow gets out for a good morning’s fishing, forgetting all business worries, once in a while – say, once in ten years – it keeps him fresh.

We agreed to go in a launch, a large launch – to be exact, the largest in the town. We could have gone in row boats, but a row boat is a poor thing to fish from. Kernin said that in a row boat it is impossible properly to ‘PLAY’ your fish. The side of the boat is so low that the fish is apt to leap over the side into the boat when half ‘played.’ Popley said that there is no comfort in a row boat. In a launch a man can reach out his feet and take it easy. Charlie Jones said that in a launch a man could rest his back against something, and Morse said that in a launch a man could rest his neck. Young inexperienced boys, in the small sense of the word, never think of these things. So they go out and after a few hours their necks get tired; whereas a group of expert fishers in a launch can rest their backs and necks and even fall asleep during the pauses when the fish stop biting.

Anyway all the ‘boys’ agreed that the great advantage of a launch would be that we could get a MAN to take us. By that means the man could see to getting the worms, and the man would be sure to have spare lines, and the man could come along to our different places – we were all beside the water – and pick us up. In fact the more we thought about the advantage of having a ‘man’ to take us the better we liked it. As a boy gets old he likes to have a man around to do the work.

Anyway Frank Rolls, the man we decided to get, not only has the biggest launch in town but what is more Frank KNOWS the lake. We called him up at his boat-house over the phone and said we’d give him five dollars to take us out first thing in the morning provided that he knew the shoal. He said he knew it.

I don’t know, to be quite candid about it, who mentioned whisky first. In these days everybody has to be a little careful. I imagine we had all been THINKING whisky for some time before anybody said it. But there is a sort of convention that when men go fishing they must have whisky.

Each man makes the pretence that one thing he needs at six o’clock in the morning is cold raw whisky. It is spoken of in terms of affection. One man says the first thing you need if you’re going fishing is a good ‘snort’ of whisky; another says that a good ‘snifter’ is the very thing; and the others agree that no man can fish properly without ‘a horn,’ or a ‘bracer’ or an ‘eye-opener.’ Each man really decides that he himself won’t take any. But he feels that, in a collective sense, the ‘boys’ need it.

So it was with us. The Colonel said he’d bring along ‘a bottle of booze.’ Popley said, no, let HIM bring it; Kernin said let him; and Charlie Jones said no, he’d bring it. It turned out that the Colonel had some very good Scotch at his house that he’d like to bring; oddly enough Popley had some good Scotch in HIS house too; and, queer though it is, each of the boys had Scotch in his house. When the discussion closed we knew that each of the five of us was intending to bring a bottle of whisky. Each of the five of us expected the other to drink one and a quarter bottles in the course of the morning.

I suppose we must have talked on that veranda till long after one in the morning. It was probably nearer two than one when we broke up. But we agreed that that made no difference. Popley said that for him three hours’ sleep, the right kind of sleep, was far more refreshing than ten. Kernin said that a lawyer learns to snatch his sleep when he can, and Jones said that in railroad work a man pretty well cuts out sleep.

So we had no alarms whatever about not being ready by five. Our plan was simplicity itself. Men like ourselves in responsible positions learn to organize things easily. In fact Popley says it is that faculty that has put us where we are. So the plan simply was that Frank Rolls should come along at five o’clock and blow his whistle in front of our places, and at that signal each man would come down to his wharf with his rod and kit and so we’d be off to the shoal without a moment’s delay. The weather we ruled out. It was decided that even if it rained that made no difference. Kernin said that fish bite better in the rain. And everybody agreed that man with a couple of snorts in him need have no fear of a little rain water.

So we parted, all keen on the enterprise. Nor do I think even now that there was anything faulty or imperfect in that party as we planned it.

I heard Frank Rolls blowing his infernal whistle opposite my summer cottage at some ghastly hour in the morning. Even without getting out of bed, I could see from the window that it was no day for fishing. No, not raining exactly. I don’t mean that, but one of those peculiar days – I don’t mean WIND – there was no wind, but a sort of feeling in the air that showed anybody who understands bass fishing that it was a perfectly rotten day for going out. The fish, I seemed to know it, wouldn’t bite.

When I was still fretting over the annoyance of the disappointment I heard Frank Rolls blowing his whistle in front of the other cottages. I counted thirty whistles altogether. Then I fell into a light doze – not exactly sleep, but a sort of DOZE – I can find no other word for it. It was clear to me that the other ‘boys’ had thrown the thing over. There was no use in my trying to go out alone. I stayed where I was, my doze lasting till ten o’clock.

When I walked up town later in the morning I couldn’t help being struck by the signs in the butcher’s shops and the restaurants, FISH, FRESH FISH, FRESH LAKE FISH.

Where in blazes do they get those fish anyway?

How We Kept Mother’s Birthday

As Related by a Member of the Family

Of all the different ideas that have been started lately, I think that the very best is the notion of celebrating once a year “Mother’s Day.” I don’t wonder that May the eleventh is becoming such a popular date all over America and I am sure the idea will spread to England too.

It is especially in a big family like ours that such an idea takes hold. So we decided to have a special celebration of Mother’s Day. We thought it a fine idea. It made us all realize how much Mother had done for us for years, and all the efforts and sacrifice that she had made for our sake.

So we decided that we’d make it a great day, a holiday for all the family, and do everything we could to make Mother happy. Father decided to take a holiday from his office, so as to help in celebrating the day, and my sister Anne and I stayed home from college classes, and Mary and my brother Will stayed home from High School.

It was our plan to make it a day just like Xmas or any big holiday, and so we decided to decorate the house with flowers and with mottoes over the mantelpieces, and all that kind of thing. We got Mother to make mottoes and arrange the decorations, because she always does it at Xmas.

The two girls thought it would be a nice thing to dress in our very best for such a big occasion, and so they both got new hats. Mother trimmed both the hats, and they looked fine, and Father had bought four-in-hand silk ties for himself and us boys as a souvenir of the day to remember Mother by. We were going to get Mother a new hat too, but it turned out that she seemed to really like her old grey bonnet better than a new one, and both the girls said that it was awfully becoming to her.

Well, after breakfast we had it arranged as a surprise for Mother that we would hire a motor car and take her for a beautiful drive away into the country. Mother is hardly ever able to have a treat like that, because we can only afford to keep one maid, and so Mother is busy in the house nearly all the time. And of course the country is so lovely now that it would be just grand for her to have a lovely morning, driving for miles and miles.

But on the very morning of the day we changed the plan a little bit, because it occurred to Father that a thing it would be better to do even than to take Mother for a motor drive would be to take her fishing. Father said that as the car was hired and paid for, we might just as well use it for a drive up into hills where the streams are. As Father said, if you just go out driving without any object, you have a sense of aimlessness, if you are going to fish, there is a definite purpose in front of you to heighten the enjoyment.

So we all felt it would be nicer for Mother to have a definite purpose; and anyway, it turned out that Father had just got a new rod the day before, which made the idea of fishing all the more appropriate, and he said that Mother could use it if she wanted to; in fact, he said it was practically for her, only Mother said she would much rather watch him fish and not to try to fish herself.

So we got everything arranged for the trip, and we got Mother to cut up some sandwiches and make a sort of lunch in case we got hungry, though of course we were to come back home again to a big dinner in the middle of the day, just like Xmas or New Year’s Day. Mother packed it all up in a basket for us ready to go in the motor.

Well, when the car came to the door, it turned out that there hardly seemed as much room in it as we had supposed, because we hadn’t reckoned on Father’s fishing basket and the rods and the lunch, and it was plain enough that we couldn’t all get in.

Father said not to mind him, he said that he could just as well stay at home, and that he was sure that he could put in the time working in the garden; he said that there was a lot of rough dirty work that he could do, like digging a trench for the garbage, that would save hiring a man, and so he said he’d stay home; he said that we were not to let the fact of his not having had a real holiday for three years stand in our way; he wanted us to go right ahead and be happy and have a big day, and not to mind him. He said that he could plug away all day, and in fact he said he’d been a fool to think there’d be any holiday for him.

But of course we all felt that it would never do to let Father stay home, especially as we knew he would make trouble if he did. The two girls Anna and Mary, would gladly have stayed and helped the maid get dinner, only it seemed such a pity to, on a lovely day like this, having their new hats. But they both said that Mother had only to say the word, and they’d gladly stay home and work. Will and I would have dropped out, but unfortunately we wouldn’t have been any use in getting the dinner.

So in the end it was decided that Mother would stay home and just have a lovely restful day round the house, and get the dinner. It turned out anyway that Mother doesn’t care for fishing, and also it was just a little bit cold and fresh out of doors, though it was lovely and sunny, and Father was rather afraid that Mother might take cold if she came.

He said he would never forgive himself if he dragged Mother round the country and let her take a severe cold at a time when she might be having a beautiful rest. He said it was our duty to try and let Mother get all the rest and quiet that she could, after all that she had done for all of us, and he said that that was principally why he had fallen in with this idea of a fishing trip, so as to give Mother a little quiet. He said that young people seldom realize how much quiet means to people who are getting old. As to himself, he could still stand the racket, but he was glad to shelter Mother from it.

So we all drove away with three cheers for Mother, and Mother stood and watched us from the verandah for as long as she could see us, and Father waved his hand back to her every few minutes till he hit his hand on the back edge of the car, and then said that he didn’t think that Mother could see us any longer.

Well – we had the loveliest day up among the hills that you could possibly imagine, and Father caught such big specimens that he felt sure that Mother couldn’t have landed them anyway, if she had been fishing for them, and Will and I fished too, though we didn’t get so many as Father, and the two girls met quite a lot of people that they knew as we drove along, and there were some young men friends of theirs that they met along the stream and talked to, and so we all had a splendid time.

It was quite late when we got back, nearly seven o’clock in the evening, but Mother had guessed that we would be late, so she had kept back the dinner so as to have it just nicely ready and hot for us. Only first she had to get towels and soap for Father and clean things for him to put on, because he always gets so messed up with fishing, and that kept Mother busy for a little while, that and helping the girls get ready.

But at last everything was ready, and we sat down to the grandest kind of dinner – roast turkey and all sorts of things like on Xmas Day. Mother had to get up and down a good bit during the meal fetching things back and forward, but at the end Father noticed it and said she simply mustn’t do it, that he wanted her to spare herself, and he got up and fetched the walnuts over from the sideboard himself.

The dinner lasted a long while, and was great fun, and when it was over all of us wanted to help clear the things up and wash the dishes, only Mother said that she would really much rather do it, and so we let her, because we wanted just for once to humor her.

It was quite late when it was all over, and when we all kissed Mother before going to bed, she said it had been the most wonderful day in her life, and I think there were tears in her eyes. So we all felt awfully repaid for all that we had done.

Murder at $2.50 a Crime

I propose tonight, ladies and gentlemen, to deal with murder. There are only two subjects that appeal nowadays to the general public, murder and sex; and, for people of culture, sex-murder. Leaving out sex for the minute – if you can – I propose tonight to talk about murder as carried on openly and daily at two dollars and fifty cents a crime.

For me, I admit right away that if I’m going to pay two dollars and fifty cents for a book I want to make sure that there’s going to be at least one murder in it. I always take a look at the book first to see if there’s a chapter headed ‘Finding of the Body.’ And I know that everything is all right when it says, The body was that of an elderly gentleman, well dressed but upside down. Always, you notice, an ‘elderly gentleman.’ What they have against us, I don’t know. But you see, if it said that the body was that of a woman – that’s a tragedy. The body was that of a child! – that’s a horror. But the body was that of an elderly gentleman – oh, pshaw! that’s all right. Anyway he’s had his life – he’s had a good time (It says he’s well dressed.) – probably been out on a hoot. (He’s found upside down.) That’s all right! He’s worth more dead than alive.

* * *

But as a matter of fact, from reading so many of these stories I get to be such an expert that I don’t have to wait for the finding of the body. I can tell just by a glance at the beginning of the book who’s going to be the body. For example, if the scene is laid on this side of the water, say in New York, look for an opening paragraph that runs about like this:

Mr. Phineas Q. Cactus sat in his downtown office in the drowsy hour of a Saturday afternoon. He was alone. Work was done for the day. The clerks were gone. The building, save for the janitor, who lived in the basement, was empty.

Notice that, save for the janitor. Be sure to save him. We’re going to need him later on, to accuse him of the murder.

As he sat thus, gazing in a sort of reverie at the papers on the desk in front of him, his chin resting on his hand, his eyes closed and slumber stole upon him.

Of course! To go to sleep like that in a downtown deserted office is a crazy thing to do in New York – let alone Chicago. Every intelligent reader knows that Mr. Cactus is going to get a crack on the cocoanut. He’s the body.

* * *

But if you don’t mind my saying so, they get a better setting for this kind of thing in England than they do with us. You need an old country to get a proper atmosphere around murder. The best murders (always of elderly gentlemen) are done in the country at some old country seat – any wealthy elderly gentleman has a seat – called by such a name as the Priory, or the Doggery, or the Chase – that sort of thing. Try this for example:

Sir Charles Althorpe sat alone in his library at Althorpe Chase. It was late at night. The fire had burned low in the grate. Through the heavily curtained windows no sound came from outside. Save for the maids, who slept in a distant wing, and save for the butler, whose pantry was under the stairs, the Chase, at this time of the year, was empty. As Sir Charles sat thus in his arm-chair, his head gradually sank upon his chest and he dozed off into slumber.

Foolish man! Doesn’t he know that to doze off into slumber in an isolated country house, with the maids in a distant wing, is little short of madness? But do you notice? – Sir Charles! He’s a baronet. That’s the touch to give class to it. And do you notice that we have saved the butler, just as we did the janitor? Of course he didn’t really kill Sir Charles, but the local police always arrest the butler. And anyway, he’d been seen sharpening a knife on his pants in his pantry and saying, ‘I’ll do for the old Devil yet.’

* * *

So there is the story away to a good start – Sir Charles’s Body found next morning by a ‘terrified’ maid – all maids are terrified – who ‘could scarcely give an intelligent account of what she saw’ – they never can. Then the local police (Inspector Higginbottom of the Hopshire Constabulary) are called in and announce themselves ‘baffled.’ Every time the reader hears that the local police are called in he smiles an indulgent smile and knows they are just there to be baffled.

* * *

At this point of the story enters the Great Detective, specially sent by or through Scotland Yard. That’s another high class touch – Scotland Yard. It’s not a Yard, and it’s not in Scotland. Knowing it only from detective fictions I imagine it is a sort of club somewhere near the Thames in London. You meet the Prime Minister and the Archbishop of Canterbury going in and out all the time – but so strictly incognito that you don’t know that it is them, I mean that they are it. And apparently even ‘royalty’ is found ‘closeted’ with heads at the yard – ‘royalty’ being in English a kind of hush-word for things too high up to talk about.

Well, anyway, the Yard sends down the Great Detective, either as an official or as an outsider to whom the Yard appeal when utterly stuck; and he comes down to the Chase, looking for clues.

Here comes in a little technical difficulty in the narration of the story. We want to show what a wonderful man the Great Detective is, and yet he can’t be made tell the story himself. He’s too silent – and too strong. So the method used nowadays is to have a sort of shadow along with him, a companion, a sort of Poor Nut, full of admiration but short on brains. Ever since Conan Doyle started this plan with Sherlock and Watson, all the others have copied it. So the story is told by this secondary person. Taken at his own face value he certainly is a Poor Nut. Witness the way in which his brain breaks down utterly and is set going again by the Great Detective. The scene occurs when the Great Detective begins to observe all the things around the place that were overlooked by Inspector Higginbottom.

‘But how,’ I exclaimed, ‘how in the name of all that is incomprehensible, are you able to aver that the criminal wore rubbers?’

My friend smiled quietly.

‘You observe,’ he said, ‘that patch of fresh mud about ten feet square in front of the door of the house. If you would look, you will see that it has been freshly walked over by a man with rubbers on.’

I looked. The marks of the rubbers were there plain enough – at least a dozen of them.

‘What a fool I was!’ I exclaimed. ‘But at least tell me how you were able to know the length of the criminal’s foot?’

My friend smiled again, his same inscrutable smile.

‘By measuring the print of the rubber,’ he answered quietly, ‘and then subtracting from it the thickness of the material multiplied by two.’

‘Multiplied by two!’ I exclaimed. ‘Why by two?’

‘For the toe and the heel.’

‘Idiot that I am,’ I cried, ‘it all seems so plain when you explain it.’

In other words, the Poor Nut makes an admirable narrator. However much fogged the reader may get, he has at least the comfort of knowing that the Nut is far more fogged than he is. Indeed, the Nut may be said, in a way, to personify the ideal reader, that is to say the stupidest – the reader who is most completely bamboozled with the mystery, and yet intensely interested.

Such a reader has the support of knowing that the police are entirely ‘baffled’ – that’s always the word for them; that the public are ‘mystified’; that the authorities are ‘alarmed’; the newspapers ‘in the dark’; and the Poor Nut, altogether up a tree. On those terms, the reader can enjoy his own ignorance to the full.

Before the Great Detective gets to work, or rather while he is getting to work, the next thing is to give him character, individuality. It’s no use to say that he ‘doesn’t in the least look like a detective.’ Of course not. No detective ever does. But the point is not what he doesn’t look like, but what he does look like?

Well, for one thing, though its pretty stale, he can be made extremely thin, in fact, ‘cadaverous.’ Why a cadaverous man can solve a mystery better than a fat man it is hard to say; presumably the thinner a man is, the more acute is his mind. At any rate, the old school of writers preferred to have their detectives lean. This incidentally gave the detective a face ‘like a hawk,’ the writer not realizing that a hawk is one of the stupidest of animals. A detective with a face like an orang-outang would beat it all to bits.

Indeed, the Great Detective’s face becomes even more important than his body. Here there is absolute unanimity. His face has to be ‘inscrutable.’ Look at it though you will, you can never read it. Contrast it, for example, with the face of Inspector Higginbottom, of the local police force. Here is a face that can look ‘surprised,’ or ‘relieved,’ or, with great ease, ‘completely baffled.’

But the face of the Great Detective knows of no such changes. No wonder the Poor Nut is completely mystified. From the face of the great man you can’t tell whether the cart in which they are driving jolts him or whether the food at the Inn gives him indigestion.

To the Great Detective’s face there used to be added the old-time expedient of not allowing him either to eat or drink. And when it was added that during this same period of about eight days the sleuth never slept, the reader could realize in what fine shape his brain would be for working out his ‘inexorable chain of logic.’

But nowadays this is changed. The Great Detective not only eats, but he eats well. Often he is presented as a connoisseur in food. Thus:

‘Stop a hit.’ Thus speaks the Great Detective to the Poor Nut and Inspector Higginbottom, whom he is dragging round with him as usual. ‘We have half an hour before the train leaves Paddington. Let us have some dinner. I know an Italian restaurant near here where they serve frogs’ legs à la Marengo better than anywhere else in London.’

A few minutes later we were seated at one of the tables of a dingy little eating place whose sign board with the words ‘Restauranto Italiano’ led me to the deduction that it was an Italian restaurant. I was amazed to observe that my friend was evidently well known in the place, while his order for ‘three glasses of Chianti with two drops of vermicelli in each,’ called for an obsequious bow from the appreciative padrone. I realized that this amazing man knew as much of the finesse of Italian wines as he did of playing the saxophone.

We may go further. In many up-to-date cases the detective not only gets plenty to eat but a liberal allowance of strong drink. One generous British author of today is never tired of handing out to the Great Detective and his friends what he calls a ‘stiff whiskey and soda.’ At all moments of crisis they get one.

For example, when they find the body of Sir Charles Althorpe, late owner of Althorpe Chase, a terrible sight, lying on the floor of the library, what do they do? They reach at once to the sideboard and pour themselves out a ‘stiff whiskey and soda.’ It certainly is a great method.

But in the main we may say that all this stuff about eating and drinking has lost its importance. The Great Detective has to be made exceptional by some other method.

And here is where his music comes in. It transpires – not at once but in the first pause in the story – that this great man not only can solve a crime, but has the most extraordinary aptitude for music, especially for dreamy music of the most difficult kind. As soon as he is left in the Inn room with the Poor Nut, out comes his saxophone and he tunes it up.

‘What were you playing?’ I asked, as my friend at last folded his beloved instrument into its case.

‘Beethoven’s Sonata in Q,’ he answered modestly. ‘Good Heaven!’ I exclaimed.

Up to this point the story, any detective story, has been a howling success. The body has been found; they’re all baffled and full of whiskey and soda, and everything’s fine! But the only trouble is how to go on with it! You can’t! There’s no way to make crime really interesting except at the start; it’s a pity they have to go on, that they can’t just stay baffled and full, and call it a day.

But now begin the mistakes and the literary fallacies that spoil a crime story. At this point in comes the heroine – the heroine! – who has no real place in a murder story but is just a left-over remnant of the love story. In she comes, Margaret Althorpe, wild and all dishevelled. No wonder she’s wild! Who wouldn’t be? And disheveled – oh, yes, the best writers always dishevel them up like that. In she comes, almost fainting! What do they do, Inspector Higginbottom and the Great Detective? They shoot a ‘stiff whiskey and soda’ into her – and hit one themselves at the same time.

* * *

And with that, you see, the story drifts off sideways so as to work up a love-interest in the heroine, who has no business in it at all. Making a heroine used to be an easy thing in earlier books when the reading public was small. The author just imagined the kind of girl that he liked himself and let it go at that. Walter Scott, for example, liked them small – size three – ‘sylph-like’ was the term used; in fact the heroine was just a ‘slip of a girl’ – the slippier the better.

But Margaret Althorpe has to please everybody’at once. So the description of her runs like this:

Margaret Althorpe was neither short nor tall.

That means that she looked pretty tall standing up but when she sat down she was sawed off.

…Her complexion neither dark nor fair, and her religion was neither Protestant nor Roman Catholic. She was not a prohibitionist but never took more than a couple of gins at a time. Her motto was, ‘No, boys, that’s all I can hold.’

That at least is about the spirit of the description. But even at that, description of what is called her ‘person’ is not sufficient by itself. There is the question of her ‘temperament’ as well. Unless a heroine has ‘temperament’ she can’t get by; and temperament consists in undergoing a great many physiological changes in a minimum of time. Here, for example, are the physiological variations undergone by the heroine of a book I read the other day, in what appeared to be a space of seventeen minutes:

A new gladness ran through her.

* * *

A thrill coursed through her (presumably in the opposite direction).

* * *

Something woke up within her that had been dead.

* * *

A great yearning welled up within her.

* * *

Something seemed– to go out from her that was not of her nor to her.

* * *

Everything sank within her.

That last means, I think, that something had come unhooked.

But, you see, by this turn the novel has reached what the diplomats call an impasse, and plainer people simply a cul de sac or a nec plus ultra. It can’t get on. They arrested the butler. He didn’t do it. Apparently nobody did it.

In other words all detective stories reach a point where the reader gets impatient and says to himself: ‘Come now; somebody murdered Sir Charles! Out with it.’ And the writer has no answer. All the old attempts at an answer suitable for literary purposes have been worn thin. There used to be a simple and easy solution of a crime mystery by finding that the murder was done by a ‘tramp.’ In the old Victorian days the unhappy creature called a tramp had no rights that the white man had to respect, either in fiction or out of it. They’d hang a tramp as unconcernedly as they’d catch a butterfly. And if he belonged to the. class called a ‘villainous-looking tramp’ he registered as A.I., and his execution (indicated but not described) was part of the happy ending, along with Margaret Althorpe’s marriage to the Poor Nut as a by-product on the side – not of course to the Great Detective. Marriage is not for him. He passes on to the next mystery, in which ‘royalty’ itself is deeply concerned.

* * *

But all the tramp stuff is out of date. With a hundred million people ‘on the dole’ and on ‘relief,’ we daren’t set them to work at murder. We have to get another solution.

Here is one, used for generations but still going fairly strong. The murderer is found; oh, yes, he’s found all right and confesses his guilt, but it is only too plain that his physical condition is such that he must soon ‘go before a higher tribunal.’ And that doesn’t mean the supreme court.

It seems that at the moment when the Great Detective and Inspector Higginbottom have seized him he has developed a ‘hacking cough.’ This is one of those terrible maladies known only in fiction – like ‘brain fever’ and a ‘broken heart,’ for which all medicine is in vain. Indeed in this case, as the man starts to make his confession, he can hardly talk for hacks.

‘Well’ said Garth, looking round at the little group of police officers, ‘the game is up – hack! hack! —and I may as well make a clean breast of it – hack, hack, hack.’

Any trained reader when he hears these hacks knows exactly what they are to lead up to. The criminal, robust though he seemed only a chapter ago when he jumped through a three-story window after throttling Sub-Inspector Juggins half to death, is a dying man. He has got one of those terrible diseases known to fiction as a ‘mortal complaint.’ It wouldn’t do to give it an exact name, or somebody might get busy and cure it. The symptoms are a hacking cough and a great mildness of manner, an absence of all profanity, and a tendency to call everybody ‘you gentlemen.’ Those things spell finis.

In fact, all that is needed now is for the Great Detective himself to say, ‘Gentlemen’ (They are all gentlemen at this stage of the story.), ‘a higher conviction than any earthly law has, et cetera, et cetera.’ With that, the curtain is dropped, and it is understood that the criminal made his exit the same night.

That’s better, decidedly better. And yet, lacking in cheerfulness, somehow.

In fact this solution has something a little cowardly about it. It doesn’t face the music.

One more of these futile solutions may be offered. Here’s the way it is done.

The Great Detective stood looking about him, quietly shaking his head. His eye rested a moment on the prostrate body of Sub-Inspector Bradshaw, then turned to scrutinize the neat hole drilled in the glass of the window.

‘I see it all now,’ he murmured. ‘I should have guessed it sooner. There is no doubt whose work this is.’

‘Who is it?’ I asked.

‘Blue Edward,’ he announced quietly.

‘Blue Edward!’ I exclaimed.

‘Blue Edward,’ he repeated.

‘Blue Edward!’ I reiterated, ‘but who then is Blue Edward?’

This, of course, is the very question that the reader is wanting to ask. Who on earth is Blue Edward? The question is answered at once by the Great Detective himself.

‘The fact that you have never heard of Blue Edward merely shows the world that you have lived in. As a matter of fact, Blue Edward is the terror of four continents. We have traced him to Shanghai, only to find him in Madagascar. It was he who organized the terrible robbery at Irkutsk in which ten mujiks were blown up with a bottle of Epsom salts.

‘It was Blue Edward who for years held the whole of Philadelphia in abject terror, and kept Oshkosh, Wisconsin, on the jump for even longer. At the head of a gang of criminals that ramifies all over the known globe, equipped with a scientific education that enables him to read and write and use a typewriter with the greatest ease, Blue Edward has practically held the police of the world at bay for years.

‘I suspected his hand in this from the start. From the very outset, certain evidences pointed to the work of Blue Edward’

After which all the police inspectors and spectators keep shaking their heads and murmuring, ‘Blue Edward, Blue Edward,’ until the reader is sufficiently impressed.

The fact is that the writer can’t end the story, not if it is sufficiently complicated in the beginning. No possible ending satisfies the case. Not even the glad news that the heroine sank into the Poor Nut’s arms, never to leave them again, can relieve the situation. Not even the knowledge that they erected a handsome memorial to Sir Charles, or that the Great Detective played the saxophone for a week can quite compensate us.

Jack London

That Spot

I don’t think much of Stephen Mackaye any more, though I used to swear by him. I know that in those days I loved him more than my own brother. If ever I meet Stephen Mackaye again, I shall not be responsible for my actions. It passes beyond me that a man with whom I shared food and blanket, and with whom I mushed over the Chilcoot Trail, should turn out the way he did. I always sized Steve up as a square man, a kindly comrade, without an iota of anything vindictive or malicious in his nature. I shall never trust my judgment in men again. Why, I nursed that man through typhoid fever; we starved together on the headwaters of the Stewart; and he saved my life on the Little Salmon. And now, after the years we were together, all I can say of Stephen Mackaye is that he is the meanest man I ever knew.

We started for the Klondike in the fall rush of 1897, and we started too late to get over Chilcoot Pass before the freeze-up. We packed our outfit on our backs part way over, when the snow began to fly, and then we had to buy dogs in order to sled it the rest of the way. That was how we came to get that Spot. Dogs were high, and we paid one hundred and ten dollars for him. He looked worth it. I say looked, because he was one of the finest-appearing dogs I ever saw. He weighed sixty pounds, and he had all the lines of a good sled animal. We never could make out his breed. He wasn’t husky, nor Malemute, nor Hudson Bay; he looked like all of them and he didn’t look like any of them; and on top of it all he had some of the white man’s dog in him, for on one side, in the thick of the mixed yellow-brown-red-and-dirty-white that was his prevailing color, there was a spot of coal-black as big as a water-bucket. That was why we called him Spot.

He was a good looker all right. When he was in condition his muscles stood out in bunches all over him. And he was the strongest-looking brute I ever saw in Alaska, also the most intelligent-looking. To run your eyes over him, you’d think he could outpull three dogs of his own weight. Maybe he could, but I never saw it. His intelligence didn’t run that way. He could steal and forage to perfection; he had an instinct that was positively grewsome for divining when work was to be done and for making a sneak accordingly; and for getting lost and not staying lost he was nothing short of inspired. But when it came to work, the way that intelligence dribbled out of him and left him a mere clot of wobbling, stupid jelly would make your heart bleed.

There are times when I think it wasn’t stupidity. Maybe, like some men I know, he was too wise to work. I shouldn’t wonder if he put it all over us with that intelligence of his. Maybe he figured it all out and decided that a licking now and again and no work was a whole lot better than work all the time and no licking. He was intelligent enough for such a computation. I tell you, I’ve sat and looked into that dog’s eyes till the shivers ran up and down my spine and the marrow crawled like yeast, what of the intelligence I saw shining out. I can’t express myself about that intelligence. It is beyond mere words. I saw it, that’s all. At times it was like gazing into a human soul, to look into his eyes; and what I saw there frightened me and started all sorts of ideas in my own mind of reincarnation and all the rest. I tell you I sensed something big in that brute’s eyes; there was a message there, but I wasn’t big enough myself to catch it. Whatever it was (I know I’m making a fool of myself) – whatever it was, it baffled me. I can’t give an inkling of what I saw in that brute’s eyes; it wasn’t light, it wasn’t color; it was something that moved, away back, when the eyes themselves weren’t moving. And I guess I didn’t see it move, either; I only sensed that it moved. It was an expression, – that’s what it was, – and I got an impression of it. No; it was different from a mere expression; it was more than that. I don’t know what it was, but it gave me a feeling of kinship just the same. Oh, no, not sentimental kinship. It was, rather, a kinship of equality. Those eyes never pleaded like a deer’s eyes. They challenged. No, it wasn’t defiance. It was just a calm assumption of equality. And I don’t think it was deliberate. My belief is that it was unconscious on his part. It was there because it was there, and it couldn’t help shining out. No, I don’t mean shine. It didn’t shine; it moved. I know I’m talking rot, but if you’d looked into that animal’s eyes the way I have, you’d understand Steve was affected the same way I was. Why, I tried to kill that Spot once – he was no good for anything; and I fell down on it. I led him out into the brush, and he came along slow and unwilling. He knew what was going on. I stopped in a likely place, put my foot on the rope, and pulled my big Colt’s. And that dog sat down and looked at me. I tell you he didn’t plead. He just looked. And I saw all kinds of incomprehensible things moving, yes, moving, in those eyes of his. I didn’t really see them move; I thought I saw them, for, as I said before, I guess I only sensed them. And I want to tell you right now that it got beyond me. It was like killing a man, a conscious, brave man who looked calmly into your gun as much as to say, ‘Who’s afraid?’ Then, too, the message seemed so near that, instead of pulling the trigger quick, I stopped to see if I could catch the message. There it was, right before me, glimmering all around in those eyes of his. And then it was too late. I got scared. I was trembly all over, and my stomach generated a nervous palpitation that made me seasick. I just sat down and looked at that dog, and he looked at me, till I thought I was going crazy. Do you want to know what I did? I threw down the gun and ran back to camp with the fear of God in my heart. Steve laughed at me. But I notice that Steve led Spot into the woods, a week later, for the same purpose, and that Steve came back alone, and a little later Spot drifted back, too.

At any rate, Spot wouldn’t work. We paid a hundred and ten dollars for him from the bottom of our sack, and he wouldn’t work. He wouldn’t even tighten the traces. Steve spoke to him the first time we put him in harness, and he sort of shivered, that was all. Not an ounce on the traces. He just stood still and wobbled, like so much jelly. Steve touched him with the whip. He yelped, but not an ounce. Steve touched him again, a bit harder, and he howled – the regular long wolf howl. Then Steve got mad and gave him half a dozen, and I came on the run from the tent.

I told Steve he was brutal with the animal, and we had some words – the first we’d ever had. He threw the whip down in the snow and walked away mad. I picked it up and went to it. That Spot trembled and wobbled and cowered before ever I swung the lash, and with the first bite of it he howled like a lost soul. Next he lay down in the snow. I started the rest of the dogs, and they dragged him along while I threw the whip into him. He rolled over on his back and bumped along, his four legs waving in the air, himself howling as though he was going through a sausage machine. Steve came back and laughed at me, and I apologized for what I’d said.

There was no getting any work out of that Spot; and to make up for it, he was the biggest pig-glutton of a dog I ever saw. On top of that, he was the cleverest thief. There was no circumventing him. Many a breakfast we went without our bacon because Spot had been there first. And it was because of him that we nearly starved to death up the Stewart. He figured out the way to break into our meat-cache, and what he didn’t eat, the rest of the team did. But he was impartial. He stole from everybody. He was a restless dog, always very busy snooping around or going somewhere. And there was never a camp within five miles that he didn’t raid. The worst of it was that they always came back on us to pay his board bill, which was just, being the law of the land; but it was mighty hard on us, especially that first winter on the Chilcoot, when we were busted, paying for whole hams and sides of bacon that we never ate. He could fight, too, that Spot. He could do everything but work. He never pulled a pound, but he was the boss of the whole team. The way he made those dogs stand around was an education. He bullied them, and there was always one or more of them fresh-marked with his fangs. But he was more than a bully. He wasn’t afraid of anything that walked on four legs; and I’ve seen him march, single-handed, into a strange team, without any provocation whatever, and put the kibosh on the whole outfit. Did I say he could eat? I caught him eating the whip once. That’s straight. He started in at the lash, and when I caught him he was down to the handle, and still going.

But he was a good looker. At the end of the first week we sold him for seventy-five dollars to the Mounted Police. They had experienced dog-drivers, and we knew that by the time he’d covered the six hundred I miles to Dawson he’d be a good sled-dog. I say we knew, for we were just getting acquainted with that Spot. A little later we were not brash enough to know anything where he was concerned. A week later we woke up in the morning to the dangdest dog-fight we’d ever heard. It was that Spot come back and knocking the team into shape. We ate a pretty depressing breakfast, I can tell you; but cheered up two hours afterward when we sold him to an official courier, bound in to Dawson with government despatches. That Spot was only three days in coming back, and, as usual, celebrated his arrival with a rough-house.

We spent the winter and spring, after our own outfit was across the pass, freighting other people’s outfits; and we made a fat stake. Also, we made money out of Spot. If we sold him once, we sold him twenty times. He always came back, and no one asked for their money. We didn’t want the money. We’d have paid handsomely for any one to take him off our hands for keeps. We had to get rid of him, and we couldn’t give him away, for that would have been suspicious. But he was such a fine looker that we never had any difficulty in selling him. ‘Unbroke,’ we’d say, and they’d pay any old price for him. We sold him as low as twenty-five dollars, and once we got a hundred and fifty for him. That particular party returned him in person, refused to take his money back, and the way he abused us was something awful. He said it was cheap at the price to tell us what he thought of us; and we felt he was so justified that we never talked back. But to this day I’ve never quite regained all the old self-respect that was mine before that man talked to me.

When the ice cleared out of the lakes and river, we put our outfit in a Lake Bennett boat and started for Dawson. We had a good team of dogs, and of course we piled them on top the outfit. That Spot was along—there was no losing him; and a dozen times, the first day, he knocked one or another of the dogs overboard in the course of fighting with them. It was close quarters, and he didn’t like being crowded.

‘What that dog needs is space,’ Steve said the second day. ‘Let’s maroon him.’

We did, running the boat in at Caribou Crossing for him to jump ashore. Two of the other dogs, good dogs, followed him; and we lost two whole days trying to find them. We never saw those two dogs again; but the quietness and relief we enjoyed made us decide, like the man who refused his hundred and fifty, that it was cheap at the price. For the first time in months Steve and I laughed and whistled and sang. We were as happy as clams. The dark days were over. The nightmare had been lifted. That Spot was gone.

Three weeks later, one morning, Steve and I were standing on the river-bank at Dawson. A small boat was just arriving from Lake Bennett. I saw Steve give a start, and heard him say something that was not nice and that was not under his breath. Then I looked; and there, in the bow of the boat, with ears pricked up, sat Spot. Steve and I sneaked immediately, like beaten curs, like cowards, like absconders from justice. It was this last that the lieutenant of police thought when he saw us sneaking. He surmised that there were law-officers in the boat who were after us. He didn’t wait to find out, but kept us in sight, and in the M. & M. saloon got us in a corner. We had a merry time explaining, for we refused to go back to the boat and meet Spot; and finally he held us under guard of another policeman while he went to the boat. After we got clear of him, we started for the cabin, and when we arrived, there was that Spot sitting on the stoop waiting for us. Now how did he know we lived there? There were forty thousand people in Dawson that summer, and how did he savve our cabin out of all the cabins? How did he know we were in Dawson, anyway? I leave it to you. But don’t forget what I have said about his intelligence and that immortal something I have seen glimmering in his eyes.

There was no getting rid of him any more. There were too many people in Dawson who had bought him up on Chilcoot, and the story got around. Half a dozen times we put him on board steamboats going down the Yukon; but he merely went ashore at the first landing and trotted back up the bank. We couldn’t sell him, we couldn’t kill him (both Steve and I had tried), and nobody else was able to kill him. He bore a charmed life. I’ve seen him go down in a dog-fight on the main street with fifty dogs on top of him, and when they were separated, he’d appear on all his four legs, unharmed, while two of the dogs that had been on top of him would be lying dead.

I saw him steal a chunk of moose-meat from Major Dinwiddie’s cache so heavy that he could just keep one jump ahead of Mrs. Dinwiddie’s squaw cook, who was after him with an axe. As he went up the hill, after the squaw gave up, Major Dinwiddie himself came out and pumped his Winchester into the landscape. He emptied his magazine twice, and never touched that Spot. Then a policeman came along and arrested him for discharging firearms inside the city limits. Major Dinwiddie paid his fine, and Steve and I paid him for the moose-meat at the rate of a dollar a pound, bones and all. That was what he paid for it. Meat was high that year.

I am only telling what I saw with my own eyes. And now I’ll tell you something, also. I saw that Spot fall through a water-hole. The ice was three and a half feet thick, and the current sucked him under like a straw. Three hundred yards below was the big water-hole used by the hospital. Spot crawled out of the hospital water-hole, licked off the water, bit out the ice that had formed between his toes, trotted up the bank, and whipped a big Newfoundland belonging to the Gold Commissioner.

In the fall of 1898, Steve and I poled up the Yukon on the last water, bound for Stewart River. We took the dogs along, all except Spot. We figured we’d been feeding him long enough. He’d cost us more time and trouble and money and grub than we’d got by selling him on the Chilcoot—especially grub. So Steve and I tied him down in the cabin and pulled our freight. We camped that night at the mouth of Indian River, and Steve and I were pretty facetious over having shaken him. Steve was a funny cuss, and I was just sitting up in the blankets and laughing when a tornado hit camp. The way that Spot walked into those dogs and gave them what-for was hair-raising. Now how did he get loose? It’s up to you. I haven’t any theory. And how did he get across the Klondike River? That’s another lacer. And anyway, how did he know we had gone up the Yukon? You see, we went by water, and he couldn’t smell our tracks. Steve and I began to get superstitious about that dog. He got on our nerves, too; and, between you and me, we were just a mite afraid of him.

The freeze-up came on when we were at the mouth of Henderson Creek, and we traded him off for two sacks of flour to an outfit that was bound up White River after copper. Now that whole outfit was lost. Never trace nor hide nor hair of men, dogs, sleds, or anything was ever found. They dropped clean out of sight. It became one of the mysteries of the country. Steve and I plugged away up the Stewart, and six weeks afterward that Spot crawled into camp. He was a perambulating skeleton, and could just drag along; but he got there. And what I want to know is who told him we were up the Stewart? We could have gone a thousand other places. How did he know? You tell me, and I’ll tell you.

No losing him. At the Mayo he started a row with an Indian dog. The buck who owned the dog took a swing at Spot with an axe, missed him, and killed his own dog. Talk about magic and turning bullets aside – I, for one, consider it a blamed sight harder to turn an axe aside with a big buck at the other end of it. And I saw him do it with my own eyes. That buck didn’t want to kill his own dog. You’ve got to show me.

I told you about Spot breaking into our meat-cache. It was nearly the death of us. There wasn’t any more meat to be killed, and meat was all we had to live on. The moose had gone back several hundred miles and the Indians with them. There we were. Spring was on, and we had to wait for the river to break. We got pretty thin before we decided to eat the dogs, and we decided to eat Spot first. Do you know what that dog did? He sneaked. Now how did he know our minds were made up to eat him? We sat up nights laying for him, but he never came back, and we ate the other dogs. We ate the whole team.

And now for the sequel. You know what it is when a big river breaks up and a few billion tons of ice go out, jamming and milling and grinding. Just in the thick of it, when the Stewart went out, rumbling and roaring, we sighted Spot out in the middle. He’d got caught as he was trying to cross up above somewhere. Steve and I yelled and shouted and ran up and down the bank, tossing our hats in the air. Sometimes we’d stop and hug each other, we were that boisterous, for we saw Spot’s finish. He didn’t have a chance in a million. He didn’t have any chance at all. After the ice-run, we got into a canoe and paddled down to the Yukon, and down the Yukon to Dawson, stopping to feed up for a week at the cabins at the mouth of Henderson Creek. And as we came in to the bank at Dawson, there sat that Spot, waiting for us, his ears pricked up, his tail wagging, his mouth smiling, extending a hearty welcome to us. Now how did he get out of that ice? How did he know we were coming to Dawson, to the very hour and minute, to be out there on the bank waiting for us?

The more I think of that Spot, the more I am convinced that there are things in this world that go beyond science. On no scientific grounds can that Spot be explained. It’s psychic phenomena, or mysticism, or something of that sort, I guess, with a lot of Theosophy thrown in. The Klondike is a good country. I might have been there yet, and become a millionnaire, if it hadn’t been for Spot. He got on my nerves. I stood him for two years all together, and then I guess my stamina broke. It was the summer of 1899 when I pulled out. I didn’t say anything to Steve. I just sneaked. But I fixed it up all right. I wrote Steve a note, and enclosed a package of ‘rough-on-rats,’ telling him what to do with it. I was worn down to skin and bone by that Spot, and I was that nervous that I’d jump and look around when there wasn’t anybody within hailing distance. But it was astonishing the way I recuperated when I got quit of him. I got back twenty pounds before I arrived in San Francisco, and by the time I’d crossed the ferry to Oakland I was my old self again, so that even my wife looked in vain for any change in me.

Steve wrote to me once, and his letter seemed irritated. He took it kind of hard because I’d left him with Spot. Also, he said he’d used the ‘rough-on-rats,’ per directions, and that there was nothing doing. A year went by. I was back in the office and prospering in all ways – even getting a bit fat. And then Steve arrived. He didn’t look me up. I read his name in the steamer list, and wondered why. But I didn’t wonder long. I got up one morning and found that Spot chained to the gate-post and holding up the milkman. Steve went north to Seattle, I learned, that very morning. I didn’t put on any more weight. My wife made me buy him a collar and tag, and within an hour he showed his gratitude by killing her pet Persian cat. There is no getting rid of that Spot. He will be with me until I die, for he’ll never die. My appetite is not so good since he arrived, and my wife says I am looking peaked. Last night that Spot got into Mr. Harvey’s hen-house (Harvey is my next door neighbor) and killed nineteen of his fancy-bred chickens. I shall have to pay for them. My neighbors on the other side quarrelled with my wife and then moved out. Spot was the cause of it. And that is why I am disappointed in Stephen Mackaye. I had no idea he was so mean a man.

The Terrible Solomons

There is no gainsaying that the Solomons are a hard-bitten bunch of islands. On the other hand, there are worse places in the world. But to the new chum who has no constitutional understanding of men and life in the rough, the Solomons may indeed prove terrible.

It is true that fever and dysentery are perpetually on the walk-about, that loathsome skin diseases abound, that the air is saturated with a poison that bites into every pore, cut, or abrasion and plants malignant ulcers, and that many strong men who escape dying there return as wrecks to their own countries. It is also true that the natives of the Solomons are a wild lot, with a hearty appetite for human flesh and a fad for collecting human heads. Their highest instinct of sportsmanship is to catch a man with his back turned and to smite him a cunning blow with a tomahawk that severs the spinal column at the base of the brain. It is equally true that on some islands, such as Malaita, the profit and loss account of social intercourse is calculated in homicides. Heads are a medium of exchange, and white heads are extremely valuable. Very often a dozen villages make a jack-pot, which they fatten moon by moon, against the time when some brave warrior presents a white man’s head, fresh and gory, and claims the pot.

All the foregoing is quite true, and yet there are white men who have lived in the Solomons a score of years and who feel homesick when they go away from them. A man needs only to be careful – and lucky – to live a long time in the Solomons; but he must also be of the right sort. He must have the hallmark of the inevitable white man stamped upon his soul. He must be inevitable. He must have a certain grand carelessness of odds, a certain colossal self-satisfaction, and a racial egotism that convinces him that one white is better than a thousand niggers every day in the week, and that on Sunday he is able to clean out two thousand niggers. For such are the things that have made the white man inevitable. Oh, and one other thing – the white man who wishes to be inevitable, must not merely despise the lesser breeds and think a lot of himself; he must also fail to be too long on imagination. He must not understand too well the instincts, customs, and mental processes of the blacks, the yellows, and the browns; for it is not in such fashion that the white race has tramped its royal road around the world.

