Little Bessie (1908)
Little Nelly Tells a Story Out of Her Own Head (1907)
The Ten Commandments (1905 or 1906)
Thoughts of God (early 190os)
The Synod of Praise (early 1900s)
The Enchanted Sea-Wilderness (1896)
Which Was the Dream? (1897)
The Great Dark
The Mad Passenger (1898)
Which Was It? (1902)
3,000 Years Among the Microbes (1905)
The Refuge of the Derelicts (1905 and 1906)
The Fable of the Yellow Terror (1904-1905)
Passage from "Glances at History" (suppressed.) (early 1900s)
Passage from "Outlines of History" (suppressed.) (early 1900s)
Passage from a Lecture (early 1900s)
History 1000 Years from Now (January 1901)
Old Age (December 1905)




Little Bessie


Chapter 1


Little Bessie Would Assist Providence


Little Bessie was nearly three years old. She was a good child,
and not shallow, not frivolous, but meditative and thoughtful,
and much given to thinking out the reasons of things and trying
to make them harmonise with results. One day she said --

"Mamma, why is there so much pain and sorrow and suffering? What
is it all for?"

It was an easy question, and mamma had no difficulty in answering
it:

"It is for our good, my child. In His wisdom and mercy the Lord
sends us these afflictions to discipline us and make us better."

"Is it He that sends them?"

"Yes."

"Does He send all of them, mamma?"

"Yes, dear, all of them. None of them comes by accident; He alone
sends them, and always out of love for us, and to make us better."

"Isn't it strange!"

"Strange? Why, no, I have never thought of it in that way. I have
not heard any one call it strange before. It has always seemed nat-
ural and right to me, and wise and most kindly and merciful."

"Who first thought of it like that, mamma? Was it you?"

"Oh, no, child, I was taught it."

"Who taught you so, mamma?"

"Why, really, I don't know--I can't remember. My mother, I suppose;
or the preacher. But it's a thing that everybody knows."

"Well, anyway, it does seem strange. Did He give Billy Norris the
typhus?"

"Yes."

"What for?"

"Why, to discipline him and make him good."

"But he died, mamma, and so it couldn't make him good."

"Well, then, I suppose it was for some other reason. We know it was
a good reason, whatever it was."

"What do you think it was, mamma?"

"Oh, you ask so many questions! I think; it was to discipline his
parents."

"Well, then, it wasn't fair, mamma. Why should his life be taken a-
way for their sake, when he wasn't doing anything?"

"Oh, I don't know! I only know it was for a good and wise and merc-
iful reason."

"What reason, mamma?"

"I think--I think--well, it was a judgment; it was to punish
them for some sin they had committed."

"But he was the one that was punished, mamma. Was that right?"

"Certainly, certainly. He does nothing that isn't right and wise
and merciful. You can't understand these things now, dear, but when
you are grown up you will understand them, and then you will see that
they are just and wise."

After a pause:

"Did He make the roof fall in on the stranger that was trying to save
the crippled old woman from the fire, mamma?"

"Yes, my child. Wait! Don't ask me why, because I don't know. I only
know it was to discipline some one, or be a judgment upon somebody, or
to show His power."

"That drunken man that stuck a pitchfork into Mrs. Welch's baby when-- "

"Never mind about it, you needn't go into particulars; it was as to
discipline the child--that much is certain, anyway."

"Mamma, Mr. Burgess said in his sermon that billions of little crea-
tures are sent into us to give us cholera, and typhoid, and lockjaw,
and more than a thousand other sicknesses and--mamma, does He
send them?"

"Oh, certainly, child, certainly. Of course."

"What for?"

"Oh, to discipline us! haven't I told you so, over and over again?"

"It's awful cruel, mamma! And silly! and if I--"

"Hush, oh hush! do you want to bring the lightning?"

"You know the lightning did come last week, mamma, and struck the new
church, and burnt it down. Was it to discipline the church?"

(Wearily). "Oh, I suppose so."

"But it killed a hog that wasn't doing anything. Was it to discipline
the hog, mamma?"

"Dear child, don't you want to run out and play a while? If you would
like to--"

"Mama, only think! Mr. Hollister says there isn't a bird or fish or
reptile or any other animal that hasn't got an enemy that Providence
has sent to bite it and chase it and pester it, and kill it, and suck;
its blood and discipline it and make it good and religious. Is that
true, mother--because if it is true, why did Mr. Hollister laugh at
it?"

"That Hollister is a scandalous person, and I don't want you to listen
to anything he says."

"Why, mamma, he is very interesting, and I think he tries to be good.
He says the wasps catch spiders and cram them down into their nests in
the ground--alive, mamma!--and there they live and suffer days and
days and days, and the hungry little wasps chewing their legs and gnaw-
ing into their bellies all the time, to make them good and religious
and praise God for His infinite mercies. I think Mr. Hollister is just
lovely, and ever so kind; for when I asked him if he would treat a spi-
der like that, he said he hoped to be damned if he would; and then he-- "

"My child! oh, do for goodness' sake--"

"And mamma, he says the spider is appointed to catch the fly, and drive
her fangs into his bowels, and suck and suck and suck his blood, to dis-
cipline him and make him a Christian; and whenever the fly buzzes his
wings with the pain and misery of it, you can see by the spider's grate-
ful eye that she is thanking the Giver of All Good for--well, she's
saying grace, as he says; and also, he--"

"Oh, aren't you ever going to get tired chattering! If you want to go
out and play--"

"Mama, he says himself that all troubles and pains and miseries and rot-
ten diseases and horrors and villainies are sent to us in mercy and kind-
ness to discipline us; and he says it is the duty of every father and
mother to help Providence, every way they can; and says they can't do
it by just scolding and whipping, for that won't answer, it is weak and
no good--Providence's way is best, and it is every parent's duty and
every person's duty to help discipline everybody, and cripple them and
kill them, and starve them, and freeze them, and rot them with diseases,
and lead them into murder and theft and dishonor and disgrace; and he
says Providence's invention for disciplining us and the animals is the
very brightest idea that ever was, and not even an idiot could get up
anything shinier. Mamma, brother Eddie needs disciplining, right away:
and I know where you can get the smallpox for him, and the itch, and the
diphtheria, and bone-rot, and heart disease, and consumption, and--Dear
mamma, have you fainted! I will run and bring help! Now this comes of
staying in town this hot weather."


Chapter 2


Creation of Man


Mamma. You disobedient child, have you been associating with that irre-
ligious Hollister again?

Bessie. Well, mamma, he is interesting, anyway, although wicked, and I
can't help loving interesting people. Here is the conversation we had:

Hollister. Bessie, suppose you should take some meat and bones and fur,
and make a cat out of it, and should tell the cat, Now you are not to be
unkind to any creature, on pain of punishment and death. And suppose the
cat should disobey, and catch a mouse and torture it and kill it. What
would you do to the cat?

Bessie. Nothing.

H. Why?

B. Because I know what the cat would say. She would say, It's my nature,
I couldn't help it; I didn't make my nature, you made it. And so you are
responsible for what I've done--I'm not. I couldn't answer that, Mr.
Hollister.

H. It's just the case of Frankenstein and his Monster over again.

B. What is that?

H. Frankenstein took some flesh and bones and blood and made a man out
of them; the man ran away and fell to raping and robbing and murdering
everywhere, and Frankenstein was horrified and in despair, and said, I
made him, without asking his consent, and it makes me responsible for e-
very crime he commits. I am the criminal, he is innocent.

B. Of course he was right.

H. I judge so. It's just the case of God and man and you and the cat o-
ver again.

B. How is that?

H. God made man, without man's consent, and made his nature, too; made
it vicious instead of angelic, and then said, Be angelic, or I will ill
punish you and destroy you. But no matter, God is responsible for every-
thing man does, all the same; He can't get around that fact. There is
only one Criminal, and it is not man.

Mamma. This is atrocious! it is wicked, blasphemous, irreverent, horrible!

Bessie. Yes'm, but it's true. And I'm not going to make a cat. I would
be above making a cat if I couldn't make a good one.


Chapter 3


Mamma, if a person by the name of Jones kills a person by the name of
Smith just for amusement, it's murder, isn't it, and Jones is a murderer?

Yes, my child.

And Jones is punishable for it?

Yes, my child.

Why, mamma?

Why? Because God has forbidden homicide in the Ten Commandments, and
therefore whoever kills a person commits a crime and must suffer for
it.

But mamma, suppose Jones has by birth such a violent temper that he can't
control himself?

He must control himself. God requires it.

But he doesn't make his own temper, mamma, he is born with it, like the
rabbit and the tiger; and so, why should he be held responsible?

Because God says he is responsible and must control his temper.

But he can't, mamma; and so, don't you think it is God that does the kill-
ing and is responsible, because it was He that gave him the temper which
he couldn't control?

Peace, my child! He must control it, for God requires it, and that ends
the matter. It settles it, and there is no room for argument.

(After a thoughtful pause.) It doesn't seem to me to settle it. Mamma,
murder is murder, isn't it? and whoever commits it is a murderer? That
is the plain simple fact, isn't it?

(Suspiciously.) What are you arriving at now, my child?

Mamma, when God designed Jones He could have given him a rabbit's temper
if He had wanted to, couldn't He?

Yes.

Then Jones would not kill anybody and have to be hanged?

True.

But He chose to give Jones a temper that would make him kill Smith. Why,
then, isn't He responsible?

Because He also gave Jones a Bible. The Bible gives Jones ample warning
not to commit murder; and so if Jones commits it he alone is responsible.

(Another pause.) Mamma, did God make the house-fly?

Certainly, my darling.

What for?

For some great and good purpose, and to display His power.

What is the great and good purpose, mamma?

We do not know, my child. We only know that He makes all things for a
great and good purpose. But this is too large a subject for a dear little
Bessie like you, only a trifle over three years old.

Possibly, mamma, yet it profoundly interests me. I have been reading about
the fly, in the newest science-book. In that book he is called "the most
dangerous animal and the most murderous that exists upon the earth, kill-
ing hundreds of thousands of men, women and children every year, by dis-
tributing deadly diseases among them." Think of it, mamma, the most fatal
of all the animals! by all odds the most murderous of all the living
things created by God. Listen to this, from the book:

Now, the house fly has a very keen scent for filth of any kind. Whenever
there is any within a hundred yards or so, the fly goes for it to smear
its mouth and all the sticky hairs of its six legs with dirt and disease
germs. A second or two suffices to gather up many thousands of these dis-
ease germs, and then off goes the fly to the nearest kitchen or dining
room. There the fly crawls over the meat, butter, bread, cake, anything
it can find in fact, and often gets into the milk pitcher, depositing
large numbers of disease germs at every step. The house fly is as dis-
gusting as it is dangerous.

Isn't it horrible, mamma! One fly produces fifty-two billions of descen-
dants in 60 days in June and July, and they go and crawl over sick people
and wade through pus, and sputa, and foul matter exuding from sores, and
gaum themselves with every kind of disease-germ, then they go to every-
body's dinner-table and wipe themselves off on the butter and the other
food, and many and many a painful illness and ultimate death results
from this loathsome industry. Mamma, they murder seven thousand persons
in New York City alone, every year--people against whom they have no
quarrel. To kill without cause is murder--nobody denies that. Mamma?

Well?

Have the flies a Bible?

Of course not.

You have said it is the Bible that makes man responsible. If God didn't
give him a Bible to circumvent the nature that He deliberately gave him,
God would be responsible. He gave the fly his murderous nature, and sent
him forth unobstructed by a Bible or any other restraint to commit murder
by wholesale. And so, therefore, God is Himself responsible. God is a mur-
derer. Mr. Hollister says so. Mr. Hollister says God can't make one moral
law for man and another for Himself. He says it would be laughable.

Do shut up! I wish that that tiresome Hollister was in H--amburg! He is
an ignorant, unreasoning, illogical ass, and I have told you over and over
again to keep out of his poisonous company.


Chapter 4


"Mamma, what is a virgin?"

"A maid."

"Well, what is a maid?"

"A girl or woman that isn't married."

"Uncle Jonas says that sometimes a virgin that has been having a child--"

"Nonsense! A virgin can't have a child."

"Why can't she, mamma?"

"Well, there are reasons why she can't."

"What reasons, mamma?"

"Physiological. She would have to cease to be a virgin before she could
have the child."

"How do you mean, mamma?"

"Well, let me see. It's something like this: a Jew couldn't be a Jew af-
ter he had become a Christian; he couldn't be Christian and Jew at the
same time. Very well, a person couldn't be mother and virgin at the same
time."

"Why, mamma, Sally Brooks has had a child, and she's a virgin."

"Indeed?' Who says so?"

"She says so herself."

"Oh. no doubt! Are there any other witnesses?"

"Yes--there's a dream. She says the governor's private secretary ap-
peared to her in a dream and told her she was going to have a child, and
it came out just so."

"I shouldn't wonder! Did he say the governor was the corespondent?"


Chapter 5


B. Mama, didn't you tell me an ex-governor, like Mr. Burlap, is a person
that's been governor but isn't a governor any more?

M. Yes, dear.

B. And Mr. Williams said "ex" always stands for a Has Been, didn't he?

M. Yes, child. It is a vulgar way of putting it, but it expresses the
fact.

B, (eagerly). So then Mr. Hollister was right, after all. He says the
Virgin Mary isn't a virgin any more, she's a Has Been. He says --

M. It is false! Oh, it was just like that godless miscreant to try to
undermine an innocent child's holy belief with his foolish lies; and
if I could have my way, I --

B. But mama,--honest and true--is she still a virgin--a real vir-
gin, you know?

M. Certainly she is; and has never been anything but a virgin--oh,
the adorable One, the pure, the spotless, the undefiled!

B. Why, mama, Mr. Hollister says she can't be. That's what he says. He
says she had five children after she had the One that was begotten by
absent treatment and didn't break anything and he thinks such a lot of
child-bearing, spread over years and years and years, would ultimately
wear a virgin's virginity so thin that even Wall street would consider
the stock too lavishly watered and you couldn't place it there at any
discount you could name, because the Board would say it was wildcat,
and wouldn't list it. That's what he says. And besides --

M. Go to the nursery, instantly! Go!


Chapter 6


Mamma, is Christ God?

Yes, my child.

Mamma, how can He be Himself and Somebody Else at the same time?

He isn't, my darling. It is like the Siamese twins--two persons,
one born ahead of the other, but equal in authority, equal in power.

I understand it, now, mamma, and it is quite simple. One twin has sex-
ual intercourse with his mother, and begets himself and his brother;
and next he has sexual intercourse with his grandmother and begets
his mother. I should think it would be difficult, mamma, though inte-
resting. Oh, ever so difficult. I should think that the Corespondent--

All things are possible with God, my child.

Yes, I suppose so. But not with an! other Siamese twin, I suppose.
You don't think any ordinary Siamese twin could beget himself and his
brother on his mother, do you, mamma, and then go on back while his
hand is in and beget her, too, on his grandmother?

Certainly not, my child. None but God can do these wonderful and holy
miracles.

And enjoy them. For of course He enjoys them, or He wouldn't go fora-
ging around among the family like that, would He, mamma?--injuring
their reputations in the village and causing talk. Mr. Hollister says
it was wonderful and awe-inspiring in those days, but wouldn't work
now. He says that if the Virgin lived in Chicago now, and got in the
family way and explained to the newspaper fellows that God was the
Corespondent, she couldn't get two in ten of them to believe it. He
says the! are a hell of a lot!

My child!

Well, that is what he says, anyway.

Oh, I do wish you would keep away from that wicked, wicked man!

He doesn't mean to be wicked, mamma, and he doesn't blame God. No, he
doesn't blame Him; he says they all do it--gods do. It's their habit,
they've always been that way.

What way, dear?

Going around unvirgining the virgins. He says our God did not invent
the idea--it was old and mouldy before He happened on it. Says He
hasn't invented anything, but got His Bible and His Flood and His mor-
als and all His ideas from earlier gods, and they got them from still
earlier gods. He says there never was a god yet that wasn't born of a
Virgin. Mr. Hollister says no virgin is safe where a god is. He says
he wishes he was a god; he says he would make virgins so scarce that--

Peace, peace! Don't run on so, my child. If you --

--and he advised me to lock my door nights, because --

Hush, hush, will you!

-- because although I am only three and a half years old and quite
safe from men --

Mary Ann, come and get this child! There, now, go along with you, and
don't come near me again until you can interest yourself in some sub-
ject of a lower grade and less awful than theology. .

Bessie, (disappearing.) Mr. Hollister says there ain't any.



Little Nelly Tells a Story Out of Her Own Head



TWENTY-TWO-OR-THREE years ago, in Cleveland, a thing hap-penned which
I still remember pretty well. Out in the suburbs, it was--on the lake;
the Fairbankses had bought a large house and a great place there, and
were living sumptuously, after Mr. Fairbanks's long life of struggle
and privation in building up the Cleveland Herald to high place and
prosperity. I was there a week, and the Severances came out to dinner
twice, and they and "Mother Fairbanks" and I talked over the old times
we had enjoyed together in the "Quaker City," when we were "Innocents
Abroad." Meantime, every day Mother Fairbanks was busy staging a brief
little drama of "The Prince and Pauper" and drill-ing the children from
town who were to play it.

One of these children was Nelly (nevermindtherestofthename) and she was
a prodigy--a bright and serious and pretty little creature of nine, who
was to play Lady Jane Grey. She had a large reputation as a reciter of
poetry and little speeches before company in her mother's drawing-room
at home; she did her work charmingly, and the sweetest charm about it
was the aged gravity and sincerity and earnestness which she put into
it. Latterly she had added a new laurel: she had composed a quaint lit-
tle story, "out of her own head," and had delighted a parlor-audience
with it and made herself the envy of all the children around.

The Prince and Pauper play was to be given in my honor, and I had a seat
in the centre of the front row; a hundred and fifty friends of the house
were present in evening costume, old and young and both sexes, the great
room was brilliantly lighted, the fine clothes made the aspect gay, ev-
erybody was laughing and chatting and having a good time, the curtain was
about ready to rise.

A hitch occurred. Edward VI, (to be played by a girl,) had been be-lated,
it would take a quarter of an hour to dress her for her part. This an-
nouncement was made, and Mother Fairbanks retired to attend to this fun-
ction, and took Nelly's mother with her to help. Presently the audience
began to call for little Nelly to come on the stage and do her little
story. Nelly's twin sister brought her on, and sat down in a chair be-
side her and folded her pudgy hands in her lap, and beamed upon the house
her joy in the ovation which Lady Jane received. Lady Jane got another
round when she said she had made a new story out of her own head and
would recite it--which she proceeded to do, with none of her sweet sol-
emnities lacking. To-wit:

Once there were two ladies, and were twins, and lived together, Mary
and Olivia Scott, in the house they were born in, and all alone, for Mr.
and Mrs. Scott were dead, now. After a while they got lonesome and wish-
ed they could have a baby, and said God will provide.

(You could feel the walls give, the strain upon suppressed emotion was
so great.)

So when the baby came they were very glad, and the neighbors surprised.

(The walls spread again, but held.)

And asked where they got it and they said by prayer, which is the only
way.

(There was not a sound in the audience except the muffled volleying of
bursting buttons and the drip of unrestrainable tears. With a gravity
not of this world, the inspired child went on:)

But there was no way to feed it at first, because it had only gums and
could not bite, then they prayed and God sent a lady which had several
and showed them how, then it got fat and they were so happy you can-
not think; and thought oh, if they could have some more--and prayed
again and got them, because whatever you pray for in the right spirit
you get it a thousand fold.

(I could feel the throes and quivers coursing up and down the body
of the ripe maiden lady at my left, and she buried her face in her
handkerchief and seemed to sob, but it was not sobbing. The walls
were sucking in and bellying out, but they held. The two children on
the stage were a dear and lovely picture to see, the face of the one
so sweetly earnest, the other's face so speakingly lit up with pride
in her gifted sister and with worshipping admiration.)

And God was pleased the way they were so thankful to have that child,
and every prayer, they made they got another one, and by the time fall
came they had thirteen, and whoever will do the right way can have as
many, perhaps more, for nothing is impossible with God, and whoever
puts their trust in Him they will have their reward, heaped up and
running over. When we think of Mary and Olivia Scott it should learn
us to have confidence. End of the tale--good bye.

The dear little thingl She made her innocent bow, and retired without
a suspicion that she had been an embarrassment. Nothing would have
happened, now, perhaps, if quiet could have been maintained for a few
minutes, so that the people could get a grip upon themselves, but the
strain overpowered my old maid partner and she exploded like a bomb;
a general and unrestrained crash of laughter followed, of course, the
happy tears flowed like brooks, and no one was sorry of the opportunity
to laugh himself out and get the blessed relief that comes of that pri-
vilege in such circumstances.

I think the Prince and Pauper went very well--I do not remember; but
the other incident stays by me with great and contenting vividness--
the picture and everything.



The Ten Commandments

(from Fables of Man)



The Ten Commandments were made for man alone. We should think it strange
if they had been made for all the animals.

We should say "Thou shalt not kill" is too general, too sweeping. It in-
cludes the field mouse and the butterfly. They can't kill. And it in-
cludes the tiger, which can't help it.

It is a case of Temperament and Circumstance again. You can arrange no
circumstances that can move the field mouse and the butterfly to kill;
their temperaments will ill keep them unaffected by temptations to kill,
they can avoid that crime without an effort. But it isn't so with the
tiger. Throw a lamb in his way when he is hungry, and his temperament
will compel him to kill it.

Butterflies and field mice are common among men; they can't kill, their
temperaments make it impossible. There are tigers among men, also. Their
temperaments move them to violence, and when Circumstance furnishes the
opportunity and the powerful motive, they kill. They can't help it.

No penal law can deal out justice; it must deal out injustice in every
instance. Penal laws have a high value, in that they protect--in a con-
siderable measure--the multitude of the gentle-natured from the violent
minority.

For a penal law is a Circumstance. It is a warning which intrudes and
stays a would-be murderer's hand--sometimes. Not always, but in many
and many a case. It can't stop the real man-tiger; nothing can do that.
Slade had 26 deliberate murders on his soul when he finally went to his
death on the scaffold. He would kill a man for a trifle; or for nothing.
He loved to kill. It was his temperament. He did not make his tempera-
ment, God gave it him at his birth. Gave it him and said Thou shalt not
kill. It was like saying Thou shalt not eat. Both appetites were given
him at birth. He could be obedient and starve both up to a certain point,
but that was as far as he could go. Another man could go further; but
not Slade.

Holmes, the Chicago monster, inveigled some dozens of men and women into
his obscure quarters and privately butchered them. Holmes's inborn nature
was such that whenever he had what seemed a reasonably safe opportunity
to kill a stranger he couldn't successfully resist the temptation to do
it.

Justice was finally meted out to Slade and to Holmes. That is what the
newspapers said. It is a common phrase, and a very old one. But it prob-
ably isn't true. When a man is hanged for slaying one man that phrase
comes into service and we learn that justice was meted out to the slayer.
But Holmes slew sixty. There seems to be a discrepancy in this distri-
bution of justice. If Holmes got justice, the other man got 59 times
more than justice.

But the phrase is wrong, anyway. The word is the wrong word. Criminal
courts do not dispense "justice"--they can't; they only dispense pro-
tections to the community. It is all they can do.



Thoughts of God

(from Fables of Man)


How often we are moved to admit the intelligence exhibited in both the
designing and the execution of some of His works. Take the fly, for in-
stance. The planning of the fly was an application of pure intelligence,
morals not being concerned. Not one of us could have planned the fly,
not one of us could have constructed him; and no one would have consid-
ered it wise to try, except under an assumed name. It is believed by
some that the fly was introduced to meet a long-felt want. In the course
of ages, for some reason or other, there have been millions of these
persons, but out of this vast multitude there has not been one who has
been willing to explain what the want was. At least satisfactorily. A
few have explained that there was need of a creature to remove disease-
breeding garbage; but these being then asked to explain what long-felt
want the disease-breeding garbage was introduced to supply, they have
not been willing to undertake the contract.

There is much inconsistency concerning the fly. In all the ages he has
not had a friend, there has never been a person in the earth who could
have been persuaded to intervene between him and extermination; yet bi-
llions of persons have excused the Hand that made him--and this without
a blush. Would they have excused a Man in the same circumstances, a man
positively known to have invented the fly? On the contrary. For the cre-
dit of the race let us believe it would have been all day with that man.
Would persons consider it just to reprobate in a child, with its unde-
veloped morals, a scandal which they would overlook in the Pope?

When we reflect that the fly was as not invented for pastime, but in the
way of business; that he was not flung off in a heedless moment and with
no object in view but to pass the time, but was the fruit of long and
pains-taking labor and calculation, and with a definite and far-reach-
ing, purpose in view; that his character and conduct were planned out
with cold deliberation, that his career was foreseen and fore-ordered,
and that there was no want which he could supply, we are hopelessly puz-
zled, we cannot understand the moral lapse that was able to render pos-
sible the conceiving and the consummation of this squalid and malevolent
creature.

Let us try to think the unthinkable: let us try to imagine a Man of a
sort willing to invent the fly; that is to say, a man destitute of feel-
ing; a man willing to wantonly torture and harass and persecute myriads
of creatures who had never done him any harm and could not if they want-
ed to, and--the majority of them--poor dumb things not even aware of his
existence. In a word, let us try to imagine a man with so singular and
so lumbering a code of morals as this: that it is fair and right to send
afflictions upon the just--upon the unoffending as well as upon the of-
fending, without discrimination.

If we can imagine such a man, that is the man that could invent the fly,
and send him out on his mission and furnish him his orders: "Depart into
the uttermost corners of the earth, and diligently do your appointed work.
Persecute the sick child; settle upon its eyes, its face, its hands, and
gnaw and pester and sting; worry and fret and madden the worn and tired
mother who watches by the child, and who humbly prays for mercy and re-
lief with the pathetic faith of the deceived and the unteachable. Settle
upon the soldier's festering wounds in field and hospital and drive him
frantic while he also prays, and betweentimes curses, with none to list-
en but you, Fly, who get all the petting and all the protection, without
even praying for it. Harry and persecute the forlorn and forsaken wretch
who is perishing of the plague, and in his terror and despair praying;
bite, sting, feed upon his ulcers, dabble your feet in his rotten blood,
gum them thick with plague-germs--feet cunningly designed and perfected
for this function ages ago in the beginning--carry this freight to a hun-
dred tables, among the just and the unjust. the high and the low, and
walk over the food and gaum it with filth and death. Visit all; allow no
man peace till he get it in the grave; visit and afflict the hard-worked
and unoffending horse, mule, ox, ass, pester the patient cow, and all
the kindly animals that labor without fair reward here and perish with-
out hope of it hereafter; spare no creature, wild or tame; but whereso-
ever you find one, make his life a misery, treat him as the innocent
deserve; and so please Me and increase My glory Who made the fly.

We hear much about His patience and forbearance and long-suffering; we
hear nothing about our own, which much exceeds it. We hear much about
His mercy and kindness and goodness--in words--the words of His Book
and of His pulpit--and the meek multitude is content with this evidence,
such as it is, seeking no further; but whoso searcheth after a concret-
ed sample of it will in time acquire fatigue. There being no instances
of it. For what are gilded as mercies are not in any recorded case more
than mere common justices, and due--due without thanks or compliment.
To rescue without personal risk a cripple from a burning house is not
a mercy, it is a mere commonplace duty; anybody would do it that could.
And not by proxy, either--delegating the work but confiscating the cre-
dit for it. If men neglected "God's poor" and "God's stricken and help-
less ones" as He does, what would become of them? The answer is to be
found in those dark lands where man follows His example and turns his
indifferent back upon them: they get no help at all; they cry, and
plead and pray in vain, they linger and suffer, and miserably die. If
you will look at the matter rationally and without prejudice, the pro-
per place to hunt for the facts of His mercy, is not where man does
the mercies and He collects the praise, but in those regions where He
has the field to Himself.

It is plain that there is one moral law for heaven and another for
the earth. The pulpit assures us that wherever we see suffering and
sorrow which we can relieve and do not do it, we sin, heavily. There
was never yet a case of suffering or sorrow which God could not re-
lieve. Does He sin, then? If He is the Source of Morals He does--cer-
tainly nothing can be plainer than that, you will admit. Surely the
Source of law cannot violate law and stand unsmirched; surely the
judge upon the bench cannot forbid crime and then revel in it himself
unreproached. Nevertheless we have this curious spectacle: daily the
trained parrot in the pulpit gravely delivers himself of these iro-
nies, which he has acquired at second-hand and adopted without exam-
ination, to a trained congregation which accepts them without exami-
nation, and neither the speaker nor the hearer laughs at himself. It
does seem as if we ought to be humble when we are at a bench-show,
and not put on airs of intellectual superiority there.



The Synod of Praise



Animals and Insects

Moderator, the COW,

1st Vice--the Giraffe (spectacles)
2d " --the Rabbit ( " )
3d " --the Goat ( " )



God--the Elephant. Knocks an innocent over now and then or steps on
him--this comes out in the speeches--it is always either for His "glo-
ry" or to teach some kind of saving lesson, or to over-adequately pun-
ish an unknown offence.

Monkey has a disease inherited from his grandfather--is this a punish-
ment? Then for what? For a lesson? then how? Evidently God is not moral
(sensation). Dull--no perception of justice. No generosity, courtesy,
magnanimity.

Invites me to his house, I am his guest. He insults me, maltreats me,
cripples me, diseases me, kicks me out when he is tired of me. No gen-
tleman.

Expects me to worship him. A guest worship his host? A guest owes no
worship to his host. When hospitably treated he owes acknowledgments,
worded in dignified and self-respecting phrase, but no servility, no
bending of the knee.

But he has a right to require worship?

Then I his guest am also his slave.

The slave says "I belong to my master, he has a right to do what he
pleases with me." Which is a lie. The master has no rights at all over
his slave. Unless force creates rights. If compulsion over the helpless
creates rights, God has rights--he has no other. If the exercise of
lawless force is moral, God is moral.

Blame. It is word applicable to God only. Unrequested, he made man, and
is responsible for all man's words and deeds. The vote of a continent of
Gods could not absolve him from his responsibility nor wash him clean of
the stain of any harm that may befal his creature.

Brutes. They cannot enter heaven. Their sufferings are merely to punish
their present sins and discipline them.

Grasshopper. Spider fast to his body and sucking its juices.

Caterpillar the same.

Fish with parasites on eye. Etc.

All humbly praise God for these deserved afflictions.

The parasites have parasites and these have others. They all praise. Cow:
He is our loving father.

Monkey. My praise is that we have not two of him.




The Enchanted Sea-Wilderness



SCATTERED about the world's oceans at enormous distances apart are
spots and patches where no compass has any value. When the compass
enters one of these bewitched domains it goes insane and whirls this
way and that and settles nowhere, and is scared and distressed, and
cannot be comforted. The sailor must steer by sun, moon and stars
when they show, and by guess when they don't, till he gets past that
enchanted region. The worst of these spots and the largest one is
in the midst of the vast ocean solitudes that lie between the Cape
of Good Hope and the south pole. It is five hundred miles in diame-
ter, and is circular in shape; four-fifths of this diameter is lash-
ed and tossed and torn by eternal storms, is smothered in clouds and
fog, and swept by fierce concentric currents; but in the centre there
is a circular area a hundred miles across, in whose outer part the
storms and the currents die down; and in the centre of this centre
there is still a final circular area about fifty miles across where
there are but the faintest suggestions of currents, no winds, no whis-
per of wandering zephyr, even, but everywhere the silence and peace
and solemnity of a calm which is eternal.

There is a bronzed and gray sailor on board this ship who has had
experience of that strange place, and the other night after midnight
I went forward to the forecastle and got him to tell me about it.
The hint came from the purser, who said it was a curious and inter-
esting story. I kept it in my memory as well as I could, and wrote
it down next day--in my own language, for I could not remember his,
of course. He said thati the outer great circle where the currents
are--as already described by me--is known among sailors as the
Devil's Race-Track, and that they call the central calm Everlasting
Sunday., Here is his account.

We got into that place by a judgment--judgment on the captain of the
ship. It was this way. We were becalmed, away down south, dead summer
time, middle of December, 1853. The vessel was a brig, and a fairly
good sailor; name, Mabel Thorpe; loaded with provisions and blasting
powder for the new gold mines in Australia; Elliot Cable master, a
rough man and hard-hearted, but he was master, and that is the truth.
When he laid down the law there wasn't pluck enough in the whole ship
to take objections to it.

Now to go back a little. About two months before, when we were lying
at the dock the day we sailed, a lovely big beautiful dog came aboard
and went racing around with his nose down hunting for somebody that
had been there--his owner, I reckon--and the crew caught him and shut
him up below, and we sailed in an hour. He was a darling, that dog.
He was full of play, and fun, and affection and good nature, the
dearest and sweetest disposition that ever was. Inside of two days he
was the pet of the whole crew. We bedded him like the aristocracy,
and there wasn't a man but would divide his dinner with him, and he
was ever so loving and grateful. And smart, too; smart and willing.
He elected of his own notion to stand watch and watch with us. He
was in the larboard watch, and he would turn out at eight bells without
anybody having to tell him it was "Yo-ho, the larboard watch!" And he
would tug at the ropes and help make sail or take it in, and seemed
to know all about it, just like any old veteran. The crew were proud
of him--well, of course they would be.