Bertie Arkwright was not inevitable. He was too sensitive, too finely strung, and he possessed too much imagination. The world was too much with him. He projected himself too quiveringly into his environment. Therefore, the last place in the world for him to come was the Solomons. He did not come, expecting to stay. A five weeks’ stop-over between steamers, he decided, would satisfy the call of the primitive he felt thrumming the strings of his being. At least, so he told the lady tourists on the Makembo, though in different terms; and they worshipped him as a hero, for they were lady tourists and they would know only the safety of the steamer’s deck as she threaded her way through the Solomons.

There was another man on board, of whom the ladies took no notice. He was a little shriveled wisp of a man, with a withered skin the color of mahogany. His name on the passenger list does not matter, but his other name, Captain Malu, was a name for niggers to conjure with, and to scare naughty pickaninnies to righteousness from New Hanover to the New Hebrides. He had farmed savages and savagery, and from fever and hardship, the crack of Sniders and the lash of the overseers, had wrested five millions of money in the form of bêche-de-mer, sandalwood, pearl-shell and turtle-shell, ivory nuts and copra, grasslands, trading stations, and plantations. Captain Malu’s little finger, which was broken, had more inevitableness in it than Bertie Arkwright’s whole carcass. But then, the lady tourists had nothing by which to judge save appearances, and Bertie certainly was a fine-looking man.

Bertie talked with Captain Malu in the smoking room, confiding to him his intention of seeing life red and bleeding in the Solomons. Captain Malu agreed that the intention was ambitious and honorable. It was not until several days later that he became interested in Bertie, when that young adventurer insisted on showing him an automatic 44-caliber pistol. Bertie explained the mechanism and demonstrated by slipping a loaded magazine up the hollow butt.

‘It is so simple,’ he said. He shot the outer barrel back along the inner one. ‘That loads it and cocks it, you see. And then all I have to do is pull the trigger, eight times, as fast as I can quiver my finger. See that safety clutch. That’s what I like about it. It is safe. It is positively fool-proof.’ He slipped out the magazine. ‘You see how safe it is.’

As he held it in his hand, the muzzle came in line with Captain Malu’s stomach. Captain Malu’s blue eyes looked at it unswervingly.

‘Would you mind pointing it in some other direction?’ he asked.

‘It’s perfectly safe,’ Bertie assured him. ‘I withdrew the magazine. It’s not loaded now, you know.’

‘A gun is always loaded.’

‘But this one isn’t.’

‘Turn it away just the same.’

Captain Malu’s voice was flat and metallic and low, but his eyes never left the muzzle until the line of it was drawn past him and away from him.

‘I’ll bet a fiver it isn’t loaded,’ Bertie proposed warmly.

The other shook his head.

‘Then I’ll show you.’

Bertie started to put the muzzle to his own temple with the evident intention of pulling the trigger.

‘Just a second,’ Captain Malu said quietly, reaching out his hand. ‘Let me look at it.’

He pointed it seaward and pulled the trigger. A heavy explosion followed, instantaneous with the sharp click of the mechanism that flipped a hot and smoking cartridge sidewise along the deck.

Bertie’s jaw dropped in amazement.

‘I slipped the barrel back once, didn’t I?’ he explained. ‘It was silly of me, I must say.’

He giggled flabbily, and sat down in a steamer chair. The blood had ebbed from his face, exposing dark circles under his eyes. His hands were trembling and unable to guide the shaking cigarette to his lips. The world was too much with him, and he saw himself with dripping brains prone upon the deck.

‘Really,’ he said, ‘…really.’

‘It’s a pretty weapon,’ said Captain Malu, returning the automatic to him.

The Commissioner was on board the Makembo, returning from Sydney, and by his permission a stop was made at Ugi to land a missionary. And at Ugi lay the ketch Arla, Captain Hansen, skipper. Now the Arla was one of many vessels owned by Captain Malu, and it was at his suggestion and by his invitation that Bertie went aboard the Arla as guest for a four days’ recruiting cruise on the coast of Malaita. Thereafter the Arla would drop him at Reminge Plantation (also owned by Captain Malu), where Bertie could remain for a week, and then be sent over to Tulagi, the seat of government, where he would become the Commissioner’s guest. Captain Malu was responsible for two other suggestions, which given, he disappears from this narrative. One was to Captain Hansen, the other to Mr. Harriwell, manager of Reminge Plantation. Both suggestions were similar in tenor, namely, to give Mr. Bertram Arkwright an insight into the rawness and redness of life in the Solomons. Also, it is whispered that Captain Malu mentioned that a case of Scotch would be coincidental with any particularly gorgeous insight Mr. Arkwright might receive…

‘Yes, Swartz always was too pig-headed. You see, he took four of his boat’s crew to Tulagi to be flogged – officially, you know – then started back with them in the whaleboat. It was pretty squally, and the boat capsized just outside. Swartz was the only one drowned. Of course, it was an accident.’

‘Was it? Really?’ Bertie asked, only half-interested, staring hard at the black man at the wheel.

Ugi had dropped astern, and the Arla was sliding along through a summer sea toward the wooded ranges of Malaita. The helmsman who so attracted Bertie’s eyes sported a ten penny nail, stuck skewerwise through his nose. About his neck was a string of pants buttons. Thrust through holes in his ears were a can opener, the broken handle of a toothbrush, a clay pipe, the brass wheel of an alarm clock, and several Winchester rifle cartridges.

On his chest, suspended from around his neck hung the half of a china plate. Some forty similarly appareled blacks lay about the deck, fifteen of which were boat’s crew, the remainder being fresh labor recruits.

‘Of course it was an accident,’ spoke up the Arla’s mate, Jacobs, a slender, dark-eyed man who looked more a professor than a sailor. ‘Johnny Bedip nearly had the same kind of accident. He was bringing back several from a flogging, when they capsized him. But he knew how to swim as well as they, and two of them were drowned. He used a boat stretcher and a revolver. Of course it was an accident.’

‘Quite common, them accidents,’ remarked the skipper. ‘You see that man at the wheel, Mr. Arkwright? He’s a man eater. Six months ago, he and the rest of the boat’s crew drowned the then captain of the Arla. They did it on deck, sir, right aft there by the mizzen-traveler.’

‘The deck was in a shocking state,’ said the mate.

‘Do I understand —?’ Bertie began.

‘Yes, just that,’ said Captain Hansen. ‘It was an accidental drowning.’

‘But on deck —?’

‘Just so. I don’t mind telling you, in confidence, of course, that they used an axe.’

‘This present crew of yours?’

Captain Hansen nodded.

‘The other skipper always was too careless,’ explained the mate. He but just turned his back, when they let him have it.’

‘We haven’t any show down here,’ was the skipper’s complaint. ‘The government protects a nigger against a white every time. You can’t shoot first. You’ve got to give the nigger first shot, or else the government calls it murder and you go to Fiji. That’s why there’s so many drowning accidents.’

Dinner was called, and Bertie and the skipper went below, leaving the mate to watch on deck.

‘Keep an eye out for that black devil, Auiki,’ was the skipper’s parting caution. ‘I haven’t liked his looks for several days.’

‘Right O,’ said the mate.

Dinner was part way along, and the skipper was in the middle of his story of the cutting out of the Scottish Chiefs.

‘Yes,’ he was saying, ‘she was the finest vessel on the coast. But when she missed stays, and before ever she hit the reef, the canoes started for her. There were five white men, a crew of twenty Santa Cruz boys and Samoans, and only the supercargo escaped. Besides, there were sixty recruits. They were all kai-kai’d. Kai-kai? – oh, I beg your pardon. I mean they were eaten. Then there was the James Edwards, a dandy-rigged – ’

But at that moment there was a sharp oath from the mate on deck and a chorus of savage cries. A revolver went off three times, and then was heard a loud splash. Captain Hansen had sprung up the companionway on the instant, and Bertie’s eyes had been fascinated by a glimpse of him drawing his revolver as he sprang.

Bertie went up more circumspectly, hesitating before he put his head above the companionway slide. But nothing happened. The mate was shaking with excitement, his revolver in his hand. Once he startled, and half-jumped around, as if danger threatened his back.

‘One of the natives fell overboard,’ he was saying, in a queer tense voice. ‘He couldn’t swim.’

‘Who was it?’ the skipper demanded.

‘Auiki,’ was the answer.

‘But I say, you know, I heard shots,’ Bertie said, in trembling eagerness, for he scented adventure, and adventure that was happily over with.

The mate whirled upon him, snarling:

‘It’s a damned lie. There ain’t been a shot fired. The nigger fell overboard.’

Captain Hansen regarded Bertie with unblinking, lack-luster eyes.

‘I–I thought —’ Bertie was beginning.

‘Shots?’ said Captain Hansen, dreamily. ‘Shots? Did you hear any shots, Mr. Jacobs?’

‘Not a shot,’ replied Mr. Jacobs.

The skipper looked at his guest triumphantly, and said:

‘Evidently an accident. Let us go down, Mr. Arkwright, and finish dinner.’

Bertie slept that night in the captain’s cabin, a tiny stateroom off the main cabin. The for’ard bulkhead was decorated with a stand of rifles. Over the bunk were three more rifles. Under the bunk was a big drawer, which, when he pulled it out, he found filled with ammunition, dynamite, and several boxes of detonators. He elected to take the settee on the opposite side. Lying conspicuously on the small table, was the Arla’s log. Bertie did not know that it had been especially prepared for the occasion by Captain Malu, and he read therein how on September 21, two boat’s crew had fallen overboard and been drowned. Bertie read between the lines and knew better. He read how the Arla’s whale boat had been bushwhacked at Su’u and had lost three men; of how the skipper discovered the cook stewing human flesh on the galley fire – flesh purchased by the boat’s crew ashore in Fui; of how an accidental discharge of dynamite, while signaling, had killed another boat’s crew; of night attacks; ports fled from between the dawns; attacks by bushmen in mangrove swamps and by fleets of salt-water men in the larger passages. One item that occurred with monotonous frequency was death by dysentery. He noticed with alarm that two white men had so died – guests, like himself, on the Arla.

‘I say, you know,’ Bertie said next day to Captain Hansen. ‘I’ve been glancing through your log.’

The skipper displayed quick vexation that the log had been left lying about.

‘And all that dysentery, you know, that’s all rot, just like the accidental drownings,’ Bertie continued. ‘What does dysentery really stand for?’

The skipper openly admired his guest’s acumen, stiffened himself to make indignant denial, then gracefully surrendered.

‘You see, it’s like this, Mr. Arkwright. These islands have got a bad enough name as it is. It’s getting harder every day to sign on white men. Suppose a man is killed. The company has to pay through the nose for another man to take the job. But if the man merely dies of sickness, it’s all right. The new chums don’t mind disease. What they draw the line at is being murdered. I thought the skipper of the Arla had died of dysentery when I took his billet. Then it was too late. I’d signed the contract.’

‘Besides,’ said Mr. Jacobs, ‘there’s altogether too many accidental drownings anyway. It don’t look right. It’s the fault of the government. A white man hasn’t a chance to defend himself from the niggers.’

‘Yes, look at the Princess and that Yankee mate,’ the skipper took up the tale. ‘She carried five white men besides a government agent. The captain, the agent, and the supercargo were ashore in the two boats. They were killed to the last man. The mate and boson, with about fifteen of the crew – Samoans and Tongans – were on board. A crowd of niggers came off from shore. First thing the mate knew, the boson and the crew were killed in the first rush. The mate grabbed three cartridge belts and two Winchesters and skinned up to the cross-trees. He was the sole survivor, and you can’t blame him for being mad. He pumped one rifle till it got so hot he couldn’t hold it, then he pumped the other. The deck was black with niggers. He cleaned them out. He dropped them as they went over the rail, and he dropped them as fast as they picked up their paddles. Then they jumped into the water and started to swim for it, and being mad, he got half a dozen more. And what did he get for it?’

‘Seven years in Fiji,’ snapped the mate.

‘The government said he wasn’t justified in shooting after they’d taken to the water,’ the skipper explained.

‘And that’s why they die of dysentery nowadays,’ the mate added.

‘Just fancy,’ said Bertie, as he felt a longing for the cruise to be over.

Later on in the day he interviewed the black who had been pointed out to him as a cannibal. This fellow’s name was Sumasai. He had spent three years on a Queensland plantation. He had been to Samoa, and Fiji, and Sydney; and as a boat’s crew had been on recruiting schooners through New Britain, New Ireland, New Guinea, and the Admiralties. Also, he was a wag, and he had taken a line on his skipper’s conduct. Yes, he had eaten many men. How many? He could not remember the tally. Yes, white men, too; they were very good, unless they were sick. He had once eaten a sick one.

‘My word!’ he cried, at the recollection. ‘Me sick plenty along him. My belly walk about too much.’

Bertie shuddered, and asked about heads. Yes, Sumasai had several hidden ashore, in good condition, sun-dried, and smoke-cured. One was of the captain of a schooner. It had long whiskers. He would sell it for two quid. Black men’s heads he would sell for one quid. He had some pickaninny heads, in poor condition, that he would let go for ten bob.

Five minutes afterward, Bertie found himself sitting on the companionway-slide alongside a black with a horrible skin disease. He sheered off, and on inquiry was told that it was leprosy. He hurried below and washed himself with antiseptic soap. He took many antiseptic washes in the course of the day, for every native on board was afflicted with malignant ulcers of one sort or another.

As the Arla drew in to an anchorage in the midst of mangrove swamps, a double row of barbed wire was stretched around above her rail. That looked like business, and when Bertie saw the shore canoes alongside, armed with spears, bows and arrows, and Sniders, he wished more earnestly than ever that the cruise was over.

That evening the natives were slow in leaving the ship at sundown. A number of them checked the mate when he ordered them ashore. ‘Never mind, I’ll fix them,’ said Captain Hansen, diving below.

When he came back, he showed Bertie a stick of dynamite attached to a fish hook. Now it happens that a paper-wrapped bottle of chlorodyne with a piece of harmless fuse projecting can fool anybody. It fooled Bertie, and it fooled the natives. When Captain Hansen lighted the fuse and hooked the fish hook into the tail end of a native’s loin cloth, that native was smitten with so an ardent a desire for the shore that he forgot to shed the loin cloth. He started for’ard, the fuse sizzling and spluttering at his rear, the natives in his path taking headers over the barbed wire at every jump. Bertie was horror-stricken. So was Captain Hansen. He had forgotten his twenty-five recruits, on each of which he had paid thirty shillings advance. They went over the side along with the shore-dwelling folk and followed by him who trailed the sizzling chlorodyne bottle.

Bertie did not see the bottle go off; but the mate opportunely discharging a stick of real dynamite aft where it would harm nobody, Bertie would have sworn in any admiralty court to a nigger blown to flinders. The flight of the twenty-five recruits had actually cost the Arla forty pounds, and, since they had taken to the bush, there was no hope of recovering them. The skipper and his mate proceeded to drown their sorrow in cold tea.

The cold tea was in whiskey bottles, so Bertie did not know it was cold tea they were mopping up. All he knew was that the two men got very drunk and argued eloquently and at length as to whether the exploded nigger should be reported as a case of dysentery or as an accidental drowning. When they snored off to sleep, he was the only white man left, and he kept a perilous watch till dawn, in fear of an attack from shore and an uprising of the crew.

Three more days the Arla spent on the coast, and three more nights the skipper and the mate drank overfondly of cold tea, leaving Bertie to keep the watch. They knew he could be depended upon, while he was equally certain that if he lived, he would report their drunken conduct to Captain Malu. Then the Arla dropped anchor at Reminge Plantation, on Guadalcanar, and Bertie landed on the beach with a sigh of relief and shook hands with the manager. Mr. Harriwell was ready for him.

‘Now you mustn’t be alarmed if some of our fellows seem downcast,’ Mr. Harriwell said, having drawn him aside in confidence. ‘There’s been talk of an outbreak, and two or three suspicious signs I’m willing to admit, but personally I think it’s all poppycock.’

‘How – how many blacks have you on the plantation?’ Bertie asked, with a sinking heart.

‘We’re working four hundred just now,’ replied Mr. Harriwell, cheerfully; ‘but the three of us, with you, of course, and the skipper and mate of the Arla, can handle them all right.’

Bertie turned to meet one McTavish, the storekeeper, who scarcely acknowledged the introduction, such was his eagerness to present his resignation.

‘It being that I’m a married man, Mr. Harriwell, I can’t very well afford to remain on longer. Trouble is working up, as plain as the nose on your face. The niggers are going to break out, and there’ll be another Hohono horror here.’

‘What’s a Hohono horror?’ Bertie asked, after the storekeeper had been persuaded to remain until the end of the month.

‘Oh, he means Hohono Plantation, on Ysabel,’ said the manager. ‘The niggers killed the five white men ashore, captured the schooner, killed the captain and mate, and escaped in a body to Malaita. But I always said they were careless on Hohono. They won’t catch us napping here. Come along, Mr. Arkwright, and see our view from the veranda.’

Bertie was too busy wondering how he could get away to Tulagi to the Commissioner’s house, to see much of the view. He was still wondering, when a rifle exploded very near to him, behind his back. At the same moment his arm was nearly dislocated, so eagerly did Mr. Harriwell drag him indoors.

‘I say, old man, that was a close shave,’ said the manager, pawing him over to see if he had been hit. ‘I can’t tell you how sorry I am. But it was broad daylight, and I never dreamed.’

Bertie was beginning to turn pale.

‘They got the other manager that way,’ McTavish vouchsafed. ‘And a dashed fine chap he was. Blew his brains out all over the veranda. You noticed that dark stain there between the steps and the door?’

Bertie was ripe for the cocktail which Mr. Harriwell pitched in and compounded for him; but before he could drink it, a man in riding trousers and puttees entered.

‘What’s the matter now?’ the manager asked, after one look at the newcomer’s face. ‘Is the river up again?’

‘River be blowed – it’s the niggers. Stepped out of the cane grass, not a dozen feet away, and whopped at me. It was a Snider, and he shot from the hip. Now what I want to know is where’d he get that Snider? – Oh, I beg pardon. Glad to know you, Mr. Arkwright.’

‘Mr. Brown is my assistant,’ explained Mr. Harriwell. ‘And now let’s have that drink.’

‘But where’d he get that Snider?’ Mr. Brown insisted. ‘I always objected to keeping those guns on the premises.’

‘They’re still there,’ Mr. Harriwell said, with a show of heat.

Mr. Brown smiled incredulously.

‘Come along and see,’ said the manager.

Bertie joined the procession into the office, where Mr. Harriwell pointed triumphantly at a big packing case in a dusty corner.

‘Well, then where did the beggar get that Snider?’ harped Mr. Brown.

But just then McTavish lifted the packing case. The manager started, then tore off the lid. The case was empty. They gazed at one another in horrified silence. Harriwell drooped wearily.

Then McVeigh cursed.

‘What I contended all along – the house-boys are not to be trusted.’

‘It does look serious,’ Harriwell admitted, ‘but we’ll come through it all right. What the sanguinary niggers need is a shaking up. Will you gentlemen please bring your rifles to dinner, and will you, Mr. Brown, kindly prepare forty or fifty sticks of dynamite. Make the fuses good and short. We’ll give them a lesson. And now, gentlemen, dinner is served.’

One thing that Bertie detested was rice and curry, so it happened that he alone partook of an inviting omelet. He had quite finished his plate, when Harriwell helped himself to the omelet. One mouthful he tasted, then spat out vociferously.

‘That’s the second time,’ McTavish announced ominously.

Harriwell was still hawking and spitting.

‘Second time, what?’ Bertie quavered.

‘Poison,’ was the answer. ‘That cook will be hanged yet.’

‘That’s the way the bookkeeper went out at Cape March,’ Brown spoke up. ‘Died horribly. They said on the Jessie that they heard him screaming three miles away.’

‘I’ll put the cook in irons,’ sputtered Harriwell. ‘Fortunately we discovered it in time.’

Bertie sat paralyzed. There was no color in his face. He attempted to speak, but only an inarticulate gurgle resulted. All eyed him anxiously.

‘Don’t say it, don’t say it,’ McTavish cried in a tense voice.

‘Yes, I ate it, plenty of it, a whole plateful!’ Bertie cried explosively, like a diver suddenly regaining breath.

The awful silence continued half a minute longer, and he read his fate in their eyes.

‘Maybe it wasn’t poison after all,’ said Harriwell, dismally.

‘Call in the cook,’ said Brown.

In came the cook, a grinning black boy, nose-spiked and ear-plugged.

‘Here, you, Wi-wi, what name that?’ Harriwell bellowed, pointing accusingly at the omelet.

Wi-wi was very naturally frightened and embarrassed.

‘Him good fella kai-kai,’ he murmured apologetically.

‘Make him eat it,’ suggested McTavish. ‘That’s a proper test.’

Harriwell filled a spoon with the stuff and jumped for the cook, who fled in panic.

‘That settles it,’ was Brown’s solemn pronouncement. ‘He won’t eat it.’

‘Mr. Brown, will you please go and put the irons on him?’ Harriwell turned cheerfully to Bertie. ‘It’s all right, old man, the Commissioner will deal with him, and if you die, depend upon it, he will be hanged.’

‘Don’t think the government’ll do it,’ objected McTavish.

‘But gentlemen, gentlemen,’ Bertie cried. ‘In the meantime think of me.’

Harriwell shrugged his shoulders pityingly.

‘Sorry, old man, but it’s a native poison, and there are no known antidotes for native poisons. Try and compose yourself and if —’

Two sharp reports of a rifle from without, interrupted the discourse, and Brown, entering, reloaded his rifle and sat down to table.

‘The cook’s dead,’ he said. ‘Fever. A rather sudden attack.’

‘I was just telling Mr. Arkwright that there are no antidotes for native poisons —’

‘Except gin,’ said Brown.

Harriwell called himself an absent-minded idiot and rushed for the gin bottle.

‘Neat, man, neat,’ he warned Bertie, who gulped down a tumbler two-thirds full of the raw spirits, and coughed and choked from the angry bite of it till the tears ran down his cheeks.

Harriwell took his pulse and temperature, made a show of looking out for him, and doubted that the omelet had been poisoned. Brown and McTavish also doubted; but Bertie discerned an insincere ring in their voices. His appetite had left him, and he took his own pulse stealthily under the table. There was no question but what it was increasing, but he failed to ascribe it to the gin he had taken. McTavish, rifle in hand, went out on the veranda to reconnoiter.

‘They’re massing up at the cook-house,’ was his report. ‘And they’ve no end of Sniders. My idea is to sneak around on the other side and take them in flank. Strike the first blow, you know. Will you come along, Brown?’

Harriwell ate on steadily, while Bertie discovered that his pulse had leaped up five beats. Nevertheless, he could not help jumping when the rifles began to go off. Above the scattering of Sniders could be heard the pumping of Brown’s and McTavish’s Winchesters – all against a background of demoniacal screeching and yelling.

‘They’ve got them on the run,’ Harriwell remarked, as voices and gunshots faded away in the distance.

Scarcely were Brown and McTavish back at the table when the latter reconnoitered.

‘They’ve got dynamite,’ he said.

‘Then let’s charge them with dynamite,’ Harriwell proposed.

Thrusting half a dozen sticks each into their pockets and equipping themselves with lighted cigars, they started for the door. And just then it happened. They blamed McTavish for it afterward, and he admitted that the charge had been a trifle excessive. But at any rate it went off under the house, which lifted up cornerwise and settled back on its foundations. Half the china on the table was shattered, while the eight-day clock stopped. Yelling for vengeance, the three men rushed out into the night, and the bombardment began.

When they returned, there was no Bertie. He had dragged himself away to the office, barricaded himself in, and sunk upon the floor in a gin-soaked nightmare, wherein he died a thousand deaths while the valorous fight went on around him. In the morning, sick and headachey from the gin, he crawled out to find the sun still in the sky and God presumable in heaven, for his hosts were alive and uninjured.

Harriwell pressed him to stay on longer, but Bertie insisted on sailing immediately on the Arla for Tulagi, where, until the following steamer day, he stuck close by the Commissioner’s house. There were lady tourists on the outgoing steamer, and Bertie was again a hero, while Captain Malu, as usual, passed unnoticed. But Captain Malu sent back from Sydney two cases of the best Scotch whiskey on the market, for he was not able to make up his mind as to whether it was Captain Hansen or Mr Harriwell who had given Bertie Arkwright the more gorgeous insight into life in the Solomons.

O. Henry

The Ransom of Red Chief

It looked like a good thing: but wait till I tell you. We were down South, in Alabama – Bill Driscoll and myself-when this kidnapping idea struck us. It was, as Bill afterward expressed it, ‘during a moment of temporary mental apparition’; but we didn’t find that out till later.

There was a town down there, as flat as a flannel-cake, and called Summit, of course. It contained inhabitants of as undeleterious and self-satisfied a class of peasantry as ever clustered around a Maypole.

Bill and me had a joint capital of about six hundred dollars, and we needed just two thousand dollars more to pull off a fraudulent town-lot scheme in Western Illinois with. We talked it over on the front steps of the hotel. Philoprogenitiveness, says we, is strong in semi-rural communities therefore, and for other reasons, a kidnapping project ought to do better there than in the radius of newspapers that send reporters out in plain clothes to stir up talk about such things. We knew that Summit couldn’t get after us with anything stronger than constables and, maybe, some lackadaisical bloodhounds and a diatribe or two in the Weekly Farmers’ Budget. So, it looked good.

We selected for our victim the only child of a prominent citizen named Ebenezer Dorset. The father was respectable and tight, a mortgage fancier and a stern, upright collection-plate passer and forecloser. The kid was a boy of ten, with bas-relief freckles, and hair the colour of the cover of the magazine you buy at the news-stand when you want to catch a train. Bill and me figured that Ebenezer would melt down for a ransom of two thousand dollars to a cent. But wait till I tell you.

About two miles from Summit was a little mountain, covered with a dense cedar brake. On the rear elevation of this mountain was a cave. There we stored provisions.

One evening after sundown, we drove in a buggy past old Dorset’s house. The kid was in the street, throwing rocks at a kitten on the opposite fence.

‘Hey, little boy!’ says Bill, ‘would you like to have a bag of candy and a nice ride?’

The boy catches Bill neatly in the eye with a piece of brick.

‘That will cost the old man an extra five hundred dollars,’ says Bill, climbing over the wheel.

That boy put up a fight like a welter-weight cinnamon bear; but, at last, we got him down in the bottom of the buggy and drove away. We took him up to the cave, and I hitched the horse in the cedar brake. After dark I drove the buggy to the little village, three miles away, where we had hired it, and walked back to the mountain.

Bill was pasting court-plaster over the scratches and bruises on his features. There was a fire burning behind the big rock at the entrance of the cave, and the boy was watching a pot of boiling coffee, with two buzzard tailfeathers stuck in his red hair. He points a stick at me when I come up, and says:

‘Ha! cursed paleface, do you dare to enter the camp of Red Chief, the terror of the plains?’

‘He’s all right now,’ says Bill, rolling up his trousers and examining some bruises on his shins. ‘We’re playing Indian. We’re making Buffalo Bill’s show look like magic-lantern views of Palestine in the town hall. I’m Old Hank, the Trapper, Red Chief’s captive, and I’m to be scalped at daybreak. By Geronimo! that kid can kick hard.’

Yes, sir, that boy seemed to be having the time of his life. The fun of camping out in a cave had made him forget that he was a captive himself. He immediately christened me Snake-eye, the Spy, and announced that, when his braves returned from the warpath, I was to be broiled at the stake at the rising of the sun.

Then we had supper; and he filled his mouth full of bacon and bread and gravy, and began to talk. He made a during-dinner speech something like this:

‘I like this fine. I never camped out before; but I had a pet ‘possum once, and I was nine last birthday. I hate to go to school. Rats ate up sixteen of Jimmy Talbot’s aunt’s speckled hen’s eggs. Are there any real Indians in these woods? I want some more gravy. Does the trees moving make the wind blow? We had five puppies. What makes your nose so red, Hank? My father has lots of money. Are the stars hot? I whipped Ed Walker twice, Saturday. I don’t like girls. You dassent catch toads unless with a string. Do oxen make any noise? Why are oranges round? Have you got beds to sleep on in this cave? Amos Murray has got six toes. A parrot can talk, but a monkey or a fish can’t. How many does it take to make twelve?’

Every few minutes he would remember that he was a pesky redskin, and pick up his stick rifle and tiptoe to the mouth of the cave to rubber for the scouts of the hated paleface. Now and then he would let out a warwhoop that made Old Hank the Trapper, shiver. That boy had Bill terrorized from the start.

‘Red Chief,’ says I to the kid, ‘would you like to go home?’

‘Aw, what for?’ says he. ‘I don’t have any fun at home. I hate to go to school. I like to camp out. You won’t take me back home again, Snake-eye, will you?’

‘Not right away,’ says I. ‘We’ll stay here in the cave a while.’

‘All right!’ says he. ‘That’ll be fine. I never had such fun in all my life.’

We went to bed about eleven o’clock. We spread down some wide blankets and quilts and put Red Chief between us. We weren’t afraid he’d run away. He kept us awake for three hours, jumping up and reaching for his rifle and screeching: ‘Hist! pard,’ in mine and Bill’s ears, as the fancied crackle of a twig or the rustle of a leaf revealed to his young imagination the stealthy approach of the outlaw band. At last, I fell into a troubled sleep, and dreamed that I had been kidnapped and chained to a tree by a ferocious pirate with red hair.

Just at daybreak, I was awakened by a series of awful screams from Bill. They weren’t yells, or howls, or shouts, or whoops, or yawps, such as you’d expect from a manly set of vocal organs – they were simply indecent, terrifying, humiliating screams, such as women emit when they see ghosts or caterpillars. It’s an awful thing to hear a strong, desperate, fat man scream incontinently in a cave at daybreak.

I jumped up to see what the matter was. Red Chief was sitting on Bill’s chest, with one hand twined in Bill’s hair. In the other he had the sharp case-knife we used for slicing bacon; and he was industriously and realistically trying to take Bill’s scalp, according to the sentence that had been pronounced upon him the evening before.

I got the knife away from the kid and made him lie down again. But, from that moment, Bill’s spirit was broken. He laid down on his side of the bed, but he never closed an eye again in sleep as long as that boy was with us. I dozed off for a while, but along toward sun-up I remembered that Red Chief had said I was to be burned at the stake at the rising of the sun. I wasn’t nervous or afraid; but I sat up and lit my pipe and leaned against a rock.

‘What you getting up so soon for, Sam?’ asked Bill.

‘Me?’ says I. ‘Oh, I got a kind of a pain in my shoulder. I thought sitting up would rest it.’

‘You’re a liar!’ says Bill. ‘You’re afraid. You was to be burned at sunrise, and you was afraid he’d do it. And he would, too, if he could find a match. Ain’t it awful, Sam? Do you think anybody will pay out money to get a little imp like that back home?’

‘Sure,’ said I. ‘A rowdy kid like that is just the kind that parents dote on. Now, you and the Chief get up and cook breakfast, while I go up on the top of this mountain and reconnoitre.’

I went up on the peak of the little mountain and ran my eye over the contiguous vicinity. Over toward Summit I expected to see the sturdy yeomanry of the village armed with scythes and pitchforks beating the countryside for the dastardly kidnappers. But what I saw was a peaceful landscape dotted with one man ploughing with a dun mule. Nobody was dragging the creek; no couriers dashed hither and yon, bringing tidings of no news to the distracted parents. There was a sylvan attitude of somnolent sleepiness pervading that section of the external outward surface of Alabama that lay exposed to my view. ‘Perhaps,’ says I to myself, ‘it has not yet been discovered that the wolves have borne away the tender lambkin from the fold. Heaven help the wolves!’ says I, and I went down the mountain to breakfast.

When I got to the cave I found Bill backed up against the side of it, breathing hard, and the boy threatening to smash him with a rock half as big as a cocoanut.

‘He put a red-hot boiled potato down my back,’ explained Bill, ‘and then mashed it with his foot; and I boxed his ears. Have you got a gun about you, Sam?’

I took the rock away from the boy and kind of patched up the argument. ‘I’ll fix you,’ says the kid to Bill. ‘No man ever yet struck the Red Chief but what he got paid for it. You better beware!’

After breakfast the kid takes a piece of leather with strings wrapped around it out of his pocket and goes outside the cave unwinding it.

‘What’s he up to now?’ says Bill, anxiously. ‘You don’t think he’ll run away, do you, Sam?’

‘No fear of it,’ says I. ‘He don’t seem to be much of a home body. But we’ve got to fix up some plan about the ransom. There don’t seem to be much excitement around Summit on account of his disappearance; but maybe they haven’t realized yet that he’s gone. His folks may think he’s spending the night with Aunt Jane or one of the neighbours. Anyhow, he’ll be missed to-day. To-night we must get a message to his father demanding the two thousand dollars for his return.’

Just then we heard a kind of war-whoop, such as David might have emitted when he knocked out the champion Goliath. It was a sling that Red Chief had pulled out of his pocket, and he was whirling it around his head.

I dodged, and heard a heavy thud and a kind of a sigh from Bill, like a horse gives out when you take his saddle off. A niggerhead rock the size of an egg had caught Bill just behind his left ear. He loosened himself all over and fell in the fire across the frying pan of hot water for washing the dishes. I dragged him out and poured cold water on his head for half an hour.

By and by, Bill sits up and feels behind his ear and says: ‘Sam, do you know who my favourite Biblical character is?’

‘Take it easy,’ says I. ‘You’ll come to your senses presently.’

‘King Herod,’ says he. ‘You won’t go away and leave me here alone, will you, Sam?’

I went out and caught that boy and shook him until his freckles rattled.

‘If you don’t behave,’ says I, ‘I’ll take you straight home. Now, are you going to be good, or not?’

‘I was only funning,’ says he sullenly. ‘I didn’t mean to hurt Old Hank. But what did he hit me for? I’ll behave, Snake-eye, if you won’t send me home, and if you’ll let me play the Black Scout to-day.’

‘I don’t know the game,’ says I. ‘That’s for you and Mr. Bill to decide. He’s your playmate for the day. I’m going away for a while, on business. Now, you come in and make friends with him and say you are sorry for hurting him, or home you go, at once.’

I made him and Bill shake hands, and then I took Bill aside and told him I was going to Poplar Cove, a little village three miles from the cave, and find out what I could about how the kidnapping had been regarded in Summit. Also, I thought it best to send a peremptory letter to old man Dorset that day, demanding the ransom and dictating how it should be paid.

‘You know, Sam,’ says Bill, ‘I’ve stood by you without batting an eye in earthquakes, fire and flood – in poker games, dynamite outrages, police raids, train robberies and cyclones. I never lost my nerve yet till we kidnapped that two-legged skyrocket of a kid. He’s got me going. You won’t leave me long with him, will you, Sam?’

‘I’ll be back some time this afternoon,’ says I. ‘You must keep the boy amused and quiet till I return. And now we’ll write the letter to old Dorset.’

Bill and I got paper and pencil and worked on the letter while Red Chief, with a blanket wrapped around him, strutted up and down, guarding the mouth of the cave. Bill begged me tearfully to make the ransom fifteen hundred dollars instead of two thousand. ‘I ain’t attempting,’ says he, ‘to decry the celebrated moral aspect of parental affection, but we’re dealing with humans, and it ain’t human for anybody to give up two thousand dollars for that forty-pound chunk of freckled wildcat. I’m willing to take a chance at fifteen hundred dollars. You can charge the difference up to me.’

So, to relieve Bill, I acceded, and we collaborated a letter that ran this way:

Ebenezer Dorset, Esq.:

We have your boy concealed in a place far from Summit. It is useless for you or the most skilful detectives to attempt to find him. Absolutely, the only terms on which you can have him restored to you are these: We demand fifteen hundred dollars in large bills for his return; the money to be left at midnight to-night at the same spot and in the same box as your reply – as hereinafter described. If you agree to these terms, send your answer in writing by a solitary messenger to-night at half-past eight o’clock. After crossing Owl Creek, on the road to Poplar Cove, there are three large trees about a hundred yards apart, close to the fence of the wheat field on the right-hand side. At the bottom of the fence-post, opposite the third tree, will be found a small pasteboard box.

The messenger will place the answer in this box and return immediately to Summit.

If you attempt any treachery or fail to comply with our demand as stated, you will never see your boy again.

If you pay the money as demanded, he will be returned to you safe and well within three hours. These terms are final, and if you do not accede to them no further communication will be attempted.

TWO DESPERATE MEN.

I addressed this letter to Dorset, and put it in my pocket. As I was about to start, the kid comes up to me and says:

‘Aw, Snake-eye, you said I could play the Black Scout while you was gone.’

‘Play it, of course,’ says I. ‘Mr. Bill will play with you. What kind of a game is it?’

‘I’m the Black Scout,’ says Red Chief, ‘and I have to ride to the stockade to warn the settlers that the Indians are coming. I ‘m tired of playing Indian myself. I want to be the Black Scout.’

‘All right,’ says I. ‘It sounds harmless to me. I guess Mr. Bill will help you foil the pesky savages.’

‘What am I to do?’ asks Bill, looking at the kid suspiciously.

‘You are the hoss,’ says Black Scout. ‘Get down on your hands and knees. How can I ride to the stockade without a hoss?’

‘You’d better keep him interested,’ said I, ‘till we get the scheme going. Loosen up.’

Bill gets down on his all fours, and a look comes in his eye like a rabbit’s when you catch it in a trap.

‘How far is it to the stockade, kid? ‘ he asks, in a husky manner of voice.

‘Ninety miles,’ says the Black Scout. ‘And you have to hump yourself to get there on time. Whoa, now!’

The Black Scout jumps on Bill’s back and digs his heels in his side.

‘For Heaven’s sake,’ says Bill, ‘hurry back, Sam, as soon as you can. I wish we hadn’t made the ransom more than a thousand. Say, you quit kicking me or I’ll get up and warm you good.’

I walked over to Poplar Cove and sat around the postoffice and store, talking with the chawbacons that came in to trade. One whiskerand says that he hears Summit is all upset on account of Elder Ebenezer Dorset’s boy having been lost or stolen. That was all I wanted to know. I bought some smoking tobacco, referred casually to the price of black-eyed peas, posted my letter surreptitiously and came away. The postmaster said the mail-carrier would come by in an hour to take the mail on to Summit.

When I got back to the cave Bill and the boy were not to be found. I explored the vicinity of the cave, and risked a yodel or two, but there was no response.

So I lighted my pipe and sat down on a mossy bank to await developments.

In about half an hour I heard the bushes rustle, and Bill wabbled out into the little glade in front of the cave. Behind him was the kid, stepping softly like a scout, with a broad grin on his face. Bill stopped, took off his hat and wiped his face with a red handkerchief. The kid stopped about eight feet behind him.

‘Sam,’ says Bill, ‘I suppose you’ll think I’m a renegade, but I couldn’t help it. I’m a grown person with masculine proclivities and habits of self-defence, but there is a time when all systems of egotism and predominance fail. The boy is gone. I have sent him home. All is off. There was martyrs in old times,’ goes on Bill, ‘that suffered death rather than give up the particular graft they enjoyed. None of ‘em ever was subjugated to such supernatural tortures as I have been. I tried to be faithful to our articles of depredation; but there came a limit.’

‘What’s the trouble, Bill?’ I asks him.

‘I was rode,’ says Bill, ‘the ninety miles to the stockade, not barring an inch. Then, when the settlers was rescued, I was given oats. Sand ain’t a palatable substitute. And then, for an hour I had to try to explain to him why there was nothin’ in holes, how a road can run both ways and what makes the grass green. I tell you, Sam, a human can only stand so much. I takes him by the neck of his clothes and drags him down the mountain. On the way he kicks my legs black-and-blue from the knees down; and I’ve got two or three bites on my thumb and hand cauterized.

‘But he’s gone’ – continues Bill – ‘gone home. I showed him the road to Summit and kicked him about eight feet nearer there at one kick. I’m sorry we lose the ransom; but it was either that or Bill Driscoll to the madhouse.’

Bill is puffing and blowing, but there is a look of ineffable peace and growing content on his rose-pink features.

‘Bill,’ says I, ‘there isn’t any heart disease in your family, is there?’

‘No,’ says Bill, ‘nothing chronic except malaria and accidents. Why?’

‘Then you might turn around,’ says I, ‘and have a look behind you.’

Bill turns and sees the boy, and loses his complexion and sits down plump on the ground and begins to pluck aimlessly at grass and little sticks. For an hour I was afraid for his mind. And then I told him that my scheme was to put the whole job through immediately and that we would get the ransom and be off with it by midnight if old Dorset fell in with our proposition. So Bill braced up enough to give the kid a weak sort of a smile and a promise to play the Russian in a Japanese war with him as soon as he felt a little better.

I had a scheme for collecting that ransom without danger of being caught by counterplots that ought to commend itself to professional kidnappers. The tree under which the answer was to be left – and the money later on – was close to the road fence with big, bare fields on all sides. If a gang of constables should be watching for any one to come for the note they could see him a long way off crossing the fields or in the road. But no, sirree! At half-past eight I was up in that tree as well hidden as a tree toad, waiting for the messenger to arrive.

Exactly on time, a half-grown boy rides up the road on a bicycle, locates the pasteboard box at the foot of the fencepost, slips a folded piece of paper into it and pedals away again back toward Summit.

I waited an hour and then concluded the thing was square. I slid down the tree, got the note, slipped along the fence till I struck the woods, and was back at the cave in another half an hour. I opened the note, got near the lantern and read it to Bill. It was written with a pen in a crabbed hand, and the sum and substance of it was this:

Two Desperate Men.

Gentlemen: I received your letter to-day by post, in regard to the ransom you ask for the return of my son. I think you are a little high in your demands, and I hereby make you a counter-proposition, which I am inclined to believe you will accept. You bring Johnny home and pay me two hundred and fifty dollars in cash, and I agree to take him off your hands. You had better come at night, for the neighbours believe he is lost, and I couldn’t be responsible for what they would do to anybody they saw bringing him back.

Very respectfully,

EBENEZER DORSET.

‘Great pirates of Penzance!’ says I; ‘of all the impudent —’

But I glanced at Bill, and hesitated. He had the most appealing look in his eyes I ever saw on the face of a dumb or a talking brute.

‘Sam,’ says he, ‘what’s two hundred and fifty dollars, after all? We’ve got the money. One more night of this kid will send me to a bed in Bedlam. Besides being a thorough gentleman, I think Mr. Dorset is a spendthrift for making us such a liberal offer. You ain’t going to let the chance go, are you?’

‘Tell you the truth, Bill,’ says I, ‘this little he ewe lamb has somewhat got on my nerves too. We’ll take him home, pay the ransom and make our get-away.’

We took him home that night. We got him to go by telling him that his father had bought a silver-mounted rifle and a pair of moccasins for him, and we were going to hunt bears the next day.

It was just twelve o’clock when we knocked at Ebenezer’s front door. Just at the moment when I should have been abstracting the fifteen hundred dollars from the box under the tree, according to the original proposition, Bill was counting out two hundred and fifty dollars into Dorset’s hand.

When the kid found out we were going to leave him at home he started up a howl like a calliope and fastened himself as tight as a leech to Bill’s leg. His father peeled him away gradually, like a porous plaster.

‘How long can you hold him?’ asks Bill.

‘I’m not as strong as I used to be,’ says old Dorset, ‘but I think I can promise you ten minutes.’

‘Enough,’ says Bill. ‘In ten minutes I shall cross the Central, Southern and Middle Western States, and be legging it trippingly for the Canadian border.’

And, as dark as it was, and as fat as Bill was, and as good a runner as I am, he was a good mile and a half out of Summit before I could catch up with him.

Tommy’s Burglar

At ten o’clock P. M. Felicia, the maid, left by the basement door with the policeman to get a raspberry phosphate around the corner. She detested the police– man and objected earnestly to the arrangement. She pointed out, not unreasonably, that she might have been allowed to fall asleep over one of St. George Rathbone’s novels on the third floor, but she was overruled. Raspberries and cops were not created for nothing.

The burglar got into the house without much difficulty; because we must have action and not too much description in a 2,000-word story.

In the dining room he opened the slide of his dark lantern. With a brace and centrebit he began to bore into the lock of the silver-closet.

Suddenly a click was heard. The room was flooded with electric light. The dark velvet portières parted to admit a fair-haired boy of eight in pink pajamas, bearing a bottle of olive oil in his hand.

‘Are you a burglar?’ he asked, in a sweet, childish voice.

‘Listen to that,’ exclaimed the man, in a hoarse voice. ‘Am I a burglar? Wot do you suppose I have a three-days’ growth of bristly bread on my face for, and a cap with flaps? Give me the oil, quick, and let me grease the bit, so I won’t wake up your mamma, who is lying down with a headache, and left you in charge of Felicia. who has been faithless to her trust.’

‘Oh, dear,’ said Tommy, with a sigh. ‘I thought you would be more up-to-date. This oil is for the salad when I bring lunch from the pantry for you. And mamma and papa have gone to the Metropolitan to hear De Reszke. But that isn’t my fault. It only shows how long the story has been knocking around among the editors. If the author had been wise he’d have changed it to Caruso in the proofs.’

‘Be quiet,’ hissed the burglar, under his breath. ‘If you raise an alarm I’ll wring your neck like a rabbit’s.’

‘Like a chicken’s,’ corrected Tommy. ‘You had that wrong. You don’t wring rabbits’ necks.’

‘Aren’t you afraid of me?’ asked the burglar.

‘You know I’m not,’ answered Tommy. ‘Don’t you suppose I know fact from fiction. If this wasn’t a story I’d yell like an Indian when I saw you; and you’d probably tumble downstairs and get pinched on the sidewalk.’

‘I see,’ said the burglar, ‘that you’re on to your job. Go on with the performance.’

Tommy seated himself in an armchair and drew his toes up under him.

‘Why do you go around robbing strangers, Mr. Burglar? Have you no friends?’

‘I see what you’re driving at,’ said the burglar, with a dark frown. ‘It’s the same old story. Your innocence and childish insouciance is going to lead me back into an honest life. Every time I crack a crib where there’s a kid around, it happens.’