And so, as I was saying, we got becalmed when we were out about two
months. It was warm that night, and still and drowsy and lazy; and
the sails hung idle, and the deck-watch and the lookout and everybody
else was sound asleep, including the dog, for it was his trick below
and he had turned in at midnight. Well, along about an hour after
midnight there was a tremendous scratching and barking at the cap-
tain's door, and he jumped out of his bunk, and that dog was just
wild with excitement, and rushed off, and just as good as told the
captain to come along and come quick. You see, the ship was afire
down in the hold, and he had discovered it. Down the captain plunged,
and the dog rushed off waking up the others.

Dear, dear, it was the closest fit! The fire was crowding a pile of
the powder-kegs close, and in another minute or two it would have had
them and we should have been blown into the sky. The captain snatched
the pile of kegs out of reach in half a second, and we were safe; be-
cause the bulk of the powder was away up forward. And by this time we
all came tearing down--white?--oh, white as ghosts when we saw what a
close shave we had had. Well, then we started in and began to hug the
dog. And wasn't he a proud dog?--and happy?--why, if he had had speech
he couldn't have expressed it any better. The captain snarled at us
and said:

"You may well hug him, you worthless hounds! he saved my life, not
you, you lazy rips. I've never cared for dogs before, but next time
I hear people talking against them I'll put in a word for this one,
anyway."

Overboard went that little batch of powder kegs, and then we flew a-
round getting food and water and compass and sextant and chart and
things for the boat; and the dog helped, just like anybody else. He
did a grown man's work carrying things to the boat, and then went
dancing around superintending whilst we launched her. Bright?--oh,
you can't think how bright he was, and intelligent.

When everybody was in the boat but the captain, and the flames were
soaring up and lighting the whole ocean, he tied the dog to the foot
of the mainmast and then got in himself and took the tiller and said--

"All ready. Give way!"

We were all struck dumb, for a second, then all shouted at once--

"Oh, captain!--going to leave the dog?"

He roared out in a fury--

"Didn't you hear the order? Give way!"

Well, the tears began to run down our faces; and we said, Why, he
saved our lives--we can't leave him. Please, captain! please let him
come.

"What, in this little tub of a boat? You don't know what you are talk-
ing about. He'd be more in the way than a family of children; and he
can eat as much as a family of children, too. Now, men, you know me"
--and he pulled an old pepper-box revolver and pointed it---"give way!"

Well, it was pitiful, the way that poor dog acted. At first he was
dancing and capering and barking, happy and proud and gay; but when he
saw us going away he stopped and stood still, gazing; it seemed as if
he was trying to believe it, and couldn't. And dear, dear, how noble
and handsome he was, in that red glare. He was a huge big St. Bernard,
with that gentle good face and that soft loving eye that they've got.

Well, pretty soon when he saw that he was left, he seemed to go kind
of crazy; and he rose on his hind legs in the strong light, and strain-
ed and lunged and tugged at his rope, and begged and moaned and yelped
--why it was as plain as if he was saying Oh, don't leave me, please
don't leave me, I haven't done any harm. And then presently the fire
swept down on him and swallowed him up, and he sent up two or three
awful shrieks, and it was all over. And the men sat there crying like
children.

And deep down in our hearts we believed a judgment would come on the
captain for this. And it did; as you will see.


WE WERE in the Indian ocean when we lost the ship--about five hundred
miles south of Port Natal, and about the same distance east by south
from Cape Town, South Africa. The captain set his course by the stars
and struck north, because he believed we were a little south of the
track of ships bound for either Natal or Australia. A smart breeze
sprung up and we went along at a good rate. In about four hours day
broke, and the first thing that showed up on the westward sea-line
was the hazy top-hamper of a ship! She was eastward-bound, and making
straight across our course. We raised a cheer, and altered our course
to go and meet her. And there wasn't as much heart in the cheer as
you might expect, for the thing we were thinking about was, that our
poor dog had been done to death for no use; if he had been allowed to
come with us he wouldn't have cost us any inconvenience, and no food
that we couldn't spare.

The captain had an idea that he was born lucky, and he said something
to the mate about it now; he said running across this ship here was
pure luck--nobody else could have had such luck. Well, it certainly did
look so; but at the same time we said to ourselves, how about this
ship's luck that's coming? Our idea was that our captain would bring
bad luck to her, and trouble to himself and us, too, on account of the
way he treated the dog that saved our lives. And that is what happened,
as I have said before.

In about an hour we were aboard that ship; and it happened that we knew
her, and knew her crew, too; for she was sister to our ship and belonged
to the same house, and was loaded at the same dock with us, and with the
same kind of cargo--provisions for the new mines almost altogether, and a
few other odds and ends of mining supplies, like candles and powder and
fuse, and such things. By name she was the Adelaide. She had left port a
week or ten days ahead of us, but we could outsail her on a wind. Her
captain had been dead about a month, now--died of a sickness of some kind
--and Mrs. Moseley, his young widow, was broken-hearted, and cried pretty
much all the time, and was in terror lest something should happen to her
little girl, and then she would be desolate indeed. Two of the Adelaide's
crew had died of the sickness, also; so that left mate, second mate and
five men aboard. When we joined, that made it seventeen men, one woman
and a child.

Our captain took command straight away, and began to give orders, without
a by-your-leave to anybody--for that was his style. It wasn't the right
way to go about it, and it made bad blood.

The captain allotted the watches and the ship continued on her courseI
for Australia. The wind freshened, the sky grew dark, and inside of an hour
there was a terrific gale blowing. We stripped the ship, and she drove help-
less before it, straight south-east. And so, night and day and day and night
for eighteen days we drove, and never got a sight of the sun or the moon
or the stars in all that time--hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of miles
we wallowed through the wild seas, with never a notion of where we were but
what we got from the dead reckoning.

For the last two or three days the captain had got to looking pretty white;
and by this time he was just ghastly. Then we found )t it the reason, from
the mates: the captain judged that we must be outh of Kerguelan's Land,
and maybe nearly half way between that and the Antarctic Circle. Well,
that news turned the rest of us white; for if it was true, we were getting
into the neighborhood of dic Devil's Race-Track!

As that cold dark eighteenth day shut down, everybody was on deck, off-
watch and all; and everybody silent; as a rule, nobody ying anything to
his neighbor; nobody interested in any but the one thing--the compass.
The captain stood over the forward one, watching it and never saying
anything; the officers and crew crowded around the after one, watching
it and never saying anything. The night shut down black as ink; he wind
screamed through the naked rigging; gusts of hail, snow, sleet followed
each other right along--a wild night, and bitter cold, and the ship reeling
and pitching and tumbling in a most awful way.

You couldn't see a thing; you couldn't see your hand before your face--
everything was blotted out; everything except three or four faces bend-
ing over the compass-light, and showing in the blackness like ghost-faces
that hadn't any bodies.

Then all of a sudden there was a burst of groans and curses, and the
faces disappeared and others took their places. You see, the thing eve-
rybody was expecting, had happened--the compass was gone crazy, and we
were in the whirl and suck of the Devil's Race-Track. Most of us kept
the deck all night. Some slept, but it was not much good--just naps and
nightmares, and wakings-up with a jerk, in a cold sweat.

When the day came you could hardly tell it, it so little differed from
the night. All the day long it was the same; you could hear the sea-birds
piping but you couldn't see them, except now and then you would get a dim
glimpse of a great white albatross sailing by like a ghost.

We had nine days and nights like this--always the roaring gale and the
wild sea and blustering squalls of snow and hail and sleet and the piping
of the gulls and the flitting of the dim albatross; and then on the tenth
morning the gale began to slacken and the seas to go down and the squalls
to get wider apart and less furious, and the blackness to soften up and
shred away, and the sea-birds to thin out; and about noon we drifted out
of the lofty wall of gloom and clouds into a calm sea and the open day
and deep, deep stillness. The sweep of that black wall described an enor-
mous circle; and it was so high that the furthest side of it still stood
boldly up above the sea, though it was fifty miles away. We were in a trap;
and that trap was the Everlasting Sunday.

There was no need to say it; everybody knew it. And everybody shuddered,
too, and was in a cold despair. For a week we drifted little by little a-
round the cloud-wall, and further and further away from it; and when we
seemed to have gotten ten or fifteen miles from it we appeared to have
stopped dead still. We threw empty bottles overboard and watched them.
There was really no motion--at any rate in any one direction. Sometimes
a bottle would stay where we threw it; sometimes after the end of an hour
we could see that it had moved five or six yards ahead or as many aft.

The stillness was horrible; and the absence of life. There was not a bird
or a creature of any kind in sight, the slick surface of the water was ne-
ver broken by a fin, never a breath of wind fanned the dead air, and there
was not a sound of any kind, even the faintest--the silence of death was
everywhere. We showed no life ourselves, but sat apart, each by himself,
and brooded and brooded, and scarcely ever moved. In that profound inert-
ness, that universal paralysis of life and energy, as far as sentient be-
ings went, there was one thing that was brimming with it, booming with it,
crazy with it; and that was the compass. It whirled and whizzed this way
and that, and never rested--never for a moment. It acted like a frightened
thing, a thing in frantic fear for its life. And so we got afraid of it, and
could not bear to look at its distress and its helpless struggles; for we
came to believe that it had a soul and that it was in hell.

We never had any more weather--forever that bright sky overhead, with
never a shred of cloud in it; not a flake of snow, nor II op of sleet or
anything; just a dead still frosty cold, with a istening white rime coat-
ing the decks and spars and rigging--a ,hip made of sparkling frostwork,
she seemed. And as the days dragged on and on and on we grew weary as
death of this hangeless sky, and watched the vague lightnings playing in
the distant cloud-wall with a sort of envy and longing.

Try to escape? Why, none of us wanted to try. What could be the use? Of
course the captain tried; it would be just like him. He manned one of
the boats and started. He disappeared in the cloud-wall for a while; got
lost in it, of course--compass no use--and came near getting swamped by
the heavy seas. He was not in there long; the currents soon swept him
back into the Everlasting Sunday. Our ship was pretty far away, but still
in sight; so he came aboard, and never said a word. His spirit was broken,
too, you see, like ours; so after that he moped around again, like the rest
--and prayed for death, I reckon. We all did.

One morning when we had been in there seven months and gradually getting
further and further toward the middle, an inch at a time, there was a sud-
den stir and excitement--the first we had known for so long that it seem-
ed strange and new and unnatural--like something we hadn't ever experienc-
ed before; it was like corpses getting excited--corpses that had been dead
many years and had forgotten the feel of it and didn't understand it. A
sailor came flying along the deck blubbering and shouting, "A ship! a
ship!"

The dull people sitting moping and dreaming here and there and yonder look-
ed up at him in a kind of a drowse, and not pleasantly; for his racket and
activity pained their heads and distressed them; and their brains were so
blunted and sodden that at first his words couldn't find their way into
their understandings, all practice in talk having ceased so long ago. But
of course we did understand, presently, and then we woke up and got wildly
excited, as I was telling you.

Away off yonder we made out a ship, sure enough; and as the daylight
brightened we made out another; and then another, and still another
and another and another--a whole fleet, scattered around, a mile or
so apart. We were full of amazement. When did they come, and how did
they get there in that sudden way, and so many of them? We were full
of joy; for maybe here was rescue for us. If they came in there on
purpose, they must know the trick of how to get out again.

Well, everything was bustle and hurry, now. We got out our boats, and I
pulled stroke in the chief mate's. I was twenty-three and a half years
old, and big and strong and an experienced sailor. We hoisted a flag,
first, in the mizzen halliards--union down, of course--and left the
young widow and the little girl standing under it crying for happiness
when we pulled away in the frosty bright morning.

It was as much as twelve miles to the nearest ship, but we made it in
three hours--without a sail, of course, there being no wind. When half
of the ship's hull showed above the water we began to wave signals, but
didn't get any answer; and about this time we began to make out that she
looked pretty old and crazy. The nearer we got, the crazier she looked,
and there was no sign of life or movement about her. We began to sus-
pect the truth--and pretty soon we knew it, and our spirits fell. Why, she
was just a naked old wreck, as you may say, a mouldy old skeleton, with
her yards hanging every-whichway, and here and there a rotten rag of
sailcloth drooping from the dews. As we passed under her stern, there
was her name, in letters so dulled you could hardly spell them out. The
Horatio Nelson! I gasped for breath. I knew the ship. When I was a boy
of ten my uncle Robert sailed in her as chief mate; and from that day
to this she had never more been heard of--thirteen years.

You will know beforehand what we found: barring the frosty litter of de-
caying wreckage that strewed the deck, just the counterpart of our own
ship, as you might say--men lying here and there and yonder, and two or
three sitting, with elbow on knee and hand under chin--just as natural!
No, not men--leathery shriveled-up effigies of them. Dead these dozen
years. It was what we had been seeing for seven months; we would come
to be like these, by and by. It was our fate foreshadowed; that is what we
thought. I found my uncle; I knew him by his watch chain. I was young,
he had Always been kind to me, and it made me cry a little to see him
looking like that. That, and that I might be like him soon. I have he watch
and chain yet, if you care to look at them. The watch kid stopped at twelve
minutes to four--whether in the day or in the night I don't know; but he
was dead when it ran down--that was all it could tell.

The ship's log left off where we had stopped ours--three days after the
entry into the Everlasting Sunday. It told the same monotonous things
that ours did, and in nearly the same words; and the blank that followed
was more eloquent than the words that went before, in this case as in
our own, for it meant despair. By the log, the Horatio Nelson had en-
tered the Everlasting Sunday on the 2d of June, 1840.

We visited ship after ship, and found these dreary scenes always repeat-
ed. And always the logs ceased the third or fourth day after the ship
got into this death-trap except in a single case. Where one day is ex-
actly like another, why record them? What is there to record? The world
continues to exist, but History has come to an end. The Horatio Nelson
was the latest ship there but one--a whaler from New England. She had
been there six years. One English ship which had been there thirty-three
years--the Eurydice--was overcrowded with men and women. She had 260
of these leathery corpses on board--convicts for Australia and their guards,
no doubt, for down below were more than two hundred sets of chains. A
Spanish ship had been there sixty years; but the oldest one of all, and
in almost the best repair, was a British man-of-war, the Royal Brunswick.
She perished with all on board the first voyage she ever made, the old
histories say--and the old ballads, too--but here she was; and here she
had been, since November 10th, 1740--a hundred and thirteen years, you
see.

Clean, dry, frosty weather seems to be a good preserver of some things--
clothes, for instance. At a little distance you might have brought some
of the men in this ship were still alive, they looked so natural in their
funny old uniforms. And the Admiral was one--old Admiral Sir John Thurlow;
he was a middy in the time of Marlborough's wars, as I have read in the
histories. He had his big cocked hat on, and his big epaulettes, like as
if he was gotten up for Madam Tussaud's; and his coat was all over gold
lace; and it was real gold, too, for it was not tarnished. He was sitting
on a gun carriage, with his head leant back against the gun in a sick and
weary way; and there was a rusty old leather portfolio in his lap and a
pen and an empty inkstand handy. He looked fine and noble--the very type
of the old fighting British Admiral, the men that made England the monarch
of the seas. By a common impulse, and without orders, we formed up in front
of him and uncovered in salute. Then Captain Cable stepped up to take tbe
portfolio, but in his awkwardness he gave a little touch to the Admiral's
elbow and he fell over on the deck. Dear me, he struck as lightly and as
noiseless as if he had been only a suit of clothes stuffed with wool; and
a faint little cloud of leathery dust rose up from him, and we judged he
had gone to pieces inside. We uncovered again and carried him very rever-
ently to his own cabin and laid him to rest.

And here we had an instance of the difference between navy discipline and
merchant marine. In this ship the log was kept up as long as an officer
was left alive--and that was two months and sixteen days. That is the grip
that authority and duty get upon a trained man, you see. When the men be-
gan to starve and die they were t [LEFT BLANK BY TWAIN]

(1896)



Which Was the Dream?


FROM MRS. ALISON X.'S DIARY.


MARCH 1, 1854, morning.--It will be a busy day. Tom and the servants and a
carpenter or two have already begun to set up the stage and scenery in the
north end of the picture gallery *

[* We call it the picture gallery because it isn't. It is the ball room.]

for Bessie's play--first dress rehearsal to-night. There will be two more
before the great occasion--Bessie's eighth birthday--the 19th. The scenery
and costumes have cost a great sum, and are very beautiful. It will be a
fine show to see that company of pretty children clothed in those rich ha-
bits. Tom tried to design Bessie's costume himself; dear man, he is daft
about the child; about both of them, indeed. He is vain of the play, and
says it is wonderful; and it is, perhaps, for a child of eight to have
conjured out of her small head. It lacks coherence, of course, and it has
some rather startling feats in it, even for magicians and fairies to do;
still it is a remarkable little play, all things considered, and is adora-
bly naive and quaint.

Tom has often promised me to write a little sketch of his life for the
children to have when we are gone, but has always put it off a lid put it
off; but as soon as I suggested that he write it in honor of Bessie's
birth-day, that was quite another matter and he was full of it at once.
I think I ought to be jealous; anything that Bessie wants, Bessie can
have, but poor mamma has to put up with a kiss and a postponement. Of
course Tom would find some opportunity in the matter to show Bessie
off. He will write the sketch in shorthand tonight, and between this and
the birthday Bessie will turn it into long hand, with a little of my help,
and then, on the birthnight, after the ball and the play, she--

Mid-afternoon. Dear me, these interruptions! It is a busy day, sure
enough. I don't get time to turn around or get a moment's rest, they
keep after me so with their How shall we do this? and how shall we do
that? and so on. Tom is going to be tired out before night, the way he
is working. But he says he won't. And he has devised a surprise of some
kind or other for the end of the evening. As soon as the night's rehear-
sals of the fancy dances and the play are over I am to bring Bessie and
Jessie to his study, and then he--

8 p.m. What a darling flock it is! They have all arrived at last, with
their troop of mothers. It is going to be a beautiful sight. The gal-
lery never looked so brilliant before, nor so grand and spacious; and
it will look finer than ever on the birth-night, with five hundred hand-
some people in it and all the military and naval uniforms, and the Dip-
lomatic Body in their showy clothes. Washington is a good place for
clothes...

I went to the study, and looked in through the glass door. Tom was at
his task--since how long, I don't know. He was drowsy, I could see that;
I knew he would be tired. But his pen was going. His cigar was lying
on the table, and while I looked he fell asleep for a second and his
nodding head drooped gradually down till his nose was right over the
ascending film of cigar smoke. It woke him with a violent start and a
sneeze, and he went straight on with his work again, and I hurried away,
amused, to my room, to get a moment's rest before beginning my long
task of superintending the costuming of the little people and direct-
ing the series of rehearsals. . . A note--from the White House. The
President invites himself for this evening! This is an honor. And it
is all for Bessie, none of it for Tom. This it is, to be a Chief Mag-
istrate's small sweetheart. Someday it will make the child proud to be
able to say that once a President of the United States broke the laws
of etiquette that hedge his station for love of her. If he--"Coming!"
I am getting tired of that word.


MAJOR GENERAL X.'S STORY.


ALICE (short for Alison) Sedgewick and I (Thomas X.,) were am in the
little town of Pawpaw Corners, in the State of Kentucky, I in 182O,
she in 1826. When she was five and I eleven, became engaged. I re-
member it very well, and so does she. It was the first time we had
ever met; for it was only just then that her family had moved into
our neighborhood from the other side of the town. We met on the
way to school, on a pleasant morning in the early summer time--April,
I should say; perhaps toward the end of it. It would be about that
time I think, for it was warm enough for even boys connected with
"quality" families to begin to hope for leave to go barefoot. The damp
was stewing out of the ground, the grass was springing briskly, the
wild flowers were thick, and in the woods on Murray Hill early in the
mornings there was a musical riot of bird-song in place of the still-
ness that had reigned there so long. All the common boys had been
barefoot for as much as a week already, and were beginning to mock at
us for "Miss Nancys," and make fun of us for being under our mother's
thumbs and obliged to be unmanly and take care of our health like girls.
I had been begging my mother for leave, but she would not give it.
She said we were as good blood as the best in the town--good old
Virginian stock, like the Sedgewicks and the Dents--and she would
not allow her boy to take second place to any offshoot of theirs.
She said that I could come out barefoot when Billy Dent and Jeff
Sedgewick did, and not a day before. Billy Dent was the county Judge's
son, and Mr. Sedgewick was the principal lawyer and had run for
Congress once. Mr. Sedgewick was Alice's father and Jeff's uncle,
and had a large farm in the country, and owned more negroes than
any other man in the town; and Jeff was a playmate of mine, although
I had never seen his cousin until now.

I had my new summer suit on, that morning--yellow nankeens--and was
proud; proud of the clothes, but prouder still because I was barefoot;
the first "quality" boy in the town to be "out." I had been showing
off before Jeff and Billy, and making them green with envy: for they
had supposed it was by my mother's permission that I was barefoot--
supposed it from something I had said, I think. But I knew where my
shoes were, and could find them when I wanted to go home.

The schoolhouse stood on a small bare hill, and at that time there was
a thicket at the bottom of it, with a clear stream rippling through it; and
it was just there that I came upon Alison. She was the dearest and pret-
tiest little thing I had ever seen, and I loved her from that very moment.
She had a broad leghorn hat on, with a wide red satin ribbon around it,
the long ends dangling down behind; and her little short frock was of
thin white summer stuff, and a piece of that same ribbon was tied a-
round her waist for a belt. In one hand she had a Webster spelling-
book and first reader, and in the other she had the last winter-apple
that was left over.

I wanted to speak to her, but I was all in a quiver and did not know
how to begin. She looked timidly up at me out of her brown eyes, then
dropped them, and stood there before me silent. I had a marble in my
hand--it was a white alley that I had just got in a trade for a China
that was so worn that you could hardly see the stripes on it--and my
excitement made my hand tremble, and it fell on the ground near by.
It was precious property, but I would not take my eyes off that pret-
ty little creature long enough to pick it up; but worked my right foot
toward it and closed my toes over it and took it in their grip. That
interested her, and broke the ice. She said--

"I didn't know anybody could do that but my cousin Jeff and our Jake.
Can you walk with it so? They can."

"Oh, yes--it's easy; anybody can do it."

I made a step or two. Then with my foot I threw up the marble and caught
it in my hand.

She was bursting with admiration, and tried to clap her hands, but they
were too full of things. She cried out--

"Oh, do it again--do it again!"

I said--

"Shucks, that's nothing--look at this."

I gripped the marble in the toes of my right foot, balanced myself on my
left, swung my right forward once or twice, to get Impulse, then violently
upward and backward, and sent the marble well up into the air above our
heads, then made a spring and aught it as it came down.

She was mine! I saw it in her eyes. Her look was the concentrated look
which Europe cast upon Napoleon after Austerlitz. She impulsively reach-
ed out the apple to me and said--"There. You may have it all for your
own."

I said--

"No, not all of it--we'll have it together. First, you'll take a bite,
and then I'll take a bite, and then you'll take a bite, and then--"

I held it to her mouth, she took her bite, then I took mine, and munch-
ing we sauntered into the thicket, along the worn path, I holding her by her
left hand. And by the stream we sat down together, and took bites turn
about, and contentedly munched and talked. I told her my name, she told
me hers, and the name of her kitten and its mother's, and some of their
habits and preferences and qualities, and I told her how to dig fishing
-worms, and how to make a pin-hook, and what to do to keep awake in
church, and the hest way to catch flies; and at last I asked her if she
was engaged, and explained it to her; and when she said she was not, I
said I was glad, and said I was not; and she said she was glad; and by
this time we had munched down to the core, and I said now we could find
out if everything was going to come out right and we get married. So then
I took out the apple-seeds one by one and laid them in her small palm,
and she listened with deep interest and grave earnestness while I del-
ivered the fateful word that belonged with each:

"One I love, two I love, three I love I say;

Four I love with all my heart, and five I cast away;

Six he loves--"

"And do you, Tom?"

"Yes. Are you glad?"

"Yes, Tom. Go on."

"Seven she loves--do you, Alice?"

"Yes, Tom. Go on."

"Eight they both love--and they do, don't we, Alice?"

"Yes, Tom. Keep on."

"Nine he comes, ten he tarries--"

"What is tarries, Tom?"

"Oh, never mind--t'isn't so, anyway--eleven he courts, and twelve he
marries! There, that settles it! It's the very last seed, Alice, dear,
and we are going to get married, sure; nothing can ever prevent it."

"I'm so glad, Tom. Now what do we have to do?"

"Nothing but just kiss. There--another--and one more. Now it's fixed.
And it'll stay forever. You'll see, dearie."

And it did stay forever. At least it has stayed until this day and date,
March 1, 1854; and that is twenty-three years-- *


I will skip a good many years, now. They were filled to the brim with
the care-free joys of boyhood, and were followed by four happy years of
young manhood, spent at the Military Academy of West Point, whence I was
graduated in the summer of 1841, aged 21 years. All those years were a
part of my life, it is true, yet I do not count them so. By my count they
were merely a preparation for my life--which began in 1845 with my mar-
riage. That was my supreme event; that was happiness which made all pre-
vious happinesses of little moment; it was so deep and real that it made
those others seem shallow and artificial; so gracious and so divine that
it exposed them as being earthy and poor and common. We two were one. For
all functions but the physical, one heart would have answered for us both.
Our days were a dream, we lived in a world of enchantment. We were obscure,
we were but indifferently well off, as to money, but if these were lacks
we did not know it, at least did not feel it

[* At this point ends the part of the narrative of "X" that was written
in May 1897. The rest of it was written about three months later.]


In 1846 our little Bessie was born--the second great event in my life. A
month later, my wife's father died; within the week afterward coal was
discovered on his land and our poverty--to exaggerate the term a little--
disappeared in a night. Presently came the war, and through a film of
proud tears my Alison, holding our little Bessie up to look, saw her late
unnoted 2d lieutenant, I .S.A., march for Mexico, colonel of a regiment
of volunteers. In a while while she began to see his name in the war
news, among the crowd of other names; then she saw it gradually and stea-
dily separate itself from the crowd and grow more and more isolated, con-
spicuous, distinguished; and finally saw it hoisted aloft among the great
head-lines, with Scott's and Taylor's for sole company; and in these
days it was become as common as theirs upon the world's tongue, and it
could be uttered in any assemblage in the land and be depended upon to
explode a mine of enthusiasm. She was a proud woman, and glad; and learn-
ed to practice deceit, to prootect her modesty and save the exultation
in her heart from showing in her face--pretending not to hear, when she
passed along, and there was a sudden stir upon the pavement, and whis-
pers of, "There--look--the wife of the boy General!" For I was by many
years the youngest of that rank in our armies.

And more was to come; the favors of fortune were not exhausted yet. There
came a stately addition to that remark--"wife of the boy General--United
States Senator--the youngest that was ever elected." It was true. The
brief war over, I learned the news from In' papers while I was on my
way home.

And Alice was a proud woman again when her late obscure lieutenant
entered our village and drove, at the Governor's side, through the
massed country multitudes, under triumphal arches, in a rain of
rockets, and glare of Greek fire, and storm of cannon-blasts, and
crash of bands and huzzahs, to the banquet prepared in honor; and
proud once more when he rose at her side, there, and she saw the
house rise at him and fill the air with a snow tempest of waving
napkins and a roar of welcoming voices long continued; and proud
yet once more when he made his speech, and carried the house with
him, sentence by sentence to the stirring close, and sat down with
a dazzling new reputation made. (Her own dear words, and a pardon-
able over-statement of the facts.)

Those were memorable days, marvelous days for us. More than ever
we seemed to be living in a world of enchantment. It all seemed so
strange, indeed so splendidly impossible, that these bounties, usu-
ally reserved for age, should be actually ours, and we so young; for
she was but 22 and I but 28. Every morning one or the other of us
laughed and said, "Another day gone, and it isn't a dream yet!" For
we had the same thought, and it was a natural one: that the night
might rob us, some time or other, and we should wake bereaved.

We built a costly and beautiful house in Washington, and furnished
it luxuriously. Then began a life which was full of charm for both
of us. We did not have to labor our way into society with arts and
diplomacies, our position was already established and our place
ready for us when we came. We did not need to court, we were court-
ed. We entertained freely, and our house was the meeting ground for
all who had done anything, for all who were distinguished in letters,
the arts, in politics and fashion, and it was almost the common home
of Clay, Webster, Benton, Scott, and some of the other men of con-
spicuous fame. Alison's beauty and youth attracted all comers to her,
and her sterling character and fine mind made them her friends.

And she was the gratefulest creature that ever was. Often she would
take my face between her hands, and look into my eyes, and say--

"How dear you are! and it is you that have given me all this wonder-
ful life. But for you I should be nothing--nothing at all. I am so
proud of you; so proud, and so glad that you are mine, all mine.

It was her wealth that made this choice life possible; but she al-
ways put her hand on my lips when I said that, and would not listen;
and said my fame and deeds would have been sufficient.

We are happy, we are satisfied. Fortune has done all for me that was
in her power. She would have added the last possible distinction, but
was defeated by the Constitution. I should be President and First Cit-
izen of the United States now, if I were of lawful age. It is not I
that say this immodest thing--ask your mother. It seems decreed, past
all doubt, that I shall ascend to that high post three years hence,
but we will not talk of that now, dear; here is no hurry.


THERE-my sketch is done, I have made my promise good. There is e-
nough of it for the purpose. For further particulars, Bessie dear, the four
Biographies. Your mamma is going to give them to you your birthday
morning. And let me whisper to you, Craig's is the best, because it
flatters me.

Now I will go on and write something for the mamma. That will easier
work than that which I have just finished--so easy that it will write
itself if I merely hold the pen and leave it free, for the text is so
inspiring--The Children.

Our Jessie was born in the year of the Californian gold-rush, a cun-
ning black-headed mite that weighed just four pounds, and was as
welcome as if she had weighed a hundred. She is above five years old,
now, a practical, decisive, courageous, adventurous little soldier,
charged to the chin with tireless activities, and never still except
when asleep. She is the embodied spirit of cheerfulness; evervthing
that happens to her is somehow convertible into entertainment; and
that is what results, no matter what the hap is. This has made it
difficult to punish her. Even the dark closet was a failure. It miss-
ed her, and merely punished her mother, who kept her shut up a quarter
of an hour and then could endure the thought of the little prisoner's
sufferings no longer, and so went here to give her the boon of the
blessed light again; but found her charmed with the novelty of the
darkness and the mystery of the place and anxious to stay and exper-
iment further.

She bears pain with a rare fortitude, for a child--or for an adult.
Last summer her forefinger got a pinch which burst the fat front of
the main joint, but she cried only a moment, then sat in her mother's
lap and uttered no sound while the doctor sewed the ragged edges to-
gether--sat, and winced at the proper times, and watched the operation
through with a charmed and eager interest, then ran off to her play
again, quite ready for any more novelties that might come her way.
Tobogganing, last winter in the north, the toboggan ran into a tree,
and her ancle was sprained and some of the small bones of her foot
broken; but she did not cry--she only whimpered a moment, that was
all; and then had as good a time in bed for a week or two as she
could have had anywhere.

The other day she was taken to the dentist to have a tooth drawn.
Seeing how little she was, the dentist proposed to give her an an-
aesthetic and make the operation painless, but her mother said it
would not be necessary. Alison stepped into the next room, not wish-
ing to see. Presently she heard the dentist say, "There, that one
is out, but here is another one that ought to come;" so she stepped
in and said, "Here is another handkerchief for you, dear," but Bessie
said, "Never mind, I brought two, mamma, I thought there might be two
teeth." She always had a thoughtful business head from the beginning.
And she is an orderly little scrap, too. Her end of the nursery is
always ship-shape; but poor Bessie's end of it is an exaggeration of
chaos.

For Bessie is a thinker--a poet--a dreamer; a creature made up of in-
tellect, imagination, feeling. She is an exquisite little sensitive
plant, shrinking and timorous in the matter of pain, and is full of
worshiping admiration of Jessie's adventurous ways and manly audac-
ities. Privately we call Bessie "Poetry," and Jessie "Romance"--be-
cause in the one case the name fits, and in the other it doesn't.
The children could not pronounce these large names in the beginning,
therefore they shortened them to Potie and Romie, and so they remain.

Bessie is a sort of little woman, now; and being a thinker, she is
learning to put a few modifying restraints upon herself here and
there in spots--and they were needed. To start with, she was a dear
little baby, with a temper made all of alternating bursts of storm
and sunshine, without any detectable intervals between these changes
of weather. She was a most sudden creature; always brimming with
life, always boiling with enthusiasm, always ready to fly off on the
opposite tack without any notice. Her approval was passionate, her
disapproval the same, and the delivery of her verdict wwas prompt in
both cases. Her volcano was seldom quiet. When it was, it was only
getting ready for an irruption; and no one could tell beforehand
whether it was going to illuminate a landscape or bury a city. For-
tunately for herself and for us, her exaltations of joy were much
more common than her ecstasies of anger. It took both to make her
thoroughly interesting; and she was that. And keep us busy; and she
did that.

The foundation of her nature is intensity. This characteristic is
prominently present in her affections. From her babyhood she has
made an idol of her mother. She and her mother are sweethearts,
ments and caresses for each other. Nobody but the mother can gov-
ern her. She does it by love, by inalterable firmness, by perfect fair-
ness, by perfect justice. While she was still in the cradle Bessie
learned that her mother's word could always be depended upon; and
that whatever promise her mother made her--whether of punishhment,
or a holiday, or a gratification, or a benevolence--would be kept,
to the letter. She also learned that she must always obey her mo-
ther's commands; and not reluctantly and half-heartedly, but prompt-
ly, and without complaint. She knew the formula, "Do this, Bessie;
do that, Bessie;" but she never had experience of the addition, "If
you will, I will give you something nice." She was never hired to
obey, in any instance. She early learned that her mother's commands
would always be delivered gently and respectfully, never rudely or
with show of temper, and that they must be obeyed straightway, and
willingly. The child soon learned that her mother was not a tyrant,
but her thoughtful and considerate friend her loving friend, her
best friend, her always courteous friend, who had no disposition
in her heart or tongue to wound her childish self-respect. And so,
this little whirlwind was brought under government; brought under
obedience; thorough obedience, instant obedience, willing obedience.
Did that save the child something? I think so. If a child--or a sol-
dier--learns to obey promptly and willingly, there is no sting in
it, no hardship, no unhappiness. The mother who coaxes or hires her
child to obey, is providing unhappiness for it; and for herself as
well. And particularly because the mother who coaxes and hires does
not always coax and hire, but is in all cases a weak creature, an
ill-balanced creature, who now and then delivers herself up to au-
tocratic exhibitions of authority, wherein she uses compulsion--
usually in a hot and insulting temper--and so the child never knows
just how to take her.

It is a shameful thing to insult a little child. It has its feelings,
it has its small dignity; and since it cannot defend them, it is sure-
ly an ignoble act to injure them. Bessie was accustomed to polite
treatment from her mother; but once when she was still a very little
creature she suffered a discourtesy at her hands. Alison and Senator
Walker's wife were talking earnestly in the library; and Bessie, who
was playing about the floor, interrupted them several times; finally
Alice said pretty sharply, "Bessie, if you interrupt again, I will
send you at once to the nursery." Five minutes later, Alice saw Mrs.
W. to the door. On her way back through the main hall she saw Bessie
on the stairs--halfway up, pawing her course laboriously, a step at
a time. Alice said--

"Where are you going, Potie?"

"To the nursery, mamma."

"What are you going up there for, dear--don't you want to stay with
me in the library?"

Bessie was tempted--but only for a moment. Then she said, with a gen-
tle dignity which carried its own reproach--"You didn't speak to me
right, mamma."

She had been humiliated in the presence of an outsider. Alice felt
condemned. She carried Bessie to the library and took her on her lap
and argued the matter with her. Bessie hadn't a fault to find with
the justice of the rebuke, but she held out steadily against the man-
ner of it, saying gently, once or twice, "but you didn't speak to me
right, mamma." She won her cause. Her mother had to confess that she
hadn't spoken to her "right."

We require courteous speech from the children at all times and in all
circumstances; we owe them the same courtesy in return; and when we
fail of it we deserve correction.

These are lovely days that we are living in this pleasant home of ours
in Washington, with these busy little tykes for comrades. I have my
share of the fun with them. We are great hunters, we. I he library is
our jungle, and there we hunt the tiger and the lion. I am the elephant,
and go on all fours, and the children ride on my hack, astride. We hunt
Jake. Jake is the colored butler. He belonged to Alison's estate, and
is the same Jake whom she mentioned in our engagement-conversation
when she was five years old. We brought him and his sister Maria from
Kentucky when we first came to Washington. Both are free, by grace of
Alice. Jake is thirty-two years old, now; a fine, large, nobly-proportioned
man, very black, and as handsome as any man in the city, white or black,
I think, and fully twice as good as he is handsome, notwithstanding he
is a bigoted Methodist, a deacon in his church, and an incurable gam-
bler on horse-races and prize fights. He is our prey, and we hunt him
all over the library and the drawing rooms. He is lion; also tiger;
preferably tiger, because as lion his roaring is too competent for
Bessie's nerves. Bessie has a passion for hunting the tiger, but as
soon as he gives notice that he is going to turn himself into a lion
she climbs down and gets behind a chair and Jessie hunts him to his
lair alone.

Bessie's mind is my pride, and I am building high hopes upon it. I have
said that she is a thinker, and she is; and deep and capable. She has
the penetrating mind, the analytical mind--and with it, naturally, pre-
cision of speech, intuitive aptitude in seizing upon the right word.
Even when she was littler than she is now she often surprised me by
the happy ingenuity she showed in choosing the word which would make
her meaning clear. For instance. All of us who have labored at a for-
eign language by book, know how hard it is to get rid of the disposi-
tion to separate the words and deliver them with over-exactness of
enunciation, instead of running them together and making them flow
liquidly along, as a person does who has acquired the language by ear
in strenuous fun and frolic and quarrel--in the nursery, for example.
One day a couple of years ago I was playing with the children, and
Bessie glibly--and I thought, loosely--fluttered off a little German
stanza about the "Voglein." Then I read it from the book, with care
and emphasis, to correct her pronunciation, whereupon Jessie corrected
me. I said I had read it correctly, and asked Bessie if I hadn't. She
said--

"Yes, papa, you did--but you read it so 'stinctly that it 'fused Romie."

It would be difficult to better that, for precision in the choice of
the right word for the occasion. At five Bessie was busy enlarging her
vocabulary. Some pretty large words got into it, and once she adopted
one which presently met with an accident. She told a visitor she was
never at church but once--"the time Romie was crucified." Meaning
christened.

Bessie has always been dropping her plummet into the deeps of thought,
always trying to reason out the problems of life, always searching for
light. One day Alison said to her, "There, there, child, you must not
cry for little things." A couple of days later Bessie came up out of a
deep reverie with the formidable question--

"Mamma, what is LITTLE things?"

No one can answer that, for nothing that grieves us can be called little:
by the eternal laws of proportion a child's loss of a doll and a king's
loss of a crown are events of the same size. Alice was not able to furnish
a sufficient answer. But Bessie did not give the matter up. She worked at
the problem several days. Then, when Alice was about to drive down town--
one of her errands being the purchase of a promised toy watch for Bessie
--the child said, "If you should forget the watch, mamma, would that be a
little thing?"

Yet she was not concerned about the watch, for she knew it would not be
forgotten; what the struggling mind was after was the getting a satis-
factory grip upon that elusive and indefinite question.

Like most people, Bessie is pestered with recurrent dreams. Her stock
dream is that she is being eaten up by bears. It is the main horror of
her life. Last night she had that dream again. This morning, after tell-
ing it, she stood apart some time looking vacantly at the floor, absorb-
ed in meditation. At last she looked up, and with the pathos of one who
feels that he has not been dealt by with even-handed fairness, said-

"But mamma, the trouble is, that I am never the bear but always the per-
son eaten."

It would not occur to everybody that there might be an advantage in be-
ing the eater, now and then, seeing that it was nothing but a dream, af-
ter all, but there is an advantage, for while you are in a dream it isn't
a dream--it is reality, and the bear-bite hurts; hurts in a perfectly
real way. In the surprise which I am providing for the children to-night,
Bessie will see that her persecuting dream can be turned into something
quite romantically and picturesquely delightful when a person of her
papa's high capacities in the way of invention puts his mind to work
upon it.

Bessie has the gift of concentration. This makes her a good listener, a
good audience, for she keeps close track of what is said. And remembers
the details, too,--which sometimes makes trouble for me; for I forget my
details, and then am brought to book. Every evening I have to tell the
children a story after they are in their ribs and their prayers accomp-
lished--and the story has to be invented on the spot; neither of them
will put up with any second-hand contributions. Now in all these inven-
tions of mine, from Away back, I have had one serious difficulty to con-
tend with, owing to Alison's influence--nobody in my tale must lie, not
even the villain of the piece. This hampers me a good deal. The blacker
and bloodier I paint the villain the more the children delight in him,
until he makes the mistake of telling a lie--then down he goes, in their
estimation. Nothing can resurrect him again; he has to pack up and go;
his character is damaged beyond help, they won't have him around any
longer.

Sometimes I try to cover up, or slide over, or explain away, one of
these lies which I have blundered into, but it is lost time. One eve-
ning during one of our European vacations I was in the middle of the
fifth night of a continued story which I intended should last a year
and make things easy for my invention-mill; and was gliding along like
this--

"But the moment the giant invited him, the grasshopper whis pered in
Johnny's ear that the food was poisoned; so, Johnny said very politely,
'I am very much obliged to you indeed, sir, but I am not hungry, and--' "

"Why, papa! he told a lie!"

(I said to myself, I have made a blunder; Johnny is compromised; I must
try to get him out of this scrape.) "Well, you see, Bessie, I reckon he
didn't think what he was saying, and--"

"But papa, it couldn't be; because he had just said, that very minute,
that he was so hungry."

"Ye-s, I believe that is true. Yes, that is true. Well, I think perhaps
he was heedless, and just came out with the first thing that happened
in his mind, and--"

"Oh, no, papa, he wasn't ever a heedless boy; it wasn't like him to be
heedless; you know how wise and thoughtful he always was. Why, night be-
fore last, when all those fairies and enchanted creatures tried their
very best, a whole day, to catch him in some little carelessness so they
could get power over him, they never could. No, papa, all through this
story, there never was such a wise boy--he couldn't be heedless, papa."

"Well, Potie, I reckon he was so weary, so kind of tired out--"

"Why, papa, he rode all the way, on the eagle, and he had been sound a-
sleep all the whole day in the gold-and-ivory bed, with his two lions
watching him and taking care of him--why how could he be tired, papa,
and he so strong? You know the other night when his whale took him to
Africa he went ashore and walked all day and all night and wasn't a bit
tired; and you know that other time when--"

"Yes, yes, you are right, Bessie, and I was wrong; he couldn't have been
tired--but he never intended any wrong; I'm sure he didn't mean what he
said; for--"

"Then it was a lie, papa, if he didn't mean what he said."

Johnny's days of usefulness were over. He was hard aground, and I had to
leave him there. He was a most unprincipled and bloody rascal, and if he
could have avoided his one vice he might still be with us, nights, to this
day, and as limitlessly happy as we are, ourselves. Romie once said this
handsome thing about him--however, I will put that in further along, when
I sketch out Romie's little history. I have a little more to say about her
sister, yet.

Of instances of Bessie's delicate intuitions there are many in my mind.
Here is one which is pleasant to me, and its original weetness is in
no way impaired by my often thinking of it. Last Airistmas Eve Alice
brought home a variety of presents; and II lowed Bessie to see those which
were to be sent to the coachman's Family. Among these was an unusually
handsome and valuable sled fur Jimmy. On it a stag was painted, and also
the sled's name in showy gilt capitals, "DEER." Bessie was joyously enthu-
siastic over everything until she came to this sled; then she became sober
and ilent. Yet this sled was the very thing she was expected to be most
eloquent over, for it was the jewel of the lot. Alice was surprised; also
disappointed; and said--

"Why Potie, doesn't it please you? Isn't it fine?"

Bessie hesitated; plainly she did not like to have to say the thing that
was in her mind; but being pressed, she got it out--haltingly:

"Well, mamma, it is fine, and of course it did cost a good deal--but--why
should that be mentioned?"

Seeing she was not understood, she pointed to that word "deer!" Poor chap,
her heart was in the right place, but her orthography wasn't. There is not
a coarse fibre in Bessie; she is as fine as gossamer.

From her earliest babyhood her religious training has gone on steadily at
her mother's knee, and she has been a willing and ?tested pupil. But not
a slavish one. She has always been
.e.1 thing on her own account, always thinking. There have been
ihtiodant evidences of that. I will set down one instance.

For some months, now, the governess has been instructing her Bout the Ame-
rican Indians. One day, a few weeks ago, Alice, with smitten conscience,
said--

"Potie, I have been so busy that I haven't been in at night, lately, to
hear you say your prayers. Maybe I can come in tonight. Shall I?"

Bessie hesitated, waited for her thought to formulate itself, then I brought
it out--

"Mamma, I don't pray as much as I used to--and I don't pray in the same way.
Maybe you would not be pleased with the way I pray now."

"Tell me about it, Potie."

"Well, mamma, I don't know that I can make you understand. But you know, the
Indians thought they knew--and they had a great many gods. We know, now, that
they were wrong. By and by maybe it will be found out that we are wrong, too.
So now I only pray that there may be a God--and a heaven--OR SOMETHING BET-
TER."

It is the garnered doubt--and hope--of all the centuries, compacted into a
sentence. And by a child.

She is a great treasure to us. Indeed we couldn't do without Bessie. Life
would be flat, without her stimulating presence. She is not clay. She is a
spirit. Generally in motion, seldom still--a sort of glimpse of frolicking
sea-waves flashing in the sun; seldom a cloud-shadow drifting over them in
these later times. She is all life, and soap-bubbles, and rainbows, and
fireworks--and anything else that has spring and sparkle and energy and
intensity for its make-up. She never talks much. I mean, in her sleep.

Now for Jessie--now for the busy brunette. The first day that ever Jessie--


I DID NOT get a chance to finish the sentence. A shriek rang through the
house, followed by a confusion of excited cries, and I ran to see what the
matter was. The house was on fire. All the upper part of it was burning
briskly before the calamity was discovered, for everybody was below, ab-
sorbed in the rehearsals.

For a moment the crowd of fifty children and thirty mothers had been in
great danger--not from the fire, but from the perils inseparable from panic.
There would have been manglings and crushings, if no man had been present.
But fortunately, and by a mere chance, there was a man there; and by a
still happier chance he was a soldier; a soldier of the best sort, the
sort that is coolest in circumstances which make other people lose their
heads. This was a young man named Grant, who was a third class man at West
Point when I was a first. He had come to see me about something, And en-
tered the ball room only a moment before the alarm was given. He was by
the door, and took his place in front of it at once. 'Hie mob of women
and children were paralyzed with fright for a moment; the next moment
they would have made their fatal rush; lint Grant did not wait for that.
He spoke up in the calm and confident voice which stills troubled human
waters by some subtle magic not explicable by the hearer but which
compels his obedience, and said--

"Stand as you are! Do not move till I speak. There is no hurry, and
there is no danger. Now then, you, madam, take two children by the
hands, and move forward; you next, madam--do the same. Next--next--
next."

And so on. In orderly procession the column fell in and filed out a
battalion leaving the field on dress parade.

But for West Point's presence there, I should be setting down a path-
etic tragedy now. Lieutenant Grant had served under me for a while in
the beginning of the Mexican war, and lately he had come to Washington
on a business visit from his home in the West, and we had renewed our
acquaintanceship. I think he had in him the stuff for a General, or
certainly a Colonel; I do not know why he achieved no distinction
in the war--but then, such things go a good deal by luck and opportu-
nity. From what he had been telling me about his later fortunes, I
judged that he was not born to luck. He remarked upon his Mexican
nickname, "Useless," and said the old saying was true, in his case,
that fun-nicknames are unwitting disguises of grave fact; for that if
ever there was a useless man in the world, and one for whom there was
plainly no place and no necessity, he was the one. Before the month
was out I had sorrowful occasion to recal this talk of ours. With the
Mexican war, his only chance for success in this world passed away; he
recognized that, and I recognized it also, and was sorry for him. He
was a good fellow, a sterling fellow, and should not have been wasted
at West Point in the acquiring of a useless trade. But unfortunately
none of us can see far ahead; prophecy is not for us. Hence the pau
city of suicides.

We were overwhelmed with kindnesses by our friends; shelter in their
houses was freely offered, but it seemed best, on the whole, to take
quarters in the hotel, and this we did. The firemen saved the main part
of the contents of the ground floor of our house, but nothing from the
upper floors--the floors where we had lived, and where every detail
was a treasure and precious, because hallowed by association with our
intimate and private home life. This was a bitter hardship for us. A
battered toy from the nursery would have been worth more to us than all
the costly rubbish that was saved from the drawing rooms. Those dumb
artificialities could be replaced, but not the historic toys.

The last of our hospitable friends left us at about two in the morning,
and then we went to bed, tired out with the labors of the day and the
excitements of the night. Alice said--

"I suppose you will rebuild the house just as it was before, Tom?"

"Yes. Jeff can begin tomorrow." That name reminded me of something,
and I said, "Why, Alice, I did not see Jeff at the fire--did you?"

"No. And he has not been here in the hotel since we arrived, so far
as I know."

"That is very strange. When did you see him last?"

"He left the house about five minutes before the fire alarm, and said
he should be back within a quarter of an hour. He must have come back,
of course; still, I did not see him."

"Alice! Could he have gone up to his room to save valuables, and got
cut off and burned up?"

"He had no valuables in his room."

"No, not of his own, I know, but ours.

"Give yourself no trouble. Jeff Sedgewick has not risked his skin to
save valuables of ours. He is not that sort of a man."

"Alice, you do not like your cousin."

"Tom, I have never accused myself of it."

Then we went to sleep. In the morning, still no Jeff Sedgewick. The
forenoon wore away, and still he did not come. Everything was at a
standstill. There was nobody to make contracts for the rebuilding of
the house. Jeff was my business man and confidential secretary. He
had begun as my secretary merely, when we first ante east; but I knew
nothing of business and had an aversion for and so, all my matters of
that sort gradually drifted into his hands; for he was fond of bus-
iness, and seemed made for it. In the I beginning I franked my public
documents myself--a wearisome job; one night I left half the documents
unfranked; in the morning they lay in a confused pile, all franked.
Jeff said--

"I finished the franking myself. Examine the pile, and see if you can
tell the genuine signature from the imitation."

I couldn't. I was glad to let him do all the franking after that. In
be beginning he wrote my letters from dictation, and I signed them.
Later he wrote and signed a letter himself, without dictation, and I
saw that he had caught my style exactly, and my hand. After illat I
was glad to let him do all my letters for me--in "autograph," nd out
of his own head. Soon he was signing and endorsing checks m "autograph."
By and by all of my business was in his hands, every detail of it, and
I was a free man and happy. Then came the full power of attorney, quite
naturally, and thenceforth I was saved I loin even the bother of con-
sulting and confirming.

In the very beginning Alice had begged me not to take Jeff to Washing-
ton.

"But Alice, he is an old friend, a schoolmate, he is poor and 'weds
help, we are prosperous, we are fortunate, he is smart and I am not,
and I need such a person badly."

But Tom, he is bad; bad to the marrow, and will do you an ill turn some
day--the worst turn he can invent. He is envious, malicious, deceitful.
He envies you your fame and prosperity, and haws you for it, privately.
Every kindness you do him, every step you advance him, he will make
record of and charge up against yeti, and when his opportunity comes he
will take his revenge."

I laughed, at the time, at these unreasoning prejudices, and never I
thought for a moment that a young and inexperienced country girl like
Alice could have an opinion that was valuable upon matters like these.
I know, now, that her judgment of character was fatally and unfailingly
accurate, but I did not find it out as early as I ought to have done.

She did not persecute me with her warnings; it was not her way; but now
and then at intervals she used to drop them when there seemed opportun-
ity to accomplish something by them. Once in the early Washington days
Jeff came in arrayed in what he thought was the finest and latest thing
in New York fashion. And perhaps it was the finest and latest thing in
the Bowery. He was as pleased as a child, with his vulgar outfit. I have
never had any tact; and that is why I said--

"I thought the Independent Order of the Fantastics had been disbanded
years ago. When are they going to parade?"

He looked ignorantly embarrassed--like one who suspects that an offence
has been intended him, but is not certain. He said--

"I believe I don't quite get your meaning."

"Isn't that a uniform?"

He went out without saying anything, and did not appear any more in those
clothes. I spoke to Alice of the incident in the evening. It troubled her,
and she said--

"I wish you hadn't done it, Tom. You laugh at it, but it is not matter for
laughing. He is a vulgar, vain fool, and you have hurt him in a tender
place. He will not forget it, nor forgive it. Do get rid of him, Tom."

Although Jeff had held the power of attorney for years, Alice never found
it out till a month before the fire--for I was too often unfaithful to her
in my business affairs. I hid things from her that I was ashamed of. Sec-
recy is the natural refuge of people who are doubtful about their conduct.
She was appalled when I told her the matter of the power of attorney. She
said--

"Oh, Tom, what have you done!" and begged me to abrogate it, and said Jeff
would make beggars of us.

I was able to triumph, this time, and said--

"On the contrary, dear, he has doubled our fortune. Come, now, you must be
just to him at last, and take back some of the hard judgments you have pass-
ed upon him in the bygone times."

She was doubtful still, that was plain; and she asked for particulars. But
I said--

"Wait one month, then you will see."

She sighed and said--

"I will wait, Tom, since you ask it, but even if he should quadruple the
fortune, I should still never be easy until we were I of him."

I had no fears. I was preparing a pleasant surprise for Alice, and sure I
could spring it upon her in a few weeks. Jeff had made some brilliant specu-
lations for me, of late years, and my confidence his wisdom and shrewd-
ness had grown in consequence until now they were boundless. He had sold
out Alice's estate and invested her fortune in a Californian gold mine; for many
months the mine had been swallowing money wholesale, but recent reports from
its chief engineer showed that it was now on the point of lying back the for-
tune, with a hundred per cent interest. I had never liked the name of it--the
"Golden Fleece"--but that was his taste; he named it.

Next morning we created a parlor and an office by having the .ds cleared
out of a couple of large chambers, and furniture per to their new functions
put in. In our house, Sedgewick's rice had been on the ground floor, conse-
quently all my business ,oks and papers were saved. Alice soon arranged
these in our new carters. It was common for people whose houses had been
burned down to send the firemen a donation and a word or two of compliment
and gratitude, therefore in deference to this custom lice asked me to draw
a check for her to forward to the fire i.irshal. It was customary to dis-
proportion the donation to the !vice rendered; therefore at Alice's request
I made the check At least I considered it large; it was for $3,000. But then
it is to help the company buy a new engine and build a new engine imse.

Before Alice could finish writing her note of compliment and mitude--she did
not expect me to do any clerical work that could shifted to somebody else--
company began to pour in again. The ream continued until mid-day; then dinner
interrupted it for an otir and a half; then the flow was resumed. About mid-
afternoon or a little later Alice stole a moment and wrote the note, and sent
it the marshal by Jake. Still no Jeff appeared. Alice knew I was neasy, for
she knew the signs of all my moods, and with her native nerous forbearance
she left Jeff unmentioned. She never made a sore place of mine worse by med-
dling with it at the inopportune time. This is a beautiful trait; indeed it may be
hailed a noble trait; and we all know it to be a rare one. I was never able to
learn it, never able to make it a possession of mine. By taking thought I could
practice it, momentarily, at wide intervals, but that was all. It was a part of
Alice, and she did not have to think about it; but it refused to become a part
of me. I was born small and selfish; Alice and the children were not. In nine
cases in ten, when Alice had a sore place, I hastened with an insane eager-
ness to bruise it, and grieve her heart--and yet I loved her so, and had such
a deep reverence for her beautiful character. I hurried to bruise it, knowing,
when I did it, that when I saw the wounded look in her eyes I should be blis-
tered with remorse and shame, and would give anything if I had not done it.
But I could not help it, for deep down in the very web and woof of my nature
I was ignoble and ungenerous.

How little the world knows us; indeed how little any except our nearest
friends know us. You who are reading these lines--your world loves you
and honors you. But suppose it knew you as you know yourself? Be humbly
thankful that it does not.

Supper. Still no Jeff. My uneasiness was steadily growing.

I had not been out, all day. In fact, I had even kept away from the win-
dows, I did not know why. I knew I should see a crowd of waiting strang-
ers from different regions of the Union on the opposite sidewalk. I was
used to it, had been used to it ever since I came back from Mexico with
my military glories upon me; and had always been pleased with it, happy
in it. But the thought of it troubled me, now. I was accustomed to driv-
ing or walking, every day, and accustomed to be flocked after and cheer-
ed, as I went along, and no more minded it than did the stately General
Scott; in fact dearly liked it and enjoyed it, as he did. But to-day,
for some reason, I shrank from the thought of it. There was a vague, in-
definable, oppressive sense of impending trouble in the air.

After supper came the marine band--a serenade. The idea of it, to take
friendly notice of our little mishap. I was in the room which had been
set apart as a nursery, and was employed as usual at that hour of the
evening--inventing a blood-curdling story for the children; a child seat-
ed on each arm of my chair, their feet in my lap, their elbows on their
knees, their chins crutched in their plump hands, their eyes burning dusk-
ily through their falling cataracts of yellow hair and black. For ten min-
utes I had been wandering with these two in a land far from this world;
in the golden land of Romance, where all things are beautiful, and exist-
ence is a splendid dream, and care cannot come. Then came that bray of
the brazen horns, and the vision vanished away; we were prisoners in this
dull planet again. I was for ignoring the serenade, and getting back to
that shining land with my story, and was for supporting me in that impro-
priety; but Bessie had Inherited higher instincts than we, and larger
principles; and she said--

"No, no, papa, mamma would not approve. You must go, papa.

"And make a speech? Somehow it seems impossible to-night."

"Oh, no it isn't, papa. It is nothing. Don't be afraid. Make the same
speech you always make. Everybody says it is a good one. Mr. Pierce likes
it better every time; he says so his own self."

Out of the unconscious lips of babes and sucklings are we satirized. I
walked slowly away into my banishment, leaving happiness behind me. For
I left a dispute behind me; and where no care is, that is joy. I heard
Bessie say--

"Papa didn't say that. He couldn't say it, because there's no sense in
it. You've got two things mixed up, Romie."

"I haven't. He did say it. I heard him; I heard the very words. He said
it is foolish to kill the goose that lays the golden calf."

It would have been a joy to me--an old and familiar and beloved joy--to
go back and take a solemn hand in the discussion and mix it all up till
the puzzled little rascals could make neither head nor tail of it, but
this boon was not for me. From outside went up a crashing cheer which
lifted my spirits away up into the sunshine, and set my pulses to leap-
ing, and for a moment I was myself again. But for a moment only. Then at
the door a bank president touched me on the shoulder and whispered--

"Senator, can I have a word with you presently?"

"Yes," and I passed on. But there was something in his manner which blot-
ted out my sunshine and made my heart cold. I stepped out on the balcony,
and gazed out, dazed and hardly conscious, over the wide sea of flaring
torches and uplifted faces; and the explosions of welcome which went up
sounded muffled and far away in my dulled ears. I made my speech--no, it
made itself, automatically; and it was as if it was some one else talking,
and scarce noting what was said. Then the cheers burst out again, as in a
dream, and I--as in a dream--bowed, and went my way.

I took the bank president into my office, closed the door, and said--

"What is it?"

He answered, apologetically--

"I am sorry to disturb you with such a matter, Senator, but the fire marsh-
al handed in a check just as we were closing the bank, and--a n d--"

"Very well. Go on."

"And--and--well, the fact is, Senator, your account is overdrawn."

What a load it lifted off my breast. And what a relief it was, to hear my-
self laugh once more; it had seemed to me that I had forgotten how.

"Oh, dear me," I said, "is that all? What of it? It isn't uncommon."

But he did not laugh. He remained ominously grave. He was silent a moment,
gathering courage for a disagreeable duty, then he spoke out and named the
amount of the overdraft.

I staggered as I have seen a soldier do when hit in the breast with a spent
ball. After a little I rallied, and said, "I am amazed. I never could have
imagined this. I don't know what Sedgewick can have been thinking of. Let us
square up at once; and pray don't ever let this happen again--by his author-
ity or any one else's." I sat down at the desk and said, "I will give you a
check on Riggs's."

Nothing but a deadly silence followed this remark. I turned in my chair. My
guest said, reluctantly--

"I am sorry, but it would do no good."

"Oh, what do you mean?"

"We bankers have been together this evening to look over the situation, and
unfortunately we find--we find--"

"Well, well, you find--what do you find?"

"That you are heavily overdrawn all around."

He told me the several amounts. It made my head swim, for a moment. Then I
pulled myself together, and said--

"After all, Simmons, it is merely embarrassing, not serious; and in use a-
larming. By good luck our house has burned down; the insurance money will
far more than pay you gentlemen, and I shall keep clear of this kind of
thing. Even if I owed a million or two I should still be solvent, by grace of
my Californian venture."

The banker asked me if I would mind telling him, in confidence, something about
the Golden Fleece. I said I should be very glad to tell him all about it; that
there was no occasion for concealment. So out the mining manager's long series
of carefully detailed reports, and we examined them patiently from the first
one to the last. Mr. Simmons was very much pleased, indeed. He said the reports
were remarkably clear, orderly and candid, and that I was fortunate in having a
manager who was courageous enough to put in the bad news as well as the good. He
conceded that I was demonstrably worth above a million and a half, and prospect-
ively worth indefinitely more. Then he confessed that when Sedgewick liegan to
overdraw rather heavily, sometime back, and had spoken niy,teriously of the won-
ders of the Golden Fleece, he had felt a little uneasy and had written his broth-
er, a banker in Grass Valley for particulars concerning the mine. He had had no
answer as yet, but he could forsee, now, that it would be a satisfactory one when
it came.

Then a letter was brought up which completed my comfort. It was from the lost
Sedgewick. I read it aloud. It said--

"No doubt you have wondered what was become of me. When I returned and found
that the house was doomed, I hurried to the station and caught the midnight
train for New York; for there was An informality in one of the insurance pol-
icies which--however I will explain how it happened when I get back. As to
$102,000 of the insurance, there will be no trouble. I think there will be none
about the rest--$38,000--but I shall stay here two or three days and see. Mean-
time, through the luck of coming here just a[t] this time I am likely to bring
back, from another source, $8O,000 which I had long ago given up as an irremed--
iable loss. Indeed it is not merely likely, I feel that I may regard it as sure."

Mr. Simmons and I parted on very pleasant terms, and I went to bed a serene and
contented man.


NEXT DAY I presided, for half an hour, at a session of tho Committee on Military
Affairs, then went back to Willard's, an Alice and I excused ourselves to callers
and spent the whole haply] day planning little improvements in the proposed new
house, the architect helping and suggesting. Alice, who was conservative wanted
the cost kept within the former house's figure, but I said we could afford a more
expensive one; and I talked her out of hei reluctances and gained my point. She
had been used to money all her life, therefore the possession of it did not turn
her head m incline her to vain shows and display; but I was a kind of beggar or
horseback, and had no sense of financial proportion, no just notion of values,
and--but you know the kind of man I was. We did not get through until midnight;
then the architect went away with a house in his pocket which charmed him and me,
and made Alice shudder

Two or three more days went pleasantly by, then came Mr. Simmons, Mr. Riggs, and
Mr. Fulton, bankers, and with them a Mr. Collins from New York. Their manner was
a warning; it spread a frost over the summer that was teeming in my heart, and the
chill of it invaded my spirits Trouble. was coming; I felt it. They wished to see
me in my private office. Arrived there, they sat down, and there was a moment or
two of silence; then one said to another, with solemnity--

"Will you begin?"

"No, you, if you prefer."

"Perhaps it will be best that Mr. Simmons open the matter."

It was so agreed. Every face there was hard and set, every eye frankly unfriendly.
Mr. Simmons cleared his throat and said--

"General X., you will pardon me if I ask you one or two blunt questions."

"Go on, sir."

"What property do you own, aside from the Golden Fleece?"

"None."

The men glanced at each other; Riggs and Fulton twisted nervously in their chairs.

"Has your wife any property other than the Golden Fleece?"

"None."

The color left the faces of Riggs and Fulton at that, then came back in a purple
flush, and Fulton put up his hand and loosened his collar.

"One more question, Senator X." This in a slightly rising voice. "When you showed
me the reports of your mining manager, was it your purpose to deceive me?"

I flushed, but said, with as much calmness as I could command--

"Mr. Simmons, have a care. I must remind you that you are going too far."

"I am, am I?" said he, excitedly. "My brother's letter has arrived from Grass Val-
ley. Read it!"

I read it. Read it again; and still again, not able to believe my eyes. There was
one italicized line in it which seemed written in fire, it glared so, and burnt me
so: "There is no such mine as the Golden Fleece." The life was all gone out of me,
and I said--

"I am a ruined man, gentlemen. I realize it--absolutely ruined. But my destruction
does not injure you. The insurance-money will more than pay everything I owe."

"That is your whole resource, then?"

"Yes."

"Are you certain that your house was insured?"

"Certain of it? Of course. It has always been insured, from the first; and in the
same companies. Here is the record. The last entry, as you see, is of date a year
ago, and insures the house for three years."

"Mr. Collins is the agent through whom your policies were always taken out. Mr. Col-
lins, will you speak?"

Collins addressed himself to me, and said--

"You may remember, sir, that something more than a year ago, I wrote you two personal
letters. In the first one I reminded you; in the second I urged you, to renew your in-
surance, for that I was not able to get Mr. Sedgewick's attention. My letters were con-
fidential, as I did not wish to get your representative's ill will. You remember my
letters?"

"Quite well. In the case of the first one I asked Sedgewick to answer you and re-
insure; in the second I gave him a peremptory order to do it."

"Have you your policies there?"

"Yes."

"Last year's, too?"

"I suppose so. I will see. N-no. Not last year's."

"It is because that last-year entry is fraudulent. Your house was not insured. The loss
is total."

My God, the words went through me like a bullet. If they were true, they meant that I
was not merely and only a pauper, but a hundred times worse than that--in debt. For a
time, no one spoke. The stillness was oppressive, smothering. All were waiting for me;
but I was dumb, I could not find my voice. When it came back to me at last, I said--

"I am to blame. I am to blame, I confess it freely. I trusted Sedgewick as no human be-
ing ought to be trusted, and I have my reward. He has destroyed me."