‘Would you mind gazing with wolfish eyes at the plate of cold beef that the butler has left on the dining table?’ said Tommy. ‘I’m afraid it’s growing late.’

The burglar accommodated.

‘Poor man,’ said Tommy. ‘You must be hungry. If you will please stand in a listless attitude I will get you something to eat.’

The boy brought a roast chicken, a jar of marmalade and a bottle of wine from the pantry. The burglar seized a knife and fork sullenly.

‘It’s only been an hour,’ he grumbled, ‘since I had a lobster and a pint of musty ale up on Broadway. I wish these story writers would let a fellow have a pepsin tablet, anyhow, between feeds.’

‘My papa writes books,’ remarked Tommy.

The burglar jumped to his feet quickly.

‘You said he had gone to the opera,’ he hissed, hoarsely and with immediate suspicion.

‘I ought to have explained,’ said Tommy. ‘He didn’t buy the tickets.’ The burglar sat again and toyed with the wishbone.

‘Why do you burgle houses?’ asked the boy, wonderingly.

‘Because,’ replied the burglar, with a sudden flow of tears. ‘God bless my little brown-haired boy Bessie at home.’

‘Ah,’ said Tommy, wrinkling his nose, ‘you got that answer in the wrong place. You want to tell your hard-luck story before you pull out the child stop.’

‘Oh, yes,’ said the burglar, ‘I forgot. Well, once I lived in Milwaukee, and —’

‘Take the silver,’ said Tommy, rising from his chair.

‘Hold on,’ said the burglar. ‘But I moved away.’ I could find no other employment. For a while I managed to support my wife and child by passing confederate money; but, alas! I was forced to give that up because it did not belong to the union. I became desperate and a burglar.’

‘Have you ever fallen into the hands of the police?’ asked Tommy.

‘I said “burglar,” not “beggar,”’ answered the cracksman.

‘After you finish your lunch,’ said Tommy, ‘and experience the usual change Of heart, how shall we wind up the story?’

‘Suppose,’ said the burglar, thoughtfully, ‘that Tony Pastor turns out earlier than usual to-night, and your father gets in from ‘Parsifal’ at 10.30. I am thoroughly repentant because you have made me think of my own little boy Bessie, and —’

‘Say,’ said Tommy, ‘haven’t you got that wrong?’

‘Not on your coloured crayon drawings by B. Cory Kilvert,’ said the burglar. ‘It’s always a Bessie that I have at home, artlessly prattling to the pale-checked burglar’s bride. As I was saying, your father opens the front door just as I am departing with admonitions and sandwiches that you have wrapped up for me. Upon recognizing me as an old Harvard classmate he starts back in —’

‘Not in surprise?’ interrupted Tommy, with wide, open eyes.

‘He starts back in the doorway,’ continued the burglar. And then he rose to his feet and began to shout ‘Rah, rah, rah! rah, rah, rah! rah, rah, rah!’

‘Well,’ said Tommy, wonderingly, ‘that’s, the first time I ever knew a burglar to give a college yell when he was burglarizing a house, even in a story.’

‘That’s one on you,’ said the burglar, with a laugh. ‘I was practising the dramatization. If this is put on the stage that college touch is about the only thing that will make it go.’

Tommy looked his admiration.

‘You’re on, all right,’ he said.

‘And there’s another mistake you’ve made,’ said the burglar. ‘You should have gone some time ago and brought me the $9 gold piece your mother gave you on your birthday to take to Bessie.’

‘But she didn’t give it to me to take to Bessie,’ said Tommy, pouting.

‘Come, come!’ said the burglar, sternly. ‘It’s not nice of you to take advantage because the story contains an ambiguous sentence. You know what I mean. It’s mighty little I get out of these fictional jobs, anyhow. I lose all the loot, and I have to reform every time; and all the swag I’m allowed is the blamed little fol-de-rols and luck-pieces that you kids hand over. Why, in one story, all I got was a kiss from a little girl who came in on me when I was opening a safe. And it tasted of molasses candy, too. I’ve a good notion to tie this table cover over your head and keep on into the silver-closet.’

‘Oh, no, you haven’t,’ said Tommy, wrapping his arms around his knees. ‘Because if you did no editor would buy the story. You know you’ve got to preserve the unities.’

‘So’ve you,’ said the burglar, rather glumly. ‘Instead of sitting here talking impudence and taking the bread out of a poor man’s mouth, what you’d like to be doing is hiding under the bed and screeching at the top of your voice.’

‘You’re right, old man,’ said Tommy, heartily. ‘I wonder what they make us do it for? I think the S. P. C. C. ought to interfere. I’m sure it’s neither agreeable nor usual for a kid of my age to butt in when a full-grown burglar is at work and offer him a red sled and a pair of skates not to awaken his sick mother. And look how they make the burglars act! You’d think editors would know – but what’s the use?’

The burglar wiped his hands on the tablecloth and arose with a yawn.

‘Well, let’s get through with it,’ he said. ‘God bless you, my little boy! you have saved a man from committing a crime this night. Bessie shall pray for you as soon as I get home and give her her orders. I shall never burglarize another house – at least not until the June magazines are out. It’ll be your little sister’s turn then to run in on me while I am abstracting the U. S. 4 per cent. from the tea urn and buy me off with her coral necklace and a falsetto kiss.’

‘You haven’t got all the kicks coming to you,’ sighed Tommy, crawling out of his chair. ‘Think of the sleep I’m losing. But it’s tough on both of us, old man. I wish you could get out of the story and really rob somebody. Maybe you’ll have the chance if they dramatize us.’

‘Never!’ said the burglar, gloomily. ‘Between the box office and my better impulses that your leading juveniles are supposed to awaken and the magazines that pay on publication, I guess I’ll always be broke.’

‘I’m sorry,’ said Tommy, sympathetically. ‘But I can’t help myself any more than you can. It’s one of the canons of household fiction that no burglar shall be successful. The burglar must be foiled by a kid like me, or by a young lady heroine, or at the last moment by his old pal, Red Mike, who recognizes the house as one in which he used to be the coachman. You have got the worst end of it in any kind of a story.’

‘Well, I suppose I must be clearing out now,’ said the burglar, taking up his lantern and bracebit.

‘You have to take the rest of this chicken and the bottle of wine with you for Bessie and her mother,’ said Tommy, calmly.

‘But confound it,’ exclaimed the burglar, in an annoyed tone, ‘they don’t want it. I’ve got five cases of Chateau de Beychsvelle at home that was bottled in 1853. That claret of yours is corked. And you couldn’t get either of them to look at a chicken unless it was stewed in champagne. You know, after I get out of the story I don’t have so many limitations. I make a turn now and then.’

‘Yes, but you must take them,’ said Tommy, loading his arms with the bundles.

‘Bless you, young master!’ recited the burglar, obedient. ‘Second-Story Saul will never forget you. And now hurry and let me out, kid. Our 2,000 words must be nearly up.’

Tommy led the way through the hall toward the front door. Suddenly the burglar stopped and called to him softly: ‘Ain’t there a cop out there in front somewhere sparking the girl?’

‘Yes,’ said Tommy, ‘but what —’

‘I’m afraid he’ll catch me,’ said the burglar. ‘You mustn’t forget that this is fiction.’

‘Great head!’ said Tommy, turning. ‘Come out by the back door.’

The Adventures of Shamrock Jolnes

I am so fortunate as to count Shamrock Jolnes, the great New York detective, among my muster of friends. Jolnes is what is called the ‘inside man’ of the city detective force. He is an expert in the use of the typewriter, and it is his duty, whenever there is a ‘murder mystery’ to be solved, to sit at a desk telephone at headquarters and take down the messages of ‘cranks’ who ‘phone in their confessions to having committed the crime.

But on certain ‘off’ days when confessions are coming in slowly and three or four newspapers have run to earth as many different guilty persons, Jolnes will knock about the town with me, exhibiting, to my great delight and instruction, his marvellous powers of observation and deduction.

The other day I dropped in at Headquarters and found the great detective gazing thoughtfully at a string that was tied tightly around his little finger.

‘Good morning, Whatsup,’ he said, without turning his head. ‘I’m glad to notice that you’ve had your house fitted up with electric lights at last.’

‘Will you please tell me,’ I said, in surprise, ‘how you knew that? I am sure that I never mentioned the fact to any one, and the wiring was a rush order not completed until this morning.’

‘Nothing easier,’ said Jolnes, genially. ‘As you came in I caught the odour of the cigar you are smoking. I know an expensive cigar; and I know that not more than three men in New York can afford to smoke cigars and pay gas bills too at the present time. That was an easy one. But I am working just now on a little problem of my own.’

‘Why have you that string on your finger?’ I asked.

‘That’s the problem,’ said Jolnes. ‘My wife tied that on this morning to remind me of something I was to send up to the house. Sit down, Whatsup, and excuse me for a few moments.’

The distinguished detective went to a wall telephone, and stood with the receiver to his ear for probably ten minutes.

‘Were you listening to a confession?’ I asked, when he had returned to his chair.

‘Perhaps,’ said Jolnes, with a smile, ‘it might be called something of the sort. To be frank with you, Whatsup, I’ve cut out the dope. I’ve been increasing the quantity for so long that morphine doesn’t have much effect on me any more. I’ve got to have something more powerful. That telephone I just went to is connected with a room in the Waldorf where there’s an author’s reading in progress. Now, to get at the solution of this string.’

After five minutes of silent pondering, Jolnes looked at me, with a smile, and nodded his head.

‘Wonderful man!’ I exclaimed; ‘already?’

‘It is quite simple,’ he said, holding up his finger. ‘You see that knot? That is to prevent my forgetting. It is, therefore, a forget-me-knot. A forget-me-not is a flower. It was a sack of flour that I was to send home!’

‘Beautiful!’ I could not help crying out in admiration.

‘Suppose we go out for a ramble,’ suggested Jolnes.

‘There is only one case of importance on hand just now. Old man McCarty, one hundred and four years old, died from eating too many bananas. The evidence points so strongly to the Mafia that the police have surrounded the Second Avenue Katzenjammer Gambrinus Club No. 2, and the capture of the assassin is only the matter of a few hours. The detective force has not yet been called on for assistance.’

Jolnes and I went out and up the street toward the corner, where we were to catch a surface car.

Half-way up the block we met Rheingelder, an acquaintance of ours, who held a City Hall position.

‘Good morning, Rheingelder,’ said Jolnes, halting.

‘Nice breakfast that was you had this morning.’ Always on the lookout for the detective’s remarkable feats of deduction, I saw Jolnes’s eye flash for an instant upon a long yellow splash on the shirt bosom and a smaller one upon the chin of Rheingelder – both undoubtedly made by the yolk of an egg.

‘Oh, dot is some of your detectiveness,’ said Rheingelder, shaking all over with a smile. ‘Vell, I pet you trinks und cigars all round dot you cannot tell vot I haf eaten for breakfast.’

‘Done,’ said Jolnes. ‘Sausage, pumpernickel and coffee.’

Rheingelder admitted the correctness of the surmise and paid the bet.

When we had proceeded on our way I said to Jolnes: ‘I thought you looked at the egg spilled on his chin and shirt front.’

‘I did,’ said Jolnes. ‘That is where I began my deduction. Rheingelder is a very economical, saving man. Yesterday eggs dropped in the market to twenty-eight cents per dozen. To-day they are quoted at forty-two. Rheingelder ate eggs yesterday, and to-day he went back to his usual fare. A little thing like this isn’t anything, Whatsup; it belongs to the primary arithmetic class.’

When we boarded the street car we found the seats all occupied – principally by ladies. Jolnes and I stood on the rear platform.

About the middle of the car there sat an elderly man with a short, gray beard, who looked to be the typical, well-dressed New Yorker. At successive corners other ladies climbed aboard, and soon three or four of them were standing over the man, clinging to straps and glaring meaningly at the man who occupied the coveted seat. But he resolutely retained his place.

‘We New Yorkers,’ I remarked to Jolnes, ‘have about lost our manners, as far as the exercise of them in public goes.’

‘Perhaps so,’ said Jolnes, lightly; ‘but the man you evidently refer to happens to be a very chivalrous and courteous gentleman from Old Virginia. He is spending a few days in New York with his wife and two daughters, and he leaves for the South to-night.’

‘You know him, then?’ I said, in amazement.

‘I never saw him before we stepped on the car,’ declared the detective, smilingly.

‘By the gold tooth of the Witch of Endor!’ I cried, ‘if you can construe all that from his appearance you are dealing in nothing else than black art.’

‘The habit of observation – nothing more,’ said Jolnes. ‘If the old gentleman gets off the car before we do, I think I can demonstrate to you the accuracy of my deduction.’

Three blocks farther along the gentleman rose to leave the car. Jolnes addressed him at the door: ‘Pardon me, sir, but are you not Colonel Hunter, of Norfolk, Virginia?’

‘No, suh,’ was the extremely courteous answer. ‘My name, suh, is Ellison – Major Winfield R. Ellison, from Fairfax County, in the same state. I know a good many people, suh, in Norfolk – the Goodriches, the Tollivers, and the Crabtrees, suh, but I never had the pleasure of meeting yo’ friend, Colonel Hunter. I am happy to say, suh, that I am going back to Virginia to-night, after having spent a week in yo’ city with my wife and three daughters. I shall be in Norfolk in about ten days, and if you will give me yo’ name, suh, I will take pleasure in looking up Colonel Hunter and telling him that you inquired after him, suh.’

‘Thank you,’ said Jolnes; ‘tell him that Reynolds sent his regards, if you will be so kind.’

I glanced at the great New York detective and saw that a look of intense chagrin had come upon his clear-cut features. Failure in the slightest point always galled Shamrock Jolnes.

‘Did you say your three daughters?’ he asked of the Virginia gentleman.

‘Yes, suh, my three daughters, all as fine girls as there are in Fairfax County,’ was the answer.

With that Major Ellison stopped the car and began to descend the step.

Shamrock Jolnes clutched his arm.

‘One moment, sir,’ he begged, in an urbane voice in which I alone detected the anxiety – ‘am I not right in believing that one of the young ladies is an adopted daughter?’

‘You are, suh,’ admitted the major, from the ground, ‘but how the devil you knew it, suh, is mo’ than I can tell.’

‘And mo’ than I can tell, too,’ I said, as the car went on.

Jolnes was restored to his calm, observant serenity by having wrested victory from his apparent failure; so after we got off the car he invited me into a cafe, promising to reveal the process of his latest wonderful feat.

‘In the first place,’ he began after we were comfortably seated, ‘I knew the gentleman was no New Yorker because he was flushed and uneasy and restless on account of the ladies that were standing, although he did not rise and give them his seat. I decided from his appearance that he was a Southerner rather than a Westerner.

‘Next I began to figure out his reason for not relinquishing his seat to a lady when he evidently felt strongly, but not overpoweringly, impelled to do so. I very quickly decided upon that. I noticed that one of his eyes had received a severe jab in one corner, which was red and inflamed, and that all over his face were tiny round marks about the size of the end of an uncut lead pencil. Also upon both of his patent leather shoes were a number of deep imprints shaped like ovals cut off square at one end.

‘Now, there is only one district in New York City where a man is bound to receive scars and wounds and indentations of that sort – and that is along the sidewalks of Twenty-third Street and a portion of Sixth Avenue south of there. I knew from the imprints of trampling French heels on his feet and the marks of countless jabs in the face from umbrellas and parasols carried by women in the shopping district that he had been in conflict with the Amazonian troops. And as he was a man of intelligent appearance, I knew he would not have braved such dangers unless he had been dragged thither by his own women folk. Therefore, when he got on the car his anger at the treatment he had received was sufficient to make him keep his seat in spite of his traditions of Southern chivalry.’

‘That is all very well,’ I said, ‘but why did you insist upon daughters – and especially two daughters? Why couldn’t a wife alone have taken him shopping?’

‘There had to be daughters,’ said Jolnes, calmly. ‘If he had only a wife, and she near his own age, he could have bluffed her into going alone. If he had a young wife she would prefer to go alone. So there you are.’

‘I’ll admit that,’ I said; ‘but, now, why two daughters? And how, in the name of all the prophets, did you guess that one was adopted when he told you he had three?’

‘Don’t say guess,’ said Jolnes, with a touch of pride in his air; ‘there is no such word in the lexicon of ratiocination. In Major Ellison’s buttonhole there was a carnation and a rosebud backed by a geranium leaf. No woman ever combined a carnation and a rosebud into a boutonniere. Close your eyes, Whatsup, and give the logic of your imagination a chance. Cannot you see the lovely Adele fastening the carnation to the lapel so that papa may be gay upon the street? And then the romping Edith May dancing up with sisterly jealousy to add her rosebud to the adornment?’

‘And then,’ I cried, beginning to feel enthusiasm, ‘when he declared that he had three daughters’ – ‘I could see,’ said Jolnes, ‘one in the background who added no flower; and I knew that she must be —’

‘Adopted!’ I broke in. ‘I give you every credit; but how did you know he was leaving for the South to-night?’

‘In his breast pocket,’ said the great detective, ‘something large and oval made a protuberance. Good liquor is scarce on trains, and it is a long journey from New York to Fairfax County.’

‘Again, I must bow to you,’ I said. ‘And tell me this, so that my last shred of doubt will be cleared away; why did you decide that he was from Virginia?’

‘It was very faint, I admit,’ answered Shamrock Jolnes, ‘but no trained observer could have failed to detect the odour of mint in the car.’

The Hiding of Black Bill

A lank, strong, red-faced man with a Wellington beak and small, fiery eyes tempered by flaxen lashes, sat on the station platform at Los Pinos swinging his legs to and fro. At his side sat another man, fat, melancholy, and seedy, who seemed to be his friend. They had the appearance of men to whom life had appeared as – a reversible coat – seamy on both sides.

‘Ain’t seen you in about four years, Ham,’ said the seedy man. ‘Which way you been travelling?’

‘Texas,’ said the red-faced man. ‘It was too cold in Alaska for me. And I found it warm in Texas. I’ll tell you about one hot spell I went through there.

‘One morning I steps off the International at a water-tank and lets it go on without me. ’Twas a ranch country, and fuller of spite-houses than New York City. Only out there they build ’em twenty miles away so you can’t smell what they’ve got for dinner, instead of running ’em up two inches from their neighbors’ windows.

‘There wasn’t any roads in sight, so I footed it ‘cross country. The grass was shoe-top deep, and the mesquite timber looked just like a peach orchard. It was so much like a gentleman’s private estate that every minute you expected a kennelful of bulldogs to run out and bite you. But I must have walked twenty miles before I came in sight of a ranch-house. It was a little one, about as big as an elevated-railroad station.

‘There was a little man in a white shirt and brown overalls and a pink handkerchief around his neck rolling cigarettes under a tree in front of the door.

‘“Greetings,” says I. “Any refreshment, welcome, emoluments, or even work for a comparative stranger?”

‘“Oh, come in,” says he, in a refined tone. “Sit down on that stool, please. I didn’t hear your horse coming.”

‘“He isn’t near enough yet,” says I. “I walked. I don’t want to be a burden, but I wonder if you have three or four gallons of water handy.”

‘“You do look pretty dusty,” says he; “but our bathing arrangements —”

‘“It’s a drink I want,” says I. “Never mind the dust that’s on the outside.”

‘He gets me a dipper of water out of a red jar hanging up, and then goes on:

‘“Do you want work?”

‘“For a time,” says I. “This is a rather quiet section of the country, isn’t it?”

‘“It is,” says he. “Sometimes – so I have been told – one sees no human being pass for weeks at a time. I’ve been here only a month. I bought the ranch from an old settler who wanted to move farther west.”

‘“It suits me,” says I. “Quiet and retirement are good for a man sometimes. And I need a job. I can tend bar, salt mines, lecture, float stock, do a little middle-weight slugging, and play the piano.”

‘“Can you herd sheep?” asks the little ranch-man.

‘“Do you mean have I heard sheep?” says I.

‘“Can you herd ’em – take charge of a flock of ’em?” says he.

‘“Oh,” says I, “now I understand. You mean chase ’em around and bark at ’em like collie dogs. Well, I might,” says I. “I’ve never exactly done any sheep-herding, but I’ve often seen ’em from car windows masticating daisies, and they don’t look dangerous.”

‘“I’m short a herder,” says the ranchman. “You never can depend on the Mexicans. I’ve only got two flocks. You may take out my bunch of muttons – there are only eight hundred of ’em – in the morning, if you like. The pay is twelve dollars a month and your rations furnished. You camp in a tent on the prairie with your sheep. You do your own cooking, but wood and water are brought to your camp. It’s an easy job.”

‘“I’m on,” says I. “I’ll take the job even if I have to garland my brow and hold on to a crook and wear a loose-effect and play on a pipe like the shepherds do in pictures.”

‘So the next morning the little ranchman helps me drive the flock of muttons from the corral to about two miles out and let ’em graze on a little hillside on the prairie. He gives me a lot of instructions about not letting bunches of them stray off from the herd, and driving ’em down to a water-hole to drink at noon.

‘“I’ll bring out your tent and camping outfit and rations in the buckboard before night,” says he.

‘“Fine,” says I. “And don’t forget the rations. Nor the camping outfit. And be sure to bring the tent. Your name’s Zollicoffer, ain’t it?”

‘“My name,” says he, “is Henry Ogden.”

‘“All right, Mr. Ogden,” says I. “Mine is Mr. Percival Saint Clair.”

‘I herded sheep for five days on the Rancho Chiquito; and then the wool entered my soul. That getting next to Nature certainly got next to me. I was lonesomer than Crusoe’s goat. I’ve seen a lot of persons more entertaining as companions than those sheep were. I’d drive ’em to the corral and pen ’em every evening, and then cook my corn-bread and mutton and coffee, and lie down in a tent the size of a table-cloth, and listen to the coyotes and whippoorwills singing around the camp.

‘The fifth evening, after I had corralled my costly but uncongenial muttons, I walked over to the ranch-house and stepped in the door.

‘“Mr. Ogden,” says I, “you and me have got to get sociable. Sheep are all very well to dot the landscape and furnish eight-dollar cotton suitings for man, but for table-talk and fireside companions they rank along with five-o’clock teazers. If you’ve got a deck of cards, or a Parcheesi outfit, or a game of authors, get ’em out, and let’s get on a mental basis. I’ve got to do something in an intellectual line, if it’s only to knock somebody’s brains out.”

‘This Henry Ogden was a peculiar kind of ranchman. He wore finger-rings and a big gold watch and careful neckties. And his face was calm, and his nose-spectacles was kept very shiny. I saw once, in Muscogee, an outlaw hung for murdering six men, who was a dead ringer for him. But I knew a preacher in Arkansas that you would have taken to be his brother. I didn’t care much for him either way; what I wanted was some fellowship and communion with holy saints or lost sinners – anything sheepless would do.

‘“Well, Saint Clair,” says he, laying down the book he was reading, “I guess it must be pretty lonesome for you at first. And I don’t deny that it’s monotonous for me. Are you sure you corralled your sheep so they won’t stray out?”

‘“They’re shut up as tight as the jury of a millionaire murderer,” says I. “And I’ll be back with them long before they’ll need their trained nurse.”

‘So Ogden digs up a deck of cards, and we play casino. After five days and nights of my sheep-camp it was like a toot on Broadway. When I caught big casino I felt as excited as if I had made a million in Trinity. And when H. O. loosened up a little and told the story about the lady in the Pullman car I laughed for five minutes.

‘That showed what a comparative thing life is. A man may see so much that he’d be bored to turn his head to look at a $3,000,000 fire or Joe Weber or the Adriatic Sea. But let him herd sheep for a spell, and you’ll see him splitting his ribs laughing at “Curfew Shall Not Ring To-night,” or really enjoying himself playing cards with ladies.

‘By-and-by Ogden gets out a decanter of Bourbon, and then there is a total eclipse of sheep.

‘“Do you remember reading in the papers, about a month ago,” says he, “about a train hold-up on the M. K. & T.? The express agent was shot through the shoulder, and about $15,000 in currency taken. And it’s said that only one man did the job.”

‘“Seems to me I do,” says I. “But such things happen so often they don’t linger long in the human Texas mind. Did they overtake, overhaul, seize, or lay hands upon the despoiler?”

‘“He escaped,” says Ogden. “And I was just reading in a paper to-day that the officers have tracked him down into this part of the country. It seems the bills the robber got were all the first issue of currency to the Second National Bank of Espinosa City. And so they’ve followed the trail where they’ve been spent, and it leads this way.”

‘Ogden pours out some more Bourbon, and shoves me the bottle.

‘“I imagine,” says I, after ingurgitating another modicum of the royal boose, “that it wouldn’t be at all a disingenuous idea for a train robber to run down into this part of the country to hide for a spell. A sheep-ranch, now,” says I, “would be the finest kind of a place. Who’d ever expect to find such a desperate character among these song-birds and muttons and wild flowers? And, by the way,” says I, kind of looking H. Ogden over, ‘was there any description mentioned of this single-handed terror? Was his lineaments or height and thickness or teeth fillings or style of habiliments set forth in print?”

‘“Why, no,” says Ogden; “they say nobody got a good sight of him because he wore a mask. But they know it was a train-robber called Black Bill, because he always works alone and because he dropped a handkerchief in the express-car that had his name on it.”

‘“All right,” says I. “I approve of Black Bill’s retreat to the sheep-ranges. I guess they won’t find him.”

‘“There’s one thousand dollars reward for his capture,” says Ogden.

‘“I don’t need that kind of money,” says I, looking Mr. Sheepman straight in the eye. “The twelve dollars a month you pay me is enough. I need a rest, and I can save up until I get enough to pay my fare to Texarkana, where my widowed mother lives. If Black Bill,” I goes on, looking significantly at Ogden, “was to have come down this way – say, a month ago – and bought a little sheep-ranch and —”

‘“Stop,” says Ogden, getting out of his chair and looking pretty vicious. “Do you mean to insinuate —”

‘“Nothing,” says I; “no insinuations. I’m stating a hypodermical case. I say, if Black Bill had come down here and bought a sheep-ranch and hired me to Little-Boy-Blue ’em and treated me square and friendly, as you’ve done, he’d never have anything to fear from me. A man is a man, regardless of any complications he may have with sheep or railroad trains. Now you know where I stand.”

‘Ogden looks black as camp-coffee for nine seconds, and then he laughs, amused.

‘“You’ll do, Saint Clair,” says he. “If I was Black Bill I wouldn’t be afraid to trust you. Let’s have a game or two of seven-up to-night. That is, if you don’t mind playing with a train-robber.”

‘“I’ve told you,” says I, “my oral sentiments, and there’s no strings to ’em.”

‘While I was shuffling after the first hand, I asks Ogden, as if the idea was a kind of a casualty, where he was from.

‘“Oh,” says he, “from the Mississippi Valley.”

‘“That’s a nice little place,” says I. “I’ve often stopped over there. But didn’t you find the sheets a little damp and the food poor? Now, I hail,” says I, “from the Pacific Slope. Ever put up there?”

‘“Too draughty,” says Ogden. “But if you’ve ever in the Middle West just mention my name, and you’ll get foot-warmers and dripped coffee.”

‘“Well,” says I, “I wasn’t exactly fishing for your private telephone number and the middle name of your aunt that carried off the Cumberland Presbyterian minister. It don’t matter. I just want you to know you are safe in the hands of your shepherd. Now, don’t play hearts on spades, and don’t get nervous.”

‘“Still harping,” says Ogden, laughing again. “Don’t you suppose that if I was Black Bill and thought you suspected me, I’d put a Winchester bullet into you and stop my nervousness, if I had any?”

‘“Not any,” says I. “A man who’s got the nerve to hold up a train single-handed wouldn’t do a trick like that. I’ve knocked about enough to know that them are the kind of men who put a value on a friend. Not that I can claim being a friend of yours, Mr. Ogden,” says I, “being only your sheep-herder; but under more expeditious circumstances we might have been.”

‘“Forget the sheep temporarily, I beg,” says Ogden, “and cut for deal.”

‘About four days afterward, while my muttons was nooning on the water-hole and I deep in the interstices of making a pot of coffee, up rides softly on the grass a mysterious person in the garb of the being he wished to represent. He was dressed somewhere between a Kansas City detective, Buffalo Bill, and the town dog-catcher of Baton Rouge. His chin and eye wasn’t molded on fighting lines, so I knew he was only a scout.

‘“Herdin’ sheep?” he asks me.

‘“Well,” says I, “to a man of your evident gumptional endowments, I wouldn’t have the nerve to state that I am engaged in decorating old bronzes or oiling bicycle sprockets.”

‘“You don’t talk or look like a sheep-herder to me,” says he.

‘“But you talk like what you look like to me,” says I.

‘And then he asks me who I was working for, and I shows him Rancho Chiquito, two miles away, in the shadow of a low hill, and he tells me he’s a deputy sheriff.

‘“There’s a train-robber called Black Bill supposed to be somewhere in these parts,” says the scout. “He’s been traced as far as San Antonio, and maybe farther. Have you seen or heard of any strangers around here during the past month?”

‘“I have not,” says I, “except a report of one over at the Mexican quarters of Loomis’ ranch, on the Frio.”

‘“What do you know about him?” asks the deputy.

‘“He’s three days old,” says I.

‘“What kind of a looking man is the man you work for?” he asks. “Does old George Ramey own this place yet? He’s run sheep here for the last ten years, but never had no success.”

‘“The old man has sold out and gone West,” I tells him. “Another sheep-fancier bought him out about a month ago.”

‘“What kind of a looking man is he?” asks the deputy again.

‘“Oh,” says I, “a big, fat kind of a Dutchman with long whiskers and blue specs. I don’t think he knows a sheep from a ground-squirrel. I guess old George soaked him pretty well on the deal,” says I.

‘After indulging himself in a lot more non-communicative information and two-thirds of my dinner, the deputy rides away.

‘That night I mentions the matter to Ogden. “They’re drawing the tendrils of the octopus around Black Bill,” says I. And then I told him about the deputy sheriff, and how I’d described him to the deputy, and what the deputy said about the matter.

‘“Oh, well,” says Ogden, “let’s don’t borrow any of Black Bill’s troubles. We’ve a few of our own. Get the Bourbon out of the cupboard and we’ll drink to his health – unless,” says he, with his little cackling laugh, “you’re prejudiced against train-robbers.”

‘“I’ll drink,” says I, “to any man who’s a friend to a friend. And I believe that Black Bill,’ I goes on, ‘would be that. So here’s to Black Bill, and may he have good luck.”

‘And both of us drank.

‘About two weeks later comes shearing-time. The sheep had to be driven up to the ranch, and a lot of frowzy-headed Mexicans would snip the fur off of them with back-action scissors. So the afternoon before the barbers were to come I hustled my underdone muttons over the hill, across the dell, down by the winding brook, and up to the ranch-house, where I penned ’em in a corral and bade ’em my nightly adieus.

‘I went from there to the ranch-house. I find H. Ogden, Esquire, lying asleep on his little cot bed. I guess he had been overcome by anti-insomnia or diswakefulness or some of the diseases peculiar to the sheep business. His mouth and vest were open, and he breathed like a second-hand bicycle pump. I looked at him and gave vent to just a few musings. “Imperial Caesar,” says I, “asleep in such a way, might shut his mouth and keep the wind away.”

A man asleep is certainly a sight to make angels weep. What good is all his brain, muscle, backing, nerve, influence, and family connections? He’s at the mercy of his enemies, and more so of his friends. And he’s about as beautiful as a cab-horse leaning against the Metropolitan Opera House at 12.30 A.M. dreaming of the plains of Arabia. Now, a woman asleep you regard as different. No matter how she looks, you know it’s better for all hands for her to be that way.

‘Well, I took a drink of Bourbon and one for Ogden, and started in to be comfortable while he was taking his nap. He had some books on his table on indigenous subjects, such as Japan and drainage and physical culture – and some tobacco, which seemed more to the point.

‘After I’d smoked a few, and listened to the sartorial breathing of H. O., I happened to look out the window toward the shearing-pens, where there was a kind of a road coming up from a kind of a road across a kind of a creek farther away.

‘I saw five men riding up to the house. All of ’em carried guns across their saddles, and among ’em was the deputy that had talked to me at my camp.

‘They rode up careful, in open formation, with their guns ready. I set apart with my eye the one I opinionated to be the boss muck-raker of this law-and-order cavalry.

‘“Good-evening, gents,” says I. “Won’t you ’light, and tie your horses?”

‘The boss rides up close, and swings his gun over till the opening in it seems to cover my whole front elevation.

‘“Don’t you move your hands none,” says he, “till you and me indulge in a adequate amount of necessary conversation.”

‘“I will not,” says I. “I am no deaf-mute, and therefore will not have to disobey your injunctions in replying.”

‘“We are on the lookout,” says he, “for Black Bill, the man that held up the Katy for $15,000 in May. We are searching the ranches and everybody on ’em. What is your name, and what do you do on this ranch?”

‘“Captain,” says I, “Percival Saint Clair is my occupation, and my name is sheep-herder. I’ve got my flock of veals – no, muttons – penned here to-night. The shearers are coming to-morrow to give them a hair-cut – with baa-a-rum, I suppose.”

‘“Where’s the boss of this ranch?” the captain of the gang asks me.

‘“Wait just a minute, cap’n,” says I. “Wasn’t there a kind of a reward offered for the capture of this desperate character you have referred to in your preamble?”

‘“There’s a thousand dollars reward offered,” says the captain, “but it’s for his capture and conviction. There don’t seem to be no provision made for an informer.”

‘“It looks like it might rain in a day or so,” says I, in a tired way, looking up at the cerulean blue sky.

‘“If you know anything about the locality, disposition, or secretiveness of this here Black Bill,” says he, in a severe dialect, “you are amiable to the law in not reporting it.”

‘“I heard a fence-rider say,” says I, in a desultory kind of voice, “that a Mexican told a cowboy named Jake over at Pidgin’s store on the Nueces that he heard that Black Bill had been seen in Matamoras by a sheepman’s cousin two weeks ago.”

‘“Tell you what I’ll do, Tight Mouth,” says the captain, after looking me over for bargains. “If you put us on so we can scoop Black Bill, I’ll pay you a hundred dollars out of my own – out of our own – pockets. That’s liberal,” says he. “You ain’t entitled to anything. Now, what do you say?”

‘“Cash down now?” I asks.

‘The captain has a sort of discussion with his helpmates, and they all produce the contents of their pockets for analysis. Out of the general results they figured up $102.30 in cash and $31 worth of plug tobacco.

‘“Come nearer, capitan meeo,” says I, “and listen.” He so did.

‘“I am mighty poor and low down in the world,” says I. “I am working for twelve dollars a month trying to keep a lot of animals together whose only thought seems to be to get asunder. Although,” says I, “I regard myself as some better than the State of South Dakota, it’s a come-down to a man who has heretofore regarded sheep only in the form of chops. I’m pretty far reduced in the world on account of foiled ambitions and rum and a kind of cocktail they make along the P. R. R. all the way from Scranton to Cincinnati – dry gin, French vermouth, one squeeze of a lime, and a good dash of orange bitters. If you’re ever up that way, don’t fail to let one try you. And, again,” says I, “I have never yet went back on a friend. I’ve stayed by ’em when they had plenty, and when adversity’s overtaken me I’ve never forsook ’em.

‘“But,” I goes on, “this is not exactly the case of a friend. Twelve dollars a month is only bowing-acquaintance money. And I do not consider brown beans and corn-bread the food of friendship. I am a poor man,’” says I, “and I have a widowed mother in Texarkana. You will find Black Bill,” says I, “lying asleep in this house on a cot in the room to your right. He’s the man you want, as I know from his words and conversation. He was in a way a friend,” I explains, “and if I was the man I once was the entire product of the mines of Gondola would not have tempted me to betray him. But,” says I, “every week half of the beans was wormy, and not nigh enough wood in camp.”

‘“Better go in careful, gentlemen,” says I. “He seems impatient at times, and when you think of his late professional pursuits one would look for abrupt actions if he was come upon sudden.”

‘So the whole posse unmounts and ties their horses, and unlimbers their ammunition and equipments, and tiptoes into the house. And I follows, like Delilah when she set the Philip Stein on to Samson.

‘The leader of the posse shakes Ogden and wakes him up. And then he jumps up, and two more of the reward-hunters grab him. Ogden was mighty tough with all his slimness, and he gives ’em as neat a single-footed tussle against odds as I ever see.

‘“What does this mean?” he says, after they had him down.

‘“You’re scooped in, Mr. Black Bill,” says the captain. “That’s all.”

‘“It’s an outrage,” says H. Ogden, madder yet.

‘“It was,” says the peace-and-good-will man. “The Katy wasn’t bothering you, and there’s a law against monkeying with express packages.”

‘And he sits on H. Ogden’s stomach and goes through his pockets symptomatically and careful.

‘“I’ll make you perspire for this,” says Ogden, perspiring some himself. “I can prove who I am.”

‘“So can I,” says the captain, as he draws from H. Ogden’s inside coat-pocket a handful of new bills of the Second National Bank of Espinosa City. “Your regular engraved Tuesdays-and-Fridays visiting-card wouldn’t have a louder voice in proclaiming your indemnity than this here currency. You can get up now and prepare to go with us and expatriate your sins.”

‘H. Ogden gets up and fixes his necktie. He says no more after they have taken the money off of him.

‘“A well-greased idea,” says the sheriff captain, admiring, “to slip off down here and buy a little sheep-ranch where the hand of man is seldom heard. It was the slickest hide-out I ever see,” says the captain.

‘So one of the men goes to the shearing-pen and hunts up the other herder, a Mexican they call John Sallies, and he saddles Ogden’s horse, and the sheriffs all ride tip close around him with their guns in hand, ready to take their prisoner to town.

‘Before starting, Ogden puts the ranch in John Sallies’ hands and gives him orders about the shearing and where to graze the sheep, just as if he intended to be back in a few days. And a couple of hours afterward one Percival Saint Clair, an ex-sheep-herder of the Rancho Chiquito, might have been seen, with a hundred and nine dollars – wages and blood-money – in his pocket, riding south on another horse belonging to said ranch.’

The red-faced man paused and listened. The whistle of a coming freight-train sounded far away among the low hills.

The fat, seedy man at his side sniffed, and shook his frowzy head slowly and disparagingly.

‘What is it, Snipy?’ asked the other. ‘Got the blues again?’

‘No, I ain’t’ said the seedy one, sniffing again. ‘But I don’t like your talk. You and me have been friends, off and on, for fifteen year; and I never yet knew or heard of you giving anybody up to the law – not no one. And here was a man whose saleratus you had et and at whose table you had played games of cards – if casino can be so called. And yet you inform him to the law and take money for it. It never was like you, I say.’

‘This H. Ogden,’ resumed the red-faced man, ‘through a lawyer, proved himself free by alibis and other legal terminalities, as I so heard afterward. He never suffered no harm. He did me favors, and I hated to hand him over.’

‘How about the bills they found in his pocket?’ asked the seedy man.

‘I put ’em there,’ said the red-faced man, ‘while he was asleep, when I saw the posse riding up. I was Black Bill. Look out, Snipy, here she comes! We’ll board her on the bumpers when she takes water at the tank.’

The Octopus Marooned

‘A trust is its weakest point,’ said Jeff Peters. ‘That,’ said I, ‘sounds like one of those unintelligible remarks such as, “Why is a policeman?”‘

‘It is not,’ said Jeff. ‘There are no relations between a trust and a policeman. My remark was an epitogram – an axis – a kind of mulct’em in parvo. What it means is that a trust is like an egg, and it is not like an egg. If you want to break an egg you have to do it from the outside. The only way to break up a trust is from the inside. Keep sitting on it until it hatches. Look at the brood of young colleges and libraries that’s chirping and peeping all over the country. Yes, sir, every trust bears in its own bosom the seeds of its destruction like a rooster that crows near a Georgia colored Methodist camp meeting, or a Republican announcing himself a candidate for governor of Texas.’

I asked Jeff, jestingly, if he had ever, during his checkered, plaided, mottled, pied and dappled career, conducted an enterprise of the class to which the word ‘trust’ had been applied. Somewhat to my surprise he acknowledged the corner.

‘Once,’ said he. ‘And the state seal of New Jersey never bit into a charter that opened up a solider and safer piece of legitimate octopusing. We had everything in our favor – wind, water, police, nerve, and a clean monopoly of an article indispensable to the public. There wasn’t a trust buster on the globe that could have found a weak spot in our scheme. It made Rockefeller’s little kerosene speculation look like a bucket shop. But we lost out.’

‘Some unforeseen opposition came up, I suppose,’ I said.

‘No, sir, it was just as I said. We were self-curbed. It was a case of auto-suppression. There was a rift within the loot, as Albert Tennyson says.

‘You remember I told you that me and Andy Tucker was partners for some years. That man was the most talented conniver at stratagems I ever saw. Whenever he saw a dollar in another man’s hands he took it as a personal grudge, if he couldn’t take it any other way. Andy was educated, too, besides having a lot of useful information. He had acquired a big amount of experience out of books, and could talk for hours on any subject connected with ideas and discourse. He had been in every line of graft from lecturing on Palestine with a lot of magic lantern pictures of the annual Custom-made Clothiers’ Association convention at Atlantic City to flooding Connecticut with bogus wood alcohol distilled from nutmegs.

‘One Spring me and Andy had been over in Mexico on a flying trip during which a Philadelphia capitalist had paid us $2,500 for a half interest in a silver mine in Chihuahua. Oh, yes, the mine was all right. The other half interest must have been worth two or three thousand. I often wondered who owned that mine.

‘In coming back to the United States me and Andy stubbed our toes against a little town in Texas on the bank of the Rio Grande. The name of it was Bird City; but it wasn’t. The town had about 2,000 inhabitants, mostly men. I figured out that their principal means of existence was in living close to tall chaparral. Some of ’em were stockmen and some gamblers and some horse peculators and plenty were in the smuggling line. Me and Andy put up at a hotel that was built like something between a roof-garden and a sectional bookcase. It began to rain the day we got there. As the saying is, Juniper Aquarius was sure turning on the water plugs on Mount Amphibious.

‘Now, there were three saloons in Bird City, though neither Andy nor me drank. But we could see the townspeople making a triangular procession from one to another all day and half the night. Everybody seemed to know what to do with as much money as they had.

‘The third day of the rain it slacked up awhile in the afternoon, so me and Andy walked out to the edge of town to view the mudscape. Bird City was built between the Rio Grande and a deep wide arroyo that used to be the old bed of the river. The bank between the stream and its old bed was cracking and giving away, when we saw it, on account of the high water caused by the rain. Andy looks at it a long time. That man’s intellects was never idle. And then he unfolds to me a instantaneous idea that has occurred to him. Right there was organized a trust; and we walked back into town and put it on the market.

‘First we went to the main saloon in Bird City, called the Blue Snake, and bought it. It cost us $1,200. And then we dropped in, casual, at Mexican Joe’s place, referred to the rain, and bought him out for $500. The other one came easy at $400.

‘The next morning Bird City woke up and found itself an island. The river had busted through its old channel, and the town was surrounded by roaring torrents. The rain was still raining, and there was heavy clouds in the northwest that presaged about six more mean annual rainfalls during the next two weeks. But the worst was yet to come.

‘Bird City hopped out of its nest, waggled its pin feathers and strolled out for its matutinal toot. Lo! Mexican Joe’s place was closed and likewise the other little ’dobe life saving station. So, naturally the body politic emits thirsty ejaculations of surprise and ports hellum for the Blue Snake. And what does it find there?

‘Behind one end of the bar sits Jefferson Peters, octopus, with a sixshooter on each side of him, ready to make change or corpses as the case may be. There are three bartenders; and on the wall is a ten foot sign reading: ‘All Drinks One Dollar.’ Andy sits on the safe in his neat blue suit and gold-banded cigar, on the lookout for emergencies. The town marshal is there with two deputies to keep order, having been promised free drinks by the trust.

‘Well, sir, it took Bird City just ten minutes to realize that it was in a cage. We expected trouble; but there wasn’t any. The citizens saw that we had ‘em. The nearest railroad was thirty miles away; and it would be two weeks at least before the river would be fordable. So they began to cuss, amiable, and throw down dollars on the bar till it sounded like a selection on the xylophone.

‘There was about 1,500 grown-up adults in Bird City that had arrived at years of indiscretion; and the majority of ’em required from three to twenty drinks a day to make life endurable. The Blue Snake was the only place where they could get ‘em till the flood subsided. It was beautiful and simple as all truly great swindles are.

‘About ten o’clock the silver dollars dropping on the bar slowed down to playing two-steps and marches instead of jigs. But I looked out the window and saw a hundred or two of our customers standing in line at Bird City Savings and Loan Co., and I knew they were borrowing more money to be sucked in by the clammy tendrils of the octopus.

‘At the fashionable hour of noon everybody went home to dinner. We told the bartenders to take advantage of the lull, and do the same. Then me and Andy counted the receipts. We had taken in $1,300. We calculated that if Bird City would only remain an island for two weeks the trust would be able to endow the Chicago University with a new dormitory of padded cells for the faculty, and present every worthy poor man in Texas with a farm, provided he furnished the site for it.

‘Andy was especial inroaded by self-esteem at our success, the rudiments of the scheme having originated in his own surmises and premonitions. He got off the safe and lit the biggest cigar in the house.

‘“Jeff,” says he, “I don’t suppose that anywhere in the world you could find three cormorants with brighter ideas about down-treading the proletariat than the firm of Peters, Satan and Tucker, incorporated. We have sure handed the small consumer a giant blow in the sole apoplectic region. No?”

‘“Well,” says I, “it does look as if we would have to take up gastritis and golf or be measured for kilts in spite of ourselves. This little turn in bug juice is, verily, all to the Skibo. And I can stand it,” says I, “I’d rather batten than bant any day.”

‘Andy pours himself out four fingers of our best rye and does with it as was so intended. It was the first drink I had ever known him to take.

‘“By way of liberation,” says he, “to the gods.”

‘And then after thus doing umbrage to the heathen diabetes he drinks another to our success. And then he begins to toast the trade, beginning with Raisuli and the Northern Pacific, and on down the line to the little ones like the school book combine and the oleomargarine outrages and the Lehigh Valley and Great Scott Coal Federation.