There was no word of response. I was ashamed. I had expected at least a recognition of
my remark, the mere courtesy of a comment of some kind or other; I was used to this much
deference--and entitled to it. My dignity was wounded. I glanced up at the faces about
me, and was cut to the heart; for if I could read what was written there, it was contempt!
It seemed unbelievable, it had been so many years since any face had delivered me a
message like that. I gatherred my pride together, and said--

"Do not mistranslate me, gentlemen; I was not begging for sympathy."

Simmons made a gesture of impatience, and said--

"This is not a time for womanish sentimentalities, General X., with these strange facts
--shall I say, these suspicious facts?--before us. You must see it yourself."

"What do you mean, sir?" I said with some little heat--I could not keep it all down.
"Please explain yourself."

He amended his manner, then, leaving nothing of discourtesy in in his tones. But his
words were knives.

"I ought not to forget, and I do not, that of the three or four men of towering emi-
nence in the Union, you are one; that your great services deserve the country's grat-
itude and have it; and that until now your public and private conduct has been above
the reach of suspicion but--but--" He stopped for a moment, troubled as to how to go
on; then added reluctantly, and with the manner of one who is saying a thing which he
does not want to say, but which he does not know how to get around, "but these insur-
ance-entries, which are--I hate to use the word--fraudulent--why did you make them?"

"I make them! I didn't make them."

The kindness faded out of the banker's face, and stupefaction took its place--stupe-
faction, mixed with surprise and unbelief; and he said with offended severity--

"I beg your pardon. I know your hand well."

For the first time, I saw my whole peril. The earth seemed to be opening under me, and
said in a voice which made my words sound like a lie even to me, so sapped of force were
they by my despairing conviction that I was not going to be believed--

"I give you my word of honor--oh, more, I give you my oath--that I never wrote--"

"Don't! Stop where you are, for God's sake!"

"I implore you to believe me! Gentlemen, I call God to wit--"

"Stop where you are! Do not make it worse than it already is. Remember what you are.
Go on, and say what you can in palliation of this unfortunate act--even in plausible
explanation of it--if such a thing may be possible--but for your own pride's sake
leave out denials backed by oaths."

I went back to the beginning of my connection with Sedgewick, and told the tale all
down to date; told them the simple truth, the plain, straightfor[war]d, humiliating
facts--burning up with self-contempt while I did it, and watching those marveling
and incredulous faces for any relenting sign, as wistfully as ever a prisoner on
trial for his life watched the faces of the jury.

The sign never came. When I finished, the group looked at each other and said, plain-
ly, though without words, "It is pitiable to see an illustrious man degrade himself
to the manufacture of such trash as this." I read the words in their faces, and knew
that my good name was gone, now, as well as my bread. After a considerable silence,
Mr. Fulton said, with chill deliberation--

"As I understand it, sir, you ask credit for these several most extraordinary assev-
erations, to-wit, that you, an educated man, a man of the world, a general of the ar-
my, a statesman, a grown person, put yourself, body and soul, together with your
wife's whole property and your own, unreservedly into the hands of a man--any man--
empowering him to originate and write letters for you in your own handwriting, sign
and endorse your name upon checks, notes, contracts, in your own hand, and speculate
in anything he pleased, with the family's money--and all without even your casual
supervision of what he was doing, or inquiry into it? Am I right?"

Detailed, item by item, in that cold direct fashion, it seemed incredible, impossi-
ble, even to me. And yet it was true, every shameful detail of it; and I said so.
Mr. Fuller spoke out with what sounded like an almost generous enthusiasm--

"For the honor I bear your great name I will do you the reverence to believe not
one damned word of it!"

I fought, and fought long, and the best I could, to save some shred of that name,
but it was a lost battle. These men could not believe me. To them, it was impossible
that a full grown man could be the fool I had professed myself to be. Their minds
were soon made up that Sedgewick and I were partnership swindlers--pals. They almost
used that word; I was sure of it. From that conviction mg' Intents of mine were able
to move them. They summed our ,concisely up in this way: we had speculated in New
York and lost money and been obliged to sell Alice's estate; we had speculated
further, and gotten deeper in; we had invented the Golden Fleece to postpone the crash
and gain time to recoup; we continued to go from bad to worse; when the house burned,
I had seen that the game was up, and had hurried Sedgewick off to scrape up what money
he might for our joint benefit before the exposure should fall, and take it to some
far country, leaving me to put all the irregularities upon him--he not minding that,
since it did not hurt his pocket.

I said that my own statement of my conduct--if true--proved me a fool; but that this
new solution of it--if true--proved me !wane. I urged that a General of the Army, Sen-
ator, and prospective President of the United States could not by any possibility
commit the crimes imputed to me unless he were insane, and that the gentlemen here
present must know this themselves. I felt a hopeful glow at the heart for a moment,
for I said to myself, that is an argument which will spike their guns; it is unanswerahle.

But how little I knew the religion of commerce and its god. The argument fell flat;
more--it was received with disdain--disdain of the sort evoked when a person intrudes
a triviality into a serious discussion. Mr. Simmons brushed it aside as indifferently
as if he were squelching the ignorant prattle of a schoolboy--

"Men will do anything for money."

From the moment that those men arrived at the conviction that I was a swindler and
Sedgewick my tool and partner, my reasonings went for nothing. It untangled every
tangle, it laid bare the core of every mystery, it explained and accounted for every
move in the odious game that had been played.

If I said that I couldn't know that the mining reports exhibited to me as coming from
Grass Valley were manufactured in Washington,--why, true,--yes, quite so--etc., etc.;
which being translated, meant that my word, as to that, was not valuable, in the circum-
stances.

If I referred to Sedgewick's letter fi um New York (about the insurance) as having been
received by me in perfect and unsus pecting good faith, the comment I got was merely
noddings of the head which meant "Oh, certainly, certainly, quite so--pray do not think
we doubt it."

I started, once, to inquire how I was to be benefited by making false entries in my in-
surance-list, and--

But they interrupted me impatiently, with a "There, it isn't worth while to go into that
again," meaning, "Oh, it is quite simple --part of the game, dear sir, part of the game
--any one can understand it."

I had tried all things, said all things, that might help me; there was nothing more that
I could do, nothing more that I could say. I was lost. There was no help for me. The
consciousness of this settled down upon me and wrapped me as in a darkness. There
was a long silence. Then I broke it.

"Gentlemen, I comprehend that I am a ruined man--bankrupt in purse, and, in your belief,
in character also. It may be that I shall never be able to retrieve myself financially,
though I shall try my best while I live to do that and clear away the debts put upon me
by a trusted subordinate; but I am not a dishonest man, whatever you may think, and I
will bring that man before the courts and fasten all these swindles upon him, where they
belong."

"When?" asked Mr. Collins.

"When? Why, at once.

"He sailed for the other side of the world the day he wrote you the letter; a friend of
mine saw him go." Then he could not deny himself the pleasure of adding--as if to himself,
and not intended for me to hear, "But it may be that this is not news."

Anybody could insult me now, with impunity--even that poor thing. Being pleased with him-
self for his boldness in kicking the dead lion, and detecting condescending approval in
the faces of the bankers, he thought he saw his opportunity to ingratiate himself further
with these high deities of his heaven; so he jauntily covered himself. But Mr. Riggs said,
angrily--

"Uncover! Have you no shame? Respect what he was."

What he was! It lit up my whole vast ruin, from horizon to horizon; it compacted my colos-
sal disaster into a single phrase. I knew that those words were burnt in; that no lapse of
time, no mental decay would ever rid my memory of them.

But why were these men still waiting? Was there more? More! The idea was almost able to
make me smile. More? Was not Pelion piled upon my Ossa? More, indeed! The possibilities
had been exhausted. I stirred in my chair, to indicate that I was ready for the interview to
terminate if they were. Nobody moved. Then I said--

"I suppose we have finished, gentlemen." Still, nobody moved. The situation was embarras-
sing; and so, with a groping idea of relieving it, I added in a wan and sickly attempt at
playfulness, "I seem to have committed about all the crimes there are; still, if by chance
one has been overlooked, let us complete the tale. Pray bring it out."

Mr. Riggs began to wash his hands nervously; Simmons glanced at me, and dropped his eyes;
Fulton, without passion or even emphasis, spat out the word--

"Forgery!"

I sprang at him--and remembered no more.


WHEN I CAME to myself I had the feeling of one who has slept heavily, is lazily comfortable,
but not greatly refreshed, and is still drowsy. My mind was empty of thought, and indifferent.
My eyelids began to droop slumbrously, and I was drifting pleasantly toward unconsciousness,
when I heard Jake's voice cry out--apparently in the next room--

"No indeed it ain't, honey--it's a jay-bird. Wait till I come. Don't make a noise; you'll
scare him."

My eyes came open, and then there was a surprise. I was stretched upon a bed, in a log cabin.
The sharp March weather was gone, summer was in the air. The floor was of earth, packed hard
and clean swept; at one end was a vast fire-place, built of undressed stones; in it a couple
of great smouldering logs six or seven feet long; swinging above them, from an iron chimney-
hook, a large iron pot; on rude unpainted shelves, on one side, some old but brightly polish-
ed tin pans, plates, pint cups, candle-sticks and a coffee pot, some bone-handled knives and
forks, some tin cans, some wooden and pasteboard boxes such as candles and groceries come in,
and some brown paper parcels; against the logs on that side, under a small square window, a
coverless deal table that had paper and pens on it and half a dozen old books; for sole orna-
ment, a crippled tumbler containing a bouquet of fresh wild flowers; against the logs, beside
the window, was fastened a diamond-shaped piece of looking-glass, and under it was a shelf
with cheap combs and brushes on it. On the other side of the fireplace, by the door, was a
small wooden bench, with a piece of bar soap on it in a common white saucer, a tin wash-basin
inverted, and a wooden pail of water with a tin dipper in it; under the ceiling, above the
bench, hung half of a side of bacon; on the floor on that side was an open sack of flour, and
another of navy beans. Nailed to the wall opposite the bed was a deep long stretch of curtain
calico which bulged, and I knew by that sign that it was the wardrobe. Along the wall, above
the bed, four cheap lithographs were tacked to the logs--the Battle of Buena Vista, the storm-
ing of San Juan d'Ulloa, (I took part in both), and portraits of Scott and Taylor in uniform.
Overhead was a ceiling made of flour-sacks sewed together; it was a frescoed ceiling, so to
speak, for the sacks bore the names and addresses of the mills, loudly stenciled in blue cap-
itals. Across the room, past the head of the bed, ran a flour-sack partition, also frescoed.
It was the picture gallery; against it was pinned a number of steel engravings from Godey's
Lady's Book.

Everything about the place was beautifully neat and clean and trim--and unimaginably inexpen-
sive. I examined the bedstead. It was made of small poles--only tolerably straight, and the
bark still on--laid close together along a frame supported by posts--the bark still on--dri-
ven into the ground. There was but one mattrass; it was filled with straw; there were pil-
lows, filled with something or other; their cases and the sheets were of coarse white cot-
ton; a cheap white blanket completed the bed.

I had on an old pair of blue jeans breeches and a private soldier's blue army shirt.

Where was I? I had no idea.

A glory of sunny hair appeared in the open door, now, and with it a bright young face--Bes-
sie's.

"Come here, dear," I said, "and read me this riddle."

"Why, papa!"

She came cautiously in, and slowly approached, her eyes big 'III glad wonder--and doubt. She
hesitated, then stopped, in the iiin Idle of the little room, four feet from me, and said
wistfully-

"Papa--do you know me?"

"Do I know you? Why, Bessie, what--"

With a spring she was in my arms and covering my face with frantic kisses. Presently she
had flashed away again, with the suddenness of a ray of light, and I heard her calling--out-
side--excitedly:

"Run here--run--run!"

Then she came flying back and stood, expectant, in the middle of the room, her eyes and
cheeks glowing; and in a moment or two more Jessie was at her side, a speaking picture of
childish interest snd curiosity. Bessie put her mouth close to Jessie's ear, whispered a
word, then stepped back to observe the effect. Jessie looked startled, but said promptly--

"I don't believe it."

The effect seemed to be all that could have been desired, for Bessie clapped her hands
like a gratified showman and said--

"I knew you wouldn't. Now you'll see. Papa, who is this?"

"Come, what kind of game are you little rascals playing? Do you I suppose I don't know
Romie?"

And now they were both in my arms, and for some reason or other seemed to be mad with
delight. Presently I said--

"It's a charming piece, and I am playing my part of it as well as I can, but I am in the
dark, you know. Why am I in jeans and army shirt? And why are you two in these little
linsey-woolsey frocks, and why are you barefooted? And why are we in this log cabin? Is
it all in the piece? And how much do we get for it? But first of where are we?

The children looked troubled and disappointed, and a little apprehensive, and Bessie said--

"But papa, I thought you would know everything, now. Don't you?"

"Dear me, no, apparently I don't. I am reveling in mysteries. Really, I don't seem to know
much of anything."

Jessie said, as one who is trying to offer encouragement--

"Oh, no, papa, you mustn't say that. You know us--you know you do."

"Oh indeed, yes, if that is large learning, I am not at the foot of the class yet. I can
say my lesson. You are Bessie and Jessie, and I am Thomas X."

Their soft hands covered my mouth at once, and they said in a frightened way-

" 'sh! papa! You mustn't say that!" "Mustn't say it? Why?"

"Because it isn't your name. You've got another name, now. Don't you know your other name?"

"Oh, you mean my stage name. No, I don't know what it is. What is it?"

"Jacobs--Edward Jacobs; and you mustn't forget it, papa; you mustn't ever forget it. Pro-
mise."

"All right, I promise. Jacob Edwards--it's a very pretty name, too."

"No, no--Edward Jacobs. Say it again, papa; and keep saying it till you learn it good."

"All right, I'll begin now. Are you ready?"

"Yes, papa--and do be careful; and don't hurry."

And they fixed their grave eyes upon me; eyes charged with hope, hope just touched with a
pathetic shade of doubt. I couldn't help toying with it. "Yes, I will be very careful, be-
cause always it is best to get a thing right in the first place, then after that it comes
easier. And in the case of a difficult name like Jacob Edwards--"

"Oh, papa!"--this with a sort of anguish; and the tears sprang into their eyes.

Bless your hearts I was only fooling. I didn't know it was any matter to you. I won't do
it any more. I wasn't in earnest, upon my word I wasn't. I can say it without any trouble;
listen: Edward ok, Ldward Jacobs, Edward Jacobs--"

The sunshine was come again, and I thought I would not play Hi( ire treacheries like that
for the present. I said--

"Rut come. You know you haven't told me where we are." " Why, ty, we are in a town, papa."

No we are not, Potie, we are only in the edge of it."

"Well, in the edge of it, then--it's all the same. And its name, lot you know its name,
papa?"

"I think I can tell better when I hear it. What is it, Bessie?" She hesitated, and said--

"Mamma only just calls it the town; and so that is what we call .1, too; but the people--
they--well, the people call it--"

"Hell's Delight," said Jessie, gravely.

It nearly startled me out of my army shirt, for it suggested some tremendous possibilities.
My breath came short and quick, now, and in insufficient quantity for a person who was
full of questions and in a hurry to ask them; but I got them out, and as fast as I could.

"Are we in California?"

"Yes, papa."

"What time of the year is it?"

"The middle of August."

"How old are you, Bessie?"

"Nearly nine and a half, papa."

"This is amazing. I have been asleep eighteen months! Amazing--incredible--impossible.
And how you children have grown--I was supposing it was your mean disguises that were
deceiving my eyes. What--"

"Mamma's come, mamma's come! Oh, mamma, he's in his right mind!"

We two had been separated just an hour--by the clock--but in the true sense a whole year
and a half. What the meeting was like, there is no art to tell. The ignorant cannot ima-
gine it, but only such as have lived it.



WHEN A PERSON has been absent from the planet a year and a half, there is much news to
hear when he gets back. It took Alison many hours to tell me her story. She had had a hard
life of it, and heavy work and sharp privations, and this had aged her body a little, but not
her spirit. Her spirit was [as] it had always been; its courage, its hopefulness, its gen-
erosities, its magnanimities had suffered no impairment, her troubles had not soured its
native sweetness nor embittered its judgments of men and the world. She had no complaints
to make about her poverty; and as for upbraiding me for causing it, she never thought of
such a thing. It shamed me to see this, knowing how quick I should be to upbraid her if
our places had been changed, and how meanly prone to keep her reminded of it--and sincere-
ly repent, in sackcloth and ashes for it --and then do it again the next day, and the next,
and the next, and all the days.

She told me her tale. When she found that we were ruined and in debt she left the hotel at
once and got three cheap rooms and a kitchen on the fourth floor of a tenement house, and
discharged Jake and Maria. They declined the discharge. Maria remained and did the housework,
and Jake went out to service and made her take and use almost all the money he earned. It
helped to save us alive, in those first days before Alice had found work for herself. She
presently got copying to do; and so great was the sympathy which her calamities excited
that she was soon overrun with this kind of work, and was able to employ several assistants.
All our friends stood by her, none of them discarded her; new ones came; and new and old
together would have helped her out of their pockets if she would have consented. She said
it was worth while to know poverty, because it so enlarged and ennobled one's estimates of
the world in general as well as of one's friends. Almost every paper in the land used me gen-
erously. There was but one man who was bitter against me; even the injured bankers made no
trouble, and I from saying harsh things about me. The officers of the army I I cd my story,
and believed it entirely. They said that a man (I at West Point might be a fool in business
matters, but v el a rascal and never a liar; that he was a gentleman, and would lin one.
General Scott said I was a good soldier, none better; and hat even the best soldier could
botch a trade which he was not fitted for.


(1897)



The Great Dark
BEFORE IT HAPPENED.


STATEMENT BY MRS. EDWARDS.


WE WERE in no way prepared for this dreadful thing. We were a happy family, we had been hap-
py from the beginning; we did not know what trouble was, we were not thinking of it nor ex-
pecting it.

My husband was thirty-five years old, and seemed ten years younger, for he was one of those
fortunate people who by nature are overcharged with breezy spirits and vigorous health, and
from whom cares and troubles slide off without making any impression. He was my ideal, and
indeed my idol. In my eyes he was everything that a man ought to be, and in spirit and body
beautiful. We were married when I was a girl of 16, and we now had two children, comely and
dear little creatures: Jessie, 8 years old, and Bessie, 6.

The house had been in a pleasant turmoil all day, this 19th of March, for it was Jessie's
birthday.t Henry (my husband) had romped with the children till I was afraid he would tire
them out and unfit them for their party in the evening, which was to be a children's fancy
dress dance; and so I was glad when at last in the edge of the evening he took them to our
bedroom to show them the grandest of all the presents, the microscope. I allowed them fifteen
minutes for this show. I would put the children into their costumes, then, and have them rea-
dy to receive their great flock of little friends and the accompanying parents. Henry would
then be free to jot down in short-hand (he was a past-master in that art) an essay which he
was to read at the social club the next night. I would show the children to him in their
smart costumes when the party should be over and the good-night kisses due.

I left the three in a state of great excitement over the microscope, and at the end of the
fifteen minutes I returned for the children. They and their papa were examining the wonders
of a drop of water through a powerful lens. I delivered the children to a maid and they went
away. Henry said--

"I will take forty winks and then go to work. But I will make a new experiment with the drop
of water first. Won't you please strengthen the drop with the merest touch of Scotch whisky
and stir up the animals?"

Then he threw himself on the sofa and before I could speak he uttered a snore. That came of
romping the whole day. In reaching for the whisky decanter I knocked off the one that con-
tained brandy and it broke. The noise stopped the snore. I stooped and gathered up the broken
glass hurriedly in a towel, and when I rose to put it out of the way he was gone. I dipped a
broomstraw in the Scotch whisky and let a wee drop fall upon the glass slide where the water-
drop was, then I crossed to the glass door to tell him it was ready. But he had lit the gas
and was at his table writing. It was the rule of the house not to disturb him when he was at
work; so I went about my affairs in the picture gallery, which was our house's ballroom.


STATEMENT BY MR. EDWARDS


WE WERE experimenting with the microscope. And pretty ignorantly. Among the little glass
slides in the box we found one labelled "section of a fly's eye." In its centre was faintly
visible a dot.

We put it under a low-power lens and it showed up like a fragment of honey-comb. We put it
under a stronger lens and it became a window-sash. We put it under the most powerful lens
of all, then there was room in the field for only one pane of the several hundred. We were
childishly delighted and astonished at the magnifying capacities of that lens, and said,
"Now we can find out if there really are living animals in a drop of water, as the books
say."

We brought some stale water from a puddle in the carriage-house where some rotten hay lay
soaking, sucked up a dropperful and allowed a tear of it to fall on a glass slide. Then we
worked the screws and brought the lens down until it almost touched the water; then shut an
eye and peered eagerly down through the barrel. A disappointment--nothing showed. Then we
worked the screws again and made the lens touch the water. Another disappointment--nothing
visible. Once more we worked the screws and projected the lens hard against the glass slide
itself. Then we saw the animals! Not frequently, but now and then. For a time there would
be a great empty blank; then a monster would enter one horizon of this great white sea made
so splendidly luminous by the reflector and go plowing across and disappear beyond the op-
posite horizon. Others would come and go at intervals and disappear. The lens was pressing
against the glass slide; therefore how could those bulky creatures crowd through between and
not get stuck? Yet they swam with perfect freedom; it was plain that they had all the room
and all the water that they needed. Then how unimaginably little they must be! Moreover,
that wide circular sea which they were traversing was only a small part of our drop of stale
water; it was not as big as the head of a pin; whereas the entire drop, flattened out on the
glass, was as big around as a child's finger-ring. If we could have gotten the whole drop
under the lens we could have seen those gruesome fishes swim leagues and leagues before
they dwindled out of sight at the further shore!

I threw myself on the sofa profoundly impressed by what I had seen, and oppressed with think-
ings. An ocean in a drop of water--and unknown, uncharted, unexplored by man! By man, who
gives all his time to the Africas and the poles, with this unsearched marvelous world right at
his elbow. Then the Superintendent of dreams appeared at my side, and we talked it over.
He was willing provide a ship and crew, but said--

"It will be like any other voyage of the sort--not altogether a excursion.

"That is all right; it is not an objection."

You and your crew will be much diminished, as to size, but you need not trouble about that,
as you will not be aware of it. Your ship itself, stuck upon the point of a needle, would
not be discoverable except through a microscope of very high power."

"I do not mind these things. Get a crew of whalers. It will be well to have men who will
know what to do in case we have trouble I those creatures."

"Better still if you avoid them."

"I shall avoid them if I can, for they have done me no harm, and I would not wantonly hurt
any creature, but I shan't run from t I win. They have an ugly look, but I thank God I am
not afraid of the ugliest that ever plowed a drop of water."

"You think so now, with your five feet eight, but it will be a different matter when the
mote that floats in a sunbeam is Mont Blanc compared to you."

"It is no matter; you have seen me face dangers before--"

"Finish with your orders--the night is slipping away."

"Very well, then. Provide me a naturalist to tell me the names of the creatures we see; and
let the ship be a comfortable one and perfectly appointed and provisioned, for I take my
family with me."


Half a minute later (as it seemed to me), a hoarse voice broke on my ear--

"Topsails all--let go the lee brace--sheet home the stuns'! boom --hearty, now, and all to-
gether!"

I turned out, washed the sleep out of my eyes with a dash of cold water, and stepped out
of my cabin, leaving Alice quietly sleeping in her berth. it was a blustering night and
dark, and the air was thick with a driving mist out of which the tall masts and bellying
clouds of sail towered spectrally, faintly flecked here and there aloft by the smothered
signal lanterns. The ship was heaving and wallowing in the heavy seas, and it was hard
to keep one's footing on the moist deck. Everything was dimmed to obliteration, almost;
the only thing sharply defined was the foamy mane of white water, sprinkled with phos-
phorescent sparks, which broke away from the lee bow. Men were within twenty steps of
me, but I could not, make out their figures; I only knew they were there by their voices.
I heard the quartermaster report to the second mate--

"Eight bells, sir."

"Very well make it so."

Then I heard the muffled sound of the distant bell, followed by a far-off cry--

"Eight bells and a cloudy morning anchor watch turn out!"

I saw the glow of a match photograph a pipe and part of a face against a solid bank
of darkness, and groped my way thither and found the second mate.

"What of the weather, mate?"

"I don't see that it's any better, sir, than it was the first day out, ten days ago;
if anything it's worse--thicker and blacker, I mean. You remember the spitting snow-
flurries we had that night?"

"Yes."

"Well, we've had them again to-night. And hail and sleet besides, b'George! And here
it comes again."

We stepped into the sheltering lee of the galley, and stood there listening to the
lashing of the hail along the deck and the singing of the wind in the cordage. The
mate said--

"I've been at sea thirty years, man and boy, but for a level ten-day stretch of un-
holy weather this bangs anything I ever struck, north of the Horn if we are north of
it. For I'm blest if I know where we are--do you?"

It was an embarrassing question. I had been asked it very confidentially by my cap-
tain, long ago, and had been able to state that I didn't know; and had been discreet
enough not to go into any particulars; but this was the first time that any officer
of the ship had approached me with the matter. I said--

"Well, no, I'm not a sailor, but I am surprised to hear you say you don't know where
we are."

He was caught. It was his turn to be embarrassed. First he began to hedge, and vague-
ly let on that perhaps he did know, after all; but he made a lame fist of it, and
presently gave it up and concluded to be frank and take me into his confidence.

"I'm going to be honest with you, sir and don't give me away."

He put his mouth close to my ear and sheltered it against the howling wind with his
hand to keep from having to shout, and said impressively, "Not only I don't know
where we are, sir, but by God the captain himself don't know!"

I had met the captain's confession by pretending to be frightened and distressed at
having engaged a man who was ignorant of his business; and then he had changed his
note and told me he had only meant that he had lost his bearings in the thick wea-
ther a thing which would rectify itself as soon as he could get a glimpse of the
sun. But I was willing to let the mate tell me all he would, so long as I was not
"No, sir, he don't know where he is; lets on to, but he don't. I mean, he lets on
to the crew, and his daughters, and young Phillips t he purser, and of course to
you and your family, but here lately he don't let on any more to the chief mate
and me. And worried? I tell you he's worried plumb to his vitals."

"I must say I don't much like the look of this, Mr. Turner."

"Well, don't let on, sir; keep it to yourself maybe it'll come out all right; hope
it will. But you look at the facts just look at the facts. We sail north see? North-
and-by-east-half-east, to be exact. Noon the fourth day out, heading for Sable is-
land--ought to see it, weather rather thin for this voyage. Don't see it. Think the
dead reckoning ain't right, maybe. We bang straight along, all the afternoon. No
Sable island. Damned if we didn't run straight over it! It warn't there. What do
you think of that?"

"Dear me, it is awful--awful--if true."

"If true. Well, it is true. True as anything that ever was, I take my oath on it.
And then Greenland. We three banked our hopes on Greenland. Night before last we
couldn't sleep for uneasiness; just anxiety, you know, to see if Greenland was going
to be there. By the dead reckoning she was due to be in sight along anywhere from
five to seven in the morning, if clear enough. But we staid on deck all night. Of
course two of us had no business there, and had to scuttle out of the way whenever
a man came along, or they would have been suspicious. But five o'clock came, seven
o'clock, eight o'clock, ten o'clock, and at last twelve--and then the captain groan-
ed and gave in! He knew well enough that if there had been any Greenland left we'd
have knocked a corner off of it long before that."

"This is appalling!"

"You may hunt out a bigger word than that and it won't cover it, sir. And Lord, to
see the captain, gray as ashes, sweating and worrying over his chart all day yester-
day and all day to-day, and spreading his compasses here and spreading them there,
and getting suspicious of his chronometer, and damning the dead-reckoning--just suf-
fering death and taxes, you know, and me and the chief mate helping and suffering,
and that purser and the captain's oldest girl spooning and cackling around, just in
heaven! I'm a poor man, sir, but if I could buy out half of each of 'em's ignorance
and put it together and make it a whole, blamed if I wouldn't put up my last nickel
to do it, you hear me. Now--"

A wild gust of wind drowned the rest of his remark and smothered us in a fierce flur-
ry of snow and sleet. He darted away and disappeared in the gloom, but first I heard
his voice hoarsely shouting--

"Turn out, all hands, shorten sail!"

There was a rush of feet along the deck, and then the gale brought the dimmed sound
of far-off commands--

"Mizzen foretop halyards there--all clue-garnets heave and away--now then, with a
will--sheet home!"

And then the plaintive notes that told that the men were handling the kites--

"If you get there, before I do
Hi-ho-o-o, roll a man down;
If you get there before I do,
O, give a man time to roll a man down!"

By and by all was still again. Meantime I had shifted to the other side of the galley
to get out of the storm, and there Mr. Turner presently found me.

"That's a specimen," said he. "I've never struck any such weather anywheres. You are
bowling along on a wind that's as steady as a sermon, and just as likely to last, and
before you can say Jack Robinson the wind whips around from weather to lee, and if you
don't jump for it you'll have your canvas blown out of the cat-heads and sailing for
heaven in rags and tatters. I've never seen anything to begin with it. But then I've
never been in the middle of Greenland before--in a ship--middle of where it used to be,
I mean. Would it worry you if I was to tell you something, sir?"

"Why, no, I think not. What is it?"

"Let me take a turn up and down, first, to see if anybody's in earshot." When he came
back he said, "What should you think if you was to see a whale with hairy spider-legs
to it as long as the foretogallant backstay and as big around as the mainmast?"

I recognized the creature; I had seen it in the microscope. But I didn't say so. I
said?

"I should think I had a little touch of the jimjams."

"The very thing I thought, so help me! It was the third day out, at a quarter to five
in the morning. I was out astraddle of the bowsprit in the drizzle, bending on a scut-
tle-butt, for I don't trust that kind of a job to a common sailor, when all of a sud-
den that creature plunged up out of the sea the way a porpoise does, not a hundred
yards away--I saw two hundred and fifty feet of him and his fringes--and then he turned
in the air like a triumphal arch, shedding Niagaras of water, and plunged head first
under the sea with an awful swash of sound, and by that time we were close aboard him
and in another ten yards we'd have hit him. It was my belief that he tried to hit us;
but by the mercy of God he was out of practice. The lookout on the foc'sle was the
only man around, and thankfulI was, or there could have been a mutiny. He was asleep
on the binnacle--they always sleep on the binnacle, it's the best place to woke him
up and he said, "Good land, what's that, sir?" and I said, "It's nothing, but it might
have been, for any good a stump like you is for a lookout." I was pretty far gone, and
said I was sick, and made him help me onto the foc'sle; and then I went straight off
and took the pledge; for I had been going it pretty high for a week before we sailed,
and I made up my mind that I'd rather go dry the rest of my life than see the like of
that thing again."

"Well, I'm glad it was only the jimjams."

"Wait a minute, I ain't done. Of course I didn't enter it on the log--"

"Of course not--"

"For a man in his right mind don't put nightmares in the log. He only puts the word
'pledge' in, and takes credit for it if anybody inquires; and knows it will please the
captain, and hopes it'll get to the owners. Well, two days later the chief mate took
the pledge!"

"You don't mean it!"

"Sure as I'm standing here. I saw the word on the book. I didn't say anything, but I
felt encouraged. Now then, listen to this: day before yesterday I'm dumm'd if the cap-
tain didn't take the pledge!"

"Oh, come!"

"It's a true bill--I take my oath. There was the word. Then we begun to put this and
that together, and next we began to look at each other kind of significant and willing,
you know; and of course giving the captain the preceedence, for it wouldn't become us
to begin, and we nothing but mates. And so yesterday, sure enough, out comes the cap-
tain--and we called his hand. Said he was out astern in a snow-flurry about dawn, and
saw a creature shaped like a wood-louse and as big as a turreted monitor, go racing by
and tearing up the foam, in chase of a fat animal the size of an elephant and creased
like a caterpillar--and saw it dive after it and disappear; and so he begun to prepare
his soul for the pledge and break it to his entrails."

"It's terrible!"

"The pledge?--you bet your bottom dollar. If I--"

No, I don't mean the pledge; I mean it is terrible to be lost at a inong such strange,
uncanny brutes."

"Yes, there's something in that, too, I don't deny it. Well, the thing that the mate
saw was like one of these big long lubberly anal boats, and it was ripping along like
the Empire Express; and be look of it gave him the cold shivers, and so he begun to
arrange his earthly affairs and go for the pledge."

I"Turner, it is dreadful--dreadful. Still, good has been done; for these pledges--"

"Oh, they're off!"

"Off?"

"Cert'nly. Can't be jimjams; couldn't all three of us have them at ice, it ain't likely.
What do you want with a pledge when there in't any occasion for it? There he goes!"

He was gone like a shot, and the night swallowed him up. Now all of a sudden, with the
wind still blowing hard, the seas went down and the deck became as level as a billiard
table! Were all the laws of Nature suspended? It made my flesh creep; it was like being
in a haunted ship. Pretty soon the mate came back panting, a lid sank down on a cable-
tier, and said--

"Oh, this is an awful life; I don't think we can stand it long. There's too many hor-
ribles in it. Let me pant a little, I'm in a kind of a collapse."

"What's the trouble?"

"Drop down by me, sir--I mustn't shout. 'There--now you're all right." Then he said sor-
rowfully, "I reckon we've got to take it again."

"Take what?"

"The pledge."

"Why?"

"Did you see that thing go by?"

"What thing?"

"A man."

"No. What of it?"

"This is four times that I've seen it; and the mate has seen it, and so has the captain.
Haven't you ever seen it?"

"I suppose not. Is there anything extraordinary about it?"

"Extra-ordinary? Well, I should say!"

"How is it extraordinary?"

He said in an awed voice that was almost like a groan--

"Like this, for instance: you put your hand on him and he ain't there."

"What do you mean, Turner?"

"It's as true as I'm sitting here, I wish I may never stir. The captain's getting morbid
and religious over it, and says he wouldn't give a damn for ship and crew if that thing
stays aboard."

"You curdle my blood. What is the man like? Isn't it just one of the crew, that you
glimpse and lose in the dark?"

"You take note of this: it wears a broad slouch hat and a long cloak. Is that a whaler
outfit, I'll ask you? A minute ago I was as close to him as I am to you; and I made a grab
for him, and what did I get? A handful of air, that's all. There warn't a sign of him left."

"I do hope the pledge will dispose of it. It must be a work of the imagination, or the
crew would have seen it."

"We're afraid they have. There was a deal of whispering going on last night in the middle
watch. The captain dealt out grog, and got their minds on something else; but he is migh-
ty uneasy, because of course he don't want you or your family to hear about that man,
and would take my scalp if he knew what I'm doing now; and besides, if such a thing got
a start with the crew, there'd be a mutiny, sure."

"I'll keep quiet, of course; still, I think it must be an output of imaginations over-
strung by the strange fishes you think you saw; and I am hoping that the pledge--"

"I want to take it now. And I will."

"I'm witness to it. Now come to my parlor and I'll give you a cup of hot coffee and--"

"Oh, my goodness, there it is again!...It's gone....Lord, it takes a body's breath
...It's the jimjams I've got--I know it for sure. I want the coffee; it'll do me
good. If you could help me a little, sir--I feel as weak as Sabbath grog."

We groped along the sleety deck to my door and entered, and there in the bright
glare of the lamps sat (as I was half expecting) the man of the long cloak and the
slouch hat, on the sofa,--my friend the Superintendent of Dreams. I was annoyed,
for a moment, for of course I expected Turneit to make a jump at him, get nothing,
and be at once in a more miserable state than he already was. I reached for my cabin
door and closed it, so that Alice might not hear the scuffle and get a fright. But there
wasn't any. Turner went on talking, and took no notice of the Superintendent. I gave
the Superintendent a grateful look; and it was an honest one, for this thing of making
himself visible and scaring peoplecould do harm.

"Lord, it's good to be in the light, sir," said Turner, rustling comfortably in his yel-
low oilskins, "it lifts a person's spirits right up. I've noticed that these cussed
jimjam blatherskites ain't as apt to show up in the light as they are in the dark, ex-
cept when you've got the trouble in your attic pretty bad." Meantime we were dusting
the snow off each other with towels. "You're mighty well fixed here, sir--chairs and
carpets and rugs and tables and lamps books and everything lovely, and so warm and
comfortable and homy; and the roomiest parlor I ever struck in a ship, too. Land, hear
the wind, don't she sing! And not a sign of motion!--rip goes the sleet again!--ugly,
you bet!--and here? why here it's only just the more cosier on account of it. Dern that
jimjam, if I had him in here once I bet you I'd sweat him. Because I don't mind saying
that I don't grab at him as earnest as I want to, outside there, and ain't as disa-
pointed as I ought to be when I don't get him; but here in the light I ain't afraid of
no jimjam."

It made the Superintendent of Dreams smile a smile that was full of pious satisfaction
to hear him. I poured a steaming cup of coffee and handed it to Turner and told him to
sit where he pleased and make himself comfortable and at home; and before I could inter-
fere he had sat down in the Superintendent of Dreams' lap!--no, sat down through him.
It cost me a gasp, but only that, nothing more. [The] Superintendent of Dreams' head
was larger than Turner's, and surrounded it, and was a transparent spirit-head fronted
with a transparent spirit face; and this latter smiled at me as much as to say give my-
self no uneasiness, it is all right. Turner was smiling comfort and contentment at me
at the same time, and the double result was very curious, but I could tell the smiles
apart without trouble. The Superintendent of Dreams' body enclosed Turner's, but I
could see Turner through it, just as one sees objects through thin smoke. It was inter-
esting and pretty. Turner tasted his coffee and set the cup down in front of him with
a hearty--

"Now I call that prime! 'George, it makes me feel the way old Cap'n Jimmy Starkweather
did, I reckon, the first time he tasted grog after he'd been off his allowance three
years. The way of it was this. It was there in Fairhaven by New Bedford, away back in
the old early whaling days before I was born; but I heard about it the first day I was
born, and it was a ripe old tale then, because they keep only the one fleet of yarns
in commission down New Bedford-way, and don't ever re-stock and don't ever repair. And
I came near hearing it in old Cap'n Jimmy's own presence once, when I was ten years
old and he was ninety-two; but I didn't, because the man that asked Cap'n Jimmy to
tell about it got crippled and the thing didn't materialize. It was Cap'n Jimmy that
crippled him. Land, I thought I sh'd die! The very recollection of it--"

The very recollection of it so powerfully affected him that it shut off his speech
and he put his head back and spread his jaws and laughed himself purple in the face.
And while he was doing it the Superintendent of Dreams emptied the coffee into the
slop bowl and set the cup back where it was before. When the explosion had spent it-
self Turner swabbed his face with his handkerchief and said--

"There--that laugh has scoured me out and done me good; I hain't had such another
one--well, not since I struck this ship, now that's sure. I'll whet up and start over."

He took up his cup, glanced into it, and it was curious to observe the two faces
that were framed in the front of his head. Turner's was long and distressed; the
Superintendent of Dreams' was wide, and broken out of all shape with a convulsion
of silent laughter. After a little, Turner said in a troubled way--

"Im dumm'd if I recollect drinking that."

I didn't say anything, though I knew he must be expecting me to ty something. He
continued to gaze into the cup a while, then linked up wistfully and said--

"Of course I must have drunk it, but I'm blest if I can recollect whether I did or
not. Lemme see. First you poured it out, then I set iwn and put it before me here;
next I took a sup and said it was 1pod, and set it down and begun about old Cap'n
Jimmy--and hen--and then--" He was silent a moment, then said, "It's as far as I
can get. It beats me. I reckon that after that I was so kind of I till of my story
that I didn't notice whether I--." He stopped again, and there was something almost
pathetic about the appealing way in which he added, "But I did drink it, didn't I?
You see me do it--didn't you?"

I hadn't the heart to say no.

"Why, yes, I think I did. I wasn't noticing particularly, but it wems'to me that I
saw you drink it--in fact, I am about certain of it.

I was glad I told the lie, it did him so much good, and so lightened his spirits,
poor old fellow.

"Of course I done it! I'm such a fool. As a general thing I wouldn't care, and I
wouldn't bother anything about it; but when there's jimjams around the least little
thing makes a person suspicious, you know. If you don't mind, sir--thanks, ever so
much." He took a large sup of the new supply, praised it, set the cup down--leaning
forward and fencing it around with his arms, with a labored pretense of not notic-
ing that he was doing that--then said-

"Lemme see--where was I? Yes. Well, it happened like this. The Washingtonian Move-
ment started up in those old times, you know, and it was Father Matthew here and
Father Matthew there and Father Matthew yonder--nothing but Father Matthew and tem-
perance all over everywheres. And temperance societies? There was millions of them,
and everybody joined and took the pledge. We had one in New Bedford. Every last
whaler joined--captain, crew and all. All, down to old Cap'n Jimmy. He was an old
bach, his grog was his darling, he owned his ship and sailed her himself, he was
independent, and he wouldn't give in. So at last they gave it up and quit pestering
him. Time rolled along, and he got awful lonesome. There wasn't anybody to drink
with, you see, and it got unbearable. So finally the day he sailed for Bering
Strait he caved, and sent in his name to the society. Just as he was starting, his
mate broke his leg and stopped ashore and he shipped a stranger in his place from
down New York way. This fellow didn't belong to any society, and he went aboard
fixed for the voyage. Cap'n Jimmy was out three solid years; and all the whole
time he had the spectacle of that mate whetting up every day and leading a life
that was worth the trouble; and it nearly killed him for envy to see it. Made his
mouth water, you know, in a way that was pitiful. Well, he used to get out on the
peak of the bowsprit where it was private, and set there and cuss. It was his only
relief from his sufferings. Mainly he cussed himself; but when he had used up all
his words and couldn't think of any new rotten things to call himself, he would
turn his vocabulary over and start fresh and lay into Father Matthew and give him
down the banks; and then the society; and so put in his watch as satisfactory as he
could. Then he would count the days he was out, and try to reckon up about when he
could hope to get home and resign from the society and start in on an all-compen-
sating drunk that would make up for lost time. Well, when he was out three thou-
sand years--which was his estimate, you know, though really it was only three
years--he came rolling down the home-stretch with every rag stretched on his
poles. Middle of winter, it was, and terrible cold and stormy. He made the land-
fall just at sundown and had to stand watch on deck all night of course, and the
rigging was caked with ice three inches thick, and the yards was bearded with
icicles five foot long, and the snow laid nine inches deep on the deck and hur-
ricanes more of it being shoveled down onto him out of the skies. And so he plow-
ed up and down all night, cussing himself and Father Matthew and the society,
and doing it better than he ever done before; and his mouth was watering so, on
account of the mate whetting up right in his sight all the time, that every cuss
-word come out damp, and froze solid as it fell, and in his insufferable indig-
nation he would hit it a whack with his cane and knock it a hundred yards, and
one of them took the mate in the mouth and fetched away a rank of teeth and low-
ered his spirits considerable. He made the dock just at early breakfast time and
never waited to tie up, but jumped ashore with his jug in his hand and rushed for
the society's quarters like a deer. He met the seckatary coming out and yelled at
him-

" 'I've resigned my membership!--I give you just two minutes to scrape my name
off your log, d'ye hear?'

"And then the seckatary told him he'd been black-balled three years before--
hadn't ever been a member! Land, I can't hold in, it's coming again!"

He flung up his arms, threw his head back, spread his jaws, and made the ship
quake with the thunder of his laughter, while the Superintendent of Dreams em-
ptied the cup again and set it back in its place. When Turner came out of his
fit at last he was limp and exhausted, and sat mopping his tears away and break-
ing at times into little feebler and feebler barks and catches of expiring
laughter. Finally he fetched a deep sigh of comfort and satisfaction, and said--

'Well, it does do a person good, no mistake--on a voyage like this. I reckon--"

His eye fell on the cup. His face turned a ghastly white--"By God she's empty a-
gain!"

He jumped up and made a sprawling break for the door. I was frightened; I didn't
know what he might do--jump overboard, maybe. I sprang in front of him and bar-
red the way, saying, "Come, Turner, be a man, be a man! don't let your imagina-
tion run away with you like this"; ancr over his shoulder I threw a pleading
look at the Superintendent of Dreams, who answered my prayer and refilled the
cup from the coffee urn.

"Imagination you call it, sir! Can't I see?--with my own eyes? Let me go--don't
stop me--I can't stand it, I can't stand it!"

"Turner, be reasonable--you know perfectly well your cup isn't empty, and hasn't
been."

That hit him. A dim light of hope and gratitude shone in his eye, and he said in
a quivery voice--

"Say it again--and say it's true. Is it true? Honor bright--you wouldn't deceive
a poor devil that's--"

"Honor bright, man, I'm not deceiving you--look for your self."

Gradually he turned a timid and wary glance toward the table then the terror went
out of his face, and he said humbly--

"Well, you see I reckon I hadn't quite got over thinking i happened the first time,
and so maybe without me knowing it, than made me kind of suspicious that it would
happen again, becaus( the jimjams make you untrustful that way; and so, sure enough,
I didn't half look at the cup, and just jumped to the conclusion it had happened."
And talking so, he moved toward the sofa, hesi tated a moment, and then sat down
in that figure's body again. "But I'm all right, now, and I'll just shake these feel-
ings off and be a man, as you say."

The Superintendent of Dreams separated himself and moved along the sofa a foot or
two away from Turner. I was glad of that; it looked like a truce. Turner swallowed
his cup of coffee; I poured another; he began to sip it, the pleasant influence work-
ed a change, and soon he was a rational man again, and comfortable. Now a sea came
aboard, hit our deck-house a stunning thump, and went hissing and seething aft.

"Oh, that's the ticket," said Turner, "the dummdest weather that ever I went plea-
sure-excursioning in. And how did it get aboard?--You answer me that: there ain't
any motion to the ship. These mysteriousnesses--well, they just give me the cold
shudders. And that reminds me. Do you mind my calling your attention to another pe-
culiar thing or two?--on conditions as before--solid secrecy, you know."

"I'll keep it to myself. Go on."

"The Gulf Stream's gone to the devil!"

"What do you mean?"

"It's the fact, I wish I may never die. From the day we sailed till now, the water's
been the same temperature right along, I'll take my oath. The Gulf Stream don't exist
any more; she's gone to the devil."

"It's incredible, Turner! You make me gasp."

"Gasp away, if you want to; if things go on so, you ain't going to forget how for want
of practice. It's the wooliest voyage, take it by and large--why, look here! You are
a landsman, and there's no telling what a landsman can't overlook if he tries. For
instance, lye you noticed that the nights and days are exactly alike, and you
can't tell one from tother except by keeping tally?"

"Why, yes, I have noticed it in a sort of indifferent general way, but--"

"Have you kept a tally, sir?"

"No, it didn't occur to me to do it."

"I thought so. Now you know, you couldn't keep it in your head, because you and your
family are free to sleep as much as you like, and as it's always dark, you sleep a good
deal, and you are pretty irregular, naturally. You've all been a little seasick from the
start--tea and toast in your own parlor here--no regular time--order it as each of
you pleases. You see? You don't go down to meals--they would keep tally for you. So
you've lost your reckoning. I noticed it an hour ago."

"How?"

"Well, you spoke of to-night. It ain't to-night at all; it's just noon, now."

"The fact is, I don't believe I have often thought of its being day, since we left.
I've got. into the habit of considering it night all the time; it's the same with my
wife and the children."

"There it is, you see. Mr. Edwards, it's perfectly awful; now ain't it, when you come
to look at it?' Always night--and such dismal nights, too. It's like being up at the
pole in the winter time. And I'll ask you to notice another thing: this sky is as empty
as my sou-wester there."

"Empty?"

"Yes, sir. I know it. You can't get up a day, in a Christian country, that's so solid
black the sun can't make a blurry glow of some kind in the sky at high noon--now can
you?"

"No, you can't."

"Have you ever seen a suspicion of any such a glow in this sky?"

"Now that you mention it, I haven't."

He dropped his voice and said impressively--

"Because there ain't any sun. She's gone where the Gulf Stream twineth."

"Turner! Don't talk like that."

"It's confidential, or I wouldn't. And the moon. She's at the full --by the almanac she
is. Why don't she make a blur? Because there ain't any moon. And moreover--you might rake
this on-completed sky a hundred year with a drag-net and you'd never scoop a star! Why?
Because there ain't any. Now then, what is your opinion about all this?"

"Turner, it's so gruesome and creepy that I don't like to think about it--and I haven't
any. What is yours?"

He said, dismally--

"That the world has come to an end. Look at it yourself. Just look at the facts. Put
them together and add them up, and what have you got? No Sable island; no Greenland; no
Gulf Stream; no day, no proper night; weather that don't jibe with any sample known to
the Bureau; animals that would start a panic in any menagerie, chart no more use than a
horse-blanket, and the heavenly bodies gone to hell! And on top of it all, that jimjam
that I've put my hand on more than once and he warn't there--I'll swear it. The ship's
bewitched. You don't believe in the jim, and I've sort of lost faith myself, here in
the bright light; but if this cup of coffee was to--"

The cup began to glide slowly away, along the table. The hand that moved it was not vis-
ible to him. He rose slowly to his feet and stood trembling as if with an ague, his teeth
knocking together and his glassy eyes staring at the cup. It slid on and on, noiseless;
then it rose in the air, gradually reversed itself, poured its contents down the Super-
intendent's throat--I saw the dark stream trickling its way down through his hazy breast
--then it returned to the table, and without sound of contact, rested there. The mate
continued to stare at it for as much as a minute; then he drew a deep breath, took up
his sou-wester, and without looking to the right or the left, walked slowly out of the
room like one in a trance, muttering--

"I've got them--I've had the proof."

I said, reproachfully--

"Superintendent, why do you do that?"

"Do what?"

"Play these tricks."

"What harm is it?"

"Harm? It could make that poor devil jump overboard."

"No, he's not as far gone as that."

"For a while he was. He is a good fellow, and it was a pity to scare him so. However
there are other matters that I am more oncerned about just now."

"Can I help?"

"Why yes, you can; and I don't know any one else that can." "Very well, go on."

"By the dead-reckoning we have come twenty-three hundred miles."

"The actual distance is twenty-three-fifty."

"Straight as a dart in the one direction--mainly."

"Apparently."

"Why do you say apparently? Haven't we come straight?"

"Go on with the rest. What were you going to say?"

"This. Doesn't it strike you that this is a pretty large drop of water?"

"No. It is about the usual size--six thousand miles across."

"Six thousand miles!"

"Yes."

"Twice as far as from New York to Liverpool?"

"Yes."

"I must say it is more of a voyage than I counted on. And we are not a great deal more
than halfway across, yet. When shall we get in?"

"It will be some time yet."

"That is not very definite. Two weeks?"

"More than that."

I was getting a little uneasy.

"But how much more? A week?"

"All of that. More, perhaps."

"Why don't you tell me? A month more, do you think?"

"I am afraid so. Possibly two--possibly longer, even."

I was getting seriously disturbed by now.

"Why, we are sure to run out of provisions and water."

"No you'll not. I've looked out for that. It is what you are loaded with."

"Is that so? How does that come?"

"Because the ship is chartered for a voyage of discovery. Ostensibly she goes to England,
takes aboard some scientists, then sails for the South pole."

"I see. You are deep."

"I understand my business."

I turned the matter over in my mind a moment, then said--

"It is more of a voyage than I was expecting, but I am not of a worrying disposition, so I
do not care, so long as we are not going to suffer hunger and thirst."

"Make yourself easy, as to that. Let the trip last as long as it may, you will not run short
of food and water, I go bail for that."

"Ail right, then. Now explain this riddle to me. Why is it always night?"

"That is easy. All of the drop of water is outside the luminous circle of the microscope ex-
cept one thin and delicate rim of it. We are in the shadow; consequently in the dark."

"In the shadow of what?"

"Of the brazen end of the lens-holder."

"How can it cover such a spread with its shadow?"

"Because it is several thousand miles in diameter. For dimen￢sions, that is nothing. The glass
slide which it is pressing against, and which forms the bottom of the ocean we are sailing u-
pon, is thirty thousand miles long, and the length of the microscope barrel is a hundred and
twenty thousand. Now then, if--"

"You make me dizzy. I--"

"If you should thrust that glass slide through what you call the `great' globe, eleven thousand
miles of it would stand out on each side--it would be like impaling an orange on a table-knife.
And so--"

"It gives me the head-ache. Are these the fictitious proportions which we and our surroundings
and belongings have acquired by bring reduced to microscopic objects?"

"They are the proportions, yes--but they are not fictitious. You do not notice that you yourself
are in any way diminished in size, do you?"

"No, I am my usual size, so far as I can see."

"The same with the men, the ship and everything?"

"Yes--all natural."

"Very good; nothing but the laws and conditions have undergone a change. You came from a small
and very insignificant world. I lie one you are in now is proportioned according to microscopic
standards--that is to say, it is inconceivably stupendous and imposing."

It was food for thought. There was something overpowering in he situation, something sublime.
It took me a while to shake off the spell and drag myself back to speech. Presently I said--

"I am content; I do not regret the voyage--far from it. I would not change places with any man
in that cramped little world. But tell me--is it always going to be dark?"

"Not if you ever come into the luminous circle under the lens. Indeed you will not find that
dark!"

"If we ever. What do you mean by that? We are making steady good time; we are cutting across
this sea on a straight course."

"Apparently."

"There is no apparently about it."

"You might be going around in a small and not rapidly widening circle."

"Nothing of the kind. Look at the tell-tale compass over your head."

"I see it."

"We changed to this easterly course to satisfy--well, to satisfy everybody but me. It is a pre-
tense of aiming for England--in a drop of water! Have you noticed that needle before?"

"Yes, a number of times."

"To-day, for instance?"

"Yes--often."

"Has it varied a jot?"

"Hasn't it always kept the place appointed for it--from the start?"

"Yes, always."

"Very well. First we sailed a northerly course; then tilted easterly; and now it is more so. How
is that going around in a circle?"

He was silent. I put it at him again. He answered with lazy indifference--

"I merely threw out the suggestion."

"All right, then; cornered; let it stand at that. Whenever you happen to think of an argument in
support of it, I shall be glad to hear about it."

He did not like that very well, and muttered something about my being a trifle airy. I retorted a
little sharply, and followed it up by finding fault with him again for playing tricks on Turner.
He said Turner called him a blatherskite. I said--

"No matter; you let him alone, from this out. And moreover, stop appearing to people--stop it en-
tirely."

His face darkened. He said--

"I would advise you to moderate your manner. I am not used to it, and I am not pleased with it."

The rest of my temper went, then. I said, angrily--

"You may like it or not, just as you choose. And moreover, if my style doesn't suit you, you can
end the dream as soon as you please --right now, if you like."

He looked me steadily in the eye for a moment, then said, with deliberation--

"The dream? Are you quite sure it is a dream?" It took my breath away.

"What do you mean? Isn't it a dream?"

He looked at me in that same way again; and it made my blood chilly, this time. Then he said--

"You have spent your whole life in this ship. And this is real life. Your other life was the dream!"

It was as if he had hit me, it stunned me so. Still looking at me, his lip curled itself into a
mocking smile, and he wasted away like a mist and disappeared.

I sat a long time thinking uncomfortable thoughts.

We are strangely made. We think we are wonderful creatures. Part of the time we think that, at
any rate. And during that interval we consider with pride our mental equipment, with its penetra-
tion, its power of analysis, its ability to reason out clear conclusions from fused facts, and
all the lordly rest oft and then comes a rational interval and disenchants us. Disenchants us
and lays us bare to ourselves, and we see that intellectually we are really no great things; that
we seldom really know the thing we think we know; that our best-built certainties are but sand-
houses and subject to damage from any wind of doubt that blows.

So little a time before, I knew that this voyage was a dream, and nothing more; a wee little puff
or two of doubt had blown against that certainty, unhelped by fact or argument, and already it
was ksolving away. It seemed an incredible thing, and it hurt my pride of intellect, but it had
to be confessed.

When I came to consider it, these ten days had been such intense realities!--so intense that by
comparison the life I had lived before them seemed distant, indistinct, slipping away and fading
lit out in a far perspective exactly as a dream does when you sit at breakfast trying to caack
its details. I grew steadily more and more nervous and uncomfortable--and a little frightened,
though I would not quite acknowledge this to myself.

Then came this disturbing thought: if this transformation goes on, how am I going to conceal it
from my wife? Suppose she should say to me, "Henry, there is something the matter with you, you
are acting strangely; something is on your mind that you are concealing from me; tell me about
it, let me help you"--what answer could I make?

I was bound to act strangely if this went on--bound to bury myself in deeps of troubled thought;
I should not be able to help it. She had a swift eye to notice, where her heart was concerned,
and a sharp intuition, and I was an impotent poor thing in her hands when I had things to hide
and she had struck the trail.

I have no large amount of fortitude, staying power. When there is a fate before me I cannot rest
easy until I know what it is. I am not able to wait. I want to know, right away. So, I would
call Alice, now, and take the consequences. If she drove me into a corner and I found I could
not escape, I would act according to my custom--come out and tell her the truth. She had a bet-
ter head than mine, and a surer instinct in grouping facts and getting their meaning out of
them. If I was drifting into dangerous waters, now, she would be sure to detect it and as sure
to set me right and save me. I would call her, and keep out of the corner if I could; if I
couldn't, why--I couldn't, that is all. She came, refreshed with sleep, and looking her best
self: that is to say, looking like a girl of nineteen, not a matron of twenty-five; she wore a
becoming wrapper, or tea gown, or whatever it is called, and it was trimmed with ribbons and limp
stuff--lace, I suppose; and she had her hair balled up and nailed to its place with a four-prong-
ed tortoise-shell comb. She brought a basket of pink and gray crewels with her, for she was cro-
cheting a jacket--for the cat, probably, judging by the size of it. She sat down on the sofa and
set the basket on the table, expecting to have a chance to get to work by and by; not right away,
because a kitten was curled up in it asleep, fitting its circle snugly, and the repose of the
children's kittens was a sacred thing and not to be disturbed. She said--

"I noticed that there was no motion--it was what waked me, I think--and I got up to enjoy it, it
is such a rare thing."

"Yes, rare enough, dear: we do have the most unaccountably strange weather."

"Do you think so, Henry? Does it seem strange weather to you?"

She looked so earnest and innocent that I was rather startled, and a little in doubt as to what
to say. Any sane person could see that it was perfectly devilish weather and crazy beyond im-
agination, and how could she feel uncertain about it?

"Well, Alice, I may be putting it too strong, but I don't think so; I think a person may call
our weather by any hard name he pleases and be justified."

"Perhaps you are right, Henry. I have heard the sailors talk the same way about it, but I did
not think that that meant much, they speak so extravagantly about everything. You are not al
ways extravagant in your speech--often you are, but not always--and so it surprised me a lit-
tle to hear you." Then she added tranquilly and musingly, "I don't remember any different
weather."

It was not quite definite.

"You mean on this voyage, Alice."

"Yes, of course. Naturally. I haven't made any other."

She was softly stroking the kitten--and apparently in her right mind. I said cautiously, and
with seeming indifference--

"You mean you haven't made any other this year. But the time we went to Europe--well, that
was very different weather."

"The time we went to Europe, Henry?"

"Certainly, certainly--when Jessie was a year old."

She stopped stroking the kitty, and looked at me inquiringly.

"I don't understand you, Henry."

She was not a joker, and she was always truthful. Her remark blew another wind of doubt upon
my wasting sand-edifice of certainty. Had I only dreamed that we went to Europe? It seemed a
good idea to put this thought into words.

"Come, Alice, the first thing you know you will be imagining that we went to Europe in a
dream."

She smiled, and said--

"Don't let me spoil it, Henry, if it is pleasant to you to think we went. I will consider that
we did go, and that I have forgotten it."

"But Alice dear we did go!"

"But Henry dear we didn't go!"

She had a good head and a good memory, and she was always truthful. My head had been injured by
a fall when I was a boy, and the physicians had said at the time that there could be ill effects
from it some day. A cold wave struck me, now; perhaps the effects had come. I was losing confi-
dence in the European trip. However, I thought I would make another try.

"Alice, I will give you a detail or two; then maybe you will remember."

"A detail or two from the dream?"

"I am not at all sure that it was a dream; and five minutes ago I was sure that it wasn't. It
was seven years ago. We went over in the Batavia. Do you remember the Batavia?"

"I don't, Henry."

"Captain Moreland. Don't you remember him?"

"To me he is a myth, Henry."

"Well, it beats anything. We lived two or three months in London, then six weeks in a private
hotel in George Street, Edinburgh--Veitch's. Come!"

"It sounds pleasant, but I have never heard of these things before, Henry."

"And Doctor John Brown, of Rab and His Friends--you were ill, and he came every day; and when you
were well again he still came every day and took us all around while he paid his visits, and we
waited in his carriage while he prescribed for his patients. And he was so dear and lovely. You
must remember all that, Alice."

"None of it, dear; it is only a dream."

"Why, Alice, have you ever had a dream that remained as distinct as that, and which you could re-
member so long?"

"So long? It is more than likely that you dreamed it last night." "No indeed! It has been in my
memory seven years."

"Seven years in a dream, yes--it is the way of dreams. They put seven years into two minutes,
without any trouble--isn't it so?"

I had to acknowledge that it was.

"It seems almost as if it couldn't have been a dream, Alice; it seems as if you ought to remember
it."

"Wait! It begins to come back to me." She sat thinking a while, nodding her head with satisfaction
from time to time. At last she said, joyfully, "I remember almost the whole of it, now."

"Good!"

"I am glad I got it back. Ordinarily I remember my dreams very well; but for some reason this one--"

"This one, Alice? Do you really consider it a dream, yet?"

"I don't consider anything about it, Henry, I know it; I know it positively."

The conviction stole through me that she must be right, since she felt so sure. Indeed I almost
knew she was. I was privately becoming ashamed of myself now, for mistaking a clever illusion for
a fact. So I gave it up, then, and said I would let it stand as a dream. Then I added--

"It puzzles me; even now it seems almost as distinct as the microscope.

"Which microscope?"

"Well, Alice, there's only the one."

"Very well, which one is that?"

"Bother it all, the one we examined this ocean in, the other day."

"Where?"

"Why, at home--of course."

"What home?"

"Alice, it's provoking--why, our home. In Springport."

"Dreaming again. I've never heard of it."

That was stupefying. There was no need of further beating about the bush; I threw caution aside,
and came out frankly. "Alice, what do you call the life we are leading in this ship? Isn't it a dream?"

She looked at me in a puzzled way and said--

"A dream, Henry? Why should I think that?"

"Oh, dear me, I don't know! I thought I did, but I don't. Alice, haven't we ever had a home? Don't
you remember one?"

"Why, yes--three. That is, dream-homes, not real ones. I have never regarded them as realities."

"Describe them."

She did it, and in detail; also our life in them. Pleasant enough homes, and easily recognizable
by me. I could also recognize an average of 2 out of 7 of the episodes and incidents which she
threw in. Then I described the home and the life which (as it appeared to me) we had so recently
left. She recognized it--but only as a dream-home. She remembered nothing about the microscope
and the children's party. I was in a corner; but it was not the one which I had arranged for.

"Alice, if those were dream-homes, how long have you been in this ship?--you say this is the only
voyage you have ever made."

"I don't know. I don't remember. It is the only voyage we have made--unless breaking it to pick up
this crew of strangers in place of the friendly dear men and officers we had sailed with so many
years makes two voyages of it. How I do miss them--Captain Hall, and Williams the sail-maker, and
Storrs the chief mate, and--"

She choked up, and the tears began to trickle down her cheeks. Soon she had her handkerchief out
and was sobbing.

I realized that I remembered those people perfectly well. Damnation! I said to myself, are we real
creatures in a real world, all of a sudden, and have we been feeding on dreams in an imaginary one
since nobody knows when--or how is it? My head was swimming.

"Alice! Answer me this. Do you know the Superintendent of Dreams?"

"Certainly."

"Have you seen him often?"

"Not often, but several times."

When did you see him first?"

"The time that Robert the captain's boy was eaten."

"Eaten?"

"Yes. Surely you haven't forgotten that?"

"But I have, though. I never heard of it before." (I spoke the II nth. For the moment I could not
recal the incident.)

Her face was full of reproach.

"I am sorry, if that is so. He was always good to you. If you are jesting, I do not think it is in
good taste."

"Now don't treat me like that, Alice, I don't deserve it. I am not le,,ting, I am in earnest. I mean
the boy's memory no offence, but although I remember him I do not remember the circumstance--I
swear it. Who ate him?"

"Do not be irreverent, Henry, it is out of place. It was not a who at all."

"What then--a which?"

"Yes."

"What kind of a which?"

"A spider-squid. Now you remember it I hope."

"Indeed and deed and double-deed I don't, Alice, and it is the real truth. Tell me about it, please."

"I suppose you see, now, Henry, what your memory is worth. You can remember dream-trips to Europe
well enough, but things in real life--even the most memorable and horrible things--pass out of your
memory in twelve years. There is something the matter with your mind."

It was very curious. How could I have forgotten that tragedy? It must have happened; she was never
mistaken in her facts, and she never spoke with positiveness of a thing which she was in any degree
uncertain about. And this tragedy--twelve years ago--

"Alice, how long have we been in this ship?"

"Now how can I know, Henry? It goes too far back. Always, for all I know. The earliest thing I can
call to mind was papa's death by the sun-heat and mamma's suicide the same day. I was four years
old, then. Surely you must remember that, Henry."

"Yes...Yes. But it is so dim. Tell me about it--refresh my memory."

"Why, you must remember that we were in the edge of a great white glare once for a little while--
a day, or maybe two days,--only a little while, I think, but I remember it, because it was the only
time I was ever out of the dark, and there was a great deal of talk of it for long afterwards--why,
Henry, you must remember a wonderful thing like that."

"Wait. Let me think." Gradually, detail by detail the whole thing came back to me; and with it the
boy's adventure with the spider-squid; and then I recalled a dozen other incidents, which Alice
verified as incidents of our ship-life, and said I had set them forth correctly.

It was a puzzling thing--my freaks of memory; Alice's, too. By testing, it was presently manifest
that the vacancies in my ship-life memories were only apparent, not real; a few words by way of
reminder enabled me to fill them up, in almost all cases, and give them clarity and vividness.
What had caused these temporary lapses? Didn't these very lapses indicate that the ship-life was
a dream, and not real?

It made Alice laugh.

I did not see anything foolish in it, or anything to laugh at, and I told her so. And I reminded
her that her own memory was as bad as mine, since many and many a conspicuous episode of our
land-life was gone from her, even so striking an incident as the water-drop exploration with
the microscope--

It made her shout.