‘“It’s all right, Andy,” says I, “to drink the health of our brother monopolists, but don’t overdo the wassail. You know our most eminent and loathed multi-corruptionists live on weak tea and dog biscuits.”

‘Andy went in the back room awhile and came out dressed in his best clothes. There was a kind of murderous and soulful look of gentle riotousness in his eye that I didn’t like. I watched him to see what turn the whiskey was going to take in him. There are two times when you never can tell what is going to happen. One is when a man takes his first drink; and the other is when a woman takes her latest.

‘In less than an hour Andy’s skate had turned to an ice yacht. He was outwardly decent and managed to preserve his aquarium, but inside he was impromptu and full of unexpectedness.

‘“Jeff,” says he, “do you know that I’m a crater – a living crater?”

‘“That’s a self-evident hypothesis,” says I. “But you’re not Irish. Why don’t you say ‘creature,’ according to the rules and syntax of America?”

‘“I’m the crater of a volcano,” says he. “I’m all aflame and crammed inside with an assortment of words and phrases that have got to have an exodus. I can feel millions of synonyms and parts of speech rising in me,” says he, “and I’ve got to make a speech of some sort. Drink,” says Andy, “always drives me to oratory.”

‘“It could do no worse,” says I.

‘“From my earliest recollections,” says he, “alcohol seemed to stimulate my sense of recitation and rhetoric. Why, in Bryan’s second campaign,” says Andy, “they used to give me three gin rickeys and I’d speak two hours longer than Billy himself could on the silver question. Finally, they persuaded me to take the gold cure.”

‘“If you’ve got to get rid of your excess verbiage,” says I, “why not go out on the river bank and speak a piece? It seems to me there was an old spell-binder named Cantharides that used to go and disincorporate himself of his windy numbers along the seashore.”

‘“No,” says Andy, “I must have an audience. I feel like if I once turned loose people would begin to call Senator Beveridge the Grand Young Sphinx of the Wabash. I’ve got to get an audience together, Jeff, and get this oral distension assuaged or it may turn in on me and I’d go about feeling like a deckle-edge edition de luxe of Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth.”

‘“On what special subject of the theorems and topics does your desire for vocality seem to be connected with?” I asks.

‘“I ain’t particular,” says Andy. “I am equally good and varicose on all subjects. I can take up the matter of Russian immigration, or the poetry of John W. Keats, or the tariff, or Kabyle literature, or drainage, and make my audience weep, cry, sob and shed tears by turns.”

‘“Well, Andy,” says I, “if you are bound to get rid of this accumulation of vernacular suppose you go out in town and work it on some indulgent citizen. Me and the boys will take care of the business. Everybody will be through dinner pretty soon, and salt pork and beans makes a man pretty thirsty. We ought to take in $1,500 more by midnight.”

‘So Andy goes out of the Blue Snake, and I see him stopping men on the street and talking to ’em. By and by he has half a dozen in a bunch listening to him; and pretty soon I see him waving his arms and elocuting at a good-sized crowd on a corner. When he walks away they string out after him, talking all the time; and he leads ’em down the main street of Bird City with more men joining the procession as they go. It reminded me of the old legerdemain that I’d read in books about the Pied Piper of Heidsieck charming the children away from the town.

‘One o’clock came; and then two; and three got under the wire for place; and not a Bird citizen came in for a drink. The streets were deserted except for some ducks and ladies going to the stores. There was only a light drizzle falling then.

‘A lonesome man came along and stopped in front of the Blue Snake to scrape the mud off his boots.

‘“Pardner,” says I, “what has happened? This morning there was hectic gaiety afoot; and now it seems more like one of them ruined cities of Tyre and Siphon where the lone lizard crawls on the walls of the main port-cullis.”

‘“The whole town,” says the muddy man, “is up in Sperry’s wool warehouse listening to your side-kicker make a speech. He is some gravy on delivering himself of audible sounds relating to matters and conclusions,” says the man.

‘“Well, I hope he’ll adjourn, sine qua non, pretty soon,” says I, “for trade languishes.”

‘Not a customer did we have that afternoon. At six o’clock two Mexicans brought Andy to the saloon lying across the back of a burro. We put him in bed while he still muttered and gesticulated with his hands and feet.

‘Then I locked up the cash and went out to see what had happened. I met a man who told me all about it. Andy had made the finest two hour speech that had ever been heard in Texas, he said, or anywhere else in the world.

‘“What was it about?” I asked.

‘“Temperance,” says he. “And when he got through, every man in Bird City signed the pledge for a year.”’

Shoes

John De Graffenreid Atwood ate of the lotus, root, stem, and flower. The tropics gobbled him up. He plunged enthusiastically into his work, which was to try to forget Rosine.

Now, they who dine on the lotus rarely consume it plain. There is a sauce au diable that goes with it; and the distillers are the chefs who prepare it. And on Johnny’s menu card it read ‘brandy.’ With a bottle between them, he and Billy Keogh would sit on the porch of the little consulate at night and roar out great, indecorous songs, until the natives, slipping hastily past, would shrug a shoulder and mutter things to themselves about the ‘Americanos diablos.’

One day Johnny’s mozo brought the mail and dumped it on the table. Johnny leaned from his hammock, and fingered the four or five letters dejectedly. Keogh was sitting on the edge of the table chopping lazily with a paper knife at the legs of a centipede that was crawling among the stationery. Johnny was in that phase of lotus-eating when all the world tastes bitter in one’s mouth.

‘Same old thing!’ he complained. ‘Fool people writing for information about the country. They want to know all about raising fruit, and how to make a fortune without work. Half of ’em don’t even send stamps for a reply. They think a consul hasn’t anything to do but write letters. Slit those envelopes for me, old man, and see what they want. I’m feeling too rocky to move.’

Keogh, acclimated beyond all possibility of ill-humor, drew his chair to the table with smiling compliance on his rose-pink countenance, and began to slit open the letters. Four of them were from citizens in various parts of the United States who seemed to regard the consul at Coralio as a cyclopedia of information. They asked long lists of questions, numerically arranged, about the climate, products, possibilities, laws, business chances, and statistics of the country in which the consul had the honor of representing his own government.

‘Write ’em, please, Billy,’ said that inert official, ‘just a line, referring them to the latest consular report. Tell ’em the State Department will be delighted to furnish the literary gems. Sign my name. Don’t let your pen scratch, Billy; it’ll keep me awake.’

‘Don’t snore,’ said Keogh, amiably, ‘and I’ll do your work for you. You need a corps of assistants, anyhow. Don’t see how you ever get out a report. Wake up a minute – here’s one more letter – it’s from your own town, too – Dalesburg.’

‘That so?’ murmured Johnny showing a mild and obligatory interest. ‘What’s it about?’

‘Postmaster writes,’ explained Keogh. ‘Says a citizen of the town wants some facts and advice from you. Says the citizen has an idea in his head of coming down where you are and opening a shoe store. Wants to know if you think the business would pay. Says he’s heard of the boom along this coast, and wants to get in on the ground floor.’

In spite of the heat and his bad temper, Johnny’s hammock swayed with his laughter. Keogh laughed too; and the pet monkey on the top shelf of the bookcase chattered in shrill sympathy with the ironical reception of the letter from Dalesburg.

‘Great bunions!’ exclaimed the consul. ‘Shoe store! What’ll they ask about next, I wonder? Overcoat factory, I reckon. Say, Billy – of our 3,000 citizens, how many do you suppose ever had on a pair of shoes?’

Keogh reflected judicially.

‘Let’s see – there’s you and me and —’

‘Not me,’ said Johnny, promptly and incorrectly, holding up a foot encased in a disreputable deerskin zapato. ‘I haven’t been a victim to shoes in months.’

‘But you’ve got ’em, though,’ went on Keogh. ‘And there’s Goodwin and Blanchard and Geddie and old Lutz and Doc Gregg and that Italian that’s agent for the banana company, and there’s old Delgado – no; he wears sandals. And, oh, yes; there’s Madama Ortiz, “what kapes the hotel” – she had on a pair of red kid slippers at the baile the other night. And Miss Pasa, her daughter, that went to school in the States – she brought back some civilized notions in the way of footgear. And there’s the comandante’s sister that dresses up her feet on feast-days – and Mrs. Geddie, who wears a two with a Castilian instep – and that’s about all the ladies. Let’s see – don’t some of the soldiers at the cuartel – no: that’s so; they’re allowed shoes only when on the march. In barracks they turn their little toeses out to grass.’

‘“Bout right,” agreed the consul. “Not over twenty out of the three thousand ever felt leather on their walking arrangements. Oh, yes; Coralio is just the town for an enterprising shoe store – that doesn’t want to part with its goods. Wonder if old Patterson is trying to jolly me! He always was full of things he called jokes. Write him a letter, Billy. I’ll dictate it. We’ll jolly him back a few.”

Keogh dipped his pen, and wrote at Johnny’s dictation. With many pauses, filled in with smoke and sundry travellings of the bottle and glasses, the following reply to the Dalesburg communication was perpetrated:

MR. OBADIAH PATTERSON,

Dalesburg, Ala.

Dear Sir: in reply to your favor of July 2d. I have the honor to inform you that, according to my opinion, there is no place on the habitable globe that presents to the eye stronger evidence of the need of a first-class shoe store than does the town of Coralio. There are 3,000 inhabitants in the place, and not a single shoe store! The situation speaks for itself. This coast is rapidly becoming the goal of enterprising business men, but the shoe business is one that has been sadly overlooked or neglected. In fact, there are a considerable number of our citizens actually without shoes at present.

Besides the want above mentioned, there is also a crying need for a brewery, a college of higher mathematics, a coal yard, and a clean and intellectual Punch and Judy show. I have the honor to be,

Your Obt. Servant,

John De Graffenreid Atwood,

U.S. CONSUL AT CORALIO.

P.S. – Hello! Uncle Obadiah. How’s the old burg racking along? What would the government do without you and me? Look out for a green-headed parrot and a bunch of bananas soon, from your old friend

Johnny.

‘I throw in that postscript,’ explained the consul, ‘so Uncle Obadiah won’t take offense at the official tone of the letter! Now, Billy, you get that correspondence fixed up, and send Pancho to the post-office with it. The Ariadne takes the mail out tomorrow if they make up that load of fruit today.’

The night programme in Coralio never varied. The recreations of the people were soporific and flat. They wandered about, barefoot and aimless, speaking lowly and smoking cigar or cigarette. Looking down on the dimly lighted ways one seemed to see a threading maze of brunette ghosts tangled with a procession of insane fireflies.

In some houses the thrumming of lugubrious guitars added to the depression of the triste night. Giant tree-frogs rattled in the foliage as loudly as the end man’s ‘bones’ in a minstrel troupe. By nine o’clock the streets were almost deserted.

Not at the consulate was there often a change of bill. Keogh would come there nightly, for Coralio’s one cool place was the little porch of that official residence. The brandy would be kept moving; and before midnight sentiment would begin to stir in the heart of the self-exiled consul. Then he would relate to Keogh the story of his ended romance. Each night Keogh would listen patiently to the tale, and be ready with untiring sympathy.

‘But don’t you think for a minute’ – thus Johnny would always conclude his woeful narrative – ‘that I’m grieving about that girl, Billy. I’ve forgotten her. She never enters my mind. If she were to enter that door right now, my pulse wouldn’t gain a beat. That’s all over long ago.’

‘Don’t I know it?’ Keogh would answer. ‘Of course you’ve forgotten her. Proper thing to do. Wasn’t quite O. K. of her to listen to the knocks that – er – Dink Pawson kept giving you.’

‘Pink Dawson!’ – a word of contempt would be in Johnny’s tones – ‘Poor white trash! That’s what he was. Had five hundred acres of farming land, though; and that counted. Maybe I’ll have a chance to get back at him some day. The Dawsons weren’t anybody. Everybody in Alabama knows the Atwoods. Say, Billy – did you know my mother was a De Graffenreid?’

‘Why, no,’ Keogh would say; ‘is that so?’ He had heard it some three hundred times.

‘Fact. The De Graffenreids of Hancock County. But I never think of that girl any more, do I, Billy?’

‘Not for a minute, my boy,’ would be the last sounds heard by the conqueror of Cupid.

At this point Johnny would fall into a gentle slumber, and Keogh would saunter out to his own shack under the calabash tree at the edge of the plaza.

In a day or two the letter from the Dalesburg postmaster and its answer had been forgotten by the Coralio exiles. But on the 26th day of July the fruit of the reply appeared upon the tree of events.

The Andador, a fruit steamer that visited Coralio regularly, drew into the offing and anchored. The beach was lined with spectators while the quarantine doctor and the custom-house crew rowed out to attend to their duties.

An hour later Billy Keogh lounged into the consulate, clean and cool in his linen clothes, and grinning like a pleased shark. ‘Guess what?’ he said to Johnny, lounging in his hammock.

‘Too hot to guess,’ said Johnny, lazily.

‘Your shoe-store man’s come,’ said Keogh, rolling the sweet morsel on his tongue, ‘with a stock of goods big enough to supply the continent as far down as Tierra del Fuego. They’re carting his cases over to the custom-house now. Six barges full they brought ashore and have paddled back for the rest. Oh, ye saints in glory! won’t there be regalements in the air when he gets onto the joke and has an interview with Mr. Consul? It’ll be worth nine years in the tropics just to witness that one joyful moment.’

Keogh loved to take his mirth easily. He selected a clean place on the matting and lay upon the floor. The walls shook with his enjoyment. Johnny turned half over and blinked.

‘Didn’t tell me,’ he said, ‘that anybody was fool enough to take that letter seriously.’

‘Four-thousand-dollar stock of goods!’ gasped Keogh, in ecstasy. ‘Talk about coals to Newcastle! Why didn’t he take a ship-load of palm-leaf fans to Spitzenbergen while he was about it? Saw the old codger on the beach. You ought to have been there when he put on his specs and squinted at the five hundred or so barefooted citizens standing around.’

‘Are you telling the truth, Billy?’ asked the consul, weakly.

‘Am I? You ought to see the buncoed gentleman’s daughter he brought along. Looks! She makes the brick-dust senoritas here look like tar-babies.’

‘Go on,’ said Johnny, ‘if you can stop that asinine giggling. I hate to see a grown man make a laughing hyena of himself.’

‘Name is Hemstetter,’ went on Keogh. ‘He’s a – Hello! what’s the matter now?’

Johnny’s moccasined feet struck the floor with a thud as he wriggled out of his hammock.

‘Get up, you idiot,’ he said, sternly, ‘or I’ll brain you with this inkstand. That’s Rosine and her father. Gad! what a drivelling idiot old Patterson is! Get up, here, Billy Keogh, and help me. What the devil are we going to do? Has all the world gone crazy?’

Keogh rose and dusted himself. He managed to regain a decorous demeanor.

‘Situation has got to be met, Johnny,’ he said, with some success at seriousness. ‘I didn’t think about its being your girl until you spoke. First thing to do is to get them comfortable quarters. You go down and face the music, and I’ll trot out to Goodwin’s and see if Mrs. Goodwin won’t take them in. They’ve got the decentest house in town.’

‘Bless you, Billy!’ said the consul. ‘I knew you wouldn’t desert me. The world’s bound to come to an end, but maybe we can stave it off for a day or two.’

Keogh hoisted his umbrella and set out for Goodwin’s house. Johnny put on his coat and hat. He picked up the brandy bottle, but set it down again without drinking, and marched bravely down to the beach.

In the shade of the custom-house walls he found Mr. Hemstetter and Rosine surrounded by a mass of gaping citizens. The customs officers were ducking and scraping, while the captain of the Andador interpreted the business of the new arrivals. Rosine looked healthy and very much alive. She was gazing at the strange scenes around her with amused interest. There was a faint blush upon her round cheek as she greeted her old admirer. Mr. Hemstetter shook hands with Johnny in a very friendly way. He was an oldish, impractical man – one of that numerous class of erratic business men who are forever dissatisfied, and seeking a change.

‘I am very glad to see you, John – may I call you John?’ he said. ‘Let me thank you for your prompt answer to our postmaster’s letter of inquiry. He volunteered to write to you on my behalf. I was looking about for something different in the way of a business in which the profits would be greater. I had noticed in the papers that this coast was receiving much attention from investors. I am extremely grateful for your advice to come. I sold out everything that I possess, and invested the proceeds in as fine a stock of shoes as could be bought in the North. You have a picturesque town here, John. I hope business will be as good as your letter justifies me in expecting.’

Johnny’s agony was abbreviated by the arrival of Keogh, who hurried up with the news that Mrs. Goodwin would be much pleased to place rooms at the disposal of Mr. Hemstetter and his daughter. So there Mr. Hemstetter and Rosine were at once conducted and left to recuperate from the fatigue of the voyage, while Johnny went down to see that the cases of shoes were safely stored in the customs warehouse pending their examination by the officials. Keogh, grinning like a shark, skirmished about to find Goodwin, to instruct him not to expose to Mr. Hemstetter the true state of Coralio as a shoe market until Johnny had been given a chance to redeem the situation, if such a thing were possible.

That night the consul and Keogh held a desperate consultation on the breezy porch of the consulate.

‘Send ’em back home,’ began Keogh, reading Johnny’s thoughts.

‘I would,’ said Johnny, after a little silence; ‘but I’ve been lying to you, Billy.’

‘All right about that,’ said Keogh, affably.

‘I’ve told you hundreds of times,’ said Johnny, slowly, ‘that I had forgotten that girl, haven’t I?’

‘About three hundred and seventy-five,’ admitted the monument of patience.

‘I lied,’ repeated the consul, ‘every time. I never forgot her for one moment. I was an obstinate ass for running away just because she said ‘No’ once. And I was too proud a fool to go back. I talked with Rosine a few minutes this evening up at Goodwin’s. I found out one thing. You remember that farmer fellow who was always after her?’

‘Dink Pawson?’ asked Keogh.

‘Pink Dawson. Well, he wasn’t a hill of beans to her. She says she didn’t believe a word of the things be told her about me. But I’m sewed up now, Billy. That tomfool letter we sent ruined whatever chance I had left. She’ll despise me when she finds out that her old father has been made the victim of a joke that a decent schoolboy wouldn’t have been guilty of. Shoes! Why he couldn’t sell twenty pairs of shoes in Coralio if he kept store here for twenty years. You put a pair of shoes on one of these Caribs or Spanish brown boys and what’d he do? Stand on his head and squeal until he’d kicked ’em off. None of ’em ever wore shoes and they never will. If I send ’em back home I’ll have to tell the whole story, and what’ll she think of me?

I want that girl worse than ever, Billy, and now when she’s in reach I’ve lost her forever because I tried to be funny when the thermometer was at 102.’

‘Keep cheerful,’ said the optimistic Keogh. ‘And let ’em open the store. I’ve been busy myself this afternoon. We can stir up a temporary boom in foot-gear anyhow. I’ll buy six pairs when the doors open. I’ve been around and seen all the fellows and explained the catastrophe. They’ll all buy shoes like they was centipedes. Frank Goodwin will take cases of ’em. The Geddies want about eleven pairs between ’em. Clancy is going to invest the savings of weeks, and even old Doc Gregg wants three pairs of alligator-hide slippers if they’ve got any tens. Blanchard got a look at Miss Hemstetter; and as he’s a Frenchman, no less than a dozen pairs will do for him.’

‘A dozen customers,’ said Johnny, ‘for a $4,000 stock of shoes! It won’t work. There’s a big problem here to figure out. You go home, Billy, and leave me alone. I’ve got to work at it all by myself. Take that bottle of Three-star along with you – no, sir; not another ounce of booze for the United States consul. I’ll sit here tonight and pull out the think stop. If there’s a soft place on this proposition anywhere I’ll land on it. If there isn’t there’ll be another wreck to the credit of the gorgeous tropics.’

Keogh left, feeling that he could be of no use. Johnny laid a handful of cigars on a table and stretched himself in a steamer chair. When the sudden daylight broke, silvering the harbor ripples, he was still sitting there. Then he got up, whistling a little tune, and took his bath.

At nine o’clock he walked down to the dingy little cable office and hung for half an hour over a blank. The result of his application was the following message, which he signed and had transmitted at a cost of $33:

TO PINKNEY DAWSON,

Dalesburg, Ala.

Draft for $100 comes to you next mail. Ship me immediately 500 pounds stiff, dry cockleburrs. New use here in arts. Market price twenty cents pound. Further orders likely. Rush.

The Handbook of Hymen

’Tis the opinion of myself, Sanderson Pratt, who sets this down, that the educational system of the United States should be in the hands of the weather bureau. I can give you good reasons for it; and you can’t tell me why our college professors shouldn’t be transferred to the meteorological department. They have been learned to read; and they could very easily glance at the morning papers and then wire in to the main office what kind of weather to expect. But there’s the other side of the proposition. I am going on to tell you how the weather furnished me and Idaho Green with an elegant education.

We was up in the Bitter Root Mountains over the Montana line prospecting for gold. A chin-whiskered man in Walla-Walla, carrying a line of hope as excess baggage, had grubstaked us; and there we was in the foothills pecking away, with enough grub on hand to last an army through a peace conference.

Along one day comes a mail-rider over the mountains from Carlos, and stops to eat three cans of greengages, and leave us a newspaper of modern date. This paper prints a system of premonitions of the weather, and the card it dealt Bitter Root Mountains from the bottom of the deck was ‘warmer and fair, with light westerly breezes.’

That evening it began to snow, with the wind strong in the east. Me and Idaho moved camp into an old empty cabin higher up the mountain, thinking it was only a November flurry. But after falling three foot on a level it went to work in earnest; and we knew we was snowed in. We got in plenty of firewood before it got deep, and we had grub enough for two months, so we let the elements rage and cut up all they thought proper.

If you want to instigate the art of manslaughter just shut two men up in a eighteen by twenty-foot cabin for a month. Human nature won’t stand it.

When the first snowflakes fell me and Idaho Green laughed at each other’s jokes and praised the stuff we turned out of a skillet and called bread. At the end of three weeks Idaho makes this kind of a edict to me. Says he:

‘I never exactly heard sour milk dropping out of a balloon on the bottom of a tin pan, but I have an idea it would be music of the spears compared to this attenuated stream of asphyxiated thought that emanates out of your organs of conversation. The kind of half-masticated noises that you emit every day puts me in mind of a cow’s cud, only she’s lady enough to keep hers to herself, and you ain’t.’

‘Mr. Green,’ says I, ‘you having been a friend of mine once, I have some hesitations in confessing to you that if I had my choice for society between you and a common yellow, three-legged cur pup, one of the inmates of this here cabin would be wagging a tail just at present.’

This way we goes on for two or three days, and then we quits speaking to one another. We divides up the cooking implements, and Idaho cooks his grub on one side of the fireplace, and me on the other. The snow is up to the windows, and we have to keep a fire all day.

You see me and Idaho never had any education beyond reading and doing ‘if John had three apples and James five’ on a slate. We never felt any special need for a university degree, though we had acquired a species of intrinsic intelligence in knocking around the world that we could use in emergencies. But, snowbound in that cabin in the Bitter Roots, we felt for the first time that if we had studied Homer or Greek and fractions and the higher branches of information, we’d have had some resources in the line of meditation and private thought. I’ve seen them Eastern college fellows working in camps all through the West, and I never noticed but what education was less of a drawback to ’em than you would think. Why, once over on Snake River, when Andrew McWilliams’ saddle horse got the botts, he sent a buckboard ten miles for one of these strangers that claimed to be a botanist. But that horse died.

One morning Idaho was poking around with a stick on top of a little shelf that was too high to reach. Two books fell down to the floor. I started toward ’em, but caught Idaho’s eye. He speaks for the first time in a week.

‘Don’t burn your fingers,’ says he. ‘In spite of the fact that you’re only fit to be the companion of a sleeping mud-turtle, I’ll give you a square deal. And that’s more than your parents did when they turned you loose in the world with the sociability of a rattle-snake and the bedside manner of a frozen turnip. I’ll play you a game of seven-up, the winner to pick up his choice of the book, the loser to take the other.’

We played; and Idaho won. He picked up his book; and I took mine. Then each of us got on his side of the house and went to reading.

I never was as glad to see a ten-ounce nugget as I was that book. And Idaho took at his like a kid looks at a stick of candy.

Mine was a little book about five by six inches called ‘Herkimer’s Handbook of Indispensable Information.’ I may be wrong, but I think that was the greatest book that ever was written. I’ve got it to-day; and I can stump you or any man fifty times in five minutes with the information in it. Talk about Solomon or the New York Tribune! Herkimer had cases on both of ’em. That man must have put in fifty years and travelled a million miles to find out all that stuff. There was the population of all cities in it, and the way to tell a girl’s age, and the number of teeth a camel has. It told you the longest tunnel in the world, the number of the stars, how long it takes for chicken pox to break out, what a lady’s neck ought to measure, the veto powers of Governors, the dates of the Roman aqueducts, how many pounds of rice going without three beers a day would buy, the average annual temperature of Augusta, Maine, the quantity of seed required to plant an acre of carrots in drills, antidotes for poisons, the number of hairs on a blond lady’s head, how to preserve eggs, the height of all the mountains in the world, and the dates of all wars and battles, and how to restore drowned persons, and sunstroke, and the number of tacks in a pound, and how to make dynamite and flowers and beds, and what to do before the doctor comes—and a hundred times as many things besides. If there was anything Herkimer didn’t know I didn’t miss it out of the book.

I sat and read that book for four hours. All the wonders of education was compressed in it. I forgot the snow, and I forgot that me and old Idaho was on the outs. He was sitting still on a stool reading away with a kind of partly soft and partly mysterious look shining through his tan-bark whiskers.

‘Idaho,’ says I, ‘what kind of a book is yours?’

Idaho must have forgot, too, for he answered moderate, without any slander or malignity.

‘Why,’ says he, ‘this here seems to be a volume by Homer K. M.’

‘Homer K. M. what?’ I asks.

‘Why, just Homer K. M.,’ says he.

‘You’re a liar,’ says I, a little riled that Idaho should try to put me up a tree. ‘No man is going ‘round signing books with his initials. If it’s Homer K. M. Spoopendyke, or Homer K. M. McSweeney, or Homer K. M. Jones, why don’t you say so like a man instead of biting off the end of it like a calf chewing off the tail of a shirt on a clothes-line?’

‘I put it to you straight, Sandy,’ says Idaho, quiet. ‘It’s a poem book,’ says he, ‘by Homer K. M. I couldn’t get colour out of it at first, but there’s a vein if you follow it up. I wouldn’t have missed this book for a pair of red blankets.’

‘You’re welcome to it,’ says I. ‘What I want is a disinterested statement of facts for the mind to work on, and that’s what I seem to find in the book I’ve drawn.’

‘What you’ve got,’ says Idaho, ‘is statistics, the lowest grade of information that exists. They’ll poison your mind. Give me old K. M.’s system of surmises. He seems to be a kind of a wine agent. His regular toast is ‘nothing doing,’ and he seems to have a grouch, but he keeps it so well lubricated with booze that his worst kicks sound like an invitation to split a quart. But it’s poetry,’ says Idaho, ‘and I have sensations of scorn for that truck of yours that tries to convey sense in feet and inches. When it comes to explaining the instinct of philosophy through the art of nature, old K. M. has got your man beat by drills, rows, paragraphs, chest measurement, and average annual rainfall.’

So that’s the way me and Idaho had it. Day and night all the excitement we got was studying our books. That snowstorm sure fixed us with a fine lot of attainments apiece. By the time the snow melted, if you had stepped up to me suddenly and said: ‘Sanderson Pratt, what would it cost per square foot to lay a roof with twenty by twenty-eight tin at nine dollars and fifty cents per box?’ I’d have told you as quick as light could travel the length of a spade handle at the rate of one hundred and ninety-two thousand miles per second. How many can do it? You wake up ‘most any man you know in the middle of the night, and ask him quick to tell you the number of bones in the human skeleton exclusive of the teeth, or what percentage of the vote of the Nebraska Legislature overrules a veto. Will he tell you? Try him and see.

About what benefit Idaho got out of his poetry book I didn’t exactly know. Idaho boosted the wine-agent every time he opened his mouth; but I wasn’t so sure.

This Homer K. M., from what leaked out of his libretto through Idaho, seemed to me to be a kind of a dog who looked at life like it was a tin can tied to his tail. After running himself half to death, he sits down, hangs his tongue out, and looks at the can and says:

‘Oh, well, since we can’t shake the growler, let’s get it filled at the corner, and all have a drink on me.’

Besides that, it seems he was a Persian; and I never hear of Persia producing anything worth mentioning unless it was Turkish rugs and Maltese cats.

That spring me and Idaho struck pay ore. It was a habit of ours to sell out quick and keep moving. We unloaded our grubstaker for eight thousand dollars apiece; and then we drifted down to this little town of Rosa, on the Salmon river, to rest up, and get some human grub, and have our whiskers harvested.

Rosa was no mining-camp. It laid in the valley, and was as free of uproar and pestilence as one of them rural towns in the country. There was a three-mile trolley line champing its bit in the environs; and me and Idaho spent a week riding on one of the cars, dropping off at nights at the Sunset View Hotel. Being now well read as well as travelled, we was soon pro re nata with the best society in Rosa, and was invited out to the most dressed-up and high-toned entertainments. It was at a piano recital and quail-eating contest in the city hall, for the benefit of the fire company, that me and Idaho first met Mrs. De Ormond Sampson, the queen of Rosa society.

Mrs. Sampson was a widow, and owned the only two-story house in town. It was painted yellow, and whichever way you looked from you could see it as plain as egg on the chin of an O’Grady on a Friday. Twenty-two men in Rosa besides me and Idaho was trying to stake a claim on that yellow house.

There was a dance after the song books and quail bones had been raked out of the Hall. Twenty-three of the bunch galloped over to Mrs. Sampson and asked for a dance. I side-stepped the two-step, and asked permission to escort her home. That’s where I made a hit.

On the way home says she:

‘Ain’t the stars lovely and bright to-night, Mr. Pratt?’

‘For the chance they’ve got,’ says I, ‘they’re humping themselves in a mighty creditable way. That big one you see is sixty-six million miles distant. It took thirty-six years for its light to reach us. With an eighteen-foot telescope you can see forty-three millions of ’em, including them of the thirteenth magnitude, which, if one was to go out now, you would keep on seeing it for twenty-seven hundred years.’

‘My!’ says Mrs. Sampson. ‘I never knew that before. How warm it is! I’m as damp as I can be from dancing so much.’

‘That’s easy to account for,’ says I, ‘when you happen to know that you’ve got two million sweat-glands working all at once. If every one of your perspiratory ducts, which are a quarter of an inch long, was placed end to end, they would reach a distance of seven miles.’

‘Lawsy!’ says Mrs. Sampson. ‘It sounds like an irrigation ditch you was describing, Mr. Pratt. How do you get all this knowledge of information?’

‘From observation, Mrs. Sampson,’ I tells her. ‘I keep my eyes open when I go about the world.’

‘Mr. Pratt,’ says she, ‘I always did admire a man of education. There are so few scholars among the sap-headed plug-uglies of this town that it is a real pleasure to converse with a gentleman of culture. I’d be gratified to have you call at my house whenever you feel so inclined.’

And that was the way I got the goodwill of the lady in the yellow house. Every Tuesday and Friday evening I used to go there and tell her about the wonders of the universe as discovered, tabulated, and compiled from nature by Herkimer. Idaho and the other gay Lutherans of the town got every minute of the rest of the week that they could.

I never imagined that Idaho was trying to work on Mrs. Sampson with old K. M.’s rules of courtship till one afternoon when I was on my way over to take her a basket of wild hog-plums. I met the lady coming down the lane that led to her house. Her eyes was snapping, and her hat made a dangerous dip over one eye.

‘Mr. Pratt,’ she opens up, ‘this Mr. Green is a friend of yours, I believe.’

‘For nine years,’ says I.

‘Cut him out,’ says she. ‘He’s no gentleman!’

‘Why ma’am,’ says I, ‘he’s a plain incumbent of the mountains, with asperities and the usual failings of a spendthrift and a liar, but I never on the most momentous occasion had the heart to deny that he was a gentleman. It may be that in haberdashery and the sense of arrogance and display Idaho offends the eye, but inside, ma’am, I’ve found him impervious to the lower grades of crime and obesity. After nine years of Idaho’s society, Mrs. Sampson,’ I winds up, ‘I should hate to impute him, and I should hate to see him imputed.’

‘It’s right plausible of you, Mr. Pratt,’ says Mrs. Sampson, ‘to take up the curmudgeons in your friend’s behalf; but it don’t alter the fact that he has made proposals to me sufficiently obnoxious to ruffle the ignominy of any lady.’

‘Why, now, now, now!’ says I. ‘Old Idaho do that! I could believe it of myself, sooner. I never knew but one thing to deride in him; and a blizzard was responsible for that. Once while we was snow-bound in the mountains he became a prey to a kind of spurious and uneven poetry, which may have corrupted his demeanour.’

‘It has,’ says Mrs. Sampson. ‘Ever since I knew him he has been reciting to me a lot of irreligious rhymes by some person he calls Ruby Ott, and who is no better than she should be, if you judge by her poetry.’

‘Then Idaho has struck a new book,’ says I, ‘for the one he had was by a man who writes under the nom de plume of K. M.’

‘He’d better have stuck to it,’ says Mrs. Sampson, ‘whatever it was. And to-day he caps the vortex. I get a bunch of flowers from him, and on ’em is pinned a note. Now, Mr. Pratt, you know a lady when you see her; and you know how I stand in Rosa society. Do you think for a moment that I’d skip out to the woods with a man along with a jug of wine and a loaf of bread, and go singing and cavorting up and down under the trees with him? I take a little claret with my meals, but I’m not in the habit of packing a jug of it into the brush and raising Cain in any such style as that. And of course he’d bring his book of verses along, too. He said so. Let him go on his scandalous picnics alone! Or let him take his Ruby Ott with him. I reckon she wouldn’t kick unless it was on account of there being too much bread along. And what do you think of your gentleman friend now, Mr. Pratt?’

‘Well, ’m,’ says I, ‘it may be that Idaho’s invitation was a kind of poetry, and meant no harm. May be it belonged to the class of rhymes they call figurative. They offend law and order, but they get sent through the mails on the grounds that they mean something that they don’t say. I’d be glad on Idaho’s account if you’d overlook it,’ says I, ‘and let us extricate our minds from the low regions of poetry to the higher planes of fact and fancy. On a beautiful afternoon like this, Mrs. Sampson,’ I goes on, ‘we should let our thoughts dwell accordingly. Though it is warm here, we should remember that at the equator the line of perpetual frost is at an altitude of fifteen thousand feet. Between the latitudes of forty degrees and forty-nine degrees it is from four thousand to nine thousand feet.’

‘Oh, Mr. Pratt,’ says Mrs. Sampson, ‘it’s such a comfort to hear you say them beautiful facts after getting such a jar from that minx of a Ruby’s poetry!’

‘Let us sit on this log at the roadside,’ says I, ‘and forget the inhumanity and ribaldry of the poets. It is in the glorious columns of ascertained facts and legalised measures that beauty is to be found. In this very log we sit upon, Mrs. Sampson,’ says I, ‘is statistics more wonderful than any poem. The rings show it was sixty years old. At the depth of two thousand feet it would become coal in three thousand years. The deepest coal mine in the world is at Killingworth, near Newcastle. A box four feet long, three feet wide, and two feet eight inches deep will hold one ton of coal. If an artery is cut, compress it above the wound. A man’s leg contains thirty bones. The Tower of London was burned in 1841.’

‘Go on, Mr. Pratt,’ says Mrs. Sampson. ‘Them ideas is so original and soothing. I think statistics are just as lovely as they can be.’

But it wasn’t till two weeks later that I got all that was coming to me out of Herkimer.

One night I was waked up by folks hollering ‘Fire!’ all around. I jumped up and dressed and went out of the hotel to enjoy the scene. When I see it was Mrs. Sampson’s house, I gave forth a kind of yell, and I was there in two minutes.

The whole lower story of the yellow house was in flames, and every masculine, feminine, and canine in Rosa was there, screeching and barking and getting in the way of the firemen. I saw Idaho trying to get away from six firemen who were holding him. They was telling him the whole place was on fire down-stairs, and no man could go in it and come out alive.

‘Where’s Mrs. Sampson?’ I asks.

‘She hasn’t been seen,’ says one of the firemen. ‘She sleeps up-stairs. We’ve tried to get in, but we can’t, and our company hasn’t got any ladders yet.’

I runs around to the light of the big blaze, and pulls the Handbook out of my inside pocket. I kind of laughed when I felt it in my hands – I reckon I was some daffy with the sensation of excitement.

‘Herky, old boy,’ I says to it, as I flipped over the pages, ‘you ain’t ever lied to me yet, and you ain’t ever throwed me down at a scratch yet. Tell me what, old boy, tell me what!’ says I.

I turned to ‘What to do in Case of Accidents,’ on page 117. I run my finger down the page, and struck it. Good old Herkimer, he never overlooked anything! It said:

Suffocation from Inhaling Smoke or Gas. – There is nothing better than flaxseed. Place a few seed in the outer corner of the eye.

I shoved the Handbook back in my pocket, and grabbed a boy that was running by.

‘Here,’ says I, giving him some money, ‘run to the drug store and bring a dollar’s worth of flaxseed. Hurry, and you’ll get another one for yourself. Now,’ I sings out to the crowd, ‘we’ll have Mrs. Sampson!’ And I throws away my coat and hat.

Four of the firemen and citizens grabs hold of me. It’s sure death, they say, to go in the house, for the floors was beginning to fall through.

‘How in blazes,’ I sings out, kind of laughing yet, but not feeling like it, ‘do you expect me to put flaxseed in a eye without the eye?’

I jabbed each elbow in a fireman’s face, kicked the bark off of one citizen’s shin, and tripped the other one with a side hold. And then I busted into the house. If I die first I’ll write you a letter and tell you if it’s any worse down there than the inside of that yellow house was; but don’t believe it yet. I was a heap more cooked than the hurry-up orders of broiled chicken that you get in restaurants. The fire and smoke had me down on the floor twice, and was about to shame Herkimer, but the firemen helped me with their little stream of water, and I got to Mrs. Sampson’s room. She’d lost conscientiousness from the smoke, so I wrapped her in the bed clothes and got her on my shoulder. Well, the floors wasn’t as bad as they said, or I never could have done it—not by no means.

I carried her out fifty yards from the house and laid her on the grass. Then, of course, every one of them other twenty-two plaintiff’s to the lady’s hand crowded around with tin dippers of water ready to save her. And up runs the boy with the flaxseed.

I unwrapped the covers from Mrs. Sampson’s head. She opened her eyes and says:

‘Is that you, Mr. Pratt?’

‘S-s-sh,’ says I. ‘Don’t talk till you’ve had the remedy.’

I runs my arm around her neck and raises her head, gentle, and breaks the bag of flaxseed with the other hand; and as easy as I could I bends over and slips three or four of the seeds in the outer corner of her eye.

Up gallops the village doc by this time, and snorts around, and grabs at Mrs. Sampson’s pulse, and wants to know what I mean by any such sandblasted nonsense.

‘Well, old Jalap and Jerusalem oakseed,’ says I, ‘I’m no regular practitioner, but I’ll show you my authority, anyway.’

They fetched my coat, and I gets out the Handbook.

‘Look on page 117,’ says I, ‘at the remedy for suffocation by smoke or gas. Flaxseed in the outer corner of the eye, it says. I don’t know whether it works as a smoke consumer or whether it hikes the compound gastro-hippopotamus nerve into action, but Herkimer says it, and he was called to the case first. If you want to make it a consultation, there’s no objection.’

Old doc takes the book and looks at it by means of his specs and a fireman’s lantern.

‘Well, Mr. Pratt,’ says he, ‘you evidently got on the wrong line in reading your diagnosis. The recipe for suffocation says: “Get the patient into fresh air as quickly as possible, and place in a reclining position.” The flaxseed remedy is for “Dust and Cinders in the Eye,” on the line above. But, after all —’

‘See here,’ interrupts Mrs. Sampson, ‘I reckon I’ve got something to say in this consultation. That flaxseed done me more good than anything I ever tried.’ And then she raises up her head and lays it back on my arm again, and says: ‘Put some in the other eye, Sandy dear.’

And so if you was to stop off at Rosa to-morrow, or any other day, you’d see a fine new yellow house with Mrs. Pratt, that was Mrs. Sampson, embellishing and adorning it. And if you was to step inside you’d see on the marble-top centre table in the parlour ‘Herkimer’s Handbook of Indispensable Information,’ all rebound in red morocco, and ready to be consulted on any subject pertaining to human happiness and wisdom.

A Lickpenny Lover

There were 3,000 girls in the Biggest Store. Masie was one of them. She was eighteen and a selleslady in the gents’ gloves. Here she became versed in two varieties of human beings – the kind of gents who buy their gloves in department stores and the kind of women who buy gloves for unfortunate gents. Besides this wide knowledge of the human species, Masie had acquired other information. She had listened to the promulgated wisdom of the 2,999 other girls and had stored it in a brain that was as secretive and wary as that of a Maltese cat. Per-haps nature, foreseeing that she would lack wise counsellors, had mingled the saving ingredient of shrewdness along with her beauty, as she has endowed the silver fox of the priceless fur above the other animals with cunning.

For Masie was beautiful. She was a deep-tinted blonde, with the calm poise of a lady who cooks butter cakes in a window. She stood behind her counter in the Biggest Store; and as you closed your band over the tape-line for your glove measure you thought of Hebe; and as you looked again you wondered how she had come by Minerva’s eyes.

When the floorwalker was not looking Masie chewed tutti frutti; when he was looking she gazed up as if at the clouds and smiled wistfully.

That is the shopgirl smile, and I enjoin you to shun it unless you are well fortified with callosity of the heart, caramels and a congeniality for the capers of Cupid. This smile belonged to Masie’s recreation hours and not to the store; but the floorwalker must have his own. He is the Shylock of the stores. When he comes nosing around the bridge of his nose is a toll bridge. It is goo-goo eyes or ‘git’ when be looks toward a pretty girl. Of course not all floor-walkers are thus. Only a few days ago the papers printed news of one over eighty years of age.

One day Irving Carter, painter, millionaire, traveller, poet, automobilist, happened to enter the Biggest Store. It is due to him to add that his visit was not voluntary. Filial duty took him by the collar and dragged him inside, while his mother philandered among the bronze and terra-cotta statuettes.

Carter strolled across to the glove counter in order to shoot a few minutes on the wing. His need for gloves was genuine; be had forgotten to bring a pair with him. But his action hardly calls for apology, because be had never heard of glove-counter flirtations.

As he neared the vicinity of his fate be hesitated, suddenly conscious of this unknown phase of Cupid’s less worthy profession.

Three or four cheap fellows, sonorously garbed, were leaning over the counters, wrestling with the mediatorial hand-coverings, while giggling girls played vivacious seconds to their lead upon the strident string of coquetry. Carter would have retreated, but he had gone too far. Masie confronted him behind her counter with a questioning look in eyes as coldly, beautifully, warmly blue as the glint of summer sunshine on an iceberg drifting in Southern seas.

And then Irving Carter, painter, millionaire, etc., felt a warm flush rise to his aristocratically pale face. But not from diffidence. The blush was intellectual in origin. He knew in a moment that he stood in the ranks of the ready-made youths who wooed the giggling girls at other counters. Himself leaned against the oaken trysting place of a cockney Cupid with a desire in his heart for the favor of a glove salesgirl. He was no more than Bill and Jack and Mickey. And then be felt a sudden tolerance for them, and an elating, courageous contempt for the conventions upon which he had fed, and an unhesitating determination to have this perfect creature for his own.

When the gloves were paid for and wrapped the Carter lingered for a moment. The dimples at corners of Masie’s damask mouth deepened. All gentlemen who bought gloves lingered in just that way. She curved an arm, showing like Psyche’s through her shirt-waist sleeve, and rested an elbow upon the show-case edge.

Carter had never before encountered a situation of which he had not been perfect master. But now he stood far more awkward than Bill or Jack or Mickey. He had no chance of meeting this beautiful girl socially. His mind struggled to recall the nature and habits of shopgirls as he had read or heard of them. Somehow be had received the idea that they sometimes did not insist too strictly upon the regular channels of introduction. His heart beat loudly at the thought of proposing an unconventional meeting with this lovely and virginal being. But the tumult in his heart gave him courage.

After a few friendly and well-received remarks on general subjects, he laid his card by her hand on the counter.

‘Will you please pardon me,’ he said, ‘if I seem too bold; but I earnestly hope you will allow me the pleasure of seeing you again. There is my name; I assure you that it is with the greatest respect that I ask the favor of becoming one of your – acquaintances. May I not hope for the privilege?’

Masie knew men – especially men who buy gloves. Without hesitation she looked him frankly and smilingly in the eyes, and said:

‘Sure. I guess you’re all right. I don’t usually go out with strange gentlemen, though. It ain’t quite ladylike. When should you want to see me again?’

‘As soon as I may,’ said Carter. ‘If you would allow me to call at your home, I —’

Masie laughed musically. ‘Oh, gee, no!’ she said, emphatically. ‘If you could see our flat once! There’s five of us in three rooms. I’d just like to see ma’s face if I was to bring a gentleman friend there!’

‘Anywhere, then,’ said the enamored Carter, ‘that will be convenient to you.’

‘Say,’ suggested Masie, with a bright-idea look in her peach-blow face; ‘I guess Thursday night will about suit me. Suppose you come to the corner of Eighth Avenue and Forty-eighth Street at 7:30. I live right near the corner. But I’ve got to be back home by eleven. Ma never lets me stay out after eleven.’

Carter promised gratefully to keep the tryst, and then hastened to his mother, who was looking about for him to ratify her purchase of a bronze Diana.

A salesgirl, with small eyes and an obtuse nose, strolled near Masie, with a friendly leer.

‘Did you make a hit with his nobs, Mase?’ she asked, familiarly.

‘The gentleman asked permission to call.’ answered Masie, with the grand air, as she slipped Carter’s card into the bosom of her waist.