I was wounded; and said that if I could not be treated with respect I would spare her the burden
of my presence and conversation. She stopped laughing, at once, and threw her arms about my neck.
She said she would not have hurt me for the world, but she supposed I was joking; it was quite
natural to think I was in earnest in talking gravely about this and that and the other phantom
as if it were a reality.

"But Alice I was in earnest, and I am in earnest. Look at it--,mine it. If the land-life was a
dream-life, how is it that you ember so much of it exactly as I remember it?"

She was amused again, inside--I could feel the quiver; but there no exterior expression of it,
for she did not want to hurt me again.

'Dear heart, throw the whole matter aside! Stop puzzling over it isn't worth it. It is perfect-
ly simple. It is true that I remember a little of that dream-life just as you remember it--but
that is an accident; the rest of it--and by far the largest part--does not respond with your rec-
ollections. And how could it? People can't be expected to remember each other's dreams, but
only their own. You have put me into your land-dreams a thousand times, but I didn't always
know I was there; so how could I remember it? Also I have put you into my land-dreams a thou-
sand times when you didn't know it--and the natural result is that when I name the circum-
stances you don't always recall them. But how different it is with this real life, this genu-
ine life in the ship! Our recollections of it are just alike. You have been forgetting epi-
sodes of it to-day--I don't know why; it has surprised me and puzzled me--but the lapse
was only temporary; your memory soon rallied again. Now it hasn't rallied in the case of
land-dreams of mine--in most cases it hasn't. And it's not going to, Henry. You can be sure
of that."

She stopped, and tilted her head up in a thinking attitude and began to unconsciously tap her
teeth with the ivory knob of a crochet needle. Presently she said, "I think I know what is
the matter. I have been neglecting you for ten days while I have been grieving for our old
shipmates and pretending to be seasick so that I might indulge myself with solitude; and
here is the result--you haven't been taking exercise enough."

I was glad to have a reason--any reason that would excuse my memory--and I accepted this one,
and made confession. There was no truth in the confession, but I was already getting handy
with these evasions. I was a little sorry for this, for she had always, trusted my word,
and I had honored this trust by telling her the truth many a time when it was a sharp sac-
rifice to me to do it. She looked me over with gentle reproach in her eye, and said--

"Henry, how can you. be so naughty? I watch you so faithfully and make you take such good
care of your health that you owe my the grace to do my office for me when for any fair rea-
son I am for a while not on guard. When have you boxed with George last?"

What an idea it was! It was a good place to make a mistake, and I came near to doing it.
It was on my tongue's end to say that I had never boxed with anyone; and as for boxing with
a colored man-servant--and so on; but I kept back my remark, and in place of it tried to
look like a person who didn't know what to say. It was easy to do, arid I probably did it
very well.

"You do not say anything, Henry. I think it is because you have a good reason. When have
you fenced with him? Henry, you arc avoiding my eye. Look up. Tell me the truth: have you
fenced with him a single time in the last ten days?"

So far as I was aware I knew nothing about foils, and had never handled them; so I was a-
ble to answer--

"I will be frank with you, Alice--I haven't."

"I suspected it. Now, Henry, what can you say?"

I was getting some of my wits back, now, and was not altogether unprepared, this time.

"Well, Alice, there hasn't been much fencing weather, and when there was any, I--well, I
was lazy, and that is the shameful truth."

"There's a chance now, anyway, and you mustn't waste it. Take off your coat and things."

She rang for George, then she got up and raised the sofa-seat and began to fish out box-
ing-gloves, and foils and masks from the locker under it, softly scolding me all the
while. George put his head in, noted the preparations, then entered and put himself in
boxing trim. It was his turn to take the witness stand, now.

"George, didn't I tell you to keep up Mr. Henry's exercises just the same as if I were
about?"

"Yes, madam, you did."

"Why by haven't you done it?"

George chuckled, and showed his white teeth and said! "Bless yo' soul, honey, I dasn't."

"Why?"

"Because the first time I went to him--it was that Tuesday, you I flow, when it was ca'm
--he wouldn't hear to it, and said he didn't ,1 ant no exercise and warn't going to take
any, and tole me to go Ring. Well, I didn't stop there, of course, but went to him agin,
every now and then, trying to persuade him, tell at last he let into tie" (he stopped and
comforted himself with an unhurried laugh ,wver the recollection of it,) "and give me a
most solid good cussing, and tole me if I come agin he'd take and thow me overboard--
there, ain't that so, Mr. Henry?"

My wife was looking at me pretty severely.

"Henry, what have you to say to that?"

It was my belief that it hadn't happened, but I was steadily losing confidence in my mem-
ory; and moreover my new policy of recollecting whatever anybody required me to recollect
seemed the safest course to pursue in my strange and trying circumstances; so I said--

"Nothing, Alice--I did refuse."

"Oh, I'm not talking about that; of course you refused--George had already said so."

"Oh, I see."

"Well, why do you stop?"

"Why do I stop?"

"Yes. Why don't you answer my question?"

"Why, Alice, I've answered it. You asked me--you asked me--What is it I haven't answered?"

"Henry, you know very well. You broke a promise; and you are trying to talk around it and
get me away from it; but I am not going to let you. You know quite well you promised me
you wouldn't swear any more in calm weather. And it is such a little thing to do. It is
hardly ever calm, and--"

"Alice, dear, I beg ever so many pardons! I had clear forgotten it; but I won't offend
again, I give you my word. Be good to me, and forgive."

She was always ready to forgive, and glad to do it, whatever my crime might be; so things
were pleasant again, now, and smooth and happy. George was gloved and skipping about in
an imaginary fight, by this time, and Alice told me to get to work with him. She took
pencil and paper and got ready to keep game. I stepped forward to position--then a cur-
ious thing happened: I seemed to remember a thousand boxing-bouts with George, the whole
boxing art came flooding in upon me, and I knew just what to do! I was a prey to no in-
decisions, I had no trouble. We fought six rounds, I held my own all through, and I fin-
ally knocked George out. I was not astonished; it seemed a familiar experience. Alice
showed no surprise, George showed none; apparently it was an old story to them.

The same thing happened with the fencing. I suddenly knew that I was an experienced old
fencer; I expected to get the victory, and when I got it, it seemed but a repetition of
something which had happened numberless times before.


We decided to go down to the main saloon and take a regular meal in the regular way--the
evening meal. Alice went away to dress. Just as I had finished dressing, the children
came romping in, warmly and prettily clad, and nestled up to me, one on each side, on
the sofa, and began to chatter. Not about a former home; no, not a word of that, but o-
nly about this ship-home and its concerns and its people. After a little I threw out
some questions--feelers. They did not understand. Finally I asked them if they had
known no home but this one. Jessie said, with some little enthusiasm--

"Oh, yes, dream-homes. They are pretty--some of them." Then, with a shrug of her shoul-
ders, "But they are so queer!"

"How, Jessie?"

"Well, you know, they have such curious things in them; and they fade, and don't stay.
Bessie doesn't like them at all."

"Why don't you, Bessie?"

"Because they scare me so."

"What is it that scares you?"

"Oh, everything, papa. Sometimes it is so light. That hurts my eyes. And it's too many
lamps--little sparkles all over, up high, and large ones that are dreadful. They could
fall on me, you know."

"But I am not much afraid," said Jessie, "because mamma says they are not real, and if
they did fall they wouldn't hurt."

"What else do you see there besides the lights, Bessie?"

"Ugly things that go on four legs like our cat, but bigger."

"Horses?"

"I forget names."

"Describe them, dear."

"I can't, papa. They are not alike; they are different kinds; and when I wake up I can't
just remember the shape of them, they are go dim."

"And I wouldn't wish to remember them," said Jessie, "they make me feel creepy. Don't
let's talk about them, papa, let's talk about something else."

"That's what I say, too," said Bessie.

So then we talked about our ship. That interested them. They cared for no other home,
real or unreal, and wanted no better one. They were innocent witnesses and free from
prejudice.

When we went below we found the roomy saloon well lighted and brightly and prettily fur-
nished, and a very comfortable and inviting place altogether. Everything seemed substan-
tial and genuine, there was nothing to suggest that it might be a work of the imagination.

At table the captain (Davis) sat at the head, my wife at his right with the children, I
at his left, a stranger at my left. The rest of the company consisted of Rush Phillips,
purser, aged 27; his sweetheart the Captain's daughter Lucy, aged 22; her sister Connie
(short for Connecticut), aged 10; Arnold Blake, surgeon, 25; Harvey Pratt, naturalist,
36; at the foot sat Sturgis the chief mate, aged 35, and completed the snug assemblage.
Stewards waited upon the general company, and George and our nurse Germania had charge
of our family. Germania was not the nurse's name, but that was our name for her because
it was shorter than her own. She was 28 years old, and had always been with us; and so
had George. George was 3O, and had once been a slave, according to my record, but I was
losing my grip upon that, now, and was indeed getting shadowy and uncertain about all my
traditions.

The talk and the feeding went along in a natural way, I could find nothing unusual about
it anywhere. The captain was pale, and had a jaded and harassed look, and was subject to
little fits of absence of mind; and these things could be said of the mate, also, but
this was all natural enough considering the grisly time they had been having, and cer-
tainly there was nothing about it to suggest that they were dream-creatures or that
their troubles were unreal.

The stranger at my side was about 45 years old, and he had the half-subdued, half-resign-
ed look of a man who had been under a burden of trouble a long time. He was tall and thin;
he had a bushy black head, and black eyes which burned when he was interested, but were
dull and expressionless when his thoughts were far away--and that happened every time he
dropped out of the conversation. He forgot to eat, then, his hands became idle, his dull
eye fixed itself upon his plate or upon vacancy, and now and then he would draw a heavy
sigh out of the depths of his breast.

These three were exceptions; the others were chatty and Ghee ful, and they were like
a pleasant little family party together Phillips and Lucy were full of life, and quite
happy, as becam engaged people; and their furtive love-passages had everybody's' sym-
pathy and approval. Lucy was a pretty creature, and simple in, her ways and kindly,
and Phillips was a blithesome and attractiv young fellow. I seemed to be familiarly
acquainted with everybody, I didn't quite know why. That is, with everybody except
the stranger at my side; and as he seemed to know me well, I had to let on to know
him, lest I cause remark by exposing the fact that I didn't know him. I was already
tired of being caught up for ignorance at every turn.

The captain and the mate managed to seem comfortable enough until Phillips raised the
subject of the day's run, the position of the ship, distance out, and so on; then they
became irritable, and sharp of speech, and were unkinder to the young fellow than the
case seemed to call for. His sweetheart was distressed to see him so treated before
all the company, and she spoke up bravely in his defence and reproached her father
for making an offence out of soharmless a thing. This only brought her into trouble,
and procured for her so rude a retort that she was consumed with shame, and left the
table crying.

The pleasure was all gone, now; everybody felt personally affronted and wantonly a-
bused. Conversation ceased and an uncomfortable silence fell upon the company; through
it one could hear the wailing of the wind and the dull tramp of the sailors and the
muffled words of command overhead, and this made the silence all the more dismal.
The dinner was a failure. While it was still unfinished the company began to break
up and slip out, one after another; and presently none was left but me.

I sat long, sipping black coffee and smoking. And thinking; groping about in my dim-
ming land-past. An incident of my American life would rise upon me, vague at first,
then grow more distinct and articulate, then sharp and clear; then in a moment it
was gone, and in its place was a dull and distant image of some long-past episode
whose theatre was this ship--and then it would develop, and clarify, and become
strong and real. It was fascinating, enchanting, this spying among the elusive mys-
teries of my bewitched memory, and I went up to my parlor and continued it, with
the help of punch and pipe, hour after hour, as long as I could keep awake. With
this curious result: that the main incidents of both my lives were now recovered,
but only those of one of them persistently gathered strength and vividness--our
life in the ship! Those of our land-life were good enough, plain enough, but in
minuteness of detail they fell perceptibly short of those others; and in matters
of feeling--joy, grief, physical pain, physical pleasure--immeasurably short!

Some mellow notes floated to my ear, muffled by the moaning wind--six bells in the
morning watch. So late! I went to bed. When I woke in the middle of the so-called
day the first thing I thought of was my night's experience. Already my land-life
had faded a little--but not the other.



BOOK II


CHAPTER I



I HAVE long ago lost Book I, but it is no matter. It served its purpose--writing it was
an entertainment to me. We found out that our little boy set it adrift on the wind,
sheet by sheet, to see if it would fly. It did. And so two of us got entertainment out
of it. I have often been minded to begin Book II, but natural indolence and the plea-
sant life of the ship interfered.

There have been little happenings, from time to time. The principal one, for us of the
family, was the birth of our Harry, which stands recorded in the log under the date of
June 8, and happened about three months after we shipped the present crew, the poor
devils! They still think we are bound for the South Pole, and that we are a long time
on the way. It is pathetic, after a fashion. They regard their former life in the World
as their real life and this present one as--well, they hardly know what; but sometimes
they get pretty tired of it, even at this late day. We hear of it now and then through
the officers--mainly Turner, who is a puzzled man.

During the first four years we had several mutinies, but things have been reasonably
quiet during the past two. One of them had really a serious look. It occurred when Harry
was a month old, and at an anxious time, for both he and his mother were weak and ill.
The master spirit of it was Stephen Bradshaw the carpenter, of course--a hard lot I know,
and a born mutineer I think.

In those days I was greatly troubled, for a time, because my wife's memories still ref-
used to correspond with mine. It had been an ideal life, and naturally it was a distress
not to be able to live it over again in its entirety with her in our talks. At first she
did not feel about it as I did, and said she could not understand my interest in those
dreams, but when she found how much I took the matter to heart, and that to me the dreams
had come to have a seeming of reality and were freighted with tender and affectionate im-
pressions besides, she began to change her mind and wish she could go back in spirit with
me to that mysterious land. And so she tried to get back that forgotten life. By my help,
and by patient probing and searching of her memory she succeeded. Gradually it all came
back, and her reward was sufficient. We now had the recollections of two lives to draw
upon, and the result was a double measure of happiness for us. We even got the children's
former lives back for them--with a good deal of difficulty--next the servants'. It made a
new world for us all, and an entertaining one to explore. In the beginning George the col-
ored man was an unwilling subject, because by heredity he was superstitious, and believed
that no good could come of meddling with dreams; but when he presently found that no harm
came of it his disfavor dissolved away.

Talking over our double-past--particularly our dream-past--became our most pleasant and sat-
isfying amusement, and the search for missing details of it our most profitable labor. One
day when the baby was about a month old, we were at this pastime in our parlor. Alice was
ly'n on the sofa, propped with pillows--she was by no means well. It was a still and solemn
black day, and cold; but the lamps made the place cheerful, and as for comfort, Turner had
taken care of that; for he had found a kerosene stove with an isng-glass front among the
freight, and had brought it up and I 'shed it fast and fired it up, and the warmth it gave
and the red glow it made took awa all chill and cheerlessness from the parlor and made it
homelike. The little girls were out somewhere with George and Delia (the maid).

Alice and I were talking about the time, twelve years before, when Captain Hall's boy had
his tragic adventure with the spider-squid, and I was reminding her that she had misstated
the case when she mentioned it to me, once. She had said the squid ate the boy. Out of my
his tragic adventure with the spider-squid, and I was reminding her that she had misstated
the case when she mentioned it to me, once. She had said the squid ate the boy. Out of my
memory I could call back all the details, now, and I remembered that the boy was only badly
hurt, not eaten.

For a month or two the ship's company had been glimpsing vast animals at intervals of a
few days, and at first the general terror was so great that the men openly threaten-
ed, on two occasions, to seize the ship unless the captain turned back; but by a resolute
bearing he tided over the difficulty; and by pointing out to the men that the animals had
shown no disposition to attack the ship and might therefore be considered harmless, he qui-
eted them down and restored order. It was good grit in the captain, for privately he was
very much afraid of the animals himself and had but a shady opinion of their innocence. He
kept his gatlings in order, and had gun-watches, which he changed with the other watches.

I had just finished correcting_ Alice's history of the boy's adventure with the squid when
the ship, plowing through a perfectly smooth sea, went heeling away down to starboard and
stayed there! The floor slanted like a roof, and every loose thing in the room slid to the
floor and glided down against the bulkhead. We were greatly alarmed, of course. Next we
heard a rush of feet along the deck and an uproar of cries and shoutings, then the rush of
feet coming back, with a wilder riot of cries. Alice exclaimed--

"Co find the children--quick!"

I sprang out and started to run aft through the gloom, and then I saw the fearful sight
which I had seen twelve years before when that boy had had his shocking misadventure. For
the moment I turned the corner of the deck-house and had an unobstructed view astern, there
it was--apparently two full moons rising close over the stern of the ship and lighting the
decks and rigging with a sickly yellow glow--the eyes of the colossal squid. His vast beak
and head were plain to be seen, swelling up like a hill above our stem; he had flung one
tentacle forward and gripped it around the peak of the main-mast and was pulling the ship
over; he had gripped the mizzen-mast with another, and a couple more were writhing about
dimly away above our heads searching for something to take hold of. The stench of his
breath was suffocating everybody.

I was like the most of the crew, helpless with fright; but the captain and the officers
kept their wits and courage. The gatlings on the starboard side could not be used, but
the four on the port side were brought to bear, and inside of a minute they had poured
more than two thousand bullets into those moons. That blinded the creature, and he let
go; and by squirting a violent Niagara of water out of his mouth which tore the sea into
a tempest of foam he shot himself backward three hundred yards and the ship forward as
far, drowning the deck with a racing flood which swept many of the men off their feet
and crippled some, and washed all loose deck-plunder overboard. For five minutes we could
hear him thrashing about, there in the dark, and lashing the sea with his giant tentacles
in his pain; and now and then his moons showed, then vanished again; and all the while
we were rocking and plunging in the booming seas he made. Then he quieted down. We took
a thankful full breath, believing him dead.

Now I thought of the children, and ran all about inquiring for them, but no one had seen
them. I thought they must have been washed overboard, and for a moment my heart stopped
beating. Then the hope came that they had taken refuge with their mother; so I ran there;
and almost swooned when I entered the place, for it was vacant. I ran out shouting the
alarm, and after a dozen steps almost ran over, her. She was lying against the bulwarks
drenched and insensible.The surgeon and young Phillips helped me carry her in; then the
surgeon and I began to work over her and Phillips rushed away to start the hunt for the
children. It was all of half an hour before she showed any sign of life; then her eyes
opened with a dazed and wondering look in them, then they recognized me and into them
shot a ghastly terror.

"The children! the children!" she gasped; and I, with the heart all gone out of me, an-
swered with such air of truth as I could assume--

"They are safe."

I could never deceive her. I was transparent to her.

"It is not true! The truth speaks out all over you--they are lost, oh they are lost, they
are lost!"

We were strong, but we could not hold her. She tore loose from us and was gone in a mo-
ment, flying along the dark decks and shrieking the children's names with a despairing pathos
that broke one's heart to hear it. We fled after her, and urged that the flitting lanterns
meant that all were searching, and begged her for dn. children's sake and mine if not for
her own to go to bed and save her life. But it went for nothing, she would not listen. For
she 1,s a mother, and her children were lost. That says it all. She would hunt for them as
long as she had strength to move. And that is what she did, hour after hour, wailing and
mourning, and touching the hardest hearts with her grief, until she was exhausted and fell
in a swoon. Then the stewardess and I put her to bed, and as soon as she came to and was
going to creep out of her bed and take up her search again the doctor encouraged her in it
and gave her a draught to restore her strength; and it put her into a deep sleep. which was
what he expected.

We left the stewardess on watch and went away to join the searchers. Not a lantern was twink-
ling anywhere, and every figure that emerged from the gloom moved upon tip-toe. I collared
one of them and said angrily--

"What does this mean? Is the search stopped?"

Turner's voice answered--very low: "--'sh! Captain's orders. The beast ain't dead--it's hunt-
ing for us."

It made me sick with fear.

"Do you mean it, Turner? How do you know?"

"Listen."

There was a muffled swashing sound out there somewhere, and then the two moons appeared for
a moment, then turned slowly away and were invisible again.

"He's been within a hundred yards of us, feeling around for us with his arms. He could reach
us, but he couldn't locate us because he's blind. Once he mighty near had us; one of his arms
that was squirming around up there in the dark just missed the foremast, and he hauled in the
slack of it without suspecting anything. It made my lungs come up into my throat. He has edged
away, you see, but he ain't done laying for us." Pause. Then in a whisper, "He's wallowing
around closer to us again, by gracious. Look--look at that. See it? Away up in the air--wri-
thing around like a crooked mainmast. Dim, but--there, now don't you see it?"

We stood dead still, hardly breathing. Here and there at little distances the men were gather-
ing silently together and watching old pointing. The deep hush lay like a weight upon one's
spirit. Even the faintest quiver of air that went idling by gave out a ghost of sound. A cou-
ple of mellow notes floated lingering and fading down from forward:

Booooom--booooom. (Two bells in the middle watch.) A hoarse low voice--the captain's:

"silence that damned bell!"

Instantly there was a thrashing commotion out there, with a thundering rush of discharged wa-
ter, and the monster came charging for us. I caught my breath, and had to seize Turner or I
should have fallen, so suddenly my strength collapsed. Then vaguely we saw the creature, wav-
ing its arms aloft, tear past the ship stem first, pushing a vast swell ahead and trailing a
tumultuous wake behind, and the next moment it was far away and we were plunging and tossing
in the sea it made.

'Thank Cod, he's out of practice!" said Turner, with emotion.

The majestic blind devil stopped out there with its moons toward us, and we were miserable a-
gain. We had so hoped it would go home.

I resumed my search. Below I found Phillips and Lucy Davis and a number of others searching,
but with no hope. They said they had been everywhere, and were merely going over the ground
again and again because they could not bear to have it reported to the mother that the search
had ceased. She must be told that they were her friends and that she could depend upon them.

Four hours later I gave it up, wearied to exhaustion, and went and sat down by Alice's bed,
to be at hand and support her when she should wake and have to hear my desolate story. After
a while she stirred, then opened her eyes and smiled brightly and said--

"Oh, what bliss it is! I dreamed that the children--" She flung her arms about me in a trans-
port of grief. "I remember--oh, my God it is true!"

And so, with sobs and lamentations and frantic self-reproaches she poured out her bitter sor-
row, and I clasped her close to me, and could not find one comforting word to say.

"Oh, Henry, Henry, your silence means--oh, we cannot live, we

There was a flurry of feet along the deck, the door was burst in, and Turner's voice shouted--

"They're found, by God they're found!"

A joy like that brings the shock of a thunderbolt, and for a little while we thought Alice was
gone; but then she rallied, and by that time the children were come, and were clasped to her
breast, and she was steeped in a happiness for which there were no words. And she said she never
dreamed that profanity could sound so dear and sweet, and she asked the mate to say it again;
and he did, but left out the profanity and spoiled it.

The children and George and Delia had seen the squid come and lift its moons above our stern
and reach its vast tentacles aloft; and they had not waited, but had fled below, and had not
stopped till they were deep down in the hold and hidden in a tunnel among the freight. When
found, they had had several hours' sleep and were much refreshed.

Between seeing the squid, and getting washed off her feet, and losing the children, the day was
a costly one for Alice. It marks the date of her first gray hairs. They were few, but they were
to have company.

We lay in a dead calm, and helpless. We could not get away from the squid's neighborhood. But I
was obliged to have some sleep, and I took it. I took all I could get, which was six hours. Then
young Phillips came and turned me out and said there were signs that the spirit of mutiny was a-
broad again and that the captain was going to call the men aft and talk to them. Phillips thought
I would not want to miss it.

He was right. We had private theatricals, we had concerts, and the other usual time-passers cus-
tomary on long voyages; but a speech from the captain was the best entertainment the ship's talent
could furnish. There was character back of his oratory. He was all sailor. He was sixty years old,
and had known no life but sea life. He had no gray hairs, his beard was full and black and shiny;
he wore no mustache, therefore his lips were exposed to view; they fitted together like box and
lid, and expressed the pluck and resolution that were in him. He had bright black eyes in his old
face and they eloquently interpreted all his moods, and his woods were many: for at times he was
the youngest man in the ship, and the most cheerful and vivacious and skittish; at times he was
the best-natured man in the ship, and he was always the most lovable; sometimes he was sarcastic,
sometimes he was serious even to solemnity, sometimes he was stern, sometimes he was as senti-
mental as a school-girl; sometimes he was silent, quiet, withdrawn within himself, sometimes he
was talkative and argumentative; he was remarkably and sincerely and persistently pious, and mar-
velously and scientifically profane; he was much the strongest man in the ship, and he was also
the largest, excepting that plotting, malicious and fearless devil, Stephen Bradshaw the carpenter;
he could smile as sweetly as a girl, and it was a pleasure to see him do it. He was entirely self-
educated, and had made a vast and picturesque job of it. He was an affectionate creature, and in
his family relations he was beautiful; in the eyes of his daughters he was omniscient, omnipotent,
a mixed sun-god and storm-god, and they feared him and adored him accordingly. He was fond of ora-
tory, and thought he had the gift of it; and so he practiced it now and then, upon occasion, and
did it with easy confidence. He was a charming man and a manly man, with a right heart and a fine
and daring spirit.

Phillips and I slipped out and moved aft. Things had an unusual and startling aspect. There were
flushes of light here and there and yonder; the captain stood in one of them, the officers stood
a little way back of him.

"How do matters stand, Phillips?"

"You notice that the battle-lanterns are lit, all the way forward?" "Yes. The gun-watches are at
their posts; I see that. The captain means business, I reckon."

"The gun-watches are mutineers!"

I steadied my voice as well as I could, but there was still a quaver in it when I said--

"Then they've sprung a trap on us, and we are at their mercy, of course."

"It has the look of it. They've caught the old man napping, and we are in a close place this time."

We joined the officers, and just then we heard the measured tramp of the men in the distance. They
were coming down from forward. Soon they came into view and moved toward us until they were within
three or four paces of the captain.

"Halt!"

They had a leader this time, and it was he that gave the command--Stephen Bradshaw, the carpenter.
He had a revolver in his hand. There was a pause, then the captain drew himself up, put on his dig-
nity, and prepared to transact business in a properly impressive and theatrical way. He cleared his
voice and said, in a fatherly tone--

"Men, this is your spokesman, duly appointed by you?" Several responded timidly--

"Yes, sir."

You have a grievance, and you desire to have it redressed?"

"Yes, sir."

"He is not here to represent hi nself, lads, but only you?"

"Yes, sir."

"Very well. Your complaint shall be heard, and treated with justice." (Murmur of approbation from
the men.) Then the captain's soft manner hardened a little, and he said to the carpenter, "Go on."

Bradshaw was eager to begin, and he flung out his words with aggressive confidence--

"Captain Davis, in the first place this crew wants to know where they are. Next, they want this
ship put about and pointed for home --straight off, and no fooling. They are tired, of this blind
voyage, and they ain't going to have any more of it--and that's the word with the bark on it." He
paused a moment, for his temper was rising and obstructing his breath; then he continued in a
raised and insolent voice and with a showy flourish of his revolver. "Before, they've had no lea-
der, and you talked them down and cowed them; but that ain't going to happen this time. And they
hadn't any plans, and warn't fixed for business; but it's different, now." He grew exultant. "Do
you see this?"--his revolver. "And do you see that?" He pointed to the gatlings. "We've got the
guns; we are boss of the ship. Put her about! That's the order, and it's going to be obeyed."
There was an admiring murmur from the men. After a pause the captain said, with dignity--

"Apparently you are through. Stand aside."

"Stand aside, is it? Not till I have heard what answer you--"

The captain's face darkened and an evil light began to flicker in his eyes, and his hands to twitch.
The carpenter glanced at him, then stepped a pace aside, shaking his head and grumbling. "Say your
say, then, and cut it short, for I've got something more to say when you're done, if it ain't sat-
isfactory."

The captain's manner at once grew sweet, and even tender, and he turned toward the men with his
most genial and winning smile on his face, and proceeded to take them into his confidence.

"You want to know where you are, boys. It is reasonable; it is natural. If we don't know where we
are--if we are lost--who is worst off, you or me? You have no children in this ship--I have. If we
are in danger have I put us there intentionally? Would I have done it purposely--with my children
aboard? Come, what do you think?"

There was a stir among the men, and an approving nodding of I leads which conceded that the point
was well taken.

"Don't I know my trade, or am I only an apprentice to it? Have I ailed the seas for sixty years
and commanded ships for thirty to be taught what to do in a difficulty by--by a damned carpenter?"

He was talking in such a pleading way, such an earnest, and moving and appealing way that the men
were not prepared for the close of his remark, and it caught them out and made some of them laugh.
He had scored one--and he knew it. The carpenter's back ,N as turned--he was playing indifference.
He whirled around and vered the captain with his revolver. Everybody shrank together and caught
his breath, except the captain, who said gently--

"Don't be afraid--pull the trigger; it isn't loaded." --

The carpenter pulled--twice, thrice, and threw the pistol away. I h n he shouted--

"Fall back, men--out of the way!" They surged apart, and he 1, II hack himself. The captain and
the officers stood alone in the le of light.

"Gun 4, 'fire!" The officers threw themselves on their faces on the deck, but the captain remain-
ed in his place. The gunner spun the windlass around there was no result. "Gun 3, fire!" The same
thing happened again. The captain said

"Come back to your places, men." They obeyed, looking puzzled, surprised, and a good deal demoral-
ized. The officers got up, looking astonished and rather ashamed. "Carpenter, come back to your
place." He did it, but reluctantly, and swearing to himself. It was easy to see that the captain
was contented with his dramatic effects. He resumed his speech, in his pleasantest manner--

"You have mutinied two or three times, boys. It is all right up to now. I would have done it my-
self in my common-seaman days, I reckon, if my ship was bewitched and I didn't know where I was.
Now then, can you be trusted with the facts? Are we rational men, manly men, men who can stand
up and face hard luck and a big difficulty that has been brought about by nobody's fault, and
say live or die, survive or perish, we are in for it, for good or bad, and we'll stand by the
ship if she goes to hell!" (The men let go a tol[erably] hearty cheer.) "Are we men grown men
salt-sea men men nursed upon dangers and cradled in storms men made in the image of God and
ready to do when He commands and die when He calls--or are we jtjst sneaks and curs and carpen-
ters!" (This brought both cheers and/laughter, and the captain was happy.) "There that's the
kind. And so I'll tell you how the thing stands. I don't know where this ship is, but she's in
the hands of God, and that's enough for me, it's enough for you, and it's enough for anybody
but a carpenter. If it is God's will that we pull through, we pull through otherwise not. We
haven't had an observation for four months, but we are going ahead, and do our best to fetch
up somewhere."

(1898)



The Mad Passenger




THE DINNER was a failure. While it was still unfinished thecompany began to break up and slip
out, one after another; and presently none was left but the stranger at my side and me. We
were sipping black coffee and smoking. The stranger said, with a sigh--

"Ah, well, that is the way with them. They are mad--that captain and that mate."

"Mad?"

"Well, on the way to it. I have noticed it for days.

"I think, myself, that they are disturbed about something, but I don't see any suggestion of
madness about it."

"But you haven't been around. You have been shut up a good deal lately and haven't seen what
has been going on. Let me tell \sot 1 a few things." He was speaking in a low voice. A rattl-
ing of candles attracted his attention a steward was clearing the other end the table. "Come
to my cabin this place lacks privacy. Bring your coffee.),

It was a roomy and comfortable cabin, andn had a good lamp in it, also a locker and a swinging
table. l is locked the door and we sat down. He began to speak again still in a guarded voice,
a precaution not needed, now, and so I judged that it was habit or nature that made him do
this.

"These new people have got a name for me which you may not have heard; they call me the
Mad Passenger. I do not mind this insult, I give you my word. It is a secret bitterness to me,
true, but as it hasn't its source in malice, but only in ignorance it is of course not blame-
worthy. 0 dear, think of the irony of it they call me mad--they! Do you know what these people
are doing? They've got a chart of Dreamland, and they are navigating this ship by it!"

I tried to look incredulous. He laid his hand on my arm and said with great earnestness

"You don't believe me. It was not to be expected that you would. But I have said only the
truth. I have seen the chart myself; and I have peeped in through the chart-room window when
no one was near, and seen them working over it and trying to compass-out a course over it. It
is perfectly true. Along at first, any one could go and look; but not now. They don't allow
any but themselves to enter that place; and they've curtained the window. You see now, don't
you, why they flew out so at the purser and the girl?"

"Well--er--"

"Dear me, it's an amazing thing, when you come to think of it. It's a chart of one particular
part of Dreamland Jupiter. No, not Jupiter Saturn. No, I'm wrong again. I can't call the name
to mind, now, but I know many of the details, land and sea; in fact am tolerably familar with
them, for I have often been there in dreams, with the Superintendent. It may be that you have
been there, too, and will remember whether it is a planet or a fixed star, if I mention a de-
tail or two. On the chart are countries called England, America, and so on, and an ocean call-
ed Atlantic. Come does it suggest anything? Can you help?"

It troubled me. It was a confusing situation. I said "Yes, I have been there. It is called the
World, and

"But dear sir, are you sure it is a part of Dreamland?"

He looked frightened; and edged away from me a little, and sat apparently dazed and ill at ease.
I didn't know anything to say, so there was an uncomfortable silence. Presently he said, halt-
ingly and timidly--

"You you won't be offended but but are you mad, too? They all are."

I said to myself, "It is of no use to struggle. Something has happened to me, I don't know
what. It seems manifest, from all sorts of evidences, that I have been under a delusion since
I don't It I low when. Years, no doubt. I think I have lived in dreams so long I hat now that
I have at last got back among realities I have lost the use of them and they seem dreams, too."
I wished I knew of some good way to get back this man's confidence; no doubt he could wake
up my dead memory for me and bring to life in it things of interest to me and thus save me
from surprising Alice with my ignorances at every turn. Presently I ventured this--

"No, I am not mad, but a thing has happened to me which is nicarly as serious. I can trust
you, I think, and I will. Will you let me tell you something in strict confidence which I
have confessed to no one, not even my wife?"

It pleased him to the marrow I could see it.

"It is good of you to show me this distinction; but you have always been good to me, these
twenty-two years I say it gratefully. Whatever the secret is, I promise to keep it faithful-
ly."

"I believe you will. It is this. I have lost my memory."

"Lost--your--memory?"

"Lost it wholly."

"Why it is terrible. Was it from the fall?"

"Fall? Have I had a fall?"

"Yes. Ten or eleven days ago."

"I remember nothing of it."

"Yes, you slipped and fell on the deck, there was a heavy sea at the time. I was with you.
I helped you up, and you laughed and said you were not hurt but your clothes were wet and
you would and change them. l haven't seen you since to speak with you till to day; but George
always said you were well, when I inquired, but chose to keep to your quarters most of the
time."

"It must have been the fall. I remember everything that has happened today, but not a sin-
gle previous experien ce of my whole life.

"Dear me, it is a fearful thing, an amazing thing."

And a misery beyond imagination. My wife knows that something has happened to me, but she
does not suspect the serious extent of it. Of course I wouldn't have her know, for anything.
She terrifies me by reminding me of things which I ought to be familiar with, then I have
to scramble out of the scrape the best I can; and of course I do it awkwardly. But I am safe
now. When I want to get over one of those obstacles I shall come to you. You will post me?"

"Gladly. Nothing has happened to you in twenty-two years that I am not acquainted with. We
shall have no trouble."

"This makes me easy. You will tell me my history. It ought to interest me, for every detail
of it will be new. And you must tell me about yourself, too. She spoke of you to-day, and
I supposed I was hearing of you for the first time."

"Isn't it astonishing!"


We had a long talk together and he told me a great deal of my history, and I found it cur-
ious and entertaining; and he told me a great deal about Alice, whom he had known ever
since she was three years old. He posted me in the details of the devouring of Captain Hall's
boy by the spider-squid, and in other matters which I needed to know in order not to be
embarrassed when trading reminiscences with my family and the servants.

We became comrades, and I came to like him better and better every day. I spent an hour or
two in his cabin daily, and he an hour or so in my quarters. Alice had always liked him very
well; and now he was become very near to her, for outside of our family he was the only relic
left of her former life and its lost and lamented comradeships. He had a name of a jaw-break-
ing sort, but no one called him by it ill die m. recent days; even the family and our nava-
lits bad dropped it for the one used by the rest of the ship. This was "M.P.," (mad passen-
ger.) It was simple and easy. He was sane, I thought, but as long as the ship thought dif-
ferently, the title was well enough, and did no harm.

Alter a couple of weeks I noticed that when I wanted him and couldn't find him in his ca-
bin there was no occasion to go groping everywhere--he was pretty sure to be in one certain
place. On the forecastle sitting on the mizzen-hatch. Sitting there and peering wistfully
out ahead through the gloom, and looking melancholy. At last, one day in his cabin I asked
him why he did that. A pathetic expression came into his face, and he muttered an ejaculation
or two in his own strange language, then said in English--

"I am looking, for my country."

"Your country?"

"I have done it every day for twenty-two years. It is long to wait, ()lig to wait!"

Ihe poor devil. It was sort of heart-breaking to hear him.

"What country is it? Where is it?"

He told me the tough name of it it was an Empire of some sort then added--

"It isn't anywhere in particular it floats."

"Floats?--isn't fixed, isn't anchored?"

He smiled, and said--

"Why should it be? It isn't Dreamland. Of course it floats."

"Tell me about it. It must be dreadful there. In the eternal
night."

"No, it isn't. It is a fair land, and beautiful. And it is not night there, but eternil day
a mellow rich light, and enchanting; for it circles forever and ever around outside the Great
White Glare, and just the right distance away from it like the other wandering Empires. Tra-
dition says one vaguely glimpses one or another of them now and then at intervals of a cen-
tury or two.

"It is curious. What keeps your Empire just the right distance away?"

"Attraction and repulsion. But for the attraction it would drift into the darkness; but for
the repulsion it would drift into the Glare and then!"

"I wish I could see that country. Do you expect to see again?"

A passion of longing lighted his face for a moment, then faded out and he said despondently--

"No, it is too good to hope for. At first I hoped--all the first years. But that is all gone
by, now--oh, yes, that is all over, years and years ago; I watch for it now from old habit,
not from hope. He was silent awhile, then sighed and added, "But it is better so, perhaps.
My girl-wife has broken her heart with waiting, no doubts my little child is a woman, now--
she would not remember me. She was half as old as your little Bessie--yes, and like her a
little, and had the same cunning ways; and sometimes there flashes into Bessie's face an ex-
pression when we are playing together that is exact! When I see that, I have to put the child
down and go away; I cannot endure the joy of it--and the pain. But let us talk of othe things.
Say something--anything! Ask me a question."

"I will. Of course I have forgotten about your coming aboard th ship; how did it happen?"

"Curse that day--forever! I had a great yacht, and I used to take my family and friends with me
and make cruises out into the cold weather and the darkness; and once we walked the deck a
good while laughing and chatting; then a storm began to brew and the snow to fly, and they all
went below to arrange for some games and prepare something hot and wait a quarter of an hour
for me. We were shortening sail, and I wanted to superintend a little. I was standing astern,
backed up against the taffrail and staring up toward the flapping kites--which I could not see
for the gloom--when your ship's invisible bowsprit swept past me, and the dragging bight of
the main-brace caught me around the body and carried me off my feet. I seized it and saved
myself; the bowsprit dipped me into the sea, but when it rose again I was astride it, and my
yacht had vanished in the blackness and the storm."

You never saw it again?"

"No, never. And now I was among strangers; we did not know each other's language, of course,
and I could not explain how I got there; but they were friendly to me and hospitable. They
taught me the language; they taught we how to divide time, and measure it into seconds, min-
utes, hours, days, weeks, months, years, and a hundred other strange and interesting things;
and so, as I was always something of a scholar, these twenty-two years have not been dull
and stupid to me. But I would they could have had less of heartbreak in them!"

It was a pathetic history, and I was touched by it. I was moved to try to say some hopeful
things to the poor exile, but he courteously put all that aside, and said he found it whole-
somest to keep the subject out of his mind when he had the opportunity to do it--and that
was only when he had a chance to talk. Talk could deal with other matters, and was a good
medicine. So then we drifted into a discussion of language, its curiosities and peculiarities,
and it presently came out that in his tongue there were no exact equivalents for our words mod-
esty, immodesty, decency, indecency, right, wrong, sin. He said that in most details the civi-
lization of his country was the counterpart of that which prevailed among the highest civili-
zations of dreamlands like the World, and that a citizen of that unreal planet would be quite
at home in his Empire, and would find it quite up to date in matters of art, erudition, inven-
tion, architecture, etc.

That seemed strange, but he said there was properly nothing strange about it, since dreamlands
were nothing but imitations of real countries created out of the dreamer's own imagination and
experience, with some help, perhaps, from the Superintendent of Dreams. At least that was his
belief, he said, and he thought it reasonable and plausible. He had noticed that in Jupiter,
Uranus, and in fact in all other dream-countries he found things about as they were at home,
and apparently quite real and natural as long as the dream lasted. In the World, it was true,
there were a few details that it had a monopoly of, but they were not important, and not plea-
sant.

"For instance?"

"Well, for instance they have what they term Religions; also curious systems of government,
and an interesting but most odd code of morals. But don't you know about these things? Haven't
you been there with the Superintendent? Come in!"

It was the children. They had come with Cermania to be entertained.

M. P. was good at that. file told them a quaint and charming tale whose scene was laid in his
lost country. then he and I had a game . of romps with than. In the course of the romps Bessie
hurt herself, and in her anger she tried to break things, and did break a glass. I said-

"Tut-tut, why did you do that, Bessie?--it's wrong."

"No-no, not wrong," said M. P.; "don't call it that."

"What then?"

"Inexpedient."

I remembered. It was the nearest that his native tongue could come to furnishing an equivalent
for our word "wrong."

He petted Bessie into a good humor, then set the children to rummaging the drawers of his bureau
and the compartments of his locker. In one of these latter they found a microscope. M. P. began
to arrange it for an exhibition, and a curious feeling came over me. It seemed to me that I had
seen the same thing done before; even that I had done it myself--in a dream. It was a strange
sensation, and troubled me. Then M. P. put a drop of water on a glass slide, threw a circle of
white light under it from the reflector, screwed the lens down tight against it, and soon the
children were exclaiming over the hideous animals they saw darting about and fighting in the bit
of moisture.

I dropped into a whirl of thinkings and dim and shadowy half-reminiscences, and wholly lost my-
self. After a while the children reached up and kissed me goodbye--I was hardly conscious of it
--and then they went away with the nurse and with M. P.. who said the sea was rising and he would
help them home and then come back. I presently got up to stretch my legs, and noticed a portfolio
lying in the open locker. Pictures, I judged, for M. P. was a good amateur artist--there were sev-
eral small portraits and photographs of his wife and children pinned to the wall which were his
own work, he had told me. I opened the portfolio and found a number of pictures; pictures of him-
self, his family, and many lady and gentleman friends: in some cases beautifully clothed, but in
most cases naked!

I heard him coming. I put the book away, and prepared myself to ook like a person who had not dis-
covered a disgraceful secret and who was not shocked. I arranged a pleasant smile and--


(1898)



Which Was It?



Editor's Note. The last section of Mark Twain's lengthy but unfinished novel
Which Was Is? is here presented. The village aristocrat George I larrison,
having tubbed and then mucdtml wink attempting to lave a dwindling family
estate, finds he is too cowardly to confess when his friend and bend newt
Squire Fairfax is accused of the crime. Believing his actions have gum unde-
tected, he maintains an anguished silence. Finally. when Harrissn seems about
to rationalize away his sense of guilt. the ex slave Jasper comes to tonfront
him and involve him in further degradations.



TROUBLES are only mental; it is the mind that manufactures them, and the mind can forget
them. banish them, abolish them. Mine shall do it. Nothing is needed but resolution, firmness,
determination. I will exert it. It is the only wisdom. I will put all these goblins. these un-
realities behind me. I have been their slave long enough; if I have done wrong I have atoned
for it, I have paid the cost and more, I have sweated blood, I have earned my freedom, I have
earned peace and a redeemed and contented spirit, and why should I not have them? I will lift
up my head, it is my right. I am honored and esteemed by all. Yes, by all. I can say it tru-
ly. There is not a person in the community who does not look up to me and--"

There was a knock on the front door. I !artisan stepped to it and opened it, and found Jasper
standing there in the humble attitude of his caste, with his ancient slouch hat in his hand.

"Kin I see you minute, seh?" he asked.

Harrison said, with ruffled dignity--

'Where are your manners, you dog? Take yourself to the back door."

He closed the front one in Jasper's fact and returned to his seat. Presently, Jasper entered
by the back one, without knocking, came forward, and began:

"I wanted to an you, seh--"

"Take your hat of!"

"I begs yo' pahdon. seh--I fo'got, deed I did, seh, l's in sich trouble en so worrited."

"Now then, go on. And cut it short. What is it you want? Wait put that stick on the fire."

Jasper dropped his hat on the floor and obeyed. But the stick slipped from his hands, and scat-
tered the coals in every direction. While he brushed them up George scolded his clumsiness
and superintended his work, correcting. fussing. finding fault, and giving new orders before
the mulatto could finish the old ones. At last there was an end, and George said--

"I think I never saw such an awkward brute."

Jasper explained.

I ain't allays so, Marse Hahson, but I been laid up in de bed considable many days en I's
stiff en ain't got de full use e myseff."

"What laid you up?"

"De constable, he done it. He gimme thutty-nine."

"You needed it. I reckon. Step out back and fetch in an armful of wood, then tell me what
your business is, here--and be quick about it, you hear? it's getting late:'

This all seems harsh, coming from so kindhearted a man as I Lathan was, but it was merely
custom, the ha-bit of the time, in dealing with the colored man, and had less depth to it
and feeling in it than a stran-ger to the count:). would have supposed. The whites imagined
that the negroes did not mind it. They judged by the negro's outside, and forgot to in-
quire within. Jasper brought the wood and piled it, and Harrison said--

"You were out without a pass--was that it?"

"Yes, seh"

"How was that?"

"You know, seh, l's de Squiah's g'yardener, en so new dey ain't nobody to gimme a pass."

"Then you're here without one! Speak up--is that so?"

Jasper--humbly:

Yes, seh, sen. I ain't got no frens, en--"

"I'll have you jailed to-morrow! I pon my word, the impudence of a free nigger beats anything
that ever--look here, my man, what's your business here? Come, speak out--speak out."

Jasper dropped on his knees and put up his hands and began to plead.

"Oh, marse Hahson, if I can't git nobody to he'p me I doe know what gwyneter become er me.
Workin' in de greenhouse ain't gwynter save me if I ain't got no pass. Dey'll drive me out
de State, en if I's to try to stay dey'd take en sell me, en if I res dey'll lynch me, caze
I ain't got no fren's en nobody to stan' by me. Won't you, marse Hahson?--won't you stan'
by me?"

"What!"

"You's de mos' pow'ful genlman in de whole deestrick, now; you's de only one dey dasn't
stan' out agin, de only one dat kin say: `You keep yo' han's off'n him' and dey dasn't say
a word. Don't you reckon, seh--"

"No--I don't. I don't like the law that sells and banishes free niggers, but if the people
wish to enforce it it is their right, and as Christian citizen it is my duty to bow to
their will and not obstruct the law in its course."

Jasper rose slowly up, and stood on his feet. Harrison turned eyes away, and stroked his
jaw nervously and uncomfortably with his hand; he was not proud of himself. There was a
pause, then the negro said--

"Ain't dey noth'n better'n bein' a Christian, seh?"

"You blasphemous scoundrel! You--"

"I means, dat kind of a Christian, seh."

Harrison turned an outraged eye upon him and motioned towai the door with his hand, say-
ing sharply--

"I've had enough of this--quite enough; I don't like your ton, there's the door; move
along!"

Jasper picked up his hat and stood fumbling it, with his head bowed, Harrison watching him
with rising choler. After a moment or two the drooping head came up--and the hat was on it!
Harrison could not speak. He could only stare, and wonder if the miracle of insolence
was real, or only a fantastic delusion. Jasper turned slowly away, saying, absently--

"Po' Jake Bleeker. if de law would let a nigger testify in a cote--"

Any reference to the tragedy which had wrecked Harrison's life was enough--it took the
man all out of him, it filled his imagination with formless shapes and ghastly terrors. He rose
up sick and trembling, steadying himself with his hand on his chair-back, and said, with a weak
counterfeit of mere curiosity--

"Wait a moment. What's that?"

Jasper moved a step, saying--

" 'Tain't no matter, seh." Still moving: "'Course de law--"

"Wait, I tell you," said Harrison. "This is a matter of interest to every public-spirit-
ed citizen; nothing concerning it--however seemingly trivial it may seem--is unimportant.
What are you hinting at? Suppose niggers could testify--what then?"

Jasper's hat was still on. Harrison ignored it. Jasper turned toward him, and said--

"Marse Hahson, you reckon dey's any doubt dat de Squiah done it?"

Harrison answered with as easy a confidence as he was able to assume--

"Oh, no, there seems to be none. No, none at all, I am afraid."

He wished the mulatto would not keep his eyes bent on him so steadily; the effect
was uncomfortable.

"Dey say de Squiah tole Miss Helen he never done it; dey say he tole her dat de man 'at
done it was a stranger in de place. Does you reckon dat could happen, seh?"

"Why, yes. Why, certainly, it could happen."

Jasper was silent a moment, then he said--

"I hearn a man say he reckon it could a been a stranger, en said Ire b'lieve it was, en
said he wisht he could find dat man."

Harrison could not say anything; the remark made him shiver. the silence that followed
oppressed him; it seemed to bear down on him like a weight. Presently Jasper said, in
an indifferent tone--

"I reckon marse Tom would, too, becaze he's gwyne to marry in de fambly."

Harrison--relieved:

"Ah, in. rm? indeed he would!"

"'Course--hit stan' to reason. En you'd like to find de too?"

"Ye-s."

In an instant Jasper snatched him by the shoulders and whirled him in front of the mirror.

"Dah he is!"

Harrison's terror paralysed his voice for a moment, then it f itself in a passion of
fright and indignation mix-ed, and he away. panting, and stood at bay and began to pour
out a totem threats and curses and insults upon themulatto, who listened the look of one
who is hearing pleasant music: listened in tranquilly, contentedly: then, in the midst
of It all, he fi around in his coat pocket in a leisurely way and got out a handkerchief
with two holes in it and blood stains upon it, shook it out and held it up by two comers!

The tornado stopped. and Harrison sank into a chair, white, breathless, and dumbly star-
ing. Jasper folded the handerchief carefully, slowly, elaborately, and returned it to
his packet. Then he nodded toward Harrison and said--

"You is my meat."

Harrison moaned in his misery, but no wads came. He realized that a formidable disaster
had befallen him. Flow formidable it might be he could not estimate, it was but matter
for guesswork as yet, and his brain was too much stunned to work capably, now, upon the
materials at hand. It tried to guess, of course, but Its efforts were so dominated by
fright that they were the opposite of tranquilizing. Presently these thought-processes
suffered an interruption which changed their drift and raised the temperature of Harri-
son's blood by several de-grees: the negro coolly sat down in his presence! This was
too much. For a moment Harrison forgot all other things in the indignation bred in him
by this monstrous insult, and he straightened up and said--

"How dare you? Get up!"

For all reply the negro got out the red-stained mask again, and spread it upon his knees.
In an instant Hannon had snatched it and sprung toward the fire with It; but in the next
moment his wrists were prisoners in the vise-like grip of the yellow athlete's brawny
hands. Ile uroggled, and raged, and wept--a vain waste of wind and strength, it was but
a case of rabbit and wolf; Jasper held him, waited, and said nothing. When he saw that
his prey was exhausted, he crushed him into his chair, freed him, and said, picking up
the fallen mask and pocketing it --

"Set dah en pant whilst I talks to you, Harrison."

Harrison allowed this fresh affront to pass; there could be no profit in discussing it,
in the circumstances.

"Now den, in de fuss place, some niggers is fools. De moo' of 'all is. Well, I ain' no
fool. You gwreter fine it out 'co' I's done wid sou. Ys gwyncter ast you some questions.
Answer 'em right out squall en plain--I ain' gwyneter 'low no foolin'. You knowed de
hankcher was missing.

"Yes."

"Didn't you reckon it was cur'us it didn't turn up at de inques'?"

"Yes."

'Course! What did you reckon was de reason?"

"Thought an enemy had it."

"Whim enemy?"

"Yes."

The negro chuckled.

"You ain' got none! Hain't it so?"

Well--yes. I believe it is?

"Den it was a dam fool reason. He'd a biting it to de 'Nun'. so's lw kin git revenge.
But I never brung It to de inquee. Does you lnaw de reason?"

"No."

"Becaze I warn't ready. Does you know why I brung it now?"

"No."

"Becaze I is ready."

"I don't know how you are more reads now than you were on the fourth of November. I don't
see any reason for it."

"Den l's gwynetertell you. Nigger evidence ain't no good in cote?"

Harrison felt a sinking sensation at the pit of his stomach.

"I had to rummage out de white witness, en I done it!"

Harrison sank back with a gasp, and a half-smothered "Ah, my God!" He looked so ghastly
that Jasper jumped for water and sprinkled some in his face, thinking he would die if
help was not promptly afforded. He watched his patient with absorbing interest and sol-
icitude until he saw him revive, then he resumed his talk and his tortures.

"Does you know, Hahson, if I couldn't make dat white man tell what he seen en what he
hearn dat night, he wouldn't go a step to de cote? Becaze--well, I knows why. You's
pow'ful strong en 'spectable en looked up to, Hahson, you's got a mighty good name in
dis town."

The persecutor chuckled again.

"But he knows I kin fetch de white folks dat'll jail him down dah in de Souf any time
I says de word, en so if I tell him to go to de cote en swah agin you, he got to."

Harrison was about to pluck up a little imitation spirit and cast contempt upon this
possibly imaginary witness, when Jasper added, in an indifferent tone--

"But I ain' gwyneter sen' him to no cote."

Joyful words! So joyful that Harrison was half afraid, for a moment, that he had mis-
heard. But before he could reassure himself and utter his gratification, Jasper was
speaking again. What he said dismissed the fickle sunshine and brought the clouds once
more.

"Dat man ain' gwyne to no cote, Hahson--not if I knows it. You b'longs to me, now.
You's my proppity, same as a nigger, en I ain' gwyneter was'e you. By God, I kin hang
you any minute I wanter! Git up en fetch yo' marster a dram!"

Through Harrison's half-paralysed brain flitted the shameful reflection, "Slave of an
ex-slave! it is the final degradation; there is nothing below this." It is win or lose,
now--this moment will never come again; he must act a man's part, now--resist, free
himself, risk his life on it, or remain a slave! He said in his heart he would, and
bravely raised his eyes; they met the stern gaze of the master, wavered there a moment,
then fell. He was conquered, and knew it. He rose, and passed unsteadily by his tamer,
and at the other end of the room began his menial labors.

"Make it strong--you heah? En put sugar in it."

Harrison's eye fell upon the gun--double-barrelled--loaded for ,hers. He glanced cau-
tiously around, hopeful, excited, tremblinghis hair to his heels: Jasper's back was
to him! stirring the Idy noisily with one hand, he reached for the gun with the other,
it and faced about, cocking it. Jasper heard the clicks, turned, I looked down the
barrels. Harrison pulled the triggers. Jasper burst into an unfeeling laugh.

"I never see sich a fool," he said; "didn't you reckon I knowed de im was dah--right
whah anybody kin see it? I done fix' dat gunI o' de constable laid me up. Been yo' ole
father, he'd a foun' it out, but I could 'pen' 'pon you, you doan' take notice er noth'n.
I drove pins in de nipples en filed 'em down. Stan' her up in de cornder. When I's done
wid you you kin have some mo' guns if you want 'em--dey ain't gwyne to worry me none.
You's gwyne to p'oteck me, yo' own seff--you'll see; yes, en you's. gwyneter be mighty
k'yerful uv me, too, dat you is. Fetch de dram!"

He tasted it. "Put in some mo' sugar." He tasted again. "Put in Illo'--dah, dat's e-
nough." He had his feet in Harrison's chair. "Whah is yo' paper en pen? Git 'em. Git a
cheer. Now, den, you write what I tells you. En don't you try to come no games, er I'll
make you sorry."

George wrote from Jasper's dictation, doctoring the English as he went along:

"This is my body-servant, Jasper. Let him pass at all hours of the day and night. I make
myself responsible for his behavior.George L. P. Harrison."

Jasper folded the pass and put it in his pocket.

"Now den," he said, "write agin." He furnished the words. The pen dropped from Harrison's
paralysed fingers.

"Write that? Oh, my God," he cried, "I can't--I can't!"

"You can't?" said Jasper, dispassionately.

"How can I? Have some mercy! What are you going to do with it?"

"Gwyne to make you safe--dat's de idear. Hit'll go to dat witness --alonger dish-yer hankcher
dat I's got. If anything happen' to me, he'll know what to do wid it. If noth'n don't happen
to me, he on'y jist hide it en wait, en keep mum. Well, dey ain't noth'n gwyne to happen to
me. You's gwyneter take pow'ful good k'yer o' dat, I bet you!"

"Yes, I will, with my hand on my heart I promise I will and--" "I doan' want none o' yo' pro-
mises," said Jasper, scornfully, "I wouldn't give a dern for 'em."

"I'll do anything you say--anything, everything you tell me to-2'

"Mp! Dey ain't no 'casion for you to tell me dat, I 'low to make you."

"--but spare me this--I can't, oh, I can't write it!"

Jasper got up and moved lazily away, remarking in a careless tone-

"Dat's all right--dat's all right."

"Wait!" cried Harrison in a panic; "oh, don't go! Where are you going?"

"Whah is I gwyne? You knows mighty well whah I's a gwyne, Jawge Hahson."

"Stop, for God's sake, don't go! I'll write it--I will, I will!"

Well, den, do it. En I can tell you dis: if I starts agin--"

"There it is! it's written. Now be kind, be merciful; I've signed away my life, my good name,
my liberty, all my spiritual riches--"

"En you's a slave!--dat's what you is; en I lay I'll learn you de paces! I been one, en I know
'em; slave to de meanest white man dat ever walked--en he 'uz my father; en I bought my freedom
fum him en paid him for it, en he took 'vantage of me en stole it back; en he sold my mother
down de river, po' young thing, en she a cryin' en a beggin' him to let her hug me jist once
mo', en he wouldn't; en she say 'cruel, cruel,' en he hit her on de mouf, God damn his soul!--
but it's my turn, now; dey's a long bill agin de low￢down ornery white race, en you's a-gwyneter
settle it."

He held up the fateful paper and contemplated it a long minute, his nostrils faintly dilating;
and when at last he ceased from this contemplation he was visibly a changed man. The meek slouch
of the slave was gone from him, and he stood straight, the exultation of victory burning in his
eyes; and not even his rags and tatters could rob his great figure of a certain state and dignity
born in this moment to it of the pride of mastership and command that was rising in his heart. He
looked the master; but that which had gone from him was not lost, for his discarded droop and
humble mien had passed to his white serf, and already they seemed not out of place there, but fit,
and congruous, and pathetically proper and at home.

He resumed his chair and sat dreaming, musing, and unconsciously fondling and caressing the pui-
ssant bit of paper that had raised him so high and brought that other man so low. Harrison was sub-
merged in thinkings, too. Presently he stirred, and something like a moan escaped him. It roused
Jasper, who said-

"Hahson?"

Harrison--wearily, sadly:

"Yes?"

"Yes?" (mimicking him). "Is dat yo' manners?"

Harrison looked up, inquiringly.

" I --I don't understand."

"You don't? Well, den, I'll learn you. Does servants say Yes, to dey marster, and stop dah?"

The word stuck in Harrison's throat; it refused to come.

"Hahson!"

By this help he got it out:

"Yes...sir?"

"Now den, don't you fo'git again. I lay if you do I'll make you sorry. You's a servant--you unner-
stan'?--en I's gwyneter make you know yo' place en keep it. Say it agin!"

"Yes, sir?"

"Dat's all right. Practice! You heah?"

"Yes, sir."

The mulatto's eyes spat fire for a while, filling Harrison's soul with nameless fears and discom-
forts, and he wished he couldIforecast this exacting master's requirements and save himself sorrow
by meeting them before the orders came. He was alert, now, and pitifully anxious to do almost any-
thing that could protect him from the pain and shame of uttered insults.

"Hahson?"

Harrison--with a timorous eagerness:

"Yes, sir?"

"Hain't I a talkin' to you?"

"Yes, sir."

A pause--with a penetrating look of inquiry and disapproval Then--

"Well den!"

"I--I'm afraid I don't understand, sir. I--"

"Does servants set down when dey marsters is talkin' to 'em?"

Harrison rose and stood, with the red sign of humiliation stealing into his gray and tired face.
Jasper contemplated his serf's misery with deep and (healing satisfaction: studying it, weighing
it, measuring it, so to speak, his mind traveling back over bitter years and comparing it with the
thousand instances wherein he himself had been the unoffending victim and had looked like that,
suffered like that. Then he began to speak.

"Hahson, hit do me good to look at you like dat. My father serve' me so, many's de time, en I not
doin' any harm, no mo' dan what you is. En him a white man, en treat my po' little mother so, en
rob' me like a thief--I hope he's a-roastin' in hell! Hahson?"

"Yes, sir."

"You's white, en I's gwyneter take it outer you. You en de res'. Ev'ry time I gits a chance. Now
den, I done made my plans, en I's gwyneter tell you. I been run outer two States, or dey'd a sold
me to de nigger-traders or lynch' me. Some folks hint aroun' dey gwyneter drive me outer dis one.
Lemme see 'em try it!--it'll cost you heavy. Dey hints if I don't go, dey gwyneter put me on de
block en sell me. Lemme see 'em try it!--it'll cost you heavy. Dey hints if I resis' dey gwyneter
lynch me. Lemme see 'em try it! Let 'em try jist one un um--en straight off dish-yer paper goes to
Miss Helen!"

"0h, for God's sake! Oh--"

"Shet up! Git up off'n de flo'!--a-clawin' en a-wallerin' aroun' like a cat in a fit; you oughter
be 'shame' er yoseff, en you a grown pusson. Dah, now, set on de flo' if you can't stan' up dad
burn you, you ain' got no mo' grit 'n a rabbit. I reckon you's a right down coward, Hahson. Fac' I
knows you is; for I knows you--knows you by de back, same as de gamblers knows de k'yards. Stop
dat whinin' en blubberin', Hahson; stop it! you heah me?"

Jasper sat looking down at him in measureless contempt. Presently he took up his discourse again.

"Hahson, made de way you is, you ain't in no danger--not de least."

"Oh, I am so thankful for--"

"Thank yo'seff! Dat's whah it b'longs. You ain't gwyneter git yo'seff in no danger--lawd, I knows
you. Becaze you knows hetter'n to let anybody do me any harm, bless yo' soul you does- r. Now, den,
you listen. Hahson, I can't stay wid you to-night, caze I got to go en give de white witness de
hankcher en de paper en ...plain to him what to do case any harm come to me whilst I's in dis (Ice-
strick; but I's a-comin' back in de mawnin', en den I's gwyneter stay wid you all yo' life. When
dey's anybody aroun', I's yo' servant, en pow'ful polite, en waits on you, en waits on de table,
en wah's good clo'es, en runs arrants, en sleeps over yo' stable, en gits ten dollars a week; en
when dey ain't nobody aroun' but me en you, you's my servant, en if I don't sweat you!--well, nem-
mine 'bout dat, I'll show you! Hahson?"

"Yes, sir."

"You ain' got no manners."

"I know, but I can soon--"

"Learn? You better bet you kin--if you knows what's good for you. Hahson?"

"Yes, sir."

"When I's a waitin' on de quality, you keep yo' eye on me, en notice de way I does, en de way I
'spress myseff, en de way I bows, en all dat; den you study it by yo'seff, en practice. You ain't
fitten for shucks de way you is, becase you ain't had no breedin', but I's gwyneter make you wuth
two dollars a week befo' I's done wid you. Does you unnerstan' de whole plan, now?"

"Yes, sir."

"Gimme de fust week. Ten dollars. Don't you fo'git 'bout de clo'es, ner 'bout de stable--you heah?
Git up en open de do' for me?'

When he was gone Harrison put his face in his hands and sobbed, moaning and muttering, and saying,
"Oh, my Cod, cannot bear it, the burden is too heavy; why was I born with man's form and a rabbit's
heart? why haven't I the courage to ki myself? who but I would keep a life that is become an agony?"


AT DAWN in the morning Jasper arrived at Harrison's kitchen with a banjo, a jewsharp, a mouth-harp,
and not much other baggage. He uncovered the fire, built it up, brought in a load of wood, fetched
a bucket of water from the well, filled the kettle, hung it on the hook, found the breakfast coffee
in the mill, and was beginning to grind it when old Martha entered from her room to see who was
making the noise She threw up her hands i astonishment, and said--

"Well, fo' de Ian' sake if it ain't you! What brung you heah, Jasper?"

"What brung me? Bless yo' soul, honey, l's de new servant."

"No!--you don't say!"

"True for a fac, my darlin'. Mane Hahson done hire me las night."

"Well--well--well--is dat so? Now ain't you in luck, sho nuff?"

"Deed I is, en so is you. Gaze you ain' got no sweetheart, en I's gwyneter cote you--dat I is, hon-
ey. You's de gal for me!"

"Shet up yo' impudence, er I'll take en bat you over de head, you long-laigged yaller-jacket! I's
ole enough to be yo' mother."

Then they broke out and laughed a rollicking laugh in cordial admiration of their powers of repar-
tee, and Jasper plunged at Martha saying he was just "honing" for a kiss, and a three-minute strug-
gling and scuffling and laughing followed, which ended in Jasper's getting the kiss and a sounding
cuff; then Martha wiped her eyes on her apron and said--

"Allays a humbuggin' en a carryin' on, I never see sich a nigger; hain't you ever serious no time?"

"What I gwyneter be serious 'bout? I ain't only thutty-five; what got to be serious 'bout?"

"Nemmine, nemmine, Jasper, you wait ontel you's fifty, de way I is--"

"Den I'll be serious de way you is, you ole cat!"

"Jasper, what you needs is some trouble; I lay dat'll take de friskies outen you when it come--
you'll see "

"G'long wid you! Trouble! didn't dat constable take de hide own me?"

Martha set her hands on her hips and gave him a look that was full of pity of his ignorance.