‘Permission to call!’ echoed small eyes, with a snigger. ‘Did he say anything about dinner in the Waldorf and a spin in his auto afterward?’

‘Oh, cheese it!’ said Masie, wearily. ‘You’ve been used to swell things, I don’t think. You’ve had a swelled head ever since that hose-cart driver took you out to a chop suey joint. No, he never mentioned the Waldorf; but there’s a Fifth Avenue address on his card, and if be buys the supper you can bet your life there won’t be no pigtail on the waiter what takes the order.’

As Carter glided away from the Biggest Store with his mother in his electric runabout, he bit his lip with a dull pain at his heart. He knew that love had come to him for the first time in all the twenty-nine years of his life. And that the object of it should make so readily an appointment with him at a street corner, though it was a step toward his desires, tortured him with misgivings.

Carter did not know the shopgirl. He did not know that her home is often either a scarcely habitable tiny room or a domicile filled to overflowing with kith and kin. The street-corner is her parlor, the park is her drawing-room; the avenue is her garden walk; yet for the most part she is as inviolate mistress of herself in them as is my lady inside her tapestried chamber.

One evening at dusk, two weeks after their first meeting, Carter and Masie strolled arm-in-arm into a little, dimly-lit park. They found a bench, tree-shadowed and secluded, and sat there.

For the first time his arm stole gently around her. Her golden-bronze head slid restfully against his shoulder.

‘Gee!’ sighed Masie, thankfully. ‘Why didn’t you ever think of that before?’

‘Masie,’ said Carter, earnestly, ‘you surely know that I love you. I ask you sincerely to marry me. You know me well enough by this time to have no doubts of me. I want you, and I must have you. I care nothing for the difference in our stations.’

‘What is the difference?’ asked Masie, curiously.

‘Well, there isn’t any,’ said Carter, quickly, ‘except in the minds of foolish people. It is in my power to give you a life of luxury. My social position is beyond dispute, and my means are ample.’

‘They all say that,’ remarked Masie. ‘It’s the kid they all give you. I suppose you really work in a delicatessen or follow the races. I ain’t as green as I look.’

‘I can furnish you all the proofs you want,’ said Carter, gently. ‘And I want you, Masie. I loved you the first day I saw you.’

‘They all do,’ said Masie, with an amused laugh, ‘to hear ’em talk. If I could meet a man that got stuck on me the third time he’d seen me I think I’d get mashed on him.’

‘Please don’t say such things,’ pleaded Carter. ‘Listen to me, dear. Ever since I first looked into your eyes you have been the only woman in the world for me.’

‘Oh, ain’t you the kidder!’ smiled Masie. ‘How many other girls did you ever tell that?’

But Carter persisted. And at length be reached the flimsy, fluttering little soul of the shopgirl that existed somewhere deep down in her lovely bosom.

His words penetrated the heart whose very lightness was its safest armor. She looked up at him with eyes that saw. And a warm glow visited her cool cheeks. Tremblingly, awfully, her moth wings closed, and she seemed about to settle upon the flower of love. Some faint glimmer of life and its possibilities on the other side of her glove counter dawned upon her. Carter felt the change and crowded the opportunity.

‘Marry me, Masie,’ be whispered softly, ‘and we will go away from this ugly city to beautiful ones. We will forget work and business, and life will be one long holiday. I know where I should take you – I have been there often. Just think of a shore where summer is eternal, where the waves are always rippling on the lovely beach and the people are happy and free as children. We will sail to those shores and remain there as long as you please. In one of those far-away cities there are grand and lovely palaces and towers full of beautiful pictures and statues. The streets of the city are water, and one travels about in —’

‘I know,’ said Masie, sitting up suddenly. ‘Gondolas.’

‘Yes,’ smiled Carter.

‘I thought so,’ said Masie.

‘And then,’ continued Carter, ‘we will travel on and see whatever we wish in the world. After the European cities we will visit India and the ancient cities there, and ride on elephants and see the wonderful temples of the Hindoos and Brahmins and the Japanese gardens and the camel trains and chariot races in Persia, and all the queer sights of foreign countries. Don’t you think you would like it, Masie?

Masie rose to her feet.

‘I think we had better be going home,’ she said, coolly. ‘It’s getting late.’

Carter humored her. He had come to know her varying, thistle-down moods, and that it was useless to combat them. But he felt a certain happy triumph. He had held for a moment, though but by a silken thread, the soul of his wild Psyche, and hope was stronger within him. Once she had folded her wings and her cool band bad closed about his own.

At the Biggest Store the next day Masie’s chum, Lulu, waylaid her in an angle of the counter.

‘How are you and your swell friend making it? she asked.

‘Oh, him?’ said Masie, patting her side curls. ‘He ain’t in it any more. Say, Lu, what do you think that fellow wanted me to do?’

‘Go on the stage?’ guessed Lulu, breathlessly.

‘Nit; he’s too cheap a guy for that. He wanted me to marry him and go down to Coney Island for a wedding tour!’

The Ethics of Pig

Peters, the only man with a brain west of the Wabash River who can use his cerebrum cerebellum, and medulla oblongata at the same time.

Jeff is in the line of unillegal graft. He is not to be dreaded by widows and orphans; he is a reducer of surplusage. His favorite disguise is that of the target-bird at which the spendthrift or the reckless investor may shy a few inconsequential dollars. He is readily vocalized by tobacco; so, with the aid of two thick and easy-burning brevas, I got the story of his latest Autolycan adventure.

‘In my line of business,’ said Jeff, ‘the hardest thing is to find an upright, trustworthy, strictly honorable partner to work a graft with. Some of the best men I ever worked with in a swindle would resort to trickery at times.

‘So, last summer, I thinks I will go over into this section of country where I hear the serpent has not yet entered, and see if I can find a partner naturally gifted with a talent for crime, but not yet contaminated by success.

‘I found a village that seemed to show the right kind of a layout. The inhabitants hadn’t found that Adam had been dispossessed, and were going right along naming the animals and killing snakes just as if they were in the Garden of Eden. They call this town Mount Nebo, and it’s up near the spot where Kentucky and West Virginia and North Carolina corner together. Them States don’t meet? Well, it was in that neighborhood, anyway.

‘After putting in a week proving I wasn’t a revenue officer, I went over to the store where the rude fourflushers of the hamlet lied, to see if I could get a line on the kind of man I wanted.

‘“Gentlemen,” says I, after we had rubbed noses and gathered ’round the dried-apple barrel. “I don’t suppose there’s another community in the whole world into which sin and chicanery has less extensively permeated than this. Life here, where all the women are brave and propitious and all the men honest and expedient, must, indeed, be an idol. It reminds me,” says I, “of Goldstein’s beautiful ballad entitled ‘The Deserted Village,’ which says:

‘Ill fares the land, to hastening ills a prey,

What art can drive its charms away?

The judge rode slowly down the lane, mother.

For I’m to be Queen of the May.’

‘“Why, yes, Mr. Peters,” says the storekeeper. “I reckon we air about as moral and torpid a community as there be on the mounting, according to censuses of opinion; but I reckon you ain’t ever met Rufe Tatum.”

‘“Why, no,” says the town constable, “he can’t hardly have ever. That air Rufe is shore the monstrousest scalawag that has escaped hangin’ on the galluses. And that puts me in mind that I ought to have turned Rufe out of the lockup before yesterday. The thirty days he got for killin’ Yance Goodloe was up then. A day or two more won’t hurt Rufe any, though.”

‘“Shucks, now,” says I, in the mountain idiom, “don’t tell me there’s a man in Mount Nebo as bad as that.”

‘“Worse,” says the storekeeper. “He steals hogs.”

‘I think I will look up this Mr. Tatum; so a day or two after the constable turned him out I got acquainted with him and invited him out on the edge of town to sit on a log and talk business.

‘What I wanted was a partner with a natural rural make-up to play a part in some little one-act outrages that I was going to book with the Pitfall & Gin circuit in some of the Western towns; and this R. Tatum was born for the role as sure as nature cast Fairbanks for the stuff that kept Eliza from sinking into the river.

‘He was about the size of a first baseman; and he had ambiguous blue eyes like the china dog on the mantelpiece that Aunt Harriet used to play with when she was a child. His hair waved a little bit like the statue of the dinkus-thrower at the Vacation in Rome, but the color of it reminded you of the ‘Sunset in the Grand Canon, by an American Artist,’ that they hang over the stove-pipe holes in the salongs. He was the Reub, without needing a touch. You’d have known him for one, even if you’d seen him on the vaudeville stage with one cotton suspender and a straw over his ear.

‘I told him what I wanted, and found him ready to jump at the job.

‘“Overlooking such a trivial little peccadillo as the habit of manslaughter,” says I, “what have you accomplished in the way of indirect brigandage or nonactionable thriftiness that you could point to, with or without pride, as an evidence of your qualifications for the position?”

‘“Why,” says he, in his kind of Southern system of procrastinated accents, “hain’t you heard tell? There ain’t any man, black or white, in the Blue Ridge that can tote off a shoat as easy as I can without bein’ heard, seen, or cotched. I can lift a shoat,” he goes on, “out of a pen, from under a porch, at the trough, in the woods, day or night, anywhere or anyhow, and I guarantee nobody won’t hear a squeal. It’s all in the way you grab hold of ’em and carry ’em atterwards. Some day,” goes on this gentle despoiler of pig-pens, “I hope to become reckernized as the champion shoat-stealer of the world.”

‘“It’s proper to be ambitious,” says I; “and hog-stealing will do very well for Mount Nebo; but in the outside world, Mr. Tatum, it would be considered as crude a piece of business as a bear raid on Bay State Gas. However, it will do as a guarantee of good faith. We’ll go into partnership. I’ve got a thousand dollars cash capital; and with that homeward-plods atmosphere of yours we ought to be able to win out a few shares of Soon Parted, preferred, in the money market.”

‘So I attaches Rufe, and we go away from Mount Nebo down into the lowlands. And all the way I coach him for his part in the grafts I had in mind. I had idled away two months on the Florida coast, and was feeling all to the Ponce de Leon, besides having so many new schemes up my sleeve that I had to wear kimonos to hold ’em.

‘I intended to assume a funnel shape and mow a path nine miles wide though the farming belt of the Middle West; so we headed in that direction. But when we got as far as Lexington we found Binkley Brothers’ circus there, and the blue-grass peasantry romping into town and pounding the Belgian blocks with their hand-pegged sabots as artless and arbitrary as an extra session of a Datto Bryan drama. I never pass a circus without pulling the valve-cord and coming down for a little Key West money; so I engaged a couple of rooms and board for Rufe and me at a house near the circus grounds run by a widow lady named Peevy. Then I took Rufe to a clothing store and gent’s-outfitted him. He showed up strong, as I knew he would, after he was rigged up in the ready-made rutabaga regalia. Me and old Misfitzky stuffed him into a bright blue suit with a Nile green visible plaid effect, and riveted on a fancy vest of a light Tuskegee Normal tan color, a red necktie, and the yellowest pair of shoes in town.

‘They were the first clothes Rufe had ever worn except the gingham layette and the butternut top-dressing of his native kraal, and he looked as self-conscious as an Igorrote with a new nose-ring.

‘That night I went down to the circus tents and opened a small shell game. Rufe was to be the capper. I gave him a roll of phony currency to bet with and kept a bunch of it in a special pocket to pay his winnings out of. No; I didn’t mistrust him; but I simply can’t manipulate the ball to lose when I see real money bet. My fingers go on a strike every time I try it.

‘I set up my little table and began to show them how easy it was to guess which shell the little pea was under. The unlettered hinds gathered in a thick semicircle and began to nudge elbows and banter one another to bed. Then was when Rufe ought to have single-footed up and called the turn on the little joker for a few tens and fives to get them started. But, no Rufe. I’d seen him two or three times walking about and looking at the side-show pictures with his mouth full of peanut candy; but he never came nigh.

‘The crowd piked a little; but trying to work the shells without a capper is like fishing without a bait. I closed the game with only forty-two dollars of the unearned increment, while I had been counting on yanking the yeomen for two hundred at least. I went home at eleven and went to bed. I supposed that the circus had proved too alluring for Rufe, and that he had succumbed to it, concert and all; but I meant to give him a lecture on general business principles in the morning.

‘Just after Morpheus had got both my shoulders to the shuck mattress I hears a houseful of unbecoming and ribald noises like a youngster screeching with green-apple colic. I opens my door and calls out in the hall for the widow lady, and when she sticks her head out, I says: “Mrs. Peevy, ma’am, would you mind choking off that kid of yours so that honest people can get their rest?”

‘“Sir,” says she, “it’s no child of mine. It’s the pig squealing that your friend Mr. Tatum brought home to his room a couple of hours ago. And if you are uncle or second cousin or brother to it, I’d appreciate your stopping its mouth, sir, yourself, if you please.”

‘I put on some of the polite outside habiliments of external society and went into Rufe’s room. He had gotten up and lit his lamp, and was pouring some milk into a tin pan on the floor for a dingy-white, half-grown, squealing pig.

‘“How is this, Rufe?” says I. “You flimflammed in your part of the work to-night and put the game on crutches. And how do you explain the pig? It looks like back-sliding to me.”

‘“Now, don’t be too hard on me, Jeff,” says he. “You know how long I’ve been used to stealing shoats. It’s got to be a habit with me. And to-night, when I see such a fine chance, I couldn’t help takin’ it.”

‘“Well,” says I, “maybe you’ve really got kleptopigia. And maybe when we get out of the pig belt you’ll turn your mind to higher and more remunerative misconduct. Why you should want to stain your soul with such a distasteful, feeble-minded, perverted, roaring beast as that I can’t understand.”

‘“Why, Jeff,” says he, “you ain’t in sympathy with shoats. You don’t understand ‘em like I do. This here seems to me to be an animal of more than common powers of ration and intelligence. He walked half across the room on his hind legs a while ago.”

‘“Well, I’m going back to bed,”says I. “See if you can impress it upon your friend’s ideas of intelligence that he’s not to make so much noise.”

‘“He was hungry,” says Rufe. “He’ll go to sleep and keep quiet now.”

‘I always get up before breakfast and read the morning paper whenever I happen to be within the radius of a Hoe cylinder or a Washington hand-press. The next morning I got up early, and found a Lexington daily on the front porch where the carrier had thrown it. The first thing I saw in it was a double-column ad. on the front page that read like this:

FIVE THOUSAND DOLLARS REWARD

The above amount will be paid, and no questions asked, for the return, alive and uninjured, of Beppo, the famous European educated pig, that strayed or was stolen from the side-show tents of Binkley Bros.’ circus last night.

Geo. B. Tapley, Business Manager.

At the circus grounds.

‘I folded up the paper flat, put it into my inside pocket, and went to Rufe’s room. He was nearly dressed, and was feeding the pig the rest of the milk and some apple-peelings.

‘“Well, well, well, good morning all,” I says, hearty and amiable. “So we are up? And piggy is having his breakfast. What had you intended doing with that pig, Rufe?”

‘“I’m going to crate him up, “ says Rufe, “and express him to ma in Mount Nebo. He’ll be company for her while I am away.”

‘“He’s a mighty fine pig,” says I, scratching him on the back.

‘“You called him a lot of names last night,” says Rufe.

‘“Oh, well,” says I, “he looks better to me this morning. I was raised on a farm, and I’m very fond of pigs. I used to go to bed at sundown, so I never saw one by lamplight before. Tell you what I’ll do, Rufe,” I says. “I’ll give you ten dollars for that pig.”

‘“I reckon I wouldn’t sell this shoat,” says he. “If it was any other one I might.”

‘“Why not this one?” I asked, fearful that he might know something.

‘“Why, because,” says he, “it was the grandest achievement of my life. There ain’t airy other man that could have done it. If I ever have a fireside and children, I’ll sit beside it and tell ’em how their daddy toted off a shoat from a whole circus full of people. And maybe my grandchildren, too. They’ll certainly be proud a whole passel. Why,” says he, “there was two tents, one openin’ into the other. This shoat was on a platform, tied with a little chain. I seen a giant and a lady with a fine chance of bushy white hair in the other tent. I got the shoat and crawled out from under the canvas again without him squeakin’ as loud as a mouse. I put him under my coat, and I must havepassed a hundred folks before I got out where the streets was dark. I reckon I wouldn’t sell that shoat, Jeff. I’d want ma to keep it, so there’d be a witness to what I done.”

‘“The pig won’t live long enough,” I says, “to use as an exhibit in your senile fireside mendacity. Your grandchildren will have to take your word for it. I’ll give you one hundred dollars for the animal.”

‘Rufe looked at me astonished.

‘“The shoat can’t be worth anything like that to you,” he says. “What do you want him for?”

‘“Viewing me casuistically,” says I, with a rare smile, “you wouldn’t think that I’ve got an artistic side to my temper. But I have. I’m a collector of pigs. I’ve scoured the world for unusual pigs. Over in the Wabash Valley I’ve got a hog ranch with most every specimen on it, from a Merino to a Poland China. This looks like a blooded pig to me, Rufe,” says I. “I believe it’s a genuine Berkshire. That’s why I’d like to have it.”

‘“I’d shore like to accommodate you,” says he, “but I’ve got theartistic tenement, too. I don’t see why it ain’t art when you can steal a shoat better than anybody else can. Shoats is a kind of inspiration and genius with me. Specially this one. I wouldn’t take two hundred and fifty for that animal.”

‘“Now, listen,” says I, wiping off my forehead. “It’s not so much a matter of business with me as it is art; and not so much art as it is philanthropy. Being a connoisseur and disseminator of pigs, I wouldn’t feel like I’d done my duty to the world unless I added that Berkshire to my collection. Not intrinsically, but according to the ethics of pigs as friends and coadjutors of mankind, I offer you five hundred dollars for the animal.”

‘“Jeff,” says this pork esthete, “it ain’t money; it’s sentiment with me.”

‘“Seven hundred,” says I.

‘“Make it eight hundred,” says Rufe, “and I’ll crush the sentiment out of my heart.”

‘I went under my clothes for my money-belt, and counted him out forty twenty-dollar gold certificates.

‘“I’ll just take him into my own room,” says I, “and lock him up till after breakfast.”

‘I took the pig by the hind leg. He turned on a squeal like the steam calliope at the circus.

‘“Let me tote him in for you,” says Rufe; and he picks up the beast under one arm, holding his snout with the other hand, and packs him into my room like a sleeping baby.

‘After breakfast Rufe, who had a chronic case of haberdashery ever since I got his trousseau, says he believes he will amble down to Misfitzky’s and look over some royal-purple socks. And then I got as busy as a one-armed man with the nettle-rash pasting on wall-paper. I found an old Negro man with an express wagon to hire; and we tied the pig in a sack and drove down to the circus grounds.

‘I found George B. Tapley in a little tent with a window flap open. He was a fattish man with an immediate eye, in a black skull-cap, with a four-ounce diamond screwed into the bosom of his red sweater.

‘“Are you George B. Tapley?” I asks.

‘“I swear it,” says he.

‘“Well, I’ve got it,” says I.

‘“Designate,” says he. “Are you the guinea pigs for the Asiatic python or the alfalfa for the sacred buffalo?”

‘“Neither, “ says I. “I’ve got Beppo, the educated hog, in a sack in that wagon. I found him rooting up the flowers in my front yard this morning. I’ll take the five thousand dollars in large bills, if it’s handy.”

‘George B. hustles out of his tent, and asks me to follow. We went into one of the side-shows. In there was a jet black pig with a pink ribbon around his neck lying on some hay and eating carrots that a man was feeding to him.

‘“Hey, Mac,” calls G. B. “Nothing wrong with the world-wide this morning, is there?”

‘“Him? No,” says the man. “He’s got an appetite like a chorus girl at 1 A.M.”

‘“How’d you get this pipe?” says Tapley to me. “Eating too many pork chops last night?”

‘I pulls out the paper and shows him the ad.

‘“Fake,” says he. “Don’t know anything about it. You’ve beheld with your own eyes the marvelous, world-wide porcine wonder of the four-footed kingdom eating with preternatural sagacity his matutinal meal, unstrayed and unstole. Good morning.”

‘I was beginning to see. I got in the wagon and told Uncle Ned to drive to the most adjacent orifice of the nearest alley. There I took out my pig, got the range carefully for the other opening, set his sights, and gave him such a kick that he went out the other end of the alley twenty feet ahead of his squeal.

‘Then I paid Uncle Ned his fifty cents, and walked down to the newspaper office. I wanted to hear it in cold syllables. I got the advertising man to his window.

‘“To decide a bet,” says I, “wasn’t the man who had this ad. put in last night short and fat, with long black whiskers and a club-foot?”

‘“He was not,” says the man. “He would measure about six feet by four and a half inches, with corn-silk hair, and dressed like the pansies of the conservatory.”

‘At dinner time I went back to Mrs. Peevy’s.

‘“Shall I keep some soup hot for Mr. Tatum till he comes back?” she asks.

‘“If you do, ma’am,” says I, “you’ll more than exhaust for firewood all the coal in the bosom of the earth and all the forests on the outside of it.”

‘So there, you see,’ said Jefferson Peters, in conclusion, ‘how hard it is ever to find a fair-minded and honest business-partner.’

‘But,’ I began, with the freedom of long acquaintance, ‘the rule should work both ways. If you had offered to divide the reward you would not have lost —’

Jeff’s look of dignified reproach stopped me.

‘That don’t involve the same principles at all,’ said he. ‘Mine was a legitimate and moral attempt at speculation. Buy low and sell high – don’t Wall Street endorse it? Bulls and bears and pigs – what’s the difference? Why not bristles as well as horns and fur?’

Confessions of a Humorist

There was a painless stage of incubation that lasted twenty-five years, and then it broke out on me, and people said I was It. But they called it humor instead of measles.

The employees in the store bought a silver inkstand for the senior partner on his fiftieth birthday. We crowded into his private office to present it. I had been selected for spokesman, and I made a little speech that I had been preparing for a week.

It made a hit. It was full of puns and epigrams and funny twists that brought down the house – which was a very solid one in the wholesale hardware line. Old Marlowe himself actually grinned, and the employees took their cue and roared.

My reputation as a humorist dates from half-past nine o’clock on that morning. For weeks afterward my fellow clerks fanned the flame of my self-esteem. One by one they came to me, saying what an awfully clever speech that was, old man, and carefully explained to me the point of each one of my jokes.

Gradually I found that I was expected to keep it up. Others might speak sanely on business matters and the day’s topics, but from me something gamesome and airy was required.

I was expected to crack jokes about the crockery and lighten up the granite ware with persiflage. I was second bookkeeper, and if I failed to show up a balance sheet without something comic about the footings or could find no cause for laughter in an invoice of plows, the other clerks were disappointed. By degrees my fame spread, and I became a local ‘character.’ Our town was small enough to make this possible. The daily newspaper quoted me. At social gatherings I was indispensable.

I believe I did possess considerable wit and a facility for quick and spontaneous repartee. This gift I cultivated and improved by practice. And the nature of it was kindly and genial, not running to sarcasm or offending others. People began to smile when they saw me coming, and by the time we had met I generally had the word ready to broaden the smile into a laugh.

I had married early. We had a charming boy of three and a girl of five. Naturally, we lived in a vine-covered cottage, and were happy. My salary as bookkeeper in the hardware concern kept at a distance those ills attendant upon superfluous wealth.

At sundry times I had written out a few jokes and conceits that I considered peculiarly happy, and had sent them to certain periodicals that print such things. All of them had been instantly accepted. Several of the editors had written to request further contributions.

One day I received a letter from the editor of a famous weekly publication. He suggested that I submit to him a humorous composition to fill a column of space; hinting that he would make it a regular feature of each issue if the work proved satisfactory. I did so, and at the end of two weeks he offered to make a contract with me for a year at a figure that was considerably higher than the amount paid me by the hardware firm.

I was filled with delight. My wife already crowned me in her mind with the imperishable evergreens of literary success. We had lobster croquettes and a bottle of blackberry wine for supper that night. Here was the chance to liberate myself from drudgery. I talked over the matter very seriously with Louisa. We agreed that I must resign my place at the store and devote myself to humor.

I resigned. My fellow clerks gave me a farewell banquet. The speech I made there coruscated. It was printed in full by the Gazette. The next morning I awoke and looked at the clock.

‘Late, by George!’ I exclaimed, and grabbed for my clothes. Louisa reminded me that I was no longer a slave to hardware and contractors’ supplies. I was now a professional humorist.

After breakfast she proudly led me to the little room off the kitchen. Dear girl! There was my table and chair, writing pad, ink, and pipe tray. And all the author’s trappings – the celery stand full of fresh roses and honeysuckle, last year’s calendar on the wall, the dictionary, and a little bag of chocolates to nibble between inspirations. Dear girl!

I sat me to work. The wall paper is patterned with arabesques or odalisks or – perhaps – it is trapezoids. Upon one of the figures I fixed my eyes. I bethought me of humor. A voice startled me – Louisa’s voice.

‘If you aren’t too busy, dear,’ it said, ‘come to dinner.’

I looked at my watch. Yes, five hours had been gathered in by the grim scytheman. I went to dinner.

‘You mustn’t work too hard at first,’ said Louisa. ‘Goethe – or was it Napoleon? – said five hours a day is enough for mental labor. Couldn’t you take me and the children to the woods this afternoon?’

‘I am a little tired,’ I admitted. So we went to the woods.

But I soon got the swing of it. Within a month I was turning out copy as regular as shipments of hardware.

And I had success. My column in the weekly made some stir, and I was referred to in a gossipy way by the critics as something fresh in the line of humorists. I augmented my income considerably by contributing to other publications.

I picked up the tricks of the trade. I could take a funny idea and make a two-line joke of it, earning a dollar. With false whiskers on, it would serve up cold as a quatrain, doubling its producing value. By turning the skirt and adding a ruffle of rhyme you would hardly recognize it as vers de société with neatly shod feet and a fashion-plate illustration.

I began to save up money, and we had new carpets, and a parlor organ. My townspeople began to look upon me as a citizen of some consequence instead of the merry trifier I had been when I clerked in the hardware store.

After five or six months the spontaniety seemed to depart from my humor. Quips and droll sayings no longer fell carelessly from my lips. I was sometimes hard run for material. I found myself listening to catch available ideas from the conversation of my friends. Sometimes I chewed my pencil and gazed at the wall paper for hours trying to build up some gay little bubble of unstudied fun.

And then I became a harpy, a Moloch, a Jonah, a vampire, to my acquaintances. Anxious, haggard, greedy, I stood among them like a veritable killjoy. Let a bright saying, a witty comparison, a piquant phrase fall from their lips and I was after it like a hound springing upon a bone. I dared not trust my memory; but, turning aside guiltily and meanly, I would make a note of it in my ever-present memorandum book or upon my cuff for my own future use.

My friends regarded me in sorrow and wonder. I was not the same man. Where once I had furnished them entertainment and jollity, I now preyed upon them. No jests from me ever bid for their smiles now. They were too precious. I could not afford to dispense gratuitously the means of my livelihood.

I was a lugubrious fox praising the singing of my friends, the crow’s, that they might drop from their beaks the morsels of wit that I coveted.

Nearly every one began to avoid me. I even forgot how to smile, not even paying that much for the sayings I appropriated.

No persons, places, times, or subjects were exempt from my plundering in search of material. Even in church my demoralized fancy went hunting among the solemn aisles and pillars for spoil.

Did the minister give out the long-meter doxology, at once I began:

‘Doxology – sockdology – sockdolager – meter – meet her.’

The sermon ran through my mental sieve, its precepts filtering unheeded, could I but glean a suggestion of a pun or a bon mot. The solemnest anthems of the choir were but an accompaniment to my thoughts as I conceived new changes to ring upon the ancient comicalities concerning the jealousies of soprano, tenor, and basso.

My own home became a hunting ground. My wife is a singularly feminine creature, candid, sympathetic, and impulsive. Once her conversation was my delight, and her ideas a source of unfailing pleasure. Now I worked her. She was a gold mine of those amusing but lovable inconsistencies that distinguish the female mind.

I began to market those pearls of unwisdom and humor that should have enriched only the sacred precincts of home. With devilish cunning I encouraged her to talk. Unsuspecting, she laid her heart bare. Upon the cold, conspicuous, common, printed page I offered it to the public gaze.

A literary Judas, I kissed her and betrayed her. For pieces of silver I dressed her sweet confidences in the pantalettes and frills of folly and made them dance in the market place.

Dear Louisa! Of nights I have bent over her cruel as a wolf above a tender lamb, hearkening even to her soft words murmured in sleep, hoping to catch an idea for my next day’s grind. There is worse to come.

God help me! Next my fangs were buried deep in the neck of the fugitive sayings of my little children.

Guy and Viola were two bright fountains of childish, quaint thoughts and speeches. I found a ready sale for this kind of humor, and was furnishing a regular department in a magazine with ‘Funny Fancies of Childhood.’ I began to stalk them as an Indian stalks the antelope. I would hide behind sofas and doors, or crawl on my hands and knees among the bushes in the yard to eavesdrop while they were at play. I had all the qualities of a harpy except remorse.

Once, when I was barren of ideas, and my copy must leave in the next mail, I covered myself in a pile of autumn leaves in the yard, where I knew they intended to come to play. I cannot bring myself to believe that Guy was aware of my hiding place, but even if he was, I would be loath to blame him for his setting fire to the leaves, causing the destruction of my new suit of clothes, and nearly cremating a parent.

Soon my own children began to shun me as a pest. Often, when I was creeping upon them like a melancholy ghoul, I would hear them say to each other: ‘Here comes papa,’ and they would gather their toys and scurry away to some safer hiding place. Miserable wretch that I was!

And yet I was doing well financially. Before the first year had passed I had saved a thousand dollars, and we had lived in comfort.

But at what a cost! I am not quite clear as to what a pariah is, but I was everything that it sounds like. I had no friends, no amusements, no enjoyment of life. The happiness of my family had been sacrificed. I was a bee, sucking sordid honey from life’s fairest flowers, dreaded and shunned on account of my stingo.

One day a man spoke to me, with a pleasant and friendly smile. Not in months had the thing happened. I was passing the undertaking establishment of Peter Heffelbower. Peter stood in the door and saluted me. I stopped, strangely wrung in my heart by his greeting. He asked me inside.

The day was chill and rainy. We went into the back room, where a fire burned, in a little stove. A customer came, and Peter left me alone for a while. Presently I felt a new feeling stealing over me – a sense of beautiful calm and content, I looked around the place. There were rows of shining rosewood caskets, black palls, trestles, hearse plumes, mourning streamers, and all the paraphernalia of the solemn trade. Here was peace, order, silence, the abode of grave and dignified reflections. Here, on the brink of life, was a little niche pervaded by the spirit of eternal rest.

When I entered it, the follies of the world abandoned me at the door. I felt no inclination to wrest a humorous idea from those sombre and stately trappings. My mind seemed to stretch itself to grateful repose upon a couch draped with gentle thoughts.

A quarter of an hour ago I was an abandoned humorist. Now I was a philosopher, full of serenity and ease. I had found a refuge from humor, from the hot chase of the shy quip, from the degrading pursuit of the panting joke, from the restless reach after the nimble repartee.

I had not known Heffelbower well. When he came back, I let him talk, fearful that he might prove to be a jarring note in the sweet, dirgelike harmony of his establishment.

But, no. He chimed truly. I gave a long sigh of happiness. Never have I known a man’s talk to be as magnificently dull as Peter’s was. Compared with it the Dead Sea is a geyser. Never a sparkle or a glimmer of wit marred his words. Commonplaces as trite and as plentiful as blackberries flowed from his lips no more stirring in quality than a last week’s tape running from a ticker. Quaking a little, I tried upon him one of my best pointed jokes. It fell back ineffectual, with the point broken. I loved that man from then on.

Two or three evenings each week I would steal down to Heffelbower’s and revel in his back room. That was my only joy. I began to rise early and hurry through my work, that I might spend more time in my haven. In no other place could I throw off my habit of extracting humorous ideas from my surroundings. Peter’s talk left me no opening had I besieged it ever so hard.

Under this influence I began to improve in spirits. It was the recreation from one’s labor which every man needs. I surprised one or two of my former friends by throwing them a smile and a cheery word as I passed them on the streets. Several times I dumfounded my family by relaxing long enough to make a jocose remark in their presence.

I had so long been ridden by the incubus of humor that I seized my hours of holiday with a schoolboy’s zest.

My work began to suffer. It was not the pain and burden to me that it had been. I often whistled at my desk, and wrote with far more fluency than before. I accomplished my tasks impatiently, as anxious to be off to my helpful retreat as a drunkard is to get to his tavern.

My wife had some anxious hours in conjecturing where I spent my afternoons. I thought it best not to tell her; women do not understand these things. Poor girl! – she had one shock out of it.

One day I brought home a silver coffin handle for a paper weight and a fine, fluffy hearse plume to dust my papers with.

I loved to see them on my desk, and think of the beloved back room down at Heffelbower’s. But Louisa found them, and she shrieked with horror. I had to console her with some lame excuse for having them, but I saw in her eyes that the prejudice was not removed. I had to remove the articles, though, at double-quick time.

One day Peter Heffelbower laid before me a temptation that swept me off my feet. In his sensible, uninspired way he showed me his books, and explained that his profits and his business were increasing rapidly. He had thought of taking in a partner with some cash. He would rather have me than any one he knew. When I left his place that afternoon Peter had my check for the thousand dollars I had in the bank, and I was a partner in his undertaking business.

I went home with feelings of delirious joy, mingled with a certain amount of doubt. I was dreading to tell my wife about it. But I walked on air. To give up the writing of humorous stuff, once more to enjoy the apples of life, instead of squeezing them to a pulp for a few drops of hard cider to make the pubic feel funny – what a boon that would be!

At the supper table Louisa handed me some letters that had come during my absence. Several of them contained rejected manuscript. Ever since I first began going to Heffelbower’s my stuff had been coming back with alarming frequency. Lately I had been dashing off my jokes and articles with the greatest fluency. Previously I had labored like a bricklayer, slowly and with agony.

Presently I opened a letter from the editor of the weekly with which I had a regular contract. The checks for that weekly article were still our main dependence. The letter ran thus:

DEAR SIR:

As you are aware, our contract for the year expires with the present month. While regretting the necessity for so doing, we must say that we do not care to renew same for the coming year. We were quite pleased with your style of humor, which seems to have delighted quite a large proportion of our readers. But for the past two months we have noticed a decided falling off in its quality. Your earlier work showed a spontaneous, easy, natural flow of fun and wit. Of late it is labored, studied, and unconvincing, giving painful evidence of hard toil and drudging mechanism. Again regretting that we do not consider your contributions available any longer, we are, yours sincerely,

THE EDITOR.

I handed this letter to my wife. After she had read it her face grew extremely long, and there were tears in her eyes.

‘The mean old thing!’ she exclaimed indignantly. ‘I’m sure your pieces are just as good as they ever were. And it doesn’t take you half as long to write them as it did.’ And then, I suppose, Louisa thought of the checks that would cease coming. ‘Oh, John,’ she wailed, ‘what will you do now?’

For an answer I got up and began to do a polka step around the supper table. I am sure Louisa thought the trouble had driven me mad; and I think the children hoped it had, for they tore after me, yelling with glee and emulating my steps. I was now something like their old playmate as of yore.

‘The theatre for us to-night!’ I shouted; ‘nothing less. And a late, wild, disreputable supper for all of us at the Palace Restaurant. Lumpty-diddle-de-dee-de-dum!’

And then I explained my glee by declaring that I was now a partner in a prosperous undertaking establishment, and that written jokes might go hide their heads in sackcloth and ashes for all me.

With the editor’s letter in her hand to justify the deed I had done, my wife could advance no objections save a few mild ones based on the feminine inability to appreciate a good thing such as the little back room of Peter Hef – no, of Heffelbower & Co’s. undertaking establishment.

In conclusion, I will say that to-day you will find no man in our town as well liked, as jovial, and full of merry sayings as I. My jokes are again noised about and quoted; once more I take pleasure in my wife’s confidential chatter without a mercenary thought, while Guy and Viola play at my feet distributing gems of childish humor without fear of the ghastly tormentor who used to dog their steps, notebook in hand.

Our business has prospered finely. I keep the books and look after the shop, while Peter attends to outside matters. He says that my levity and high spirits would simply turn any funeral into a regular Irish wake.

Saki

The Story-Teller

It was a hot afternoon, and the railway carriage was correspondingly sultry, and the next stop was at Templecombe, nearly an hour ahead. The occupants of the carriage were a small girl, and a smaller girl, and a small boy. An aunt belonging to the children occupied one corner seat, and the further corner seat on the opposite side was occupied by a bachelor who was a stranger to their party, but the small girls and the small boy emphatically occupied the compartment. Both the aunt and the children were conversational in a limited, persistent way, reminding one of the attentions of a housefly that refuses to be discouraged. Most of the aunt’s remarks seemed to begin with ‘Don’t,’ and nearly all of the children’s remarks began with ‘Why?’ The bachelor said nothing out loud. ‘Don’t, Cyril, don’t,’ exclaimed the aunt, as the small boy began smacking the cushions of the seat, producing a cloud of dust at each blow.

‘Come and look out of the window,’ she added.

The child moved reluctantly to the window. ‘Why are those sheep being driven out of that field?’ he asked.

‘I expect they are being driven to another field where there is more grass,’ said the aunt weakly.

‘But there is lots of grass in that field,’ protested the boy; ‘there’s nothing else but grass there. Aunt, there’s lots of grass in that field.’

‘Perhaps the grass in the other field is better,’ suggested the aunt fatuously.

‘Why is it better?’ came the swift, inevitable question.

‘Oh, look at those cows!’ exclaimed the aunt. Nearly every field along the line had contained cows or bullocks, but she spoke as though she were drawing attention to a rarity.

‘Why is the grass in the other field better?’ persisted Cyril.

The frown on the bachelor’s face was deepening to a scowl. He was a hard, unsympathetic man, the aunt decided in her mind. She was utterly unable to come to any satisfactory decision about the grass in the other field.

The smaller girl created a diversion by beginning to recite ‘On the Road to Mandalay.’ She only knew the first line, but she put her limited knowledge to the fullest possible use. She repeated the line over and over again in a dreamy but resolute and very audible voice; it seemed to the bachelor as though some one had had a bet with her that she could not repeat the line aloud two thousand times without stopping. Whoever it was who had made the wager was likely to lose his bet.

‘Come over here and listen to a story,’ said the aunt, when the bachelor had looked twice at her and once at the communication cord.

The children moved listlessly towards the aunt’s end of the carriage. Evidently her reputation as a story-teller did not rank high in their estimation.

In a low, confidential voice, interrupted at frequent intervals by loud, petulant questionings from her listeners, she began an unenterprising and deplorably uninteresting story about a little girl who was good, and made friends with every one on account of her goodness, and was finally saved from a mad bull by a number of rescuers who admired her moral character.

‘Wouldn’t they have saved her if she hadn’t been good?’ demanded the bigger of the small girls. It was exactly the question that the bachelor had wanted to ask.

‘Well, yes,’ admitted the aunt lamely, ‘but I don’t think they would have run quite so fast to her help if they had not liked her so much.’

‘It’s the stupidest story I’ve ever heard,’ said the bigger of the small girls, with immense conviction.

‘I didn’t listen after the first bit, it was so stupid,’ said Cyril.

The smaller girl made no actual comment on the story, but she had long ago recommenced a murmured repetition of her favourite line.

‘You don’t seem to be a success as a story-teller,’ said the bachelor suddenly from his corner.

The aunt bristled in instant defence at this unexpected attack.

‘It’s a very difficult thing to tell stories that children can both understand and appreciate,’ she said stiffly.

‘I don’t agree with you,’ said the bachelor.

‘Perhaps you would like to tell them a story,’ was the aunt’s retort.

‘Tell us a story,’ demanded the bigger of the small girls.

‘Once upon a time,’ began the bachelor, ‘there was a little girl called Bertha, who was extraordinarily good.’

The children’s momentarily-aroused interest began at once to flicker; all stories seemed dreadfully alike, no matter who told them.

‘She did all that she was told, she was always truthful, she kept her clothes clean, ate milk puddings as though they were jam tarts, learned her lessons perfectly, and was polite in her manners.’

‘Was she pretty?’ asked the bigger of the small girls.

‘Not as pretty as any of you,’ said the bachelor, ‘but she was horribly good.’

There was a wave of reaction in favour of the story; the word horrible in connection with goodness was a novelty that commended itself. It seemed to introduce a ring of truth that was absent from the aunt’s tales of infant life.

‘She was so good,’ continued the bachelor, ‘that she won several medals for goodness, which she always wore, pinned on to her dress. There was a medal for obedience, another medal for punctuality, and a third for good behaviour. They were large metal medals and they clicked against one another as she walked. No other child in the town where she lived had as many as three medals, so everybody knew that she must be an extra good child.’

‘Horribly good,’ quoted Cyril.

‘Everybody talked about her goodness, and the Prince of the country got to hear about it, and he said that as she was so very good she might be allowed once a week to walk in his park, which was just outside the town. It was a beautiful park, and no children were ever allowed in it, so it was a great honour for Bertha to be allowed to go there.’

‘Were there any sheep in the park?’ demanded Cyril.

‘No;’ said the bachelor, ‘there were no sheep.’

‘Why weren’t there any sheep?’ came the inevitable question arising out of that answer.

The aunt permitted herself a smile, which might almost have been described as a grin.

‘There were no sheep in the park,’ said the bachelor, ‘because the Prince’s mother had once had a dream that her son would either be killed by a sheep or else by a clock falling on him. For that reason the Prince never kept a sheep in his park or a clock in his palace.’

The aunt suppressed a gasp of admiration.

‘Was the Prince killed by a sheep or by a clock?’ asked Cyril.

‘He is still alive, so we can’t tell whether the dream will come true,’ said the bachelor unconcernedly; ‘anyway, there were no sheep in the park, but there were lots of little pigs running all over the place.’

‘What colour were they?’

‘Black with white faces, white with black spots, black all over, grey with white patches, and some were white all over.’

The story-teller paused to let a full idea of the park’s treasures sink into the children’s imaginations; then he resumed:

‘Bertha was rather sorry to find that there were no flowers in the park. She had promised her aunts, with tears in her eyes, that she would not pick any of the kind Prince’s flowers, and she had meant to keep her promise, so of course it made her feel silly to find that there were no flowers to pick.’

‘Why weren’t there any flowers?’

‘Because the pigs had eaten them all,’ said the bachelor promptly. ‘The gardeners had told the Prince that you couldn’t have pigs and flowers, so he decided to have pigs and no flowers.’

There was a murmur of approval at the excellence of the Prince’s decision; so many people would have decided the other way.

‘There were lots of other delightful things in the park. There were ponds with gold and blue and green fish in them, and trees with beautiful parrots that said clever things at a moment’s notice, and humming birds that hummed all the popular tunes of the day. Bertha walked up and down and enjoyed herself immensely, and thought to herself: ‘If I were not so extraordinarily good I should not have been allowed to come into this beautiful park and enjoy all that there is to be seen in it,’ and her three medals clinked against one another as she walked and helped to remind her how very good she really was. Just then an enormous wolf came prowling into the park to see if it could catch a fat little pig for its supper.’

‘What colour was it?’ asked the children, amid an immediate quickening of interest.

‘Mud-colour all over, with a black tongue and pale grey eyes that gleamed with unspeakable ferocity. The first thing that it saw in the park was Bertha; her pinafore was so spotlessly white and clean that it could be seen from a great distance. Bertha saw the wolf and saw that it was stealing towards her, and she began to wish that she had never been allowed to come into the park. She ran as hard as she could, and the wolf came after her with huge leaps and bounds. She managed to reach a shrubbery of myrtle bushes and she hid herself in one of the thickest of the bushes. The wolf came sniffing among the branches, its black tongue lolling out of its mouth and its pale grey eyes glaring with rage. Bertha was terribly frightened, and thought to herself: ‘If I had not been so extraordinarily good I should have been safe in the town at this moment.’ However, the scent of the myrtle was so strong that the wolf could not sniff out where Bertha was hiding, and the bushes were so thick that he might have hunted about in them for a long time without catching sight of her, so he thought he might as well go off and catch a little pig instead. Bertha was trembling very much at having the wolf prowling and sniffing so near her, and as she trembled the medal for obedience clinked against the medals for good conduct and punctuality. The wolf was just moving away when he heard the sound of the medals clinking and stopped to listen; they clinked again in a bush quite near him. He dashed into the bush, his pale grey eyes gleaming with ferocity and triumph, and dragged Bertha out and devoured her to the last morsel. All that was left of her were her shoes, bits of clothing, and the three medals for goodness.’

‘Were any of the little pigs killed?’

‘No, they all escaped.’

‘The story began badly,’ said the smaller of the small girls, ‘but it had a beautiful ending.’

‘It is the most beautiful story that I ever heard,’ said the bigger of the small girls, with immense decision.

‘It is the only beautiful story I have ever heard,’ said Cyril.

A dissentient opinion came from the aunt.

‘A most improper story to tell to young children! You have undermined the effect of years of careful teaching.’

‘At any rate,’ said the bachelor, collecting his belongings preparatory to leaving the carriage, ‘I kept them quiet for ten minutes, which was more than you were able to do.’

‘Unhappy woman!’ he observed to himself as he walked down the platform of Templecombe station; ‘for the next six months or so those children will assail her in public with demands for an improper story!’

Mark Twain

Favourite Extracts from ‘The Adventures of Tom Sawyer’

Tom Meets a Stranger

The summer evenings were long. It was not dark, yet. Presently Tom checked his whistle. A stranger was before him – a boy a shade larger than himself. A new-comer of any age or either sex was an impressive curiosity in the poor little shabby village of St. Petersburg. This boy was well dressed, too – well dressed on a week-day. This was simply astounding. His cap was a dainty thing, his close-buttoned blue cloth roundabout was new and natty, and so were his pantaloons. He had shoes on – and it was only Friday. He even wore a necktie, a bright bit of ribbon. He had a citified air about him that ate into Tom’s vitals. The more Tom stared at the splendid marvel, the higher he turned up his nose at his finery and the shabbier and shabbier his own outfit seemed to him to grow. Neither boy spoke. If one moved, the other moved – but only sidewise, in a circle; they kept face to face and eye to eye all the time. Finally Tom said:

‘I can lick you!’

‘I’d like to see you try it.’

‘Well, I can do it.’

‘No you can’t, either.’

‘Yes I can.’

‘No you can’t.’

‘I can.’

‘You can’t.’

‘Can!’

‘Can’t!’

An uncomfortable pause. Then Tom said:

‘What’s your name?’

‘’Tisn’t any of your business, maybe.’

‘Well I ‘low I’ll make it my business.’

‘Well why don’t you?’

‘If you say much, I will.’

‘Much – much – much. There now.’

‘Oh, you think you’re mighty smart, don’t you? I could lick you with one hand tied behind me, if I wanted to.’

‘Well why don’t you do it? You say you can do it.’

‘Well I will, if you fool with me.’

‘Oh yes – I’ve seen whole families in the same fix.’

‘Smarty! You think you’re some, now, don’t you? Oh, what a hat!’

‘You can lump that hat if you don’t like it. I dare you to knock it off – and anybody that’ll take a dare will suck eggs.’

‘You’re a liar!’

‘You’re another.’

‘You’re a fighting liar and dasn’t take it up.’

‘Aw – take a walk!’

‘Say – if you give me much more of your sass I’ll take and bounce a rock off’n your head.’

‘Oh, of course you will.’

‘Well I will.’

‘Well why don’t you do it then? What do you keep saying you will for? Why don’t you do it? It’s because you’re afraid.’

‘I ain’t afraid.’

‘You are.’

‘I ain’t.’

‘You are.’

Another pause, and more eying and sidling around each other. Presently they were shoulder to shoulder. Tom said:

‘Get away from here!’

‘Go away yourself!’

‘I won’t.’

‘I won’t either.’

So they stood, each with a foot placed at an angle as a brace, and both shoving with might and main, and glowering at each other with hate. But neither could get an advantage. After struggling till both were hot and flushed, each relaxed his strain with watchful caution, and Tom said:

‘You’re a coward and a pup. I’ll tell my big brother on you, and he can thrash you with his little finger, and I’ll make him do it, too.’

‘What do I care for your big brother? I’ve got a brother that’s bigger than he is – and what’s more, he can throw him over that fence, too.’ [Both brothers were imaginary.]

‘That’s a lie.’

‘Your saying so don’t make it so.’

Tom drew a line in the dust with his big toe, and said:

‘I dare you to step over that, and I’ll lick you till you can’t stand up. Anybody that’ll take a dare will steal sheep.’

The new boy stepped over promptly, and said:

‘Now you said you’d do it, now let’s see you do it.’

‘Don’t you crowd me now; you better look out.’

‘Well, you said you’d do it – why don’t you do it?’

‘By jingo! for two cents I will do it.’

The new boy took two broad coppers out of his pocket and held them out with derision. Tom struck them to the ground. In an instant both boys were rolling and tumbling in the dirt, gripped together like cats; and for the space of a minute they tugged and tore at each other’s hair and clothes, punched and scratched each other’s nose, and covered themselves with dust and glory. Presently the confusion took form, and through the fog of battle Tom appeared, seated astride the new boy, and pounding him with his fists. ‘Holler ’nuff!’ said he.

The boy only struggled to free himself. He was crying – mainly from rage.

‘Holler ’nuff!’ – and the pounding went on.

At last the stranger got out a smothered ‘’Nuff!’ and Tom let him up and said:

‘Now that’ll learn you. Better look out who you’re fooling with next time.’

The new boy went off brushing the dust from his clothes, sobbing, snuffling, and occasionally looking back and shaking his head and threatening what he would do to Tom the ‘next time he caught him out.’ To which Tom responded with jeers, and started off in high feather, and as soon as his back was turned the new boy snatched up a stone, threw it and hit him between the shoulders and then turned tail and ran like an antelope. Tom chased the traitor home, and thus found out where he lived. He then held a position at the gate for some time, daring the enemy to come outside, but the enemy only made faces at him through the window and declined. At last the enemy’s mother appeared, and called Tom a bad, vicious, vulgar child, and ordered him away. So he went away; but he said he ‘’lowed’ to ‘lay’ for that boy.

Tom and the Fence

Saturday morning was come, and all the summer world was bright and fresh, and brimming with life. There was a song in every heart; and if the heart was young the music issued at the lips. There was cheer in every face and a spring in every step. The locust-trees were in bloom and the fragrance of the blossoms filled the air. Cardiff Hill, beyond the village and above it, was green with vegetation and it lay just far enough away to seem a Delectable Land, dreamy, reposeful, and inviting.

Tom appeared on the sidewalk with a bucket of whitewash and a long-handled brush. He surveyed the fence, and all gladness left him and a deep melancholy settled down upon his spirit. Thirty yards of board fence nine feet high. Life to him seemed hollow, and existence but a burden. Sighing, he dipped his brush and passed it along the topmost plank; repeated the operation; did it again; compared the insignificant whitewashed streak with the far-reaching continent of unwhitewashed fence, and sat down on a tree-box discouraged. Jim came skipping out at the gate with a tin pail, and singing Buffalo Gals. Bringing water from the town pump had always been hateful work in Tom’s eyes, before, but now it did not strike him so. He remembered that there was company at the pump. White, mulatto, and negro boys and girls were always there waiting their turns, resting, trading playthings, quarrelling, fighting, skylarking. And he remembered that although the pump was only a hundred and fifty yards off, Jim never got back with a bucket of water under an hour – and even then somebody generally had to go after him. Tom said:

‘Say, Jim, I’ll fetch the water if you’ll whitewash some.’

Jim shook his head and said:

‘Can’t, Mars Tom. Ole missis, she tole me I got to go an’ git dis water an’ not stop foolin’ roun’ wid anybody. She say she spec’ Mars Tom gwine to ax me to whitewash, an’ so she tole me go ‘long an’ ’tend to my own business – she ’lowed she’d ’tend to de whitewashin’.’

‘Oh, never you mind what she said, Jim. That’s the way she always talks. Gimme the bucket—I won’t be gone only a a minute. She won’t ever know.’

‘Oh, I dasn’t, Mars Tom. Ole missis she’d take an’ tar de head off’n me. ’Deed she would.’

‘She! She never licks anybody – whacks ’em over the head with her thimble – and who cares for that, I’d like to know. She talks awful, but talk don’t hurt – anyways it don’t if she don’t cry. Jim, I’ll give you a marvel. I’ll give you a white alley!’

Jim began to waver.

‘White alley, Jim! And it’s a bully taw.’

‘My! Dat’s a mighty gay marvel, I tell you! But Mars Tom I’s powerful ’fraid ole missis —’

‘And besides, if you will I’ll show you my sore toe.’

Jim was only human – this attraction was too much for him. He put down his pail, took the white alley, and bent over the toe with absorbing interest while the bandage was being unwound. In another moment he was flying down the street with his pail and a tingling rear, Tom was whitewashing with vigor, and Aunt Polly was retiring from the field with a slipper in her hand and triumph in her eye.

But Tom’s energy did not last. He began to think of the fun he had planned for this day, and his sorrows multiplied. Soon the free boys would come tripping along on all sorts of delicious expeditions, and they would make a world of fun of him for having to work – the very thought of it burnt him like fire. He got out his worldly wealth and examined it – bits of toys, marbles, and trash; enough to buy an exchange of work, maybe, but not half enough to buy so much as half an hour of pure freedom. So he returned his straitened means to his pocket, and gave up the idea of trying to buy the boys. At this dark and hopeless moment an inspiration burst upon him! Nothing less than a great, magnificent inspiration.

He took up his brush and went tranquilly to work. Ben Rogers hove in sight presently – the very boy, of all boys, whose ridicule he had been dreading. Ben’s gait was the hop-skip-and-jump – proof enough that his heart was light and his anticipations high. He was eating an apple, and giving a long, melodious whoop, at intervals, followed by a deep-toned ding-dong-dong, ding-dong-dong, for he was personating a steamboat. As he drew near, he slackened speed, took the middle of the street, leaned far over to starboard and rounded to ponderously and with laborious pomp and circumstance – for he was personating the Big Missouri, and considered himself to be drawing nine feet of water. He was boat and captain and engine-bells combined, so he had to imagine himself standing on his own hurricane-deck giving the orders and executing them:

‘Stop her, sir! Ting-a-ling-ling!’ The headway ran almost out, and he drew up slowly toward the sidewalk.

‘Ship up to back! Ting-a-ling-ling!’ His arms straightened and stiffened down his sides.

‘Set her back on the stabboard! Ting-a-ling-ling! Chow! ch-chow-wow! Chow!’ His right hand, mean-time, describing stately circles – for it was representing a forty-foot wheel.

‘Let her go back on the labboard! Ting-a-ling-ling! Chow-ch-chow-chow!’ The left hand began to describe circles.

‘Stop the stabboard! Ting-a-ling-ling! Stop the labboard! Come ahead on the stabboard! Stop her! Let your outside turn over slow! Ting-a-ling-ling! Chow-ow-ow! Get out that head-line! lively now! Come – out with your spring-line – what’re you about there! Take a turn round that stump with the bight of it! Stand by that stage, now – let her go! Done with the engines, sir! Ting-a-ling-ling! SH’T! S’H’T! SH’T!’ (trying the gauge-cocks).

Tom went on whitewashing – paid no attention to the steamboat. Ben stared a moment and then said: ‘Hi-Yi! You’re up a stump, ain’t you!’

No answer. Tom surveyed his last touch with the eye of an artist, then he gave his brush another gentle sweep and surveyed the result, as before. Ben ranged up alongside of him. Tom’s mouth watered for the apple, but he stuck to his work. Ben said:

‘Hello, old chap, you got to work, hey?’

Tom wheeled suddenly and said:

‘Why, it’s you, Ben! I warn’t noticing.’

‘Say – I’m going in a-swimming, I am. Don’t you wish you could? But of course you’d druther work – wouldn’t you? Course you would!’

Tom contemplated the boy a bit, and said:

‘What do you call work?’

‘Why, ain’t that work?’

Tom resumed his whitewashing, and answered carelessly:

‘Well, maybe it is, and maybe it ain’t. All I know, is, it suits Tom Sawyer.’

‘Oh come, now, you don’t mean to let on that you like it?’

The brush continued to move.

‘Like it? Well, I don’t see why I oughtn’t to like it. Does a boy get a chance to whitewash a fence every day?’

That put the thing in a new light. Ben stopped nibbling his apple. Tom swept his brush daintily back and forth – stepped back to note the effect – added a touch here and there – criticised the effect again – Ben watching every move and getting more and more interested, more and more absorbed. Presently he said:

‘Say, Tom, let me whitewash a little.’

Tom considered, was about to consent; but he altered his mind:

‘No – no – I reckon it wouldn’t hardly do, Ben. You see, Aunt Polly’s awful particular about this fence – right here on the street, you know – but if it was the back fence I wouldn’t mind and she wouldn’t. Yes, she’s awful particular about this fence; it’s got to be done very careful; I reckon there ain’t one boy in a thousand, maybe two thousand, that can do it the way it’s got to be done.’

‘No – is that so? Oh come, now – lemme just try. Only just a little – I’d let you, if you was me, Tom.’

‘Ben, I’d like to, honest injun; but Aunt Polly – well, Jim wanted to do it, but she wouldn’t let him; Sid wanted to do it, and she wouldn’t let Sid. Now don’t you see how I’m fixed? If you was to tackle this fence and anything was to happen to it —’

‘Oh, shucks, I’ll be just as careful. Now lemme try. Say – I’ll give you the core of my apple.’

‘Well, here – No, Ben, now don’t. I’m afeard —’

‘I’ll give you all of it!’

Tom gave up the brush with reluctance in his face, but alacrity in his heart. And while the late steamer Big Missouri worked and sweated in the sun, the retired artist sat on a barrel in the shade close by, dangled his legs, munched his apple, and planned the slaughter of more innocents. There was no lack of material; boys happened along every little while; they came to jeer, but remained to whitewash. By the time Ben was fagged out, Tom had traded the next chance to Billy Fisher for a kite, in good repair; and when he played out, Johnny Miller bought in for a dead rat and a string to swing it with – and so on, and so on, hour after hour. And when the middle of the afternoon came, from being a poor poverty-stricken boy in the morning, Tom was literally rolling in wealth. He had besides the things before mentioned, twelve marbles, part of a jews-harp, a piece of blue bottle-glass to look through, a spool cannon, a key that wouldn’t unlock anything, a fragment of chalk, a glass stopper of a decanter, a tin soldier, a couple of tadpoles, six fire-crackers, a kitten with only one eye, a brass door-knob, a dog-collar – but no dog – the handle of a knife, four pieces of orange-peel, and a dilapidated old window sash.

He had had a nice, good, idle time all the while – plenty of company – and the fence had three coats of whitewash on it! If he hadn’t run out of whitewash he would have bankrupted every boy in the village.

Sunday School Visitors

In due course the superintendent stood up in front of the pulpit, with a closed hymn-book in his hand and his forefinger inserted between its leaves, and commanded attention. When a Sunday-school superintendent makes his customary little speech, a hymn-book in the hand is as necessary as is the inevitable sheet of music in the hand of a singer who stands forward on the platform and sings a solo at a concert – though why, is a mystery: for neither the hymn-book nor the sheet of music is ever referred to by the sufferer. This superintendent was a slim creature of thirty-five, with a sandy goatee and short sandy hair; he wore a stiff standing-collar whose upper edge almost reached his ears and whose sharp points curved forward abreast the corners of his mouth—a fence that compelled a straight lookout ahead, and a turning of the whole body when a side view was required; his chin was propped on a spreading cravat which was as broad and as long as a bank-note, and had fringed ends; his boot toes were turned sharply up, in the fashion of the day, like sleigh-runners – an effect patiently and laboriously produced by the young men by sitting with their toes pressed against a wall for hours together. Mr. Walters was very earnest of mien, and very sincere and honest at heart; and he held sacred things and places in such reverence, and so separated them from worldly matters, that unconsciously to himself his Sunday-school voice had acquired a peculiar intonation which was wholly absent on week-days. He began after this fashion:

‘Now, children, I want you all to sit up just as straight and pretty as you can and give me all your attention for a minute or two. There – that is it. That is the way good little boys and girls should do. I see one little girl who is looking out of the window – I am afraid she thinks I am out there somewhere – perhaps up in one of the trees making a speech to the little birds. [Applausive titter.] I want to tell you how good it makes me feel to see so many bright, clean little faces assembled in a place like this, learning to do right and be good.’ And so forth and so on. It is not necessary to set down the rest of the oration. It was of a pattern which does not vary, and so it is familiar to us all.

The latter third of the speech was marred by the resumption of fights and other recreations among certain of the bad boys, and by fidgetings and whisperings that extended far and wide, washing even to the bases of isolated and incorruptible rocks like Sid and Mary. But now every sound ceased suddenly, with the subsidence of Mr. Walters’ voice, and the conclusion of the speech was received with a burst of silent gratitude.

A good part of the whispering had been occasioned by an event which was more or less rare – the entrance of visitors: lawyer Thatcher, accompanied by a very feeble and aged man; a fine, portly, middle-aged gentleman with iron-gray hair; and a dignified lady who was doubtless the latter’s wife. The lady was leading a child. Tom had been restless and full of chafings and repinings; conscience-smitten, too – he could not meet Amy Lawrence’s eye, he could not brook her loving gaze. But when he saw this small newcomer his soul was all ablaze with bliss in a moment. The next moment he was ‘showing off’ with all his might – cuffing boys, pulling hair, making faces – in a word, using every art that seemed likely to fascinate a girl and win her applause. His exaltation had but one alloy – the memory of his humiliation in this angel’s garden – and that record in sand was fast washing out, under the waves of happiness that were sweeping over it now.

The visitors were given the highest seat of honor, and as soon as Mr. Walters’ speech was finished, he introduced them to the school. The middle-aged man turned out to be a prodigious personage – no less a one than the county judge – altogether the most august creation these children had ever looked upon – and they wondered what kind of material he was made of – and they half wanted to hear him roar, and were half afraid he might, too. He was from Constantinople, twelve miles away – so he had travelled, and seen the world – these very eyes had looked upon the county court-house – which was said to have a tin roof. The awe which these reflections inspired was attested by the impressive silence and the ranks of staring eyes. This was the great Judge Thatcher, brother of their own lawyer. Jeff Thatcher immediately went forward, to be familiar with the great man and be envied by the school. It would have been music to his soul to hear the whisperings:

‘Look at him, Jim! He’s a going up there. Say – look! he’s a going to shake hands with him – he is shaking hands with him! By jings, don’t you wish you was Jeff?’

Mr. Walters fell to ‘showing off,’ with all sorts of official bustlings and activities, giving orders, delivering judgments, discharging directions here, there, everywhere that he could find a target. The librarian ‘showed off’ – running hither and thither with his arms full of books and making a deal of the splutter and fuss that insect authority delights in. The young lady teachers ‘showed off’ – bending sweetly over pupils that were lately being boxed, lifting pretty warning fingers at bad little boys and patting good ones lovingly. The young gentlemen teachers ‘showed off’ with small scoldings and other little displays of authority and fine attention to discipline – and most of the teachers, of both sexes, found business up at the library, by the pulpit; and it was business that frequently had to be done over again two or three times (with much seeming vexation). The little girls ‘showed off’ in various ways, and the little boys ‘showed off’ with such diligence that the air was thick with paper wads and the murmur of scufflings. And above it all the great man sat and beamed a majestic judicial smile upon all the house, and warmed himself in the sun of his own grandeur – for he was ‘showing off,’ too.

There was only one thing wanting to make Mr. Walters’ ecstasy complete, and that was a chance to deliver a Bible-prize and exhibit a prodigy. Several pupils had a few yellow tickets, but none had enough – he had been around among the star pupils inquiring. He would have given worlds, now, to have that German lad back again with a sound mind.

And now at this moment, when hope was dead, Tom Sawyer came forward with nine yellow tickets, nine red tickets, and ten blue ones, and demanded a Bible. This was a thunderbolt out of a clear sky. Walters was not expecting an application from this source for the next ten years. But there was no getting around it – here were the certified checks, and they were good for their face. Tom was therefore elevated to a place with the Judge and the other elect, and the great news was announced from headquarters. It was the most stunning surprise of the decade, and so profound was the sensation that it lifted the new hero up to the judicial one’s altitude, and the school had two marvels to gaze upon in place of one. The boys were all eaten up with envy – but those that suffered the bitterest pangs were those who perceived too late that they themselves had contributed to this hated splendor by trading tickets to Tom for the wealth he had amassed in selling whitewashing privileges. These despised themselves, as being the dupes of a wily fraud, a guileful snake in the grass.

The prize was delivered to Tom with as much effusion as the superintendent could pump up under the circumstances; but it lacked somewhat of the true gush, for the poor fellow’s instinct taught him that there was a mystery here that could not well bear the light, perhaps; it was simply preposterous that this boy had warehoused two thousand sheaves of Scriptural wisdom on his premises – a dozen would strain his capacity, without a doubt.

Amy Lawrence was proud and glad, and she tried to make Tom see it in her face – but he wouldn’t look. She wondered; then she was just a grain troubled; next a dim suspicion came and went – came again; she watched; a furtive glance told her worlds – and then her heart broke, and she was jealous, and angry, and the tears came and she hated everybody. Tom most of all (she thought).

Tom was introduced to the Judge; but his tongue was tied, his breath would hardly come, his heart quaked – partly because of the awful greatness of the man, but mainly because he was her parent. He would have liked to fall down and worship him, if it were in the dark. The Judge put his hand on Tom’s head and called him a fine little man, and asked him what his name was. The boy stammered, gasped, and got it out:

‘Tom.’

‘Oh, no, not Tom – it is —’

‘Thomas.’

‘Ah, that’s it. I thought there was more to it, maybe. That’s very well. But you’ve another one I daresay, and you’ll tell it to me, won’t you?’

‘Tell the gentleman your other name, Thomas,’ said Walters, ‘and say sir. You mustn’t forget your manners.’

‘Thomas Sawyer – sir.’

‘That’s it! That’s a good boy. Fine boy. Fine, manly little fellow. Two thousand verses is a great many – very, very great many. And you never can be sorry for the trouble you took to learn them; for knowledge is worth more than anything there is in the world; it’s what makes great men and good men; you’ll be a great man and a good man yourself, some day, Thomas, and then you’ll look back and say, It’s all owing to the precious Sunday-school privileges of my boyhood – it’s all owing to my dear teachers that taught me to learn – it’s all owing to the good superintendent, who encouraged me, and watched over me, and gave me a beautiful Bible – a splendid elegant Bible – to keep and have it all for my own, always – it’s all owing to right bringing up! That is what you will say, Thomas – and you wouldn’t take any money for those two thousand verses – no indeed you wouldn’t. And now you wouldn’t mind telling me and this lady some of the things you’ve learned – no, I know you wouldn’t – for we are proud of little boys that learn. Now, no doubt you know the names of all the twelve disciples. Won’t you tell us the names of the first two that were appointed?’

Tom was tugging at a button-hole and looking sheepish. He blushed, now, and his eyes fell. Mr. Walters’ heart sank within him. He said to himself, it is not possible that the boy can answer the simplest question – why did the Judge ask him? Yet he felt obliged to speak up and say:

‘Answer the gentleman, Thomas – don’t be afraid.’

Tom still hung fire.

‘Now I know you’ll tell me,’ said the lady. ‘The names of the first two disciples were —’

‘David and Goliah!’

Let us draw the curtain of charity over the rest of the scene.

How I Edited an Agricultural Paper

I did not take temporary editorship of an agricultural paper without misgivings. Neither would a landsman take command of a ship without misgivings. But I was in circumstances that made the salary an object. The regular editor of the paper was going off for a holiday, and I accepted the terms he offered, and took his place.

The sensation of being at work again was luxurious, and I wrought all the week with unflagging pleasure. We went to press, and I waited a day with some solicitude to see whether my effort was going to attract any notice. As I left the office, toward sundown, a group of men and boys at the foot of the stairs dispersed with one impulse, and gave me passageway, and I heard one or two of them say: ‘That’s him!’ I was naturally pleased by this incident. The next morning I found a similar group at the foot of the stairs, and scattering couples and individuals standing here and there in the street and over the way, watching me with interest. The group separated and fell back as I approached, and I heard a man say, ‘Look at his eye!’ I pretended not to observe the notice I was attracting, but secretly I was pleased with it, and was purposing to write an account of it to my aunt. I went up the short flight of stairs, and heard cheery voices and a ringing laugh as I drew near the door, which I opened, and caught a glimpse of two young rural-looking men, whose faces blanched and lengthened when they saw me, and then they both plunged through the window with a great crash. I was surprised.

In about half an hour an old gentleman, with a flowing beard and a fine but rather austere face, entered, and sat down at my invitation. He seemed to have something on his mind. He took off his hat and set it on the floor, and got out of it a red silk handkerchief and a copy of our paper.

He put the paper on his lap, and while he polished his spectacles with his handkerchief he said, ‘Are you the new editor?’

I said I was.

‘Have you ever edited an agricultural paper before?’

‘No,’ I said; ‘this is my first attempt.’

‘Very likely. Have you had any experience in agriculture practically?’

‘No; I believe I have not.’

‘Some instinct told me so,’ said the old gentleman, putting on his spectacles, and looking over them at me with asperity, while he folded his paper into a convenient shape. ‘I wish to read you what must have made me have that instinct. It was this editorial. Listen, and see if it was you that wrote it:

“Turnips should never be pulled, it injures them. It is much better to send a boy up and let him shake the tree.”

‘Now, what do you think of that? For I really suppose you wrote it?’

‘Think of it? Why, I think it is good. I think it is sense. I have no doubt that every year millions and millions of bushels of turnips are spoiled in this township alone by being pulled in a half-ripe condition, when, if they had sent a boy up to shake the tree —’

‘Shake your grandmother! Turnips don’t grow on trees!’

‘Oh, they don’t, don’t they? Well, who said they did? The language was intended to be figurative, wholly figurative. Anybody that knows anything will know that I meant that the boy should shake the vine.’

Then this old person got up and tore his paper all into small shreds, and stamped on them, and broke several things with his cane, and said I did not know as much as a cow; and then went out and banged the door after him, and, in short, acted in such a way that I fancied he was displeased about something. But not knowing what the trouble was, I could not be any help to him.

Pretty soon after this a long, cadaverous creature, with lanky locks hanging down to his shoulders, and a week’s stubble bristling from the hills and valleys of his face, darted within the door, and halted, motionless, with finger on lip, and head and body bent in listening attitude. No sound was heard.

Still he listened. No sound. Then he turned the key in the door, and came elaborately tiptoeing toward me till he was within long reaching distance of me, when he stopped and, after scanning my face with intense interest for a while, drew a folded copy of our paper from his bosom, and said:

‘There, you wrote that. Read it to me – quick! Relieve me. I suffer.’

I read as follows; and as the sentences fell from my lips I could see the relief come, I could see the drawn muscles relax, and the anxiety go out of the face, and rest and peace steal over the features like the merciful moonlight over a desolate landscape:

‘The guano is a fine bird, but great care is necessary in rearing it. It should not be imported earlier than June or later than September. In the winter it should be kept in a warm place, where it can hatch out its young.

It is evident that we are to have a backward season for grain. Therefore it will be well for the farmer to begin setting out his corn-stalks and planting his buckwheat cakes in July instead of August.

Concerning the pumpkin. This berry is a favorite with the natives of the interior of New England, who prefer it to the gooseberry for the making of fruit-cake, and who likewise give it the preference over the raspberry for feeding cows, as being more filling and fully as satisfying. The pumpkin is the only esculent of the orange family that will thrive in the North, except the gourd and one or two varieties of the squash. But the custom of planting it in the front yard with the shrubbery is fast going out of vogue, for it is now generally conceded that, the pumpkin as a shade tree is a failure.

Now, as the warm weather approaches, and the ganders begin to spawn —’

The excited listener sprang toward me to shake hands, and said:

‘There, there – that will do. I know I am all right now, because you have read it just as I did, word for word. But, stranger, when I first read it this morning, I said to myself, I never, never believed it before, notwithstanding my friends kept me under watch so strict, but now I believe I am crazy; and with that I fetched a howl that you might have heard two miles, and started out to kill somebody – because, you know, I knew it would come to that sooner or later, and so I might as well begin. I read one of them paragraphs over again, so as to be certain, and then I burned my house down and started. I have crippled several people, and have got one fellow up a tree, where I can get him if I want him. But I thought I would call in here as I passed along and make the thing perfectly certain; and now it is certain, and I tell you it is lucky for the chap that is in the tree. I should have killed him sure, as I went back. Good-bye, sir, good-bye; you have taken a great load off my mind. My reason has stood the strain of one of your agricultural articles, and I know that nothing can ever unseat it now. Good-bye, sir.’

I felt a little uncomfortable about the cripplings and arsons this person had been entertaining himself with, for I could not help feeling remotely accessory to them. But these thoughts were quickly banished, for the regular editor walked in! [I thought to myself, ‘Now if you had gone to Egypt as I recommended you to, I might have had a chance to get my hand in; but you wouldn’t do it, and here you are. I sort of expected you.’]

The editor was looking sad and perplexed and dejected.

He surveyed the wreck which that old rioter and those two young farmers had made, and then said, ‘This is a sad business – a very sad business. There is the mucilage-bottle broken, and six panes of glass, and a spittoon, and two candlesticks. But that is not the worst. The reputation of the paper is injured – and permanently, I fear. True, there never was such a call for the paper before, and it never sold such a large edition or soared to such celebrity; but does one want to be famous for lunacy, and prosper upon the infirmities of his mind? My friend, as I am an honest man, the street out here is full of people, and others are roosting on the fences, waiting to get a glimpse of you, because they think you are crazy. And well they might after reading your editorials. They are a disgrace to journalism. Why, what put it into your head that you could edit a paper of this nature? You do not seem to know the first rudiments of agriculture. You speak of a furrow and a harrow as being the same thing; you talk of the moulting season for cows; and you recommend the domestication of the pole-cat on account of its playfulness and its excellence as a ratter! Your remark that clams will lie quiet if music be played to them was superfluous – entirely superfluous. Nothing disturbs clams. Clams always lie quiet. Clams care nothing whatever about music. Ah, heavens and earth, friend! If you had made the acquiring of ignorance the study of your life, you could not have graduated with higher honor than you could to-day. I never saw anything like it. Your observation that the horse-chestnut as an article of commerce is steadily gaining in favor is simply calculated to destroy this journal. I want you to throw up your situation and go. I want no more holiday – I could not enjoy it if I had it. Certainly not with you in my chair. I would always stand in dread of what you might be going to recommend next. It makes me lose all patience every time I think of your discussing oyster-beds under the head of “Landscape Gardening.” I want you to go. Nothing on earth could persuade me to take another holiday. Oh! why didn’t you tell me you didn’t know anything about agriculture?’

‘Tell you, you corn-stalk, you cabbage, you son of a cauliflower? It’s the first time I ever heard such an unfeeling remark. I tell you I have been in the editorial business going on fourteen years, and it is the first time I ever heard of a man’s having to know anything in order to edit a newspaper. You turnip! Who write the dramatic critiques for the second-rate papers? Why, a parcel of promoted shoemakers and apprentice apothecaries, who know just as much about good acting as I do about good farming and no more. Who review the books? People who never wrote one. Who do up the heavy leaders on finance? Parties who have had the largest opportunities for knowing nothing about it. Who criticize the Indian campaigns? Gentlemen who do not know a war-whoop from a wigwam, and who never have had to run a foot-race with a tomahawk, or pluck arrows out of the several members of their families to build the evening camp-fire with. Who write the temperance appeals, and clamor about the flowing bowl? Folks who will never draw another sober breath till they do it in the grave. Who edit the agricultural papers, you, yam? Men, as a general thing, who fail in the poetry line, yellow-colored novel line, sensation, drama line, city-editor line, and finally fall back on agriculture as a temporary reprieve from the poorhouse. You try to tell me anything about the newspaper business! Sir, I have been through it from Alpha to Omaha, and I tell you that the less a man knows the bigger the noise he makes and the higher the salary he commands. Heaven knows if I had but been ignorant instead of cultivated, and impudent instead of diffident, I could have made a name for myself in this cold, selfish world. I take my leave, sir. Since I have been treated as you have treated me, I am perfectly willing to go. But I have done my duty. I have fulfilled my contract as far as I was permitted to do it. I said I could make your paper of interest to all classes – and I have. I said I could run your circulation up to twenty thousand copies, and if I had had two more weeks I’d have done it. And I’d have given you the best class of readers that ever an agricultural paper had – not a farmer in it, nor a solitary individual who could tell a watermelon-tree from a peach-vine to save his life. You are the loser by this rupture, not me, Pie-plant. Adiós.’

I then left.

Running for Governor

A few months ago I was nominated for Governor of the great State of New York, to run against Mr Stewart L. Woodford and Mr John T. Hoffman on an independent ticket. I somehow felt that I had one prominent advantage over these gentlemen and that was-good character. It was easy to see by the newspapers that, if ever they had known what it was to bear a good name, that time had gone by. It was plain that in these latter years they had become familiar with all manner of shameful crimes. But at the very moment that I was exalting my advantage and joying in it in secret, there was a muddy undercurrent of discomfort ‘riling’ the deeps of my happiness, and that was-the having to hear my name bandied about in familiar connection with those of such people. I grew more and more disturbed. Finally I wrote my grandmother about it. Her answer came quick and sharp. She said:

‘You have never done a single thing in all your life to be ashamed of-not one. Look at the newspapers– look at them and comprehend what sort of characters Messrs Woodford and Hoffman are, and then see if you are willing to lower yourself to their level and enter a public canvass with them.’

It was my very thought. I did not sleep a single moment that night. But after all I could not recede. I was fully committed, and must go on with the fight.

As I was looking listlessly over the papers at breakfast I came across this paragraph, and I may truly say I never was so confounded before:

‘PERJURY. – Perhaps, now that Mr. Mark Twain is before the people as a candidate for Governor, he will condescend to explain how he came to be convicted of perjury by thirty-four witnesses in Wakawak, Cochin China, in 1863, the intent of which perjury being to rob a poor native widow and her helpless family of a meagre plantain-patch, their only stay and support in their bereavement and desolation. Mr. Twain owes it to himself, as well as to the great people whose suffrages he asks, to clear this matter up. Will he do it?’

I thought I should burst with amazement! Such a cruel, heartless charge! I never had seen Cochin China! I never had heard of Wakawak! I didn’t know a plantain-patch from a kangaroo! I did not know what to do. I was crazed and helpless. I let the day slip away without doing anything at all. The next morning the same paper had this-nothing more:

‘SIGNIFICANT. – Mr. Twain, it will be observed, is suggestively silent about the Cochin China perjury.’

[Mem. – During the rest of the campaign this paper never referred to me in any other way than as ‘the infamous perjurer Twain.’]

Next came the Gazette, with this:

‘WANTED TO KNOW. – Will the new candidate for Governor deign to explain to certain of his fellow-citizens (who are suffering to vote for him!) the little circumstance of his cabin-mates in Montana losing small valuable from time to time, until at last, these things having been invariably found on Mr. Twain’s person or in his ‘trunk’ (newspaper he rolled his traps in), they felt compelled to give him a friendly admonition for his own good, and so tarred and feathered him, and rode him on a rail, and then advised him to leave a permanent vacuum in the place he usually occupied in the camp. Will he do this?’

Could anything be more deliberately malicious than that? For I never was in Montana in my life.

[After this, this journal customarily spoke of me as ‘Twain, the Montana Thief.’]

I got to picking up papers apprehensively-much as one would lift a desired blanket which he had some idea might have a rattlesnake under it. One day this met my eye:

‘THE LIE NAILED. – By the sworn affidavits of Michael O’Flanagan, Esq., of the Five Points, and Mr. Kit Burns and Mr. John Allen, of Water Street, it is established that Mr. Mark Twain’s vile statement that the lamented grandfather of our noble standard-bearer, John T. Hoffman, was shadow of foundation in fact. It is disheartening to virtuous men to see such shameful means resorted to achieve political success as the attacking of the dead in their graves, and defiling their honored names with slander. When we think of the anguish this miserable falsehood must cause the innocent relatives and friends of the deceased, we are almost driven to incite an outraged and insulted public to summary and unlawful vengeance upon the traducer. But no! Let us leave him to the agony of a lacerated conscience (though, if passion should get the better of the public, and in its blind fury they should do the traducer bodily injury, it is but too obvious that no jury could convict and no court punish the perpetrators of the deed.’

The ingenious closing sentence had the effect of moving me out of bed with despatch that night, and out at the back-door also, while the ‘outraged and insulted public’ surged in the front way, breaking furniture and windows in their righteous indignation as they came, and taking off such property as they could carry when they went. And yet I can lay my hand upon the Book and say that I never slandered Governor Hoffman’s grandfather. More, I had never even heard of him or mentioned him up to that day and date.

[I will state, in passing, that the journal above quoted from always referred to me afterward as ‘Twain, the Body-Snatcher.’]

The next newspaper article that attracted my attention was the following:

‘A SWEET CANDIDATE. – Mr. Mark Twain, who was to make such a blighting speech at the mass meeting of the Independents last night, didn’ t come to time! A telegram from his physician stated that he had been knocked down by a runway team, and his leg broken in two places sufferer lying in great agony, and so forth, and so forth, and a lot more bosh of the same sort. And the Independents tried hard to swallow the wretched subterfuge, and pretend that they did not know what was the real reason of the absence of the abandoned creature whom they denominate their standard-bearer.

A certain man was seen to reel into Mr. Twain’s hotel last night in a state of beastly intoxication. It is the imperative duty of the Independents to prove that this besotted brute was not Mark Twain himself. We have them at last! This is a case that admits of no shirking. The voice of the people demands in thundertones, “Who was that man?”’

It was incredible, absolutely incredible, for a moment, that it was really my name that was coupled with this disgraceful suspicion. Three long years had passed over my head since I had tasted ale, beer, wine or liquor of any kind.

[It shows what effect the times were having on me when I say that I saw myself confidently dubbed ‘Mr. Delirium Tremens Twain’ in the next issue to that journal without a pang-notwithstanding I knew that with monotonous fidelity the paper would go on calling me so to the very end.]

By this time anonymous letters were getting to be an important part of my mail matter. This form was common: —

How about that old woman you kicked off your premises which was begging? POL PRY.

And this:

There is things which you have done which is unbeknowens to anybody but me. You better trot out a few dols, to yours truly, or you’ll hear through the papers from HANDY ANDY.

This is about the idea. I could continue them till the reader was surfeited, if desirable.

Shortly the principal Republican journal ‘convicted’ me of wholesale bribery, and the leading Democratic paper ‘nailed’ and aggravated case of blackmailing to me.

[In this way I acquired two additional names: ‘Twain, the Filthy Corruptionist,’ and ‘Twain, the Loathsome Embracer.’]

By this time there had grown to be such a clamour for an ‘answer’ to all the dreadful charges that were laid to me that the editors and leaders of my party said it would be political ruin for me to remain silent any longer. As if to make their appeal the more imperative, the following appeared in one of the papers the very next day:

‘BEHOLD THE MAN! – The Independent candidate still maintains silence. Because he dare not speak. Every accusation against him has been amply proved, and they have been endorsed and reendorsed by his own eloquent, silence, till at this day he stands forever convicted. Look upon your candidate, Independents! Look upon the Infamous Perjurer! the Montana Thief! the Body-Snatcher! Contemplate your incarnate Delirium Tremens! Your Filthy Corruptionist! Your Loathsome Embracer! Gaze upon him-ponder him well – and then say if you can give your honest votes to a creature who has earned this dismal array of titles by his hideous crimes, and dare not open his mouth in denial of any one of them!’

There was no possible way of getting out of it, and so in deep humiliation, I set about preparing to ‘answer’ a mass of baseless charges and mean and wicked falsehoods. But I never finished the task, for the very next morning a paper came out with a new horror, a fresh malignity, and seriously charged me with burning a lunatic asylum with all this inmates, because it obstructed the view from my house. This threw me into a sort of panic. Then came the charge of poisoning my uncle to get his property, with an imperative demand that the grave should be opened. This drove me to the verge of distraction. On top of this I was accused of employing toothless and incompetent old relatives to prepare the food for the foundling hospital when I was warden. I was wavering – wavering. And at last, as a due and fitting climax to the shameless persecution that party rancour had inflicted upon me, nine little toddling children, of all shades of colour and degrees of raggedness, were taught to rush on to the platform at a public meeting, and clasp me around the legs and call me PA! I gave up. I hauled down my colours and surrendered. I was not equal to the requirements of a Gubernatorial campaign in the State of New York, and so I sent in my withdrawal from the candidacy, and in bitterness of spirit signed it.

‘Truly yours, once a decent man, but now

‘Mark Twain, I. P., M. T., B. S., D. T., F. C, and L. E.’

Punch, Brothers, Punch

Will the reader please to cast his eye over the following lines, and see if 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 possession of me. All through breakfast they went waltzing through my brain; and when, at last, I rolled up my napkin, I could not tell whether I had eaten anything or not. I had carefully laid out my day’s work the day before – thrilling tragedy in the novel which I am writing. I went to my den to begin my deed of blood. I took up my pen, but all I could get it to say was, ‘Punch in the presence of the passenjare.’ I fought hard for an hour, but it was useless. My head kept humming, ‘A blue trip slip for an eight-cent fare, a buff trip slip for a six-cent fare,’ and so on and so on, without peace or respite. The day’s work was ruined – I could see that plainly enough. I gave up and drifted down-town, and presently discovered that my feet were keeping time to that relentless jingle. When I could stand it no longer I altered my step. But it did no good; those rhymes accommodated themselves to the new step and went on harassing me just as before. I returned home, and suffered all the afternoon; suffered all through an unconscious and unrefreshing dinner; suffered, and cried, and jingled all through the evening; went to bed and rolled, tossed, and jingled right along, the same as ever; got up at midnight frantic, and tried to read; but there was nothing visible upon the whirling page except ‘Punch! punch in the presence of the passenjare.’ By sunrise I was out of my mind, and everybody marveled and was 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, and went forth to fulfil an engagement with a valued friend, the Rev. Mr. – , to walk to the Talcott Tower, ten miles distant. He stared at me, but asked no questions. We started. Mr. – talked, talked, talked as 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 haggard and 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 any relevancy in what you have said, certainly nothing sad; and yet – maybe it was the way you said the words – I never heard anything that sounded so 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 slip for a six-cent fare, pink trip slip for a three-cent fare; punch in the presence of the passenjare.’ I do not know what occurred during the other nine miles. However, all of a sudden Mr. – laid his hand on my shoulder and shouted:

‘Oh, wake up! wake up! wake up! Don’t sleep all day! Here we are at the Tower, man! I have talked myself deaf and dumb and blind, and never got a response. Just look at this magnificent autumn landscape! Look at it! look at it! Feast your eye on it! You have traveled; you have seen boaster landscapes elsewhere. Come, now, deliver an honest opinion. What do 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-cent fare, 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 are about the same words you said before; there does not seem to be anything in them, and yet they nearly break my heart when you say them. Punch in the – 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 flows along so nicely. I have nearly caught the rhymes myself. Say them over just 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 a great burden seemed to tumble from my shoulders. That torturing jingle departed out of my brain, and a grateful sense of rest and peace descended upon me. I was light-hearted enough to sing; and I did sing for half an hour, straight along, as we went jogging homeward. Then my freed tongue found blessed speech again, and the pent talk of many a 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’s hand at parting, I said:

‘Haven’t we had a royal good time! But now I remember, you haven’t said a 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 the passenjare!’

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, on Tuesday evening, he staggered into my presence and sank dejectedly into a seat. He was pale, worn; he was a wreck. He lifted his faded eyes to my face and said:

‘Ah, Mark, it was a ruinous investment that I made in those heartless rhymes. They have ridden me like a nightmare, day and night, hour after hour, to this very moment. Since I saw you I have suffered the torments of the lost. Saturday evening I had a sudden call, by telegraph, and took the night train for Boston. The occasion was the death of a valued old friend who had requested that I should preach his funeral sermon. I took my seat in the cars and set myself to framing the discourse. But I never got beyond the opening paragraph; for then the train started and the car-wheels began their ‘clack, clack-clack-clack-clack! clack-clack! – clack-clack-clack!’ and right away those odious rhymes fitted themselves to that accompaniment. For an hour I sat there and set a syllable of those rhymes to every separate and distinct clack the car-wheels made. Why, I was as fagged out, then, as if I had been chopping wood all day. My skull was splitting with headache. It seemed to me that I must go mad if I sat there any longer; so I undressed and went to bed. I stretched myself out in my berth, and – well, you know what the result was. The thing went right along, just the same. ‘Clack-clack clack, a blue trip slip, clack-clack-clack, for an eight cent fare; clack-clack-clack, a buff trip slip, clack clack-clack, for a six-cent fare, and so on, and so on, and so on punch in the presence of the passenjare!’ Sleep? Not a single wink! I was almost a lunatic when I 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 in and out with ‘Punch, brothers, punch with care, punch in the presence of the passenjare.’ And the most distressing thing was that my delivery dropped into the undulating rhythm of those pulsing rhymes, and I could actually catch absent-minded people nodding time to the swing of it with their stupid heads. And, Mark, you may believe it or not, but before I got through the entire assemblage were placidly bobbing their heads in solemn unison, mourners, undertaker, and all. The moment I had finished, I fled to the anteroom in a state bordering on frenzy. Of course it would be my luck to find a sorrowing and aged maiden aunt of the deceased there, who had arrived from Springfield too late to get into the 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 this suffering 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 in this 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 last words – 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 – he never said anything but Punch, punch, punch in the presence of the passenjare! 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 a six-cent fare, a pink trip slip for a three-cent fare – endu – rance can no fur – ther go! – PUNCH in the presence of the passenjare!”

My friend’s hopeless eyes rested upon mine a pregnant minute, and then he said impressively:

‘Mark, you do not say anything. You do not offer me any hope. But, ah me, it is just as well – it is just as well. You could not do me any good. The time has long gone by when words could comfort me. Something tells me that my tongue is doomed to wag forever to the jigger of that remorseless jingle. There – there it is coming on me again: a blue trip slip for an eight-cent fare, a buff trip slip for a —’

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

How did I finally save him from an asylum? I took him to a neighboring university and made him discharge the burden of his persecuting rhymes into the eager ears of the poor, unthinking students. How is it with them, 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 – avoid them as you would a pestilence.

The Stolen White Elephant

[Left out of A Tramp Abroad, because it was feared that some of the particulars had been exaggerated, and that others were not true. Before these suspicions had been proven groundless, the book had gone to press. – M. T.]

I

The following curious history was related to me by a chance railway acquaintance. He was a gentleman more than seventy years of age, and his thoroughly good and gentle face and earnest and sincere manner imprinted the unmistakable stamp of truth upon every statement which fell from his lips. He said:

You know in what reverence the royal white elephant of Siam is held by the people of that country. You know it is sacred to kings, only kings may possess it, and that it is, indeed, in a measure even superior to kings, since it receives not merely honor but worship. Very well; five years ago, when the troubles concerning the frontier line arose between Great Britain and Siam, it was presently manifest that Siam had been in the wrong. Therefore every reparation was quickly made, and the British representative stated that he was satisfied and the past should be forgotten. This greatly relieved the King of Siam, and partly as a token of gratitude, partly also, perhaps, to wipe out any little remaining vestige of unpleasantness which England might feel toward him, he wished to send the Queen a present – the sole sure way of propitiating an enemy, according to Oriental ideas. This present ought not only to be a royal one, but transcendently royal. Wherefore, what offering could be so meet as that of a white elephant? My position in the Indian civil service was such that I was deemed peculiarly worthy of the honor of conveying the present to her Majesty. A ship was fitted out for me and my servants and the officers and attendants of the elephant, and in due time I arrived in New York harbor and placed my royal charge in admirable quarters in Jersey City. It was necessary to remain awhile in order to recruit, the animal’s health before resuming the voyage.

All went well during a fortnight – then my calamities began. The white elephant was stolen! I was called up at dead of night and informed of this fearful misfortune. For some moments I was beside myself with terror and anxiety; I was helpless. Then I grew calmer and collected my faculties. I soon saw my course – for, indeed, there was but the one; course for an intelligent man to pursue. Late as it was, I flew to New York and got a policeman to conduct me to the headquarters of the detective force. Fortunately I arrived in time, though the chief of the force, the celebrated Inspector Blunt was just on the point of leaving for his home. He was a man of middle size and compact frame, and when he was thinking deeply he had a way of kniting his brows and tapping his forehead reflectively with his finger, which impressed you at once with the conviction that you stood in the presence of a person of no common order. The very sight of him gave me confidence and made me hopeful. I stated my errand. It did not flurry him in the least; it had no more visible effect upon his iron self-possession than if I had told him somebody had stolen my dog. He motioned me to a seat, and said, calmly:

‘Allow me to think a moment, please.’

So saying, he sat down at his office table and leaned his head upon his hand. Several clerks were at work at the other end of the room; the scratching of their pens was all the sound I heard during the next six or seven minutes. Meantime the inspector sat there, buried in thought. Finally he raised his head, and there was that in the firm lines of his face which showed me that his brain had done its work and his plan was made. Said he – and his voice was low and impressive:

‘This is no ordinary case. Every step must be warily taken; each step must be made sure before the next is ventured. And secrecy must be observed – secrecy profound and absolute. Speak to no one about the matter, not even the reporters. I will take care of them; I will see that they get only what it may suit my ends to let them know.’ He touched a bell; a youth appeared.

‘Alaric, tell the reporters to remain for the present.’ The boy retired. ‘Now let us proceed to business – and systematically. Nothing can be accomplished in this trade of mine without strict and minute method.’

He took a pen and some paper. ‘Now – name of the elephant?’

‘Hassan Ben Ali Ben Selim Abdallah Mohammed Moist Alhammal Jamsetjejeebhoy Dhuleep Sultan Ebu Bhudpoor.’

‘Very well. Given name?’

‘Jumbo.’

‘Very well. Place of birth?’

‘The capital city of Siam.’

‘Parents living?’

‘No – dead.’

‘Had they any other issue besides this one?’

‘None. He was an only child.’

‘Very well. These matters are sufficient under that head. Now please describe the elephant, and leave out no particular, however insignificant – that is, insignificant from your point of view. To me in my profession there are no insignificant particulars; they do not exist.’

I described he wrote. When I was done, he said:

‘Now listen. If I have made any mistakes, correct me.’

He read as follows:

‘Height, 19 feet; length from apex of forehead insertion of tail, 26 feet; length of trunk, 16 feet; length of tail, 6 feet; total length, including trunk, and tail, 48 feet; length of tusks, 9 feet; ears keeping with these dimensions; footprint resembles the mark left when one up-ends a barrel in the snow; the color of the elephant, a dull white; has a hole the size of a plate in each ear for the insertion of jewelry and possesses the habit in a remarkable degree of squirting water upon spectators and of maltreating with his trunk not only such persons as he is acquainted with, but even entire strangers; limps slightly with his right hind leg, and has a small scar in his left armpit caused by a former boil; had on, when stolen, a castle containing seats for fifteen persons, and a gold-cloth saddle-blanket the size of an ordinary carpet.’

There were no mistakes. The inspector touched the bell, handed the description to Alaric, and said:

‘Have fifty thousand copies of this printed at once and mailed to every detective office and pawnbroker’s shop on the continent.’ Alaric retired. ‘There – so far, so good. Next, I must have a photograph of the property.’

I gave him one. He examined it critically, and said:

‘It must do, since we can do no better; but he has his trunk curled up and tucked into his mouth. That is unfortunate, and is calculated to mislead, for of course he does not usually have it in that position.’ He touched his bell.

‘Alaric, have fifty thousand copies of this photograph made the first thing in the morning, and mail them with the descriptive circulars.’

Alaric retired to execute his orders. The inspector said:

‘It will be necessary to offer a reward, of course. Now as to the amount?’

‘What sum would you suggest?’

‘To begin with, I should say – well, twenty-five thousand dollars. It is an intricate and difficult business; there are a thousand avenues of escape and opportunities of concealment. These thieves have friends and pals everywhere —’

‘Bless me, do you know who they are?’

The wary face, practised in concealing the thoughts and feelings within, gave me no token, nor yet the replying words, so quietly uttered:

‘Never mind about that. I may, and I may not. We generally gather a pretty shrewd inkling of who our man is by the manner of his work and the size of the game he goes after. We are not dealing with a pickpocket or a hall thief now, make up your mind to that. This property was not “lifted” by a novice. But, as I was saying, considering the amount of travel which will have to be done, and the diligence with which the thieves will cover up their traces as they move along, twenty-five thousand may be too small a sum to offer, yet I think it worth while to start with that.’

So we determined upon that figure as a beginning. Then this man, whom nothing escaped which could by any possibility be made to serve as a clue, said:

‘There are cases in detective history to show that criminals have been detected through peculiarities, in their appetites.

Now, what does this elephant eat, and how much?’

‘Well, as to what he eats – he will eat anything. He will eat a man, he will eat a Bible – he will eat anything between a man and a Bible.’

‘Good very good, indeed, but too general. Details are necessary – details are the only valuable things in our trade. Very well – as to men. At one meal – or, if you prefer, during one day – how man men will he eat, if fresh?’

‘He would not care whether they were fresh or not; at a single meal he would eat five ordinary men.

‘Very good; five men; we will put that down. What nationalities would he prefer?’

‘He is indifferent about nationalities. He prefers acquaintances, but is not prejudiced against strangers.’

‘Very good. Now, as to Bibles. How many Bibles would he eat at a meal?’

‘He would eat an entire edition.’

‘It is hardly succinct enough. Do you mean the ordinary octavo, or the family illustrated?’

‘I think he would be indifferent to illustrations that is, I think he would not value illustrations above simple letterpress.’

‘No, you do not get my idea. I refer to bulk. The ordinary octavo Bible weighs about two pound; and a half, while the great quarto with the illustrations weighs ten or twelve. How many Doré Bibles would he eat at a meal?’

‘If you knew this elephant, you could not ask. He would take what they had.’

‘Well, put it in dollars and cents, then. We must get at it somehow. The Doré costs a hundred dollars a copy, Russia leather, beveled.’

‘He would require about fifty thousand dollars worth – say an edition of five hundred copies.’

‘Now that is more exact. I will put that down. Very well; he likes men and Bibles; so far, so good. What else will he eat? I want particulars.’

‘He will leave Bibles to eat bricks, he will leave bricks to eat bottles, he will leave bottles to eat clothing, he will leave clothing to eat cats, he will leave cats to eat oysters, he will leave oysters to eat ham, he will leave ham to eat sugar, he will leave sugar to eat pie, he will leave pie to eat potatoes, he will leave potatoes to eat bran; he will leave bran to eat hay, he will leave hay to eat oats, he will leave oats to eat rice, for he was mainly raised on it. There is nothing whatever that he will not eat but European butter, and he would eat that if he could taste it.’

‘Very good. General quantity at a meal – say about —’

‘Well, anywhere from a quarter to half a ton.’

‘And he drinks —’

‘Everything that is fluid. Milk, water, whisky, molasses, castor oil, camphene, carbolic acid – it is no use to go into particulars; whatever fluid occurs to you set it down. He will drink anything that is fluid, except European coffee.’

‘Very good. As to quantity?’

‘Put it down five to fifteen barrels – his thirst varies; his other appetites do not.’

‘These things are unusual. They ought to furnish quite good clues toward tracing him.’

He touched the bell.

‘Alaric; summon Captain Burns.’

Burns appeared. Inspector Blunt unfolded the whole matter to him, detail by detail. Then he said in the clear, decisive tones of a man whose plans are clearly defined in his head and who is accustomed to command:

‘Captain Burns, detail Detectives Jones, Davis, Halsey, Bates, and Hackett to shadow the elephant.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Detail Detectives Moses, Dakin, Murphy, Rogers, Tupper, Higgins, and Bartholomew to shadow the thieves.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Place a strong guard – A guard of thirty picked men, with a relief of thirty – over the place from whence the elephant was stolen, to keep strict watch there night and day, and allow none to approach – except reporters – without written authority from me.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Place detectives in plain clothes in the railway; steamship, and ferry depots, and upon all roadways leading out of Jersey City, with orders to search all suspicious persons.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Furnish all these men with photograph and accompanying description of the elephant, and instruct them to search all trains and outgoing ferryboats and other vessels.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘If the elephant should be found, let him be seized, and the information forwarded to me by telegraph.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Let me be informed at once if any clues should be found footprints of the animal, or anything of that kind.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Get an order commanding the harbor police to patrol the frontages vigilantly.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Despatch detectives in plain clothes over all the railways, north as far as Canada, west as far as Ohio, south as far as Washington.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Place experts in all the telegraph offices to listen in to all messages; and let them require that all cipher despatches be interpreted to them.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Let all these things be done with the utmost’s secrecy – mind, the most impenetrable secrecy.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Report to me promptly at the usual hour.’

‘Yes, Sir.’

‘Go!’

‘Yes, sir.’

He was gone.

Inspector Blunt was silent and thoughtful a moment, while the fire in his eye cooled down and faded out. Then he turned to me and said in a placid voice:

‘I am not given to boasting, it is not my habit; but – we shall find the elephant.’

I shook him warmly by the hand and thanked him; and I felt my thanks, too. The more I had seen of the man the more I liked him and the more I admired him and marveled over the mysterious wonders of his profession. Then we parted for the night, and I went home with a far happier heart than I had carried with me to his office.

II

Next morning it was all in the newspapers, in the minutest detail. It even had additions – consisting of Detective This, Detective That, and Detective The Other’s ‘Theory’ as to how the robbery was done, who the robbers were, and whither they had flown with their booty. There were eleven of these theories, and they covered all the possibilities; and this single fact shows what independent thinkers detectives are. No two theories were alike, or even much resembled each other, save in one striking particular, and in that one all the other eleven theories were absolutely agreed. That was, that although the rear of my building was torn out and the only door remained locked, the elephant had not been removed through the rent, but by some other (undiscovered) outlet. All agreed that the robbers had made that rent only to mislead the detectives. That never would have occurred to me or to any other layman, perhaps, but it had not deceived the detectives for a moment. Thus, what I had supposed was the only thing that had no mystery about it was in fact the very thing I had gone furthest astray in. The eleven theories all named the supposed robbers, but no two named the same robbers; the total number of suspected persons was thirty-seven. The various newspaper accounts all closed with the most important opinion of all – that of Chief Inspector Blunt. A portion of this statement read as follows:

The chief knows who the two principals are, namely,’ Brick’ Daffy and ‘Red’ McFadden. Ten days before the robbery was achieved he was already aware that it was to be attempted, and had quietly proceeded to shadow these two noted villains; but unfortunately on the night in question their track was lost, and before it could be found again the bird was flown – that is, the elephant.

Daffy and McFadden are the boldest scoundrels in the profession; the chief has reasons for believing that they are the men who stole the stove out of the detective headquarters on a bitter night last winter – in consequence of which the chief and every detective present were in the hands of the physicians before morning, some with frozen feet, others with frozen fingers, ears, and other members.

When I read the first half of that I was more astonished than ever at the wonderful sagacity of this strange man. He not only saw everything in the present with a clear eye, but even the future could not be hidden from him. I was soon at his office, and said I could not help wishing he had had those men arrested, and so prevented the trouble and loss; but his reply was simple and unanswerable:

‘It is not our province to prevent crime, but to punish it. We cannot punish it until it is committed.’

I remarked that the secrecy with which we had begun had been marred by the newspapers; not only all our facts but all our plans and purposes had been revealed; even all the suspected persons had been named; these would doubtless disguise themselves now, or go into hiding.

‘Let them. They will find that when I am ready for them my hand will descend upon them, in their secret places, as unerringly as the hand of fate. As to the newspapers, we must keep in with them. Fame, reputation, constant public mention – these are the detective’s bread and butter. He must publish his facts, else he will be supposed to have none; he must publish his theory, for nothing is so strange or striking as a detective’s theory, or brings him so much wonderful respect; we must publish our plans, for these the journals insist upon having, and we could not deny them without offending. We must constantly show the public what we are doing, or they will believe we are doing nothing. It is much pleasanter to have a newspaper say, ‘Inspector Blunt’s ingenious and extraordinary theory is as follows,’ than to have it say some harsh thing, or, worse still, some sarcastic one.’

‘I see the force of what you say. But I noticed that in one part of your remarks in the papers this morning you refused to reveal your opinion upon a certain minor point.’

‘Yes, we always do that; it has a good effect. Besides, I had not formed any opinion on that point, anyway.’

I deposited a considerable sum of money with the inspector, to meet current expenses, and sat down to wait for news. We were expecting the telegrams to begin to arrive at any moment now. Meantime I reread the newspapers and also our descriptive circular, and observed that our twenty-five thousand dollars reward seemed to be offered only to detectives. I said I thought it ought to be offered to anybody who would catch the elephant. The inspector said:

‘It is the detectives who will find the elephant; hence the reward will go to the right place. If other people found the animal, it would only be by watching the detectives and taking advantage of clues and indications stolen from them, and that would entitle the detectives to the reward, after all. The proper office of a reward is to stimulate the men who deliver up their time and their trained sagacities to this sort of work, and not to confer benefits upon chance citizens who stumble upon a capture without having earned the benefits by their own merits and labors.’

This was reasonable enough, certainly. Now the telegraphic machine in the corner began to click, and the following despatch was the result:

FLOWER STATION, N. Y., 7.30 A.M. Have got a clue. Found a succession of deep tracks across a farm near here. Followed them two miles east without result; think elephant went west. Shall now shadow him in that direction. DARLEY, Detective.

‘Darley’s one of the best men on the force,’ said the inspector. ‘We shall hear from him again before long.’

Telegram No. 2 came:

BARKER’S, N. J., 7.40 A.M. Just arrived. Glass factory broken open here during night, and eight hundred bottles taken. Only water in large quantity near here is five miles distant. Shall strike for there. Elephant will be thirsty. Bottles were empty. DARLEY, Detective.

‘That promises well, too,’ said the inspector.

‘I told you the creature’s appetites would not be bad clues.’

Telegram No. 3:

TAYLORVILLE, L. I. 8.15 A.M. A haystack near here disappeared during night. Probably eaten. Have got a clue, and am off. HUBBARD, Detective.

‘How he does move around!’ said the inspector ‘I knew we had a difficult job on hand, but we shall catch him yet.’

FLOWER STATION, N. Y., 9 A.M. Shadowed the tracks three miles westward. Large, deep, and ragged. Have just met a farmer who says they are not elephant-tracks. Says they are holes where he dug up saplings for shade-trees when ground was frozen last winter. Give me orders how to proceed. DARLEY, Detective.

‘Aha! a confederate of the thieves! The thing, grows warm,’ said the inspector.

He dictated the following telegram to Darley:

Arrest the man and force him to name his pals. Continue to follow the tracks to the Pacific, if necessary. Chief BLUNT.

Next telegram:

CONEY POINT, PA., 8.45 A.M. Gas office broken open here during night and three month; unpaid gas bills taken. Have got a clue and am away. MURPHY, Detective.

‘Heavens!’ said the inspector; ‘would he eat gas bills?’

‘Through ignorance – yes; but they cannot support life. At least, unassisted.’

Now came this exciting telegram:

IRONVILLE, N. Y., 9.30 A.M. Just arrived. This village in consternation. Elephant passed through here at five this morning. Some say he went east some say west, some north, some south – but all say they did not wait to notice, particularly. He killed a horse; have secure a piece of it for a clue. Killed it with his trunk; from style of blow, think he struck it left-handed. From position in which horse lies, think elephant traveled northward along line Berkley Railway. Has four and a half hours’ start, but I move on his track at once. HAWES, Detective

I uttered exclamations of joy. The inspector was as self-contained as a graven image. He calmly touched his bell.

‘Alaric, send Captain Burns here.’

Burns appeared.

‘How many men are ready for instant orders?’

‘Ninety-six, sir.’

‘Send them north at once. Let them concentrate along the line of the Berkley road north of Ironville.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Let them conduct their movements with the utmost secrecy. As fast as others are at liberty, hold them for orders.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Go!’

‘Yes, sir.’

Presently came another telegram:

SAGE CORNERS, N. Y., 10.30. Just arrived. Elephant passed through here at 8.15. All escaped from the town but a policeman. Apparently elephant did not strike at policeman, but at the lamp-post. Got both. I have secured a portion of the policeman as clue. STUMM, Detective.

‘So the elephant has turned westward,’ said the inspector. ‘However, he will not escape, for my men are scattered all over that region.’

The next telegram said:

GLOVER’S, 11.15 Just arrived. Village deserted, except sick and aged. Elephant passed through three-quarters of an hour ago. The anti-temperance mass-meeting was in session; he put his trunk in at a window and washed it out with water from cistern. Some swallowed it – since dead; several drowned. Detectives Cross and O’Shaughnessy were passing through town, but going south – so missed elephant. Whole region for many miles around in terror – people flying from their homes. Wherever they turn they meet elephant, and many are killed. BRANT, Detective.

I could have shed tears, this havoc so distressed me. But the inspector only said:

‘You see – we are closing in on him. He feels our presence; he has turned eastward again.’

Yet further troublous news was in store for us. The telegraph brought this:

HOGANSPORT, 12.19. Just arrived. Elephant passed through half an hour ago, creating wildest fright and excitement. Elephant raged around streets; two plumbers going by, killed one – other escaped. Regret general. O’FLAHERTY, Detective.

‘Now he is right in the midst of my men,’ said the inspector. ‘Nothing can save him.’

A succession of telegrams came from detectives who were scattered through New Jersey and Pennsylvania, and who were following clues consisting of ravaged barns, factories, and Sunday-school libraries, with high hopes-hopes amounting to certainties, indeed. The inspector said:

‘I wish I could communicate with them and order them north, but that is impossible. A detective only visits a telegraph office to send his report; then he is off again, and you don’t know where to put your hand on him.’

Now came this despatch:

BRIDGEPORT, CT., 12.15. Barnum offers rate of $4,000 a year for exclusive privilege of using elephant as traveling advertising medium from now till detectives find him. Wants to paste circus-posters on him. Desires immediate answer. BOGGS, Detective.

‘That is perfectly absurd!’ I exclaimed.

‘Of course it is,’ said the inspector. ‘Evidently Mr. Barnum, who thinks he is so sharp, does not know me – but I know him.’

Then he dictated this answer to the despatch:

Mr. Barnum’s offer declined. Make it $7,000 or nothing. Chief BLUNT.

‘There. We shall not have to wait long for an answer. Mr. Barnum is not at home; he is in the telegraph office – it is his way when he has business on hand. Inside of three —’

Done. – P. T. BARNUM.

So interrupted the clicking telegraphic instrument. Before I could make a comment upon this extraordinary episode, the following despatch carried my thoughts into another and very distressing channel:

BOLIVIA, N. Y., 12.50. Elephant arrived here from the south and passed through toward the forest at 11.50, dispersing a funeral on the way, and diminishing the mourners by two. Citizens fired some small cannon-balls into him, and they fled. Detective Burke and I arrived ten minutes later, from the north, but mistook some excavations for footprints, and so lost a good deal of time; but at last we struck the right trail and followed it to the woods. We then got down on our hands and knees and continued to keep a sharp eye on the track, and so shadowed it into the brush. Burke was in advance. Unfortunately the animal had stopped to rest; therefore, Burke having his head down, intent upon the track, butted up against the elephant’s hind legs before he was aware of his vicinity. Burke instantly arose to his feet, seized the tail, and exclaimed joyfully, ‘I claim the re —’ but got no further, for a single blow of the huge trunk laid the brave fellow’s fragments low in death. I fled rearward, and the elephant turned and shadowed me to the edge of the wood, making tremendous speed, and I should inevitably have been lost, but that the remains of the funeral providentially intervened again and diverted his attention. I have just learned that nothing of that funeral is now left; but this is no loss, for there is abundance of material for another. Meantime, the elephant has disappeared again. MULROONEY, Detective.

We heard no news except from the diligent and confident detectives scattered about New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, and Virginia – who were all following fresh and encouraging clues – until shortly after 2 P.M., when this telegram came:

BAXTER CENTER, 2.15. Elephant been here, plastered over with circus-bills, any broke up a revival, striking down and damaging many who were on the point of entering upon a better life. Citizens penned him up and established a guard. When Detective Brown and I arrived, some time after, we entered inclosure and proceeded to identify elephant by photograph and description. All masks tallied exactly except one, which we could not see – the boil-scar under armpit. To make sure, Brown crept under to look, and was immediately brained – that is, head crushed and destroyed, though nothing issued from debris. All fled so did elephant, striking right and left with much effect. He escaped, but left bold blood-track from cannon-wounds. Rediscovery certain. He broke southward, through a dense forest. BRENT, Detective.

That was the last telegram. At nightfall a fog shut down which was so dense that objects but three feet away could not be discerned. This lasted all night. The ferry-boats and even the omnibuses had to stop running.

III

Next morning the papers were as full of detective theories as before; they had all our tragic facts in detail also, and a great many more which they had received from their telegraphic correspondents. Column after column was occupied, a third of its way down, with glaring head-lines, which it made my heart sick to read. Their general tone was like this:

THE WHITE ELEPHANT AT LARGE! HE MOVES UPON HIS FATAL MARCH WHOLE VILLAGES DESERTED BY THEIR FRIGHT-STRICKEN OCCUPANTS! PALE TERROR GOES BEFORE HIM, DEATH AND DEVASTATION FOLLOW AFTER! AFTER THESE, THE DETECTIVES! BARNS DESTROYED, FACTORIES GUTTED, HARVESTS DEVOURED, PUBLIC ASSEMBLAGES DISPERSED, ACCOMPANIED BY SCENES OF CARNAGE IMPOSSIBLE TO DESCRIBE! THEORIES OF THIRTY-FOUR OF THE MOST DISTINGUISHED DETECTIVES ON THE FORCES! THEORY OF CHIEF BLUNT!

‘There!’ said Inspector Blunt, almost betrayed into excitement, ‘this is magnificent! This is the greatest windfall that any detective organization ever had. The fame of it will travel to the ends of the earth, and endure to the end of time, and my name with it.’

But there was no joy for me. I felt as if I had committed all those red crimes, and that the elephant was only my irresponsible agent. And how the list had grown! In one place he had ‘interfered with an election and killed five repeaters.’ He had followed this act with the destruction of two pool fellows, named O’Donohue and McFlannigan, who had ‘found a refuge in the home of the oppressed of all lands only the day before, and were in the act of exercising for the first time the noble right of American citizens at the polls, when stricken down by the relentless hand of the Scourge of Siam.’ In another, he had ‘found a crazy sensation– preacher preparing his next season’s heroic attacks on the dance, the theater, and other things which can’t strike back, and had stepped on him.’ And in still another place he had ‘killed a lightning-rod agent.’ And so the list went on, growing redder and redder, and more and more heartbreaking. Sixty persons had been killed, and two hundred and forty wounded. All the accounts bore just testimony to the activity and devotion of the detectives, and all closed with the remark that ‘three hundred thousand citizen; and four detectives saw the dread creature, and two of the latter he destroyed.’

I dreaded to hear the telegraphic instrument begin to click again. By and by the messages began to pour in, but I was happily disappointed in they nature. It was soon apparent that all trace of the elephant was lost. The fog had enabled him to search out a good hiding-place unobserved. Telegrams from the most absurdly distant points reported that a dim vast mass had been glimpsed there through the fog at such and such an hour, and was ‘undoubtedly the elephant.’ This dim vast mass had been glimpsed in New Haven, in New Jersey, in Pennsylvania, in interior New York, in Brooklyn, and even in the city of New York itself! But in all cases the dim vast mass had vanished quickly and left no trace. Every detective of the large force scattered over this huge extent of country sent his hourly report, and each and every one of them had a clue, and was shadowing something, and was hot upon the heels of it.

But the day passed without other result.

The next day the same.

The next just the same.

The newspaper reports began to grow monotonous with facts that amounted to nothing, clues which led to nothing, and theories which had nearly exhausted the elements which surprise and delight and dazzle.

By advice of the inspector I doubled the reward.

Four more dull days followed. Then came a bitter blow to the poor, hard-working detectives – the journalists declined to print their theories, and coldly said, ‘Give us a rest.’

Two weeks after the elephant’s disappearance I raised the reward to seventy-five thousand dollars by the inspector’s advice. It was a great sum, but I felt that I would rather sacrifice my whole private fortune than lose my credit with my government. Now that the detectives were in adversity, the newspapers turned upon them, and began to fling the most stinging sarcasms at them. This gave the minstrels an idea, and they dressed themselves as detectives and hunted the elephant on the stage in the most extravagant way. The caricaturists made pictures of detectives scanning the country with spy-glasses, while the elephant, at their backs, stole apples out of their pockets. And they made all sorts of ridiculous pictures of the detective badge – you have seen that badge printed in gold on the back of detective novels, no doubt it is a wide-staring eye, with the legend, ‘WE NEVER SLEEP.’ When detectives called for a drink, the would-be facetious barkeeper resurrected an obsolete form of expression and said, ‘Will you have an eye-opener?’ All the air was thick with sarcasms.

But there was one man who moved calm, untouched, unaffected, through it all. It was that heart of oak, the chief inspector. His brave eye never drooped, his serene confidence never wavered.

He always said:

‘Let them rail on; he laughs best who laughs last.’

My admiration for the man grew into a species of worship. I was at his side always. His office had become an unpleasant place to me, and now became daily more and more so. Yet if he could endure it I meant to do so also – at least, as long as I could. So I came regularly, and stayed – the only outsider who seemed to be capable of it. Everybody wondered how I could; and often it seemed to me that I must desert, but at such times I looked into that calm and apparently unconscious face, and held my ground.

About three weeks after the elephant’s disappearance I was about to say, one morning, that I should have to strike my colors and retire, when the great detective arrested the thought by proposing one more superb and masterly move.

This was to compromise with the robbers. The fertility of this man’s invention exceeded anything I have ever seen, and I have had a wide intercourse with the world’s finest minds. He said he was confident he could compromise for one hundred thousand dollars and recover the elephant. I said I believed I could scrape the amount together, but what would become of the poor detectives who had worked so faithfully? He said:

‘In compromises they always get half.’

This removed my only objection. So the inspector wrote two notes, in this form:

DEAR MADAM, – Your husband can make a large sum of money (and be entirely protected from the law) by making an immediate, appointment with me. Chief BLUNT.

He sent one of these by his confidential messenger to the ‘reputed wife’ of Brick Duffy, and the other to the reputed wife of Red McFadden.

Within the hour these offensive answers came:

YE OWLD FOOL: brick Duffys bin ded 2 yere. BRIDGET MAHONEY.

CHIEF BAT, – Red McFadden is hung and in heving 18 month. Any Ass but a detective know that. MARY O’HOOLIGAN.

‘I had long suspected these facts,’ said the inspector; ‘this testimony proves the unerring accuracy of my instinct.’

The moment one resource failed him he was ready with another. He immediately wrote an advertisement for the morning papers, and I kept a copy of it:

A. – xWhlv. 242 ht. Tjnd – fz328wmlg. Ozpo, – 2 m! 2m!. M! ogw.

He said that if the thief was alive this would bring him to the usual rendezvous. He further explained that the usual rendezvous was a glare where all business affairs between detectives and criminals were conducted. This meeting would take place at twelve the next night.

We could do nothing till then, and I lost no time in getting out of the office, and was grateful indeed for the privilege.

At eleven the next night I brought one hundred thousand dollars in bank-notes and put them into the chief’s hands, and shortly afterward he took his leave, with the brave old undimmed confidence in his eye. An almost intolerable hour dragged to a close; then I heard his welcome tread, and rose gasping and tottered to meet him. How his fine eyes flamed with triumph! He said:

‘We’ve compromised! The jokers will sing a different tune to-morrow! Follow me!’

He took a lighted candle and strode down into the vast vaulted basement where sixty detectives always slept, and where a score were now playing cards to while the time. I followed close after him. He walked swiftly down to the dim and remote end of the place, and just as I succumbed to the pangs of suffocation and was swooning away he stumbled and fell over the outlying members of a mighty object, and I heard him exclaim as he went down:

‘Our noble profession is vindicated. Here is your elephant!’

I was carried to the office above and restored with carbolic acid. The whole detective force swarmed in, and such another season of triumphant rejoicing ensued as I had never witnessed before. The reporters were called, baskets of champagne were opened, toasts were drunk, the handshakings and congratulations were continuous and enthusiastic. Naturally the chief was the hero of the hour, and his happiness was so complete and had been so patiently and worthily and bravely won that it made me happy to see it, though I stood there a homeless beggar, my priceless charge dead, and my position in my country’s service lost to me through what would always seem my fatally careless execution of a great trust.

Many an eloquent eye testified its deep admiration for the chief, and many a detective’s voice murmured, ‘Look at him – just the king of the profession; only give him a clue, it’s all he wants, and there ain’t anything hid that he can’t find.’ The dividing of the fifty thousand dollars made great pleasure; when it was finished the chief made a little speech while he put his share in his pocket, in which he said, ‘Enjoy it, boys, for you’ve earned it; and, more than that, you’ve earned for the detective profession undying fame.’

A telegram arrived, which read:

MONROE, MICH., 10 P.M. First time I’ve struck a telegraph office in over three weeks. Have followed those footprints, horseback, through the woods, a thousand miles to here, and they get stronger and bigger and fresher every day. Don’t worry-inside of another week I’ll have the elephant. This is dead sure. DARLEY, Detective.

The chief ordered three cheers for ‘Darley, one of the finest minds on the force,’ and then commanded that he be telegraphed to come home and receive his share of the reward.

So ended that marvelous episode of the stolen elephant. The newspapers were pleasant with praises once more, the next day, with one contemptible exception. This sheet said, ‘Great is the detective! He may be a little slow in finding a little thing like a mislaid elephant he may hunt him all day and sleep with his rotting carcass all night for three weeks, but he will find him at last if he can get the man who mislaid him to show him the place!’

Poor Hassan was lost to me forever. The cannonshots had wounded him fatally, he had crept to that unfriendly place in the fog, and there, surrounded by his enemies and in constant danger of detection, he had wasted away with hunger and suffering till death gave him peace.

The compromise cost me one hundred thousand dollars; my detective expenses were forty-two thousand dollars more; I never applied for a place again under my government; I am a ruined man and a wanderer on the earth but my admiration for that man, whom I believe to be the greatest detective the world has ever produced, remains undimmed to this day, and will so remain unto the end.

A Complaint about Correspondents, Dated in San Francisco

What do you take us for on this side of the continent? I am addressing myself personally, and with asperity, to every man, woman and child east of the Rocky Mountains. How do you suppose our minds are constituted, that you will write us such execrable letters – such poor, bald, uninteresting trash? You complain that by the time that a man has been on the Pacific coast for six months, he seems to lose all concern about things and matters and people in the distant East, and ceases to answer the letters of his friends and even his relatives. It is your own fault. You need a lecture on the subject – a lecture which ought to read about as follows: —

There is only one brief, solitary law for letter-writing, and yet you either do not know that law, or else you are so stupid that you never think of it. It is very easy and simple: – Write only about things and people your correspondent takes a living interest in.

Can you remember this law, hereafter, and abide by it? If you are an old friend of the person you are writing to, you know a number of his acquaintances, and you can rest satisfied that even the most trivial things you can write about them will be read with avidity out here on the edge of sunset.

Yet how do you write? – how do the most of you write? Why, you drivel and drivel and drivel along in your wooden-headed way about people one never heard of before, and things which one knows nothing at all about and cares less. There is no sense in that. Let me show up your style with a specimen or so. Here is a paragraph from my Aunt Nancy’s last letter – received four years ago, and not answered immediately – not at all, I may say: —

St. Louis, 1862

‘Dear Mark! – We spent the evening very pleasantly at home yesterday. The Rev. Dr. Mucklin and his wife, from Peoria, were here. He is an humble labourer in the vineyard, and takes his coffee strong. He is also subject to neuralgia – neuralgia in the head – and is unassuming and prayerful. There are few such men. We had soup for dinner likewise. Although I am not fond of it. O Mark! why don’t you try to lead a better life? Read II. Kings, from chap. 2 to chap. 24 inclusive. It would be so gratifying to me if you experience a change at heart. Poor Mrs. Gabrick is dead. You did not know her. She had fits, poor soul. On the 14th the entire army took up the line of march from —’

I always stopped here, because I knew what was coming – the war news, in minute and dry detail – for I could never drive it into those numskulls of the overland telegraph enabled me to know here in San Francisco every day all that transpired in the United States the day before, and that the pony express brought me the exhaustive details of all the matters pertaining to the war at least two weeks before their letters could possibly reach me. So I naturally skipped their stale war reports, even at the cost of slipping the inevitable suggestions to read this, that, and other batch of chapters in the Scriptures, with which they were interlarded in intervals, like snares wherewith to entrap an unwary sinner.

Now what was the Rev. Mucklin to me? Of what consequence was it to me that he was ‘an humble labourer in the vineyard’, and ‘took his coffee strong’? – and was ‘unassuming’, and ‘neuralgic’, and ‘prayerful’? Such a strong conglomeration of virtues could only excite my admiration – nothing more. It could awake no living interest. That there are few such men, and that we had soup for dinner, is simply gratifying – that is all. ‘Read twenty-two chapters of II. Kings’ is a nice shell to fall in the camp for the man who is not studying for the ministry. The intelligence of that ‘poor Mrs. Gabrick’ was dead, aroused no enthusiasm – mostly because of the circumstance that I had never heard of her before, I presume. But I was glad she had fits – although a stranger.

Don’t you begin to understand, now? Don’t you see that there is not a sentence in that letter of any interest in the world to me? I had a war news in advance of it; I could get a much better sermon at church when I needed it; I didn’t care anything about poor Gabrick, not knowing deceased; nor yet the Rev. Mucklin, not knowing him either. I said to myself, ‘Here is not a word about Mary Ann Smith – I wish there was; nor about Georgiana Brown, or Zeb Leavenworth, or Sam Bowen, or Strother Wiley – or about anybody else I care a straw for.’ And so, as this letter was just of a pattern with all that went before it, it was not answered, and one useless correspondence ceased.

My venerable mother is a tolerably good correspondent – she is above the average, at any rate. She puts on her spectacles and takes her scissors and wades into a pile of newspapers, and slashes out column after column – editorials, hotel arrivals, poetry, telegraph news, advertisements, novelettes, old jokes, recipes of making pies, cures for ‘biles’ – anything that goes handy; it don’t matter for her; she’s entirely impartial; she slashes out a column, and runs her eye down it over her spectacles – (she looks over them because she can’t see through them, but she prefers them to her more serviceable ones because they have got gold rimes to them) – runs her eye down the column, and says, ‘Well, it’s from a St. Louis paper, any way,’ and jams it into the envelope along with her letter. She writes about everybody I ever knew or ever heard of; but unhappily, she forgets that when she tells me that ‘J.B. is dead,’ or that ‘W.L. is going to marry T.D.,’ and ‘B.K. and R.M. and L.P.J. have all gone to New Orleans to live,’ it is more than likely that years of absence may have so dulled my recollection of once familiar names, that their unexplained initials will be as unintelligible as Hebrew unto me. She never writes a name in full, and so I never know whom she is talking about. Therefore I have to guess; and this was how it came that I mourned the death of Bill Kribben when I should have rejoiced over the dissolution of Ben Kenfuron. I failed to cipher the initials out correctly.

The most useful and interesting letters we get here from home are from children seven or eight years old. This is petrified truth. Happily they have nothing to talk about but home, and neighbours, and family – things their betters think unworthy of transmission thousand of miles. They write simply and naturally, and without straining for effect. They tell all they know, and then stop. They seldom deal in abstractions, or moral homilies. Consequently their epistles are brief; but, treating as they do of familiar persons and scenes, always entertaining. Now, therefore, if you would learn the art of letter-writing, let a little child teach you. I have preserved a letter from a small girl eight years of age – preserved it as a curiosity, because it was the only letter I ever got from the States that had any information in it. It runs thus:

St. Louis, 1865

‘Uncle Mark, if you was here, I could tell you about Moses in the bulrushers again, I know it better now. Mr. Sowerby has got his leg broke off a horse. He was riding it on Sunday. Margaret, that’s the maid, Margaret has took all the spittoons, and slop-buckets, and old jugs out of your room, because she says she don’t think you’re ever coming back any more, you been gone so long. Sissy MsElroy’s mother has got another little baby. She has them all the time. It has got little blue eyes, like Mr. Swimley that boards there, and looks just like him. I have got a new doll, but Johnny Anderson pulled one of its legs out. Miss Doosenberry was here to-day; I give her your picture, but she said she didn’t want it. My cat has got more kittens – oh! You can’t think! – twice as many as Lottie Belden’s. And there’s one, such a sweet little buff one with a short tail, and I named it for you. All of them’s got names now – General Grant, and Halleck, and Moses, and Margaret, and Deuteronorny, and Captain Semmes, and Exodus, and Leviticus, and Horace Greely – all named but one, and I am saving it, because the one that I named for you’s been sick all the time since, and I reckon it’ll die. [It appears to have been mighty rough on the short-tailed kitten, naming it for me – I wonder how the reserved victim will stand it.] Uncle Mark, I do believe Hattie Coldwell liked you, and I know she thinks you are pretty, because I heard her say nothing couldn’t hurt your good looks – nothing at all – she said, even if you was to have the small-pox ever so bad, you would be just as good-looking as you was before. An my ma says she’s ever so smart. [Very.] So no more this time, because General Grant and Moses is fighting

‘Annie’

This child treads on my toes, in every other sentence, with perfect looseness, but in the simplicity of her time of life she doesn’t know it.

I consider that a model letter – an eminently readable and entertaining letter, and, as I said before, it contains more matter of interest and more real information than any letter I ever received from the East. I had rather hear about the cats at home and their truly remarkable names, than listen to a lot of stuff about people I am not acquainted with, or read ‘The Evil Effects of the Intoxicating Bowl,’ illustrated in the back with a picture of a ragged scalliwag pelting away right and left, in the midst of his family circle, with a junk bottle.

Experience of the McWilliamses with Membranous Croup

[As related to the author of this book by Mr. McWilliams, a pleasant New York gentleman whom the said author met by chance on a journey.]

Well, to go back to where I was before I digressed to explain to you how that frightful and incurable disease, membranous croup,[Diphtheria D.W.] was ravaging the town and driving all mothers mad with terror, I called Mrs. McWilliams’s attention to little Penelope, and said:

‘Darling, I wouldn’t let that child be chewing that pine stick if I were you.’

‘Precious, where is the harm in it?’ said she, but at the same time preparing to take away the stick for women cannot receive even the most palpably judicious suggestion without arguing it, that is married women.

I replied:

‘Love, it is notorious that pine is the least nutritious wood that a child can eat.’

My wife’s hand paused, in the act of taking the stick, and returned itself to her lap. She bridled perceptibly, and said:

‘Hubby, you know better than that. You know you do. Doctors all say that the turpentine in pine wood is good for weak back and the kidneys.’

‘Ah – I was under a misapprehension. I did not know that the child’s kidneys and spine were affected, and that the family physician had recommended – ’

‘Who said the child’s spine and kidneys were affected?’

‘My love, you intimated it.’

‘The idea! I never intimated anything of the kind.’

‘Why, my dear, it hasn’t been two minutes since you said – ’

‘Bother what I said! I don’t care what I did say. There isn’t any harm in the child’s chewing a bit of pine stick if she wants to, and you know it perfectly well. And she shall chew it, too. So there, now!’

‘Say no more, my dear. I now see the force of your reasoning, and I will go and order two or three cords of the best pine wood to-day. No child of mine shall want while I – ’

‘Oh, please go along to your office and let me have some peace. A body can never make the simplest remark but you must take it up and go to arguing and arguing and arguing till you don’t know what you are talking about, and you never do.’

‘Very well, it shall be as you say. But there is a want of logic in your last remark which – ’

However, she was gone with a flourish before I could finish, and had taken the child with her. That night at dinner she confronted me with a face a white as a sheet:

‘Oh, Mortimer, there’s another! Little Georgi Gordon is taken.’

‘Membranous croup?’

‘Membranous croup.’

‘Is there any hope for him?’

‘None in the wide world. Oh, what is to be come of us!’

By and by a nurse brought in our Penelope to say good night and offer the customary prayer at the mother’s knee. In the midst of ‘Now I lay me down to sleep,’ she gave a slight cough! My wife fell back like one stricken with death. But the next moment she was up and brimming with the activities which terror inspires.

She commanded that the child’s crib be removed from the nursery to our bedroom; and she went along to see the order executed. She took me with her, of course. We got matters arranged with speed. A cot-bed was put up in my wife’s dressing room for the nurse. But now Mrs. McWilliams said we were too far away from the other baby, and what if he were to have the symptoms in the night – and she blanched again, poor thing.

We then restored the crib and the nurse to the nursery and put up a bed for ourselves in a room adjoining.

Presently, however, Mrs. McWilliams said suppose the baby should catch it from Penelope? This thought struck a new panic to her heart, and the tribe of us could not get the crib out of the nursery again fast enough to satisfy my wife, though she assisted in her own person and well-nigh pulled the crib to pieces in her frantic hurry.

We moved down-stairs; but there was no place there to stow the nurse, and Mrs. McWilliams said the nurse’s experience would be an inestimable help. So we returned, bag and baggage, to our own bedroom once more, and felt a great gladness, like storm-buffeted birds that have found their nest again.

Mrs. McWilliams sped to the nursery to see how things were going on there. She was back in a moment with a new dread. She said:

‘What can make Baby sleep so?’

I said:

‘Why, my darling, Baby always sleeps like a graven image.’

‘I know. I know; but there’s something peculiar about his sleep now. He seems to – to – he seems to breathe so regularly. Oh, this is dreadful.’

‘But, my dear, he always breathes regularly.’

‘Oh, I know it, but there’s something frightful about it now. His nurse is too young and inexperienced. Maria shall stay there with her, and be on hand if anything happens.’

‘That is a good idea, but who will help you?’

‘You can help me all I want. I wouldn’t allow anybody to do anything but myself, anyhow, at such a time as this.’

I said I would feel mean to lie abed and sleep, and leave her to watch and toil over our little patient all the weary night. But she reconciled me to it. So old Maria departed and took up her ancient quarters in the nursery.

Penelope coughed twice in her sleep.

‘Oh, why don’t that doctor come! Mortimer, this room is too warm. This room is certainly too warm. Turn off the register – quick!’

I shut it off, glancing at the thermometer at the same time, and wondering to myself if 70 was too warm for a sick child.

The coachman arrived from down-town now with the news that our physician was ill and confined to his bed. Mrs. McWilliams turned a dead eye upon me, and said in a dead voice:

‘There is a Providence in it. It is foreordained. He never was sick before. Never. We have not been living as we ought to live, Mortimer. Time and time again I have told you so. Now you see the result. Our child will never get well. Be thankful if you can forgive yourself; I never can forgive myself.’

I said, without intent to hurt, but with heedless choice of words, that I could not see that we had been living such an abandoned life.

‘Mortimer! Do you want to bring the judgment upon Baby, too!’

Then she began to cry, but suddenly exclaimed:

‘The doctor must have sent medicines!’

I said:

‘Certainly. They are here. I was only waiting for you to give me a chance.’

‘Well do give them to me! Don’t you know that every moment is precious now? But what was the use in sending medicines, when he knows that the disease is incurable?’

I said that while there was life there was hope.

‘Hope! Mortimer, you know no more what you are talking about than the child unborn. If you would – As I live, the directions say give one teaspoonful once an hour! Once an hour! – as if we had a whole year before us to save the child in! Mortimer, please hurry. Give the poor perishing thing a tablespoonful, and try to be quick!’

‘Why, my dear, a tablespoonful might – ’

‘Don’t drive me frantic!..There, there, there, my precious, my own; it’s nasty bitter stuff, but it’s good for Nelly – good for mother’s precious darling; and it will make her well. There, there, there, put the little head on mamma’s breast and go to sleep, and pretty soon – oh, I know she can’t live till morning! Mortimer, a tablespoonful every half-hour will – Oh, the child needs belladonna, too; I know she does – and aconite. Get them, Mortimer. Now do let me have my way. You know nothing about these things.’

We now went to bed, placing the crib close to my wife’s pillow. All this turmoil had worn upon me, and within two minutes I was something more than half asleep. Mrs. McWilliams roused me:

‘Darling, is that register turned on?’

‘No.’

‘I thought as much. Please turn it on at once. This room is cold.’

I turned it on, and presently fell asleep again. I was aroused once more:

‘Dearie, would you mind moving the crib to your side of the bed? It is nearer the register.’

I moved it, but had a collision with the rug and woke up the child. I dozed off once more, while my wife quieted the sufferer. But in a little while these words came murmuring remotely through the fog of my drowsiness:

‘Mortimer, if we only had some goose grease – will you ring?’

I climbed dreamily out, and stepped on a cat, which responded with a protest and would have got a convincing kick for it if a chair had not got it instead.

‘Now, Mortimer, why do you want to turn up the gas and wake up the child again?’

‘Because I want to see how much I am hurt, Caroline.’

‘Well, look at the chair, too – I have no doubt it is ruined. Poor cat, suppose you had – ’

‘Now I am not going to suppose anything about the cat. It never would have occurred if Maria had been allowed to remain here and attend to these duties, which are in her line and are not in mine.’

‘Now, Mortimer, I should think you would be ashamed to make a remark like that. It is a pity if you cannot do the few little things I ask of you at such an awful time as this when our child – ’

‘There, there, I will do anything you want. But I can’t raise anybody with this bell. They’re all gone to bed. Where is the goose grease?’

‘On the mantelpiece in the nursery. If you’ll step there and speak to Maria – ‘

I fetched the goose grease and went to sleep again. Once more I was called:

‘Mortimer, I so hate to disturb you, but the room is still too cold for me to try to apply this stuff. Would you mind lighting the fire? It is all ready to touch a match to.’

I dragged myself out and lit the fire, and then sat down disconsolate.

‘Mortimer, don’t sit there and catch your death of cold. Come to bed.’

As I was stepping in she said:

‘But wait a moment. Please give the child some more of the medicine.’

Which I did. It was a medicine which made a child more or less lively; so my wife made use of its waking interval to strip it and grease it all over with the goose oil. I was soon asleep once more, but once more I had to get up.

‘Mortimer, I feel a draft. I feel it distinctly. There is nothing so bad for this disease as a draft. Please move the crib in front of the fire.’

I did it; and collided with the rug again, which I threw in the fire. Mrs. McWilliams sprang out of bed and rescued it and we had some words. I had another trifling interval of sleep, and then got up, by request, and constructed a flax-seed poultice. This was placed upon the child’s breast and left there to do its healing work.

A wood-fire is not a permanent thing. I got up every twenty minutes and renewed ours, and this gave Mrs. McWilliams the opportunity to shorten the times of giving the medicines by ten minutes, which was a great satisfaction to her. Now and then, between times, I reorganized the flax-seed poultices, and applied sinapisms and other sorts of blisters where unoccupied places could be found upon the child. Well, toward morning the wood gave out and my wife wanted me to go down cellar and get some more. I said:

‘My dear, it is a laborious job, and the child must be nearly warm enough, with her extra clothing. Now mightn’t we put on another layer of poultices and – ’

I did not finish, because I was interrupted. I lugged wood up from below for some little time, and then turned in and fell to snoring as only a man can whose strength is all gone and whose soul is worn out. Just at broad daylight I felt a grip on my shoulder that brought me to my senses suddenly. My wife was glaring down upon me and gasping. As soon as she could command her tongue she said:

‘It is all over! All over! The child’s perspiring! What shall we do?’

‘Mercy, how you terrify me! I don’t know what we ought to do. Maybe if we scraped her and put her in the draft again – ’

‘Oh, idiot! There is not a moment to lose! Go for the doctor. Go yourself. Tell him he must come, dead or alive.’

I dragged that poor sick man from his bed and brought him. He looked at the child and said she was not dying. This was joy unspeakable to me, but it made my wife as mad as if he had offered her a personal affront. Then he said the child’s cough was only caused by some trifling irritation or other in the throat. At this I thought my wife had a mind to show him the door. Now the doctor said he would make the child cough harder and dislodge the trouble. So he gave her something that sent her into a spasm of coughing, and presently up came a little wood splinter or so.

‘This child has no membranous croup,’ said he. ‘She has been chewing a bit of pine shingle or something of the kind, and got some little slivers in her throat. They won’t do her any hurt.’

‘No,’ said I, ‘I can well believe that. Indeed, the turpentine that is in them is very good for certain sorts of diseases that are peculiar to children. My wife will tell you so.’

But she did not. She turned away in disdain and left the room; and since that time there is one episode in our life which we never refer to. Hence the tide of our days flows by in deep and untroubled serenity.

[Very few married men have such an experience as McWilliams’s, and so the author of this book thought that maybe the novelty of it would give it a passing interest to the reader.]

Mrs. McWilliamsand the Lightning

Well, sir, – continued Mr. McWilliams, for this was not the beginning of his talk; – the fear of lightning is one of the most distressing infirmities a human being can be afflicted with. It is mostly confined to women; but now and then you find it in a little dog, and sometimes in a man. It is a particularly distressing infirmity, for the reason that it takes the sand out of a person to an extent which no other fear can, and it can’t be reasoned with, and neither can it be shamed out of a person. A woman who could face the very devil himself – or a mouse – loses her grip and goes all to pieces in front of a flash of lightning. Her fright is something pitiful to see.

Well, as I was telling you, I woke up, with that smothered and unlocatable cry of ‘Mortimer! Mortimer!’ wailing in my ears; and as soon as I could scrape my faculties together I reached over in the dark and then said, —

‘Evangeline, is that you calling? What is the matter? Where are you?’

‘Shut up in the boot-closet. You ought to be ashamed to lie there and sleep so, and such an awful storm going on.’

‘Why, how can one be ashamed when he is asleep? It is unreasonable; a man can’t be ashamed when he is asleep, Evangeline.’

‘You never try, Mortimer, – you know very well you never try.’

I caught the sound of muffled sobs.

That sound smote dead the sharp speech that was on my lips, and I changed it to —

“I’m sorry, dear, – I’m truly sorry. I never meant to act so. Come back and —’

‘MORTIMER!’

‘Heavens! what is the matter, my love?’

‘Do you mean to say you are in that bed yet?’

‘Why, of course.’

‘Come out of it instantly. I should think you would take some little care of your life, for my sake and the children’s, if you will not for your own.’

‘But my love —’

‘Don’t talk to me, Mortimer. You know there is no place so dangerous as a bed, in such a thunder-storm as this, – all the books say that; yet there you would lie, and deliberately throw away your life, – for goodness knows what, unless for the sake of arguing and arguing, and —’

‘But, confound it, Evangeline, I’m not in the bed, now. I’m —’

[Sentence interrupted by a sudden glare of lightning, followed by a terrified little scream from Mrs. McWilliams and a tremendous blast of thunder.]

‘There! You see the result. Oh, Mortimer, how can you be so profligate as to swear at such a time as this?’

‘I didn’t swear. And that wasn’t a result of it, any way. It would have come, just the same, if I hadn’t said a word; and you know very well, Evangeline, – at least you ought to know, – that when the atmosphere is charged with electricity —’

‘Oh, yes, now argue it, and argue it, and argue it! – I don’t see how you can act so, when you know there is not a lightning-rod on the place, and your poor wife and children are absolutely at the mercy of Providence. What are you doing? – lighting a match at such a time as this! Are you stark mad?’

‘Hang it, woman, where’s the harm? The place is as dark as the inside of an infidel, and —’

‘Put it out! put it out instantly! Are you determined to sacrifice us all? You know there is nothing attracts lightning like a light. [Fzt! – crash! boom – boloom-boom-boom!] Oh, just hear it! Now you see what you’ve done!’

‘No, I don’t see what I’ve done. A match may attract lightning, for all I know, but it don’t cause lightning, – I’ll go odds on that. And it didn’t attract it worth a cent this time; for if that shot was levelled at my match, it was blessed poor marksmanship, – about an average of none out of a possible million, I should say. Why, at Dollymount, such marksmanship as that —’

‘For shame, Mortimer! Here we are standing right in the very presence of death, and yet in so solemn a moment you are capable of using such language as that. If you have no desire to – Mortimer!’

‘Well?’

‘Did you say your prayers to-night?’

‘I–I – meant to, but I got to trying to cipher out how much twelve times thirteen is, and —’

[Fzt! – boom – berroom – boom! Bumble-umble bang – SMASH!]

‘Oh, we are lost, beyond all help! How could you neglect such a thing at such a time as this?’

‘But it wasn’t ‘such a time as this.’ There wasn’t a cloud in the sky. How could I know there was going to be all this rumpus and pow-wow about a little slip like that? And I don’t think it’s just fair for you to make so much out of it, any way, seeing it happens so seldom; I haven’t missed before since I brought on that earthquake, four years ago.’

‘MORTIMER! How you talk! Have you forgotten the yellow fever?’

‘My dear, you are always throwing up the yellow fever to me, and I think it is perfectly unreasonable. You can’t even send a telegraphic message as far as Memphis without relays, so how is a little devotional slip of mine going to carry so far? I’ll stand the earthquake, because it was in the neighborhood; but I’ll be hanged if I’m going to be responsible for every blamed —’

[Fzt! – BOOM beroom-boom! boom! – BANG!]

‘Oh, dear, dear, dear! I know it struck something, Mortimer. We never shall see the light of another day; and if it will do you any good to remember, when we are gone, that your dreadful language – Mortimer!’

‘WELL! What now?’

‘Your voice sounds as if – Mortimer, are you actually standing in front of that open fireplace?’

‘That is the very crime I am committing.’

‘Get away from it, this moment. You do seem determined to bring destruction on us all. Don’t you know that there is no better conductor for lightning than an open chimney? Now where have you got to?’

‘I’m here by the window.’

‘Oh, for pity’s sake, have you lost your mind? Clear out from there, this moment. The very children in arms know it is fatal to stand near a window in a thunder-storm. Dear, dear, I know I shall never see the light of another day. Mortimer?’

‘Yes?’

‘What is that rustling?’

‘It’s me.’

‘What are you doing?’

‘Trying to find the upper end of my pantaloons.’

‘Quick! throw those things away! I do believe you would deliberately put on those clothes at such a time as this; yet you know perfectly well that all authorities agree that woolen stuffs attract lightning. Oh, dear, dear, it isn’t sufficient that one’s life must be in peril from natural causes, but you must do everything you can possibly think of to augment the danger. Oh, don’t sing! What can you be thinking of?’

‘Now where’s the harm in it?’

‘Mortimer, if I have told you once, I have told you a hundred times, that singing causes vibrations in the atmosphere which interrupt the flow of the electric fluid, and – What on earth are you opening that door for?’

‘Goodness gracious, woman, is there is any harm in that?’

‘Harm? There’s death in it. Anybody that has given this subject any attention knows that to create a draught is to invite the lightning. You haven’t half shut it; shut it tight, – and do hurry, or we are all destroyed. Oh, it is an awful thing to be shut up with a lunatic at such a time as this. Mortimer, what are you doing?’

‘Nothing. Just turning on the water. This room is smothering hot and close. I want to bathe my face and hands.’

‘You have certainly parted with the remnant of your mind! Where lightning strikes any other substance once, it strikes water fifty times. Do turn it off. Oh, dear, I am sure that nothing in this world can save us. It does seem to me that – Mortimer, what was that?’

‘It was a da – it was a picture. Knocked it down.’

‘Then you are close to the wall! I never heard of such imprudence! Don’t you know that there’s no better conductor for lightning than a wall? Come away from there! And you came as near as anything to swearing, too. Oh, how can you be so desperately wicked, and your family in such peril? Mortimer, did you order a feather bed, as I asked you to do?’

‘No. Forgot it.’

‘Forgot it! It may cost you your life. If you had a feather bed, now, and could spread it in the middle of the room and lie on it, you would be perfectly safe. Come in here, – come quick, before you have a chance to commit any more frantic indiscretions.’

I tried, but the little closet would not hold us both with the door shut, unless we could be content to smother. I gasped awhile, then forced my way out. My wife called out, —

‘Mortimer, something must be done for your preservation. Give me that German book that is on the end of the mantel-piece, and a candle; but don’t light it; give me a match; I will light it in here. That book has some directions in it.’

I got the book, – at cost of a vase and some other brittle things; and the madam shut herself up with her candle. I had a moment’s peace; then she called out, —

‘Mortimer, what was that?’

‘Nothing but the cat.’

‘The cat! Oh, destruction! Catch her, and shut her up in the wash-stand. Do be quick, love; cats are full of electricity. I just know my hair will turn white with this night’s awful perils.’

I heard the muffled sobbings again. But for that, I should not have moved hand or foot in such a wild enterprise in the dark.

However, I went at my task, – over chairs, and against all sorts of obstructions, all of them hard ones, too, and most of them with sharp edges, – and at last I got kitty cooped up in the commode, at an expense of over four hundred dollars in broken furniture and shins. Then these muffled words came from the closet: —

‘It says the safest thing is to stand on a chair in the middle of the room, Mortimer; and the legs of the chair must be insulated, with non-conductors. That is, you must set the legs of the chair in glass tumblers. [Fzt! – boom – bang! – smash!] Oh, hear that! Do hurry, Mortimer, before you are struck.’

I managed to find and secure the tumblers. I got the last four, – broke all the rest. I insulated the chair legs, and called for further instructions.

‘Mortimer, it says, “Wahrend eines Gewitters entferne man Metalle wie z. B., Ringe, Uhren, Schlussel, etc. von sich und halte sich auch nicht an solchen Stellen auf, wo viele Metalle bei einander liegen, oder mit andern Korpern verbunden sind, wie an Herden, Oefen, Eisengittern und dgl.” What does that mean, Mortimer? Does it mean that you must keep metals about you, or keep them away from you?’

‘Well, I hardly know. It appears to be a little mixed. All German advice is more or less mixed. However, I think that that sentence is mostly in the dative case, with a little genitive and accusative sifted in, here and there, for luck; so I reckon it means that you must keep some metals about you.’

‘Yes, that must be it. It stands to reason that it is. They are in the nature of lightning-rods, you know. Put on your fireman’s helmet, Mortimer; that is mostly metal.’

I got it and put it on, – a very heavy and clumsy and uncomfortable thing on a hot night in a close room. Even my night-dress seemed to be more clothing than I strictly needed.

‘Mortimer, I think your middle ought to be protected. Won’t you buckle on your militia sabre, please?’

I complied.

‘Now, Mortimer, you ought to have some way to protect your feet. Do please put on your spurs.’

I did it, – in silence, – and kept my temper as well as I could.

‘Mortimer, it says, “Das Gewitterlauten ist sehr gefahrlich, weil die Glocke selbst, sowie der durch das Lauten veranlasste Luftzug und die Hohe des Thurmes den Blitz anziehen konnten.” Mortimer, does that mean that it is dangerous not to ring the church bells during a thunder-storm?’

‘Yes, it seems to mean that, – if that is the past participle of the nominative case singular, and I reckon it is. Yes, I think it means that on account of the height of the church tower and the absence of Luftzug it would be very dangerous (sehr gefahrlich) not to ring the bells in time of a storm; and moreover, don’t you see, the very wording —’

‘Never mind that, Mortimer; don’t waste the precious time in talk. Get the large dinner-bell; it is right there in the hall. Quick, Mortimer dear; we are almost safe. Oh, dear, I do believe we are going to be saved, at last!’

Our little summer establishment stands on top of a high range of hills, overlooking a valley. Several farm-houses are in our neighborhood, – the nearest some three or four hundred yards away.

When I, mounted on the chair, had been clanging that dreadful bell a matter of seven or eight minutes, our shutters were suddenly torn open from without, and a brilliant bull’s-eye lantern was thrust in at the window, followed by a hoarse inquiry: —

‘What in the nation is the matter here?’

The window was full of men’s heads, and the heads were full of eyes that stared wildly at my night-dress and my warlike accoutrements.

I dropped the bell, skipped down from the chair in confusion, and said, —

‘There is nothing the matter, friends, – only a little discomfort on account of the thunder-storm. I was trying to keep off the lightning.’

‘Thunder-storm? Lightning? Why, Mr. McWilliams, have you lost your mind? It is a beautiful starlight night; there has been no storm.’

I looked out, and I was so astonished I could hardly speak for a while. Then I said, —

‘I do not understand this. We distinctly saw the glow of the flashes through the curtains and shutters, and heard the thunder.’

One after another of those people lay down on the ground to laugh, – and two of them died. One of the survivors remarked, —

‘Pity you didn’t think to open your blinds and look over to the top of the high hill yonder. What you heard was cannon; what you saw was the flash. You see, the telegraph brought some news, just at midnight: Garfield’s nominated, – and that’s what’s the matter!’

Yes, Mr. Twain, as I was saying in the beginning (said Mr. McWilliams), the rules for preserving people against lightning are so excellent and so innumerable that the most incomprehensible thing in the world to me is how anybody ever manages to get struck.

So saying, he gathered up his satchel and umbrella, and departed; for the train had reached his town.

The McWilliamses and the Burglar Alarm

The conversation drifted smoothly and pleasantly along from weather to crops, from crops to literature, from literature to scandal, from scandal to religion; then took a random jump, and landed on the subject of burglar alarms. And now for the first time Mr. McWilliams showed feeling. Whenever I perceive this sign on this man’s dial, I comprehend it, and lapse into silence, and give him opportunity to unload his heart. Said he, with but ill-controlled emotion:

‘I do not go one single cent on burglar alarms, Mr. Twain – not a single cent – and I will tell you why. When we were finishing our house, we found we had a little cash left over, on account of the plumber not knowing it. I was for enlightening the heathen with it, for I was always unaccountably down on the heathen somehow; but Mrs. McWilliams said no, let’s have a burglar alarm. I agreed to this compromise. I will explain that whenever I want a thing, and Mrs. McWilliams wants another thing, and we decide upon the thing that Mrs. McWilliams wants – as we always do – she calls that a compromise. Very well: the man came up from New York and put in the alarm, and charged three hundred and twenty-five dollars for it, and said we could sleep without uneasiness now. So we did for awhile – say a month. Then one night we smelled smoke, and I was advised to get up and see what the matter was. I lit a candle, and started toward the stairs, and met a burglar coming out of a room with a basket of tinware, which he had mistaken for solid silver in the dark. He was smoking a pipe. I said, “My friend, we do not allow smoking in this room.” He said he was a stranger, and could not be expected to know the rules of the house; said he had been in many houses just as good as this one, and it had never been objected to before. He added that as far as his experience went, such rules had never been considered to apply to burglars, anyway.

‘I said: “Smoke along, then, if it is the custom, though I think that the conceding of a privilege to a burglar which is denied to a bishop is a conspicuous sign of the looseness of the times. But waiving all that, what business have you to be entering this house in this furtive and clandestine way, without ringing the burglar alarm?”

‘He looked confused and ashamed, and said, with embarrassment: ‘I beg a thousand pardons. I did not know you had a burglar alarm, else I would have rung it. I beg you will not mention it where my parents may hear of it, for they are old and feeble, and such a seemingly wanton breach of the hallowed conventionalities of our Christian civilization might all too rudely sunder the frail bridge which hangs darkling between the pale and evanescent present and the solemn great deeps of the eternities. May I trouble you for a match?”

‘I said: “Your sentiments do you honor, but if you will allow me to say it, metaphor is not your best hold. Spare your thigh; this kind light only on the box, and seldom there, in fact, if my experience may be trusted. But to return to business: how did you get in here?”

‘“Through a second-story window.’

‘It was even so. I redeemed the tinware at pawnbroker’s rates, less cost of advertising, bade the burglar good-night, closed the window after him, and retired to headquarters to report. Next morning we sent for the burglar-alarm man, and he came up and explained that the reason the alarm did not “go off” was that no part of the house but the first floor was attached to the alarm. This was simply idiotic; one might as well have no armor on at all in battle as to have it only on his legs. The expert now put the whole second story on the alarm, charged three hundred dollars for it, and went his way. By and by, one night, I found a burglar in the third story, about to start down a ladder with a lot of miscellaneous property. My first impulse was to crack his head with a billiard cue; but my second was to refrain from this attention, because he was between me and the cue rack. The second impulse was plainly the soundest, so I refrained, and proceeded to compromise. I redeemed the property at former rates, after deducting ten per cent. for use of ladder, it being my ladder, and, next day we sent down for the expert once more, and had the third story attached to the alarm, for three hundred dollars.

‘By this time the ‘annunciator’ had grown to formidable dimensions. It had forty-seven tags on it, marked with the names of the various rooms and chimneys, and it occupied the space of an ordinary wardrobe. The gong was the size of a wash-bowl, and was placed above the head of our bed. There was a wire from the house to the coachman’s quarters in the stable, and a noble gong alongside his pillow.

‘We should have been comfortable now but for one defect. Every morning at five the cook opened the kitchen door, in the way of business, and rip went that gong! The first time this happened I thought the last day was come sure. I didn’t think it in bed – no, but out of it – for the first effect of that frightful gong is to hurl you across the house, and slam you against the wall, and then curl you up, and squirm you like a spider on a stove lid, till somebody shuts the kitchen door. In solid fact, there is no clamor that is even remotely comparable to the dire clamor which that gong makes. Well, this catastrophe happened every morning regularly at five o’clock, and lost us three hours sleep; for, mind you, when that thing wakes you, it doesn’t merely wake you in spots; it wakes you all over, conscience and all, and you are good for eighteen hours of wide-awakeness subsequently – eighteen hours of the very most inconceivable wide-awakeness that you ever experienced in your life. A stranger died on our hands one time, aid we vacated and left him in our room overnight. Did that stranger wait for the general judgment? No, sir; he got up at five the next morning in the most prompt and unostentatious way. I knew he would; I knew it mighty well. He collected his life-insurance, and lived happy ever after, for there was plenty of proof as to the perfect squareness of his death.

‘Well, we were gradually fading toward a better land, on account of the daily loss of sleep; so we finally had the expert up again, and he ran a wire to the outside of the door, and placed a switch there, whereby Thomas, the butler, always made one little mistake – he switched the alarm off at night when he went to bed, and switched it on again at daybreak in the morning, just in time for the cook to open the kitchen door, and enable that gong to slam us across the house, sometimes breaking a window with one or the other of us. At the end of a week we recognized that this switch business was a delusion and a snare. We also discovered that a band of burglars had been lodging in the house the whole time – not exactly to steal, for there wasn’t much left now, but to hide from the police, for they were hot pressed, and they shrewdly judged that the detectives would never think of a tribe of burglars taking sanctuary in a house notoriously protected by the most imposing and elaborate burglar alarm in America.

‘Sent down for the expert again, and this time he struck a most dazzling idea – he fixed the thing so that opening the kitchen door would take off the alarm. It was a noble idea, and he charged accordingly. But you already foresee the result. I switched on the alarm every night at bed-time, no longer trusting on Thomas’s frail memory; and as soon as the lights were out the burglars walked in at the kitchen door, thus taking the alarm off without waiting for the cook to do it in the morning. You see how aggravatingly we were situated. For months we couldn’t have any company. Not a spare bed in the house; all occupied by burglars.

‘Finally, I got up a cure of my own. The expert answered the call, and ran another ground wire to the stable, and established a switch there, so that the coachman could put on and take off the alarm. That worked first rate, and a season of peace ensued, during which we got to inviting company once more and enjoying life.

‘But by and by the irrepressible alarm invented a new kink. One winter’s night we were flung out of bed by the sudden music of that awful gong, and when we hobbled to the annunciator, turned up the gas, and saw the word “Nursery” exposed, Mrs. McWilliams fainted dead away, and I came precious near doing the same thing myself. I seized my shotgun, and stood timing the coachman whilst that appalling buzzing went on. I knew that his gong had flung him out, too, and that he would be along with his gun as soon as he could jump into his clothes. When I judged that the time was ripe, I crept to the room next the nursery, glanced through the window, and saw the dim outline of the coachman in the yard below, standing at present-arms and waiting for a chance. Then I hopped into the nursery and fired, and in the same instant the coachman fired at the red flash of my gun. Both of us were successful; I crippled a nurse, and he shot off all my back hair. We turned up the gas, and telephoned for a surgeon. There was not a sign of a burglar, and no window had been raised. One glass was absent, but that was where the coachman’s charge had come through. Here was a fine mystery – a burglar alarm ‘going off’ at midnight of its own accord, and not a burglar in the neighborhood!

‘The expert answered the usual call, and explained that it was a “False alarm.” Said it was easily fixed. So he overhauled the nursery window, charged a remunerative figure for it, and departed.

‘What we suffered from false alarms for the next three years no stylographic pen can describe. During the next three months I always flew with my gun to the room indicated, and the coachman always sallied forth with his battery to support me. But there was never anything to shoot at – windows all tight and secure. We always sent down for the expert next day, and he fixed those particular windows so they would keep quiet a week or so, and always remembered to send us a bill about like this:

‘At length a perfectly natural thing came about – after we had answered three or four hundred false alarms – to wit, we stopped answering them. Yes, I simply rose up calmly, when slammed across the house by the alarm, calmly inspected the annunciator, took note of the room indicated; and then calmly disconnected that room from the alarm, and went back to bed as if nothing had happened. Moreover, I left that room off permanently, and did not send for the expert. Well, it goes without saying that in the course of time all the rooms were taken off, and the entire machine was out of service.

‘It was at this unprotected time that the heaviest calamity of all happened. The burglars walked in one night and carried off the burglar alarm! yes, sir, every hide and hair of it: ripped it out, tooth and nail; springs, bells, gongs, battery, and all; they took a hundred and fifty miles of copper wire; they just cleaned her out, bag and baggage, and never left us a vestige of her to swear at – swear by, I mean.

‘We had a time of it to get her back; but we accomplished it finally, for money. The alarm firm said that what we needed now was to have her put in right – with their new patent springs in the windows to make false alarms impossible, and their new patent clock attached to take off and put on the alarm morning and night without human assistance. That seemed a good scheme. They promised to have the whole thing finished in ten days. They began work, and we left for the summer. They worked a couple of days; then they left for the summer. After which the burglars moved in, and began their summer vacation. When we returned in the fall, the house was as empty as a beer closet in premises where painters have been at work. We refurnished, and then sent down to hurry up the expert. He came up and finished the job, and said: ‘Now this clock is set to put on the alarm every night at 10, and take it off every morning at 5:45. All you’ve got to do is to wind her up every week, and then leave her alone – she will take care of the alarm herself.’

‘After that we had a most tranquil season during three months. The bill was prodigious, of course, and I had said I would not pay it until the new machinery had proved itself to be flawless. The time stipulated was three months. So I paid the bill, and the very next day the alarm went to buzzing like ten thousand bee swarms at ten o’clock in the morning. I turned the hands around twelve hours, according to instructions, and this took off the alarm; but there was another hitch at night, and I had to set her ahead twelve hours once more to get her to put the alarm on again. That sort of nonsense went on a week or two, then the expert came up and put in a new clock. He came up every three months during the next three years, and put in a new clock. But it was always a failure. His clocks all had the same perverse defect: they would put the alarm on in the daytime, and they would not put it on at night; and if you forced it on yourself, they would take it off again the minute your back was turned.

‘Now there is the history of that burglar alarm – everything just as it happened; nothing extenuated, and naught set down in malice. Yes, sir, – and when I had slept nine years with burglars, and maintained an expensive burglar alarm the whole time, for their protection, not mine, and at my sole cost – for not a d—d cent could I ever get THEM to contribute – I just said to Mrs. McWilliams that I had had enough of that kind of pie; so with her full consent I took the whole thing out and traded it off for a dog, and shot the dog. I don’t know what you think about it, Mr. Twain; but I think those things are made solely in the interest of the burglars. Yes, sir, a burglar alarm combines in its person all that is objectionable about a fire, a riot, and a harem, and at the same time had none of the compensating advantages, of one sort or another, that customarily belong with that combination. Good-bye: I get off here.’

Notes

John Kendrick Bangs

A Psychical Prank

Junoesque – like the Roman goddess Juno (tall and beautiful)

Madame Blavatsky – Helena Blavatsky (1813–1891), a spiritualist and medium, creator of the Theosophical Society (1875) in New York

The Ghost Club

Sing Sing – a prison (New York State) known for its security and discipline

non compos mentis – not of sound mind (Latin)

royalty – money paid to an author for each sold copy of his or her book

Brazenose = Brasenose College of the University of Oxford, founded in 1509

cui bono – to whose benefit (Latin)

was black-balled – not elected, rejected (about a person willing to become a member of a club)

Douglas Jerrold – Douglas William Jerrold (1803–1857), an English dramatist and writer

Marryat – Captain Frederick Marryat (1792–1848), a British Royal Navy officer and novelist, known for his sea stories; developed a system of maritime flag signaling (Marryat’s Code).

Davy Crockett – David Stern Crockett (1786–1836), American folk hero, frontiersman, soldier, and politician. ‘King of the Wild Frontier,’ he gained a reputation for hunting and storytelling.

old Doctor Johnson – Samuel Johnson (1709–1784), an English writer, poet, essayist, moralist, literary critic, biographer, editor and lexicographer

Boswell – James Boswell, (1740–1795), a Scottish lawyer, diarist, and author. His surname has become a synonym for a constant companion and observer, who records all his observations.

Gottschalk – Louis Moreau Gottschalk (1829–1869), an American composer and pianist, a virtuoso performer of his own piano pieces

Carlyle – Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881), a Scottish philosopher, historian, and satirical writer. In his famous work ‘On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and The Heroic in History’ he explains the key role of the ‘Great Man’ in history.

Froude – James Anthony Froude (1818–1894), an English novelist and one of the best known historians of his time for his ‘History of England’

Ignatius Donnelly – Ignatius Loyola Donnelly (1831–1901), populist writer and amateur scientist, known for his theories, among which was Shakespearean authorship.

Lord Wolseley – Garnet Joseph Wolseley, (1833–1913), an Anglo-Irish officer in the British Army. He served as Commander-in-Chief of the Forces from 1895 to 1900 and gained his reputation for efficiency.

the Iron Duke – Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington (1769–1852), a British soldier and statesman, a hero of the Napoleonic Wars

Catherine – Catherine II, (Catherine the Great, 1729–1796), the longest-ruling female leader of Russia, whose reign was believed to be Russia’s golden age

Marie Louise (1791–1847) – the second wife of Napoleon Bonaparte, the Empress of France (1810–1814), later the Duchess of Parma (since 1814)

Josephine – Joséphine de Beauharnais (1763–1814), the first wife of Napoleon I, and the Empress of France (since 1804)

Queen Elizabeth – Elizabeth I (1533–1603), daughter of Henry VIII, queen of England and Ireland (1558–1603). The so-called Virgin Queen, she never married.

Queen Anne (1665–1714) – the last of the Stuart monarchs, and the first sovereign of Great Britain

Peg Woffington – Margaret ‘Peg’ Woffington (1720–1760), a well-known Irish actress

Queen Isabella – Isabella I (1451–1504), known as Isabella the Catholic, was queen of Castile and León. Her husband was Ferdinand II of Aragon.

Verb. sap. – verbum sapienti sat est, meaning ‘a word is enough for the wise’ (Latin)

alibi – elsewhere (Latin); the term means the proof that a suspect could not be guilty of the crime in question as he/she was elsewhere.

habeas corpush – habeas corpus, a legal issue according to which an arrested person is to be brought into court, for the court to see the evidence and decide whether he or she is to stay in prison

jug dthe blag-yard – to jail

Maa dthe shaints presharve us – May the saints preserve us

Hivin hov mershy – giving of mercy

Dan O’Connell – Daniel O’Connell (1775–1847), called The Liberator, an Irish political leader who fought for Catholic Emancipation (the right for Catholics to sit in the Westminster Parliament)

Ambrose Bierce

Curried Cow

Timotheus, who ‘raised a mortal to the skies’ – an allusion to the ode ‘Alexander’s Feast, or the Power of Music’ (1697) by John Dryden. In the ode Alexander the Great, after his defeat of Darius, is giving a feast. Alexander’s bard Timotheus sings praises of him, glorifying him as a god.

The Widower Turmore

Laborare est errare – to work is to err (Latin); it is an allusion to ‘laborare est orare’ – to work is to pray (Latin).

Bret Harte

Miss Mix

BY CH – L – TTE BR – NTE – here is meant Charlotte Brontё (1816–1855), a popular Victorian author, and the story is a parody of her most famous novel, ‘Jane Eyre’

Chapter III

Oui, Monsieur – Yes, Sir (French)

Taisez-vous – shut up (French)

Washington Irving

The Legend of Sleepy Hollow

Hessian trooper – an 18h century German soldier engaged by the British Empire for military service

the Revolutionary War – the War of Independence (1775–1783) was caused by the rebellion of 13 American colonies of Great Britain; they proclaimed themselves independent, and the conflict followed.

The Battle of White Plains (October 28, 1776) – a battle near White Plains village (New York); British troops headed by General William Howe tried to cut off the way of retreating George Washington’s army. They didn’t succeed, but the American troops had to retreat farther.

Major André – John André, a brave and cunning spy, British officer during the American Revolution War, who convinced American general Benedict Arnold to sell out West Point. During one of his trips he was caught with incriminating documents and hanged at age 31.

Stephen Leacock

Nonsense Novels

Maddened by Mystery: or, The Defective Detective

Quel beau chien! – What a beautiful dog! (French)

Ach! was ein Dog – That is the dog. (German)

Gertrude the Governess: or, Simple Seventeen

Quelle triste matin! – What a sad morning!

Was fur ein allerverdamnter Tag! – What a… day! (German and pseudo-German adjective)

A Hero in Homespun: or, The Life Struggle of Hezekiah Hayloft

table d’hôte – meals in a boarding-house when the same dishes are served to everybody present

nolle prosequi – refuse to pursue (Latin); the phrase meaning an abandonment of a suit (before the trial or verdict).

nec plus ultra – the (farthest) extremity (Latin)

certiorari – an order by which a higher court checks a case of a lower court

Sorrows of a Super Soul: or, The Memoirs of Marie Mushenough

Hegel or Schlegel or Whegel – Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831) was a German philosopher, one of the creators of German idealism; his works greatly influenced the development of philosophy. Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel (1772–1829) was a German poet, philosopher and linguist, one of the creators of the group of Jena Romantics. Whegel doesn’t exist.

Hannah of the Highlands: or, The Laird of Loch Aucherlocherty

Sair maun ye greet, but hoot awa!… – the lines are a parody of a Gaelic folk-song (Auld Lang Syne)

Bonnie Prince Charlie – Charles Edward Stuart (1720–1788), pretender to the British throne, son of James Stuart, also pretender to the British throne. It was Bonnie Prince Charlie who encouraged the Jacobite uprising of 1745.

the defeat of Culloden – the Battle of Culloden (1746) was the end of the Jacobite uprising of 1745; the supporters of Bonnie Prince Charlie were defeated.

the Bruce – Robert I the Bruce, King of Scots (1306–1329), great warrior, leader of Scotland during the Wars of Scottish Independence against England

Bannockburn – in the Battle of Bannockburn (1314) the troops of Scotts defeated the English army of King Edward II

the Covenanters – those who signed the National Covenant in 1638 (to oppose to the interference by the Stuart kings in the affairs of the Presbyterian Church of Scotland)

Montrose had passed on his fateful ride to Killiecrankie – in the battle of Killiecrankie (1689, the Scot Wars) John Graham, the 2nd Duke of Montrose, was killed.

William Wallace (c. 1270–1305) – one of the leaders during the Wars of Scottish Independence, commanded the troops in the Battle of Stirling (1297) that ended in the defeat of the English army

Rob Roy – Robert Roy MacGregor, a famous folk hero (the Scottish Robin Hood) of the early 18th century

Burne-Jones – Edward Burne-Jones (1833–1898), British Pre-Raphaelite painter

Alma Tadema – Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema (1836–1912), Dutch-born English Classicist painter

Murder at $2.50 a Crime

been out on a hoot – had some fun

cul de sac – dead end street (French)

nec plus ultra – the extremity (Latin)

he registered as A.I., – was considered number 1 (suspect)

Jack London

That Spot

Chilcoot Trail – gold-diggers landed in Dyea and followed the Chilcoot trail to get to the lakes and then to the inner regions where the gold had been found

put the kibosh on – destroy, spoil, put an end to

Dawson – a town on the Klondike and Yukon Rivers, named after a Canadian geologist George M. Dawson, the main Klondike Gold Rush centre

Lake Bennett boat – from Bennett Lake the gold-seekers travelled by rafts or boats to Dawson City.

rough-on-rats – rat poison

The Terrible Solomons

bêche-de-mer – the so-called “sea cucumber”

New Britain, New Ireland, New Guinea, and the Admiralties – these are islands and parts of Papua New Guinea

wag – a one who likes and makes jokes

O. Henry

The Ransom of Red Chief

King Herod – Herod the Great, biblical king who ordered the massacre of the Innocents in his attempt to get rid of the new-born Jesus

Tommy’s Burglar

Metropolitan – Metropolitan Opera House in New York

De Reszke, Caruso – both were famous opera tenors, but Jean De Reszke was a star of the late 19th century, and Enrico Caruso was the star of the early 20th century

fol-de-rols – trifles or nonsense

S. P. C. C – Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children

The Adventures of Shamrock Jolnes

run to earth = to find, to catch

The Hiding of Black Bill

Parcheesi – a game where you move pieces along the board

the M. K. & T – the Missouri—Kansas—Texas Railroad

hypodermical – he means ‘hypothetical,’ of course

Buffalo Bill – William Frederick ‘Buffalo Bill’ Cody (1846–1917), an American scout, bison hunter, and organizer of the first cowboy show

the Katy – the Katy trail (road)

P.R.R. – either Peachtree Road Race, a 10 kilometer road race held annually in Atlanta, Georgia, or Pennsylvania Railroad

mines of Gondola – he means the gold mines in the Swiss village of Gondo

Delilah when she set the Philip Stein on to Samson – in the Hebrew bible ‘Book of Judges’ Delilah was the woman whom Samson loved, and she betrayed him to Philistines

The Octopus Marooned

an epitogram – he created smth in between an epigram and epitaph

mulct’em in parvo = multum in parvo – much in little (Latin)

a rift within the loot – a break in friendly relations; actually, ‘in the lute,’ ‘loot’ means ‘money’ (slang).

Albert Tennyson – Alfred Tennison (1809–1892), one of the greatest poets and writers of the Victorian era

Juniper Aquarius – he means ‘Jupiter,’ of course: Jupiter is the chief Roman god, and juniper is a bush

Matutinal – mutational

’dobe – adobe, brick made of clay

the Skibo – Skibo Castle in Scotland (symbol of wealth)

Cantharides – they are a kind of flies; he may mean Cato, a noted Roman orator.

Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth – Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth (1819–1899), widely-read American novelist

Tyre and Siphon – Biblical cities of Tyre and Sidon had long been reduced to ruins

sine qua non – it’s absolutely needed (Latin)

burro – a donkey (Spanish)

Shoes

Americanos diablos – devilish Americans (Spanish)

moso = mozo – a boy, a servant (Spanish)

zapato – a shoe (Spanish)

Kapes – keeps

Baile – ball (Spanish)

cuartel – quarters (Spanish)

Toeses – toes

triste – sad (Spanish)

Cockleburrs – cocklebur is a plant, which has prickly fruits

The Handbook of Hymen

Greengages – a sort of plums

horse got the botts – apparently, constipation

Homer K.M. – corrupted name of Omar Khayyám (1048–1131), Persian poet and mathematician, the author of famous rubáiyát

pro re nata – as needed (Latin, used in prescriptions)

Ruby Ott – Rubáiyát (a form of Persian poetry)

nom de plume – pen-name (French)

A Lickpenny Lover

Hebe – the goddess of youth in Greek mythology, the daughter of Zeus and Hera

Minerva – the Roman goddess of wisdom

Shylock – a character in William Shakespeare’s ‘The Merchant of Venice.’ His name is used to mean a loan shark.

goo-goo eyes or ‘git’ – eyes full of love or childish admiration

Psyche – the soul or breath of life in Greek and Latin mythology

The Ethics of Pig

cerebrum cerebellum, medulla oblongata – sections of the brain

Autolycan – in Greek mythology, Autolycus was a master in the art of theft and trickery

fourflushers – a four-flusher is a liar or idly boaster. The term originates from the game of poker (when a person bluffs that he has five cards in a flush when there are only four).

Goldstein’s – meaning Oliver Goldsmith, (1728–1774), Anglo-Irish poet and writer

‘Ill fares the land, to hastening ills a prey,

What art can drive its charms away?

The judge rode slowly down the lane, mother.

For I’m to be Queen of the May.’

Only the 1st line is really from the named poem, while the 3rd is from ‘Maud Muller’ by John Greenleaf Whittier, and the 4th is from ‘The May Queen’ by Alfred Tennyson.

Fairbanks for the stuff that kept Eliza from sinking into the river – Jason Fairbanks (1780–1801) was an American murderer who killed his sweetheart Elizabeth Fales in 1801

dinkus – discus

Reub – an unsophisticated guy (slang)

reckernized – recognized

Soon Parted – perhaps, from the proverb ‘A fool and his money are soon parted’

Ponce de Leon – Juan Ponce de León (1474–1521), Spanish explorer, the first European who reached Florida (1513). His name is also tied up with the legendary Fountain of Youth.

Hoe cylinder – a rotary press made by Richard M. Hoe (1812–1886), a New York City inventor, which led to speeding up the production of the printed word

Confessions of a Humorist

vers de société – flippant or mildly ironic light poetry intended for a limited, sophisticated audience

doxology – a hymn of praise to God

sockdology – a 19th-century boxing term meaning ‘a finishing blow’ or ‘the brutal end of everything’

sockdolager – smth outstanding or smth that settles the matter (can be a blow too!)

Mark Twain

Favourite Extracts from ‘The Adventures of Tom Sawyer’

Tom Meets a Stranger

’nuff! – enough

Tom and the Fence

a marvel. I’ll give you a white alley – A marble. These things are used in the game of marbles; white alley is a beautiful white one.

a bully taw – a taw is a fancy marble used to shoot with in playing marbles

the Big Missouri – a large steam ship

Sunday School Visitors

David and Goliath – David (c. 1000 BC – c. 962 BC) was an ancient King of Israel and Judah; he killed a ferocious Philistine giant Goliath.

How I Edited an Agricultural Paper

Adiós – Good-bye (Spanish)

Running for Governor

plantain-patch – a piece of land where they grow plantains (fruit that resemble banana)

The Stolen White Elephant

A Tramp Abroad (1880) – a book by Mark Twain loosely based on his travel experience

I

Siam – that’s how Thailand was called till 1939

ordinary octavo; the great quarto – the sizes of books that are: 1) about 8 to 10 inches tall (almost A5 paper size); 2) 12×10 inches (developed from folding a paper sheet)

Doré Bibles – expensive editions of the Bible illustrated by French artist Gustave Doré (1832–1883)

II

Barnum – P.T. Barnum (1810–1891), an American showman, founder and owner of a circus

III

to strike my colors = to surrender. At sea the ‘colors’ is the flag under which the ship is fighting. To ‘strike’ in this context means to pull down.

A Complaint about Correspondents, Dated in San Francisco

Moses in the bulrushers – bulrushes are water reeds. The infant Moses was found on the riverbank.

Deuteronorny – Deuteronomy, the fifth book of canonical Jewish and Christian Scripture

Mrs. McWilliams and the Lightning

Wahrend eines Gewitters entferne man Metalle wie z. B., Ringe, Uhren, Schlussel, etc. von sich und halte sich auch nicht an solchen Stellen auf, wo viele Metalle bei einander liegen, oder mit andern Korpern verbunden sind, wie an Herden, Oefen, Eisengittern und dgl. – During a thunderstorm take off all the metal items, such as rings, watches, remove the keys, etc. Stay away from conveniences that contain metals: furnaces, iron bars and such like. (German)

‘Das Gewitterlauten ist sehr gefahrlich, weil die Glocke selbst, sowie der durch das Lauten veranlasste Luftzug und die Hohe des Thurmes den Blitz anziehen konnten – The bell strike in a storm is dangerous, too, because as well as the bell itself, the height of the tower can attract lightning. (German)

Content

33 лучших юмористических рассказа на английском = 33 Best Humorous Short Stories

John Kendrick Bangs

A Psychical Prank

I

II

The Ghost Club An unfortunate episode in the life of No. 5010

Ambrose Bierce

Curried Cow

The Widower Turmore

Bret Harte

The Stolen Cigar Case

Miss Mix

Chapter I

Chapter II

Chapter III

Chapter IV

Chapter V

Washington Irving

The Legend of Sleepy Hollow Found among the papers of the Late Diedrich Knickerbocker

Stephen Leacock

Nonsense Novels

Maddened by Mystery: or, The Defective Detective

‘Q.’ A Psychic Pstory of the Psupernatural

Guido the Gimlet of Ghent: A Romance of Chivalry

Gertrude the Governess: or, Simple Seventeen

A Hero in Homespun: or, The Life Struggle of Hezekiah Hayloft

Sorrows of a Super Soul: or, The Memoirs of Marie Mushenough (Translated, by Machinery, out of the Original Russian.)

Hannah of the Highlands: or, The Laird of Loch Aucherlocherty

Soaked in Seaweed: or, Upset in the Ocean (An Old-fashioned Sea Story.)

Caroline’s Christmas: or, The Inexplicable Infant

The Man in Asbestos: An Allegory of the Future

The Old, Old Story of How Five Men Went Fishing

How We Kept Mother’s Birthday As Related by a Member of the Family

Murder at $2.50 a Crime

Jack London

That Spot

The Terrible Solomons

O. Henry

The Ransom of Red Chief

Tommy’s Burglar

The Adventures of Shamrock Jolnes

The Hiding of Black Bill

The Octopus Marooned

Shoes

The Handbook of Hymen

A Lickpenny Lover

The Ethics of Pig

Confessions of a Humorist

Saki

The Story-Teller

Mark Twain

Favourite Extracts from ‘The Adventures of Tom Sawyer’

Tom Meets a Stranger

Tom and the Fence

Sunday School Visitors

How I Edited an Agricultural Paper

Running for Governor

Punch, Brothers, Punch

The Stolen White Elephant

I

II

III

A Complaint about Correspondents, Dated in San Francisco

Experience of the McWilliamses with Membranous Croup

Mrs. McWilliamsand the Lightning

The McWilliamses and the Burglar Alarm

Notes

John Kendrick Bangs

A Psychical Prank

The Ghost Club

Ambrose Bierce

Curried Cow

The Widower Turmore

Bret Harte

Miss Mix

Chapter III

Washington Irving

The Legend of Sleepy Hollow

Stephen Leacock

Nonsense Novels

Maddened by Mystery: or, The Defective Detective

Gertrude the Governess: or, Simple Seventeen

A Hero in Homespun: or, The Life Struggle of Hezekiah Hayloft

Sorrows of a Super Soul: or, The Memoirs of Marie Mushenough

Hannah of the Highlands: or, The Laird of Loch Aucherlocherty

Murder at $2.50 a Crime

Jack London

That Spot

The Terrible Solomons

O. Henry

The Ransom of Red Chief

Tommy’s Burglar

The Adventures of Shamrock Jolnes

The Hiding of Black Bill

The Octopus Marooned

Shoes

The Handbook of Hymen

A Lickpenny Lover

The Ethics of Pig

Confessions of a Humorist

Mark Twain

Favourite Extracts from ‘The Adventures of Tom Sawyer’

Tom Meets a Stranger

Tom and the Fence

Sunday School Visitors

How I Edited an Agricultural Paper

Running for Governor

The Stolen White Elephant

I

II

III

A Complaint about Correspondents, Dated in San Francisco

Mrs. McWilliams and the Lightning