"Took de hide off'n you! What's dat! 'Tain't nothin'. Who gwyneter mind a little thing like
dat? You doan' know nothin"bout real trouble; you wait ontel you has some real trouble, den
you'll know!"

"Well, den, what you call real trouble?"

"A heart dat's broke! days what's real trouble. If you'd a had a father to lose, er a mother to
lose....Look at marse George. Dab's trouble! Jasper, mo'n half de time he jist can't ree, on
accounts er ole marster a-dyin."

It seemed to impress Jasper, and he said--

"Well, I reckon it is turrible hard. But Martha, he was sich a ole man. I's pow'ful sorry for
marse Hahson, but if he ain't got no troubles but dat--"

"Can't you see, yo'seff, dat it's enough? He couldn't stan' no mo if he had 'em, you yeller
fool!"

"Well, I ain't sayin' he could, I 'uz on'y jist sayin' he--"

"Shet up, you doan' know nothin' what you talkin"bout. You wait tell you's had trouble; up to
den you can't talk nothin' 'bout it but foolishness."

"Martha, how kin you say dat? Hain't I seen people dat's had it? Look at Bridget; look at de
Squiah--my, dat's trouble, sho-nuff trouble. You see, if mane Hahson had troubles like dem--"

It went to Martha's compassionate old heart, and she said--

"Oh, yes, Gawd knows he ain't had no troubles like dens po creturs has. Twould kill mane George,
he got sich a good heart en so sof'. Why Jasper, jist hearitrbout what de Squiah done 'most
killed him. Laws, it make me feel turrible down, talkin' like dis. Wake up de banjo."

"Camptown Races?"

"Dar's it. Go it!"

Pul-lunky plunk-plunk plunk-plunk. Jasper poured out the gay song in great style, and when the
chorus came round, Martha, all enthusiasm, added the rich voice that is the birthright of her
race.

"I's boun' to run all night,
l's boun' to run all day,
I bet my money on de bobtail nag,
If somebody bet on de bay."

Other songs followed, and rattling dance-tunes, and light-hearted laughter; and Harrison recogniz-
ed the voices, and one of them carried dread and misery to his heart. An hour passed, and Martha
said she must carry up the shaving-water now, and set the table; but Jasper said--

"What you talkin"bout? What is I for?"

"Why, bless you, Jasper, I clean fo'got you's hired. Ain't dat good! 'Tain't gwyneter be lonesome
en mo'nful in dis kitchen no mo', now. I's pow'ful glad, Jasper. Heah--take de hot water. You got
a good marster, now--jist as kind. He'll cuff you roun' a little when he's cross, but don't you
mind, 'tain't much, en he don't mean nothin' by it."

Jasper answered bravely--

"I doan' k'yer noth'n for cuffin', I kin scan' all he'll gimme."

He departed with the water. Martha liked that reply of his; it showed the right spirit, the spirit
of a slave, and made her doubt if free niggers were quite as black as they had been commonly paint-
ed--for certainly here was one that was rational, and worthily constructed. She felt sure that Jas-
per's sunny spirit would have a good influence upon the master, and that the importing it into the
shadowed homestead would turn out to have been a fortunate idea on the master's part. She recogniz-
ed, too, that there was profit for herself in the arrangement--her labor-burdens eased, and lively
company at hand in place of loneliness. Jasper was gone ten minutes.

"What kep' you so long?" she asked, when he returned.

Jasper's white teeth radiated a gleaming smile, and he answered--

"Well, he's feelin' prime, smawnin', en hatter jist let go en talk, he couldn't he'p it, he feelin'
so gay."

"Dah, now!" exclaimed Martha, "hit's jist as I's a-sayin' no longer ago 'n dis minute. Las night he
was a feelin' jesso, en I turn' in en cher'd him up good, en I says to myself, hit ain't takin' all
dis time to tote up dat shavin' water, I lay Jasper's a cherin' him up some mo'--wam't I right, hey,
warn't I?"

"Dat you wuz, sho's you bawn; he's jist gay, now, I tell you!"

This was not true. However, Martha, innocently taking it at par, laughed out her happy thankfulness
over it and said--

"I jist know'd how 'twould be. Jasper, I do b'lieve befo' you's done wid marse George he's gwyneter
be a diff'nt man to what he was."

He responded, with modest confidence--

"I bet you!"

She rewarded him with a buttered biscuit hot from the reflector. His eye chanced to fall upon the
breakfast dishes, and he felt a sense of disappointment. He said--

"Martha, is dat all?"

She chuckled, and answered--

"Bless yo soul, honey, hit shows you doan' know what sorrer is. He doan' eat nothin'. My, if a body
could git him to!"

Jasper--argumentatively, persuasively--and with a watering mouth:

"Martha, hit's difrnt, smawnin', you know. He's a feelin' like a bird. Hain't dat gwyneter raise his
appertite, don't you reckon?"

"Well, well, well, what is de matter of me! gracious I never thought. 'Course it will! Jasper, how much
you reckon you kin 'suade him to eat?" and she began to load up her pans and ovens again, in great ex-
citement and joy, Jasper helping, without invitation.

"Pile 'em in, pile 'em in," he said, with fervor, "doan' you 'fated, Martha, you ain' gwyneter see 'em
no mo'."

"We-ll, if dat ain't de bes' news I ever--Lin', Jasper, why dis is enough for a hoss!"

"His very words! Martha, he said he could eat a boss!"

"Dem's blessed words, Jasper, jist blessed--I doan' warner heah no` blesseder ones. Laws, if he kin
on'y git away wid dis stack it'll be de makin' of him."

Jasper--with placid conviction:

"Look yo' las' on it, honey--look yo' las'."

Some little time afterward Jasper was sitting solitary in the dining room--at the head of Harrison's
table. The snowy tablecloth was almost hidden under its prodigal freightage of hot and appetising
good things; the coffee pot was steaming, and a generous hickory fire was sending a sheet of flame
up the chimney. Jasper was listening--listening with evil satisfaction to a descending step on the
stair, a slow and lifeless step, a weary and halting step. And now Harrison appeared. Wan, old, gaunt,
broken, humble--he seemed rather a spectre than a man. Jasper's mind slipped back over long years,
and he saw the duplicate of this apparition: himself. It was when he went to his father to ask for a
new bill of sale in place of the one which had burned up with his cabin, and his father mocked him,
laughed in his face and said, "Out of my presence, you bastard, and keep mum, or I'll sell you South,
as I did your sniveling mother!"

The mulatto sat studying the meek apparition, and musing, with a hardening heart. This was a Harrison,
that was a Harrison--the hated blood was in his own veins! The thought stung him, galled him. He spoke
up sharply-

"Hahson!"

Harrison--timidly:

"Yes, sir."

"You's makin' a po' start. You's kep' me a waitin'. I ab' gwyneter have it!"

"I--"

"Shet up, when I's a talkin'. Got no mo' manners 'n a animal. You wait till somebody asts you to mix
in." He paused, to see if Harrison's judgment would fail him again, but it didn't. "Now den, git to
work. En doan' you wait for me to give you de orders; you Watch en 'scover what I wants befo I tells
you."

Harrison poured the coffee, then furnished beefsteak, spare-ribs, home-made sausages, corn-pone, bis-
cuits, winter-stored vegetables -one after the other, with encores, and in generous quantity--and kept
a sharp lookout, as commanded, saying nothing, and moving constantly and with his best briskness, for
this devourer was more than a mere man, he was a mill. When about half of the food had been devoured
there was a light knock on the door, and by force of habit I !unison called out before he had had time
to think--

"Come in!"

Jasper scowled darkly upon him and said--

"Has anybody ast you to make yo'seff so dam brash?"

"Oh, I beg pardon, sir."

"De do's bolted. I done it." He got up with deliberation and said, "Hit's Martha. She's comin' in
wid de batter-cakes." He had risen from his chair. He pointed to it, and added: "Set down here. I's
servant, now--you is marster; you un'stan'? Doan' you fo'git yo'seff, less'n you wanter be sorry.
Look cherfull you heah?"

Harrison took the seat, and Jasper went to the door. Martha, entering, said, reprovingly--

"What you fasten de do' for?"

Jasper chuckled, in what seemed to be a sort of embarrassed but pleasant confusion, and explained.

"Nev' you mine 'bout de do', honey: marse Hahson feelin' prime, smawnin, en tellin"bout de times when
he's young; en he say shet de do', 'tain't suitable for ladies to heah. Bless you, he's feclin' dat
gay--look at him laugh!"

Harrison, obeying a threatening side look, delivered himself of a ghastly travesty of a laugh which
sent a shudder through Martha, and would have made her drop her platter of cakes but that it was al-
ready reaching the refuge of Jasper's hands. Martha soliloquised audibly, and unconsciously--

"De Lawd God!" and stood staring, rather vacantly yet admiringly, while Jasper, all smiling servil-
ity, most politely helped the master to one cake and purposely dropped another in his lap, at the
same time whispering, "Raise hell 'bout it! you heap?"

"Curse your lumbering awkwardness, now look what you', e done!" responded the obedient master.

Jasper mimicked the proper consternation while he nervously and clumsily repaired the mishap, mean-
while whispering "'Buse me, 'buse me, Hahson--keep it up!" and Harrison, obeying, poured out seven-
ties the best he could, and trembled to his marrow in apprehension of what he might have to pay for
them. Martha chimed in--

"Give it to him good, manse George, hit boun' to do you good, stirrin' yo'seff up like dat; taint
gwyneter do him no harm, en he 'zerve it, anyway."

Privately she was puzzled at Harrison's haggard appearance, and could not understand why he should
look like that, now when he was so gay--so unnaturally gay that he was even obliged to break out
in tales not proper for ladies to hear, to get relief, an extravagance of high spirits which he
surely had never risen to before. She was minded to speak of this curious thing, and inquire if the
gayety was solid and real; but she glanced at the table and held her peace. She remarked to herself:

"I reckon he's all right. He's et enough to bust a tavern."

She passed out, and master and servant changed places again. "Pass 'em, pass 'em along!" cried Jas-
per, indicating the tower of hot battercakes, "en de m'lasses; I's pow'ful hongry, yit; I ain't had
no sich breakfus' as dis sence de cows come home."

But them was a brisk stamping of feet at the front door, now, and Jasper jumped from his seat and
thrust Harrison into it just in time. Dug Hapgood burst in with an eager shout--

"Say, George, there's a stranger at the tavern. Get it? stranger, I said. Been there a couple of
days. How he managed it without me finding it out, blamed if I know." He was busy shedding his wraps,
and quite unaware that Jasper was obsequiously receiving them and hanging them up. But he noticed
the mulatto now, and shouted in great surprise, 'Why, what in the nation are you doing here?" Jas-
per grinned in a flattered and thankful way and answered,

"Mane Hahson done hire me, Misto Dug."

"Well, by gracious if that ain't just like you, George Harrison! There ain't anybody too low down
for you to come up to the rack and give him a lift when he's in trouble, even a free nigger! I just
honor you, George Harrison, I do, that's the fact." He went forward blinking the sympathetic water
out of his eyes, and wrung Harrison's hand cordially. "George demed if I don't think you are just
a brevet angel, that's what I think--just a noble generous tadpole-angel, as you may say, and like-
ly to sprout legs any time and feather-out and jine the choir. Shake again!" He turned to Jasper:
"Looky here, yaller-belly, do you know you've had a mighty close shave? You bet you! Why, George,
it was all put up yesterday to run him out of the State to-night--sho! what am I talkin' about;
you found it out and that's why he's here. Now how in the nation did you, and you shut up in the
house all the time?"

Jasper cut in, and saved Harrison the necessity of answering:

"I foun' it out myself, Misto Dug, en come en tole him, en he up 'n say 'You's my nigger, now--jist
let 'em tetch you!' he says." 'Well, George, I'll say it again, you're the bravest devil that ever
was, when you want to be. You're the only man in the whole deestrict that could a saved this cuss,
and the only one that's good-hearted enough. Jasper!"

"Yes, seh."

"Are you grateful?"

"'Deed I is, Misto Dug."

"All right, then; some niggers ain't." His eye fell on the table, and his mouth watered. 'That
looks good. Pity to let that go to waste. George, I'll see what I can do, if you don't mind,"
and he sat down and began an assault on the remaining half of the breakfast that meant victory
and annihilation, Jasper serving him with zeal and exterior eagerness accompanied by a running
fire of curses inside his breast. "Say, George, he's a whole team and a yeller dog under the wa-
gon: when it comes to telling fortunes. Bowles says he lays over Confucius, oh, to hell and gone!
Says he told him things in his life he hadn't thought of for so long he'd about forgotten them.
And he told my fortune, too, and it's plumb wonderful the way he does it. It's a new way: just
looks in your hand, and there it's all wrote out and he can read it like print--everything you've
ever done or going to do. Say, George, he told Frances Osgood's fortune, and in one place he
looked awful sorrowful, and says `You've had a dreadful calamity in your life, poor lady,' and
put her hand away and didn't want to go on; but she made him, and then he started in and told
her all about the fire where she lost her twin and you lost your house and family, just as
straight as if he'd been there and seen the whole thing himself--ain't it wonderful!" A pota-
toe, impaled on a fork, wa-approaching his mouth, which was falling open in welcome and antici-
pation. It stopped where it was, and the mouth began to close. These were signs that a vast
idea had been born to Dug. He laid the potatoe down and said impressively--

"George!"

"Well?"

"He's the very man!"

"How the very man?" said Harrison, wearily.

"To root out the bottom facts of Jake Bleeker's murder."

It made Harrison gasp, it hit him with such power and suddenness.

"Bottom facts?" he said, as indifferently as he could, "what bottom facts?"

"Well, I'll tell you. You see, he could get right down into the details. There ain't any details,
up to now. This cuss could lay it all just as bare as your hand. By gracious, it's a grand idea!"
He sprang from the devastated table and began to throw on his things. Harrison shouted--

"Stop! what are you going to do?"

"Going to have him come here tomorrow afternoon and--"

"Oh, stop, stop, I tell you!"

But Dug was gone. Harrison plunged toward the door, but Jasper stepped in his way and said--

"Stay whah you is. Hain't you ever gwyneter git any sense: S'pose you stop dat deef jackass--how
you gwyneter 'splain Does you want to raise a lot er s'picions? Let de man come. gwyneter be in
dat closet dal, en notice what he say. He ain't gwyneter jail you en spile yo' good name en yo'
power, not if knows it--I can't 'ford it. If he gits down to de bottom facks, I's gwyneter buy
his mouf shet, en you's gwyneter pay de bill. Cler up de table--hustle! Stack up de dishes; I's
gwyneter tote 'em to de kitchen en git some mo' grub, dad burn dat greedy gut!"


Dug spread the news of Jasper's redemption, and it made a cation in the village, which had had
nothing to buzz about and I excited over for some little time. It was diligently discussed. Har-
rison's judgment was discounted, and his conduct in some degree censured; but his courage was
frankly admired and extolled, and there was none but had a fervent word of praise for the abi-
lity of his nature and the never-failing goodness of his heart. His act would have heavily dam-
aged any other citizen, but it raised Harrison a shade in the public reverence and affection,
and was recognized as a natural and proper thing for him to do. When some persons did things,
the public customarily hunted for a doubtful motive, and generally believed it had found it; in
Harrison's case it always premised a good motive, and of course it always found it. What one ex-
pects to find and wants to find is easy to find, as a rule. Reputation is a formidable force in
this world.

People flocked to Harrison's house all day; partly to recognize his pluck and praise it, and part-
ly out of curiosity to see Jasper, gardener, perform as a house servant. Their praises were vinegar
to Harrison's wounds, and the pain was the greater for that Jasper was there to see and enjoy the
sufferings the others did not suspect and could not see. Everybody was surprised and a little dis-
appointed to find that Jasper did not seem very much out of place in his new office, and many were
candid enough to say so, and fling him a compliment as well. Tom and Helen were of these. Tom said,
heartily--

"You are performing really well, Jasper, and I mean what I say. All you've got to do is to behave
yourself, and show yourself worthy of what my father has done for you, and you'll have in him a
protector that is not afraid to stand by you against the whole town."

Jasper was so moved, and so grateful for these gracious words that Tom was quite touched, and
gave him a dime, which he gave to Harrison that night, at the same time mimicking the son's
manner and paraphrasing his speech:

"You's p'fawmin' real good, Hainan, en I means what I says. All you got to do is to behave, en
show yo'seff wuthy of what l's we It en done for you, en I's gwyneter be a p'tector dat'll--yah
-yah-yah! I couldn't scasely keep fum laughin' to heap dat goslin' talk 'bout you p'tectin' me!"

Frances Osgood was there in the afternoon, and shook George by the hand, and said--
"George, you are so different from other people! Happiness, good fortune and an applauding con-
science make some persons hard or indifferent, but they only furnish you new impulses toward--"

"No, Frances, no, you--"

"There, I will spare you, but I had to say it, because I feel it. f Alison and the children could
come back now from the grave, how proud they would be of you, and what love and worship they--"

Jasper was hearing all this and storing it up for sarcastic use. He was always hovering in Har-
rison's neighborhood when it was handy to do it; partly to listen, but mainly because his listen-
ing sharpened his slave's miseries.

Ann Bailey cordially endorsed Frances Osgood's remarks, and so did Sol and his brother the mini-
ster; the widow Wilkinson and Axtell the consumptive joined the group and added their praises,
and General Landry and Asphyxia Perry did likewise while Tom and Helen listened in charmed con-
tentment and pride, all unaware that these compliments which were heaven to them were hell to
Harrison; unaware, too, that he would have to hear them again, toward midnight, with Jasper to
serve them up, in a new edition revised and improved.



3,000 Years Among the Microbes


BY A MICROBE
B. b. Bkshp
With Notes Added by the Same Hand
7,000 Years Later*

Translated from the Original Microbic
By
MARK TWAIN

1905.


[NOTE, 7,000 years later. I had been a microbe 3,000 years (microbe-years) when I
resolved to do this Narrative. At first I was minded to save time and labor by de-
livering it into the mechanical thought.recorder, but I gave up that idea because
I might want to deal in some privacies--in fact I should have to do it--and a body
might as well publish a secret and be done with it as put it into a machine which
is ready to reveal its privacies to any thief that will turn the crank, let the
thief's language and nationality be what they may. So I decided to write my book
in my own tongue. Not many sooflaskies would be able to read it if they got hold
of it; besides, I was be-ginning to forget my English, and this labor would pres-
ently bring it back to me as good as new, no doubt. B.b.B.]


PREFACE.

ALTHOUGH THIS WORK is a History, I believe it to be true. There is internal evidence in e-
very page of it that its Author was conscientiously trying to state bare facts, unembellished
by fancy. While this insures irksome reading, it also insures useful reading; and I feel satis-
fied that this will be regarded as full compensation by an intelligent public which has long
been suffering from a surfeit of pure History unrefreshed by fact. Among the thousands of
statements put forth in this Work There are but two that have a doubtful look, and I think
these divergences--if they are divergences--are forgivable for the reason that there are in-
dications the Author made them with regret and was afterward pursued remorse for having made
them at all. But for this pair of slight indeed inconsequential blemishes, there had been no
occasion apologies from me.

The Translator



PREFACE

I HAVE TRANSLATED the author's style and construction, as well as his matter. I began by reform-
ing these, but gave it up. It amounted to putting evening dress on a stevedore and making him
stand up in the college and lecture. He was trim, but he was stiff; he delivered strict English,
polished English, but it seemed strained and artificial, coming from such a source, and was not
pleasant, not satisfactory. Elegant, but cold and unsympathetic. In fact, corpsy. It seemed best
to put him back into his shirt-sleeves and overalls, and let him flounder around after the fash-
ion that he was used to.His style is loose and wandering and garrulous and self-contented beyond
anything I have ever encountered before, and his grammar breaks the heart. But there is no remedy:
let it go.

The Translator.

His title-page is incorrect.

xxxxx. But really no one was to blame, it was an accident.t


[The narration begins thus abruptly, outside of the formal structure of the story, to convey the
disorienting effect of the miscarried experiment that is then described in Chapter I. The follow-
ing notes with asterisks are Mark Twain 's own. Ed.]


I.


THE MAGICIAN'S experiment miscarried, because of the imposbility of getting pure and honest drugs
in those days, and the result was that he transformed me into a cholera-germ when he was trying to
turn me into a bird.

At first I was not pleased. But this feeling did not last. I was soon terested in my surroundings,
and eager to study them and enjoy em. I was peculiarly well equipped for these pleasures, for cer-
tain reasons: to wit, I had become instantly naturalized, instantly endowed with a cholera germ's
instincts, perceptions, opinions, ideals, ambitions, vanities, prides, affections and emotions;
that is to say, I was become a real cholera germ, not an imitation one; I was become intensely,
passionately, cholera-germanic; indeed, I out-natived the natives themselves, and felt and spoke
and acted like those girls of ours who marry nobilities and lose their democracy the first week
and their American accent the next; I loved all the germ-world--the Bacilli, the Bacteria, the
Microbes, etc.,--and took them to my heart with all the zeal they would allow; my patriotism was
hotter than their own, more aggressive, more uncompromising; I was the gcrmiest of the germy. It
will be perceived, now, that I could observe the germs from their own point of view. At the same
time, I was able to observe them from a human being's point of view, and naturally this invested
them with an added interest for me. Another thing: my human measurements of time and my human
span of life remained to me, right alongside of my full appreciation of the germ-measurements of
time and the germ span of life. That is to say, when I was thinking as a human, 10 minutes meant
10 minutes, but when I was thinking as a microbe, it meant a year; when I was thinking as a human,
an hour meant an hour, but when I was thinking as a mircrobe it meant 6 years; when I was think-
ing as a human, a day meant a day, but when I was thinking as a microbe it meant 144 years; when
I was thinking as a human, a week meant a week, but when I was thinking as a microbe it meant
1,008 years: when I was thinking as a human a year meant a year, but when I was thinking as a
microbe it meant 52,416 years. When I was using microbe-time, I could start at the cradle with a
tender young thing and grow old with her: follow fortunes second by second, minute by minute,
hour after hour; see her bud into sweet maidenhood, see her marry an idolized husband, see her
develop into the matron's noble estate, see her lovingly watch over her millions of babes, see her
rear them in honesty and see her mourn the loss of millions of them by early death, see her rejoice
over the happy nuptials of more fortunate millions of them, see old age and wrinkles and decrepi-
tude descend gradually upon her, and finally see her released from the griefs and the burden of life
and laid to rest in the hallowed peace of the grave, with my benediction and my tears for fare-
well--all this in 150 years by microbe-count, about 24 hours by human time.


II.


THE ERRING magician introduced me into the blood of a hoary and mouldering old bald-headed tramp.
His name is Blitzowski--if that isn't an alias--and he was shipped to America by Hungary because
Hungary was tired of him. He tramps in the summer and sleeps in the fields; in the winter he
passes the hat in cities, and sleeps in the jails when the gutter is too cold; he was sober
once, but does not remember when it was; he never shaves, never washes, never combs his tangl-
ed fringe of hair; he is wonderfully ragged, incredibly dirty; he is malicious, malignant,
vengeful, treacherous, he was born a thief, and will die one; he is unspeakably profane, his
body is a sewer, a reek of decay, a charnel house, and contains swarming nations of all the
different kinds of germ-vermin that have been invented for the contentment of man. He is their
world, their globe, lord of their universe, its jewel, its marvel, its miracle, its master-
piece. They are as proud of their world as is any earthling of his. When the soul of the cho-
lera-germ possesses me, I am proud of him: I shout for him, I would die for him; but when the
man-nature invades me I hold my nose. At such times it is impossible for me to respect this
pulpy old sepulchre.

I have been a microbe about 3 weeks, now. By microbe-time it is 3 thousand years. What ages
and ages of joy, prosperity, poverty, hope, despair, triumph, defeat, pain, grief, misery, I
have seen, felt, experienced in this lagging and lingering slow drift of centuries! What bil-
lions of friends I have made, and loved, and clung to, only to see them pass from this fleeting
life to return no more! What black days I have seen--but also what bright ones!


III.


WHEN I BECAME a microbe, the transformation was so complete that I felt at home at once. This
is not surprdaing, for men and germs are not widely different from each other. Of germs there
are many nationalities, and there are many languages, just as it is with mankind. The germs
think the man they are occupying is the only world there is. To them it is a vast and wonderful
world, and they are as proud of it as if they had made it themselves. It seems a pity that this
poor forlorn old tramp will never know that, for compliments are scarce with him.


IV.


0UR WORLD (the tramp) is as large and grand and awe-compelling to us microscopic creatures as
is man's world to man. Our tramp is mountainous, there are vast oceans in him, and lakes that
are sea-like for size, there are many rivers (veins and arteries) which are fifteen miles a-
cross, and of a length so stupendous as to make the Mississippi and the Amazon trifling little
Rhode Island brooks by comparison. As for our minor rivers, they are multitudinous, and the du-
tiable commerce of disease which they carry rich beyond the dreams of the American custom-house.

Well, and why shouldn't our tramp seem imposing and majesti to us little creatures? Think what
a wee little speck a man would I if you stood the American Continent up on end in front of lum.
Standing there with his back to the waves,--standing there on the arching roof of the conti-
nent's big toe, (Cape Horn), he would naturally lift his eyes skyward; and how far up that dim-
ming hug frontage would his vision carry? Half way to the knees? No. Not tenth of the distance!
Evanishment would quickly supervene, tho colossus would be swallowed up and lost in the sky!
If you should stand one of us microscopic specks upon the roof of"Fur tramp's big toe and say
"look up"--well, you'd have the same result over again.

There are upwards of a thousand republics in our planet, and as many as thirty thousand mon-
archies. Several of these monarchies have a venerable history behind them. They do not date
back to the actual moment of Blitzowski's birth, for a human child is born pure of disease-
germs, and remains pure of them for a matter of three or four hours--say eighteen or twenty
years, microbe-time--but the do date back to the earliest invasions, and have sturdily main-
tained and preserved their regal authority in full force through all vicissitudes from that
remote period until now, a stretch approximating four and a half million years. In one case
the same dynasty holds the throne to-day that established it twenty-five hundred, thou-
sand years ago. This is the Pus family,--Pus being the family name, just as Romanoff is the
family name of the Czars; the official title is, His August Majesty Henry, D.G. Staphyloco-
ccus Pyogenes Aureus CMX--that is to say, he is the One Hundred and Ten Thousandth monarch
of the Pus lineage that has occupied that throne. They have all used the one name, HENRY. In
this they have been imitated by the Princes of Reuss, of Germany: all Princes of Reuss are
named I lenry. Reuss is a fine old royal house, and its blood can be traced back, right a-
longside the Guelf and the ohenzollern to the dim antiquity of ten centuries ago.

The English monarchy--the real English monarchy--has been existence about 840 years; its 36
reigns have averaged about 23 years each. Pretty nearly the same average obtains here. At least
it so with the great monarchy of which I have been speaking--the atest, in population, and
the most ambitious, in all Blitzowski. my 3,000 years here I have walked, uncovered and sin-
cerely sorving, at the end of the funeral pageants of 121 sovereigns of this nerable line,
and have been permitted to assist in the rejoicings hich followed the coronations of their
successors. It is a stem and ble race, and by diplomacy and arms has pushed its frontiers
far. herever it has deprived a conquered nation of its liberties and its religion it has
replaced these with something better. It is justly claimed for this great House that it has
carried the blessings of Civilization further than has any other imperial power. In honor
of this good work many of our microbe nations have come to speak of pus and civilization
as being substantially the same thing?


[Latin. "D.C.," (Deus grarias,) means by the grace of Cod. The long word means
pus-tank. The next word--when used in a scientific sense--means principal; pol-
itically it means imperial; in the slang of the common people it means brick,
and is a term of admiration. Aureus means gold. Hence the title, when occurring
in a State paper, could be translated Henry by the grace of God Imperial Pus-
Tank, while in the endearing speech of the common people it would be shortened
to Henry the Gold Brick.

Note: 5,000 [Years Later.] The microbe's name for himself is not Microbe, it is
Sooflasky. It would bankrupt the Unabridged to furnish definitions enough to
damage all its meanings and make you afraid of the word forever after. Oh, that
worthless, worthless book, that timid book, that shifty book, that uncertain
book, that time-serving book, that exasperating book, that unspeakable book,
the Unlimited Dictionary! that book with but one object in life: to get in more
words and shadings of the words than its competitors. With the result that near-
ly every time it gets done shading a good old useful word it means everything
in general and nothing in particular. When, in my human life, we first borrow-
ed the word unique, for instance, it was strong and direct, it meant sole, on-
ly, the one and only "joker"--not another one in the pack; the one and only e-
xistent example of whatever thing the user of the word was referring to: then
the Dictionary took hold of it, and hitched to it every careless user's defin-
ition of it that it could hunt out--and look at that whilom virgin now! I am
not as particular as I might be, perhaps, but I should not like to be caught
going around in public with that trollop.

Now as to that word Sooflasky. Straitly translated, it means in Blitzowski
what the word Man--as chief creature in the scheme of Creation--means in
the human World: that is to say, The Pet, The Chosen One, The Wonderful
One, The Grand Razzledazzle. The Whole Thing, The Lord of Creation, The
Drum Major, The Head of the Procession) The word Sooflasky mans all that,
includes all those shades. To construct an English equivalent that would hold
them all and not leak was exceedingly difficult, for me, but I believe,
Bullyboywithaglasseye came nearest. I often applied it to my fellow-microbe
from the very first, and they liked it. Partly because it was long and fine
sounding and foreign). and partly because, of the modified translation. furnish-
ed along with it. I told them it was the form employed by our best Major Molar
poets, and meant "the Deity's Delight." On these terms I work it into uni-
versal use among the grateful clergy, the poets, the great orators, and the rest
of our best people. Quaintly and prettily accented, and delivered lingeringly and
lovingly and impressively in a sermon, or with fire and thunder and gush in a
great oration, it is certainly one of the nobbiest things I know of. But the first
time I heard it wafted from the pulpit it took me unprepared, and it was all I
could do to keep from being over-affected by it.

I often used the term Microbe, applying it freely to myself and to the others
and this without offence. If I had explained its real meaning--its mean little
patronizing microscopic meaning--there would have been trouble, but I did not
do that. I saved myself early. I said it was Major Molar for "the Creature With
The Moral Sense," and was the cold scientific term employed to technically
describe the Lord Paramount of Animated Nature. There are times when guff
is better than fact, and you get more for the price.

"The Creature With The Moral Sense." The the got them--the the captured
them--the the took them into camp,. You know, I thought it would. To be a
"the" is something, to Man and Microbe; but to be the "the"--oh, well, that
is a bait which they can't resist at all. I was always a daring person, I never
could help it, and I played that 'ansome title on them for a compliment. They
did the natural thing, the thing which the honestest of us does when he is on
uncertain ground: they looked wise and unsurprised, and let on to know all a-
bout it. Without doubt they thought I had brought that jewel from some deep
well of erudition in the Major Molar. If they thought that, one thing was sure:
they wouldn't expose their ignorance by asking me. No, they would keep still;
they wouldn't even risk asking if it was a custom there to keep such things in
wells.

My instinct was right; that is to say, my knowledge was right--my knowledge
of the furtive and cautious ways of Man and Microbe: they didn't ask any ques-
tions. Not public ones, at any rate. One inquirer did approach me, but he came
privately. He wanted to talk frankly and freely, he said, but hoped I would letthe
conversation be and remain confidential. He said--

"'I will be candid, for I am inviting candor. You supposed, of course, that your
''the Creature With The Moral Sense' was not new to us, but it was; our realm
manner of receiving it was a deception; we had never heard of it before. It has
gone into currency; it is accepted, and purred over, and I think it is safe io say
that everybody is vain of it, the learned and the ignorant alike. So--"

"Dear sir," I said, with some complacency, interrupting, "I was not altogether
deceived--I was doing a little pretending on my own account; I perceived that
the restricting of the Moral Sense to the Bullyboywithaglasseye was

"Oh, bless you, no!" cried he, "not that. That was not new."

"Ahh," said I, a little squelched, "what was it that was new, then?"

"Why, the the--used as you used it. You see, that emphasis was the striking
thing. I mean, the way you said it. It made it sound like a title of honor, a com-
pliment. Making a compliment of it was a new idea, you see. We haven't ever
doubted that the Moral Sense is restricted to the Higher Animals, but--. look
here, give me some help. Our idea of the Moral Sense is, that it teaches us how
to distinguish right from wrong; isn't that your idea of it, the Major Molar idea of
it?"

"Yes."

"Also, it enables us to find out what is right, and do it."

"Correct."

"Also, it enables us to find out what is wrong, and do that."

"Correct."

"Also, without it we couldn't find out what was wrong, and therefore couldn't do
wrong. There wouldn't be any wrong; everything we did would be tight. Just as it
is with the Lower Animals."

"Correct, again."

"Rationally stated, then, the function of the Moral Sense is to create WRONG--
since without it all conduct would be right."

"Correct."

"It creates wrong, points it out, and so enables us to do it."

"Yes."

'Therefore the special and particular office of the Moral Sense is to suggest, in-
stigate and propagate wrongdoing."

"Also, right-doing, dear sir--admit it, please."

"Excuse me, we could do that without it. But we couldn't do wrong without it."

"Very true. But dear sir, to be able to do wrong is a high distinction--it lifts us
far above the other animals. It is a good deal of a distinction, isn't it?"

"Yes: the distinction between a dial and a tin watch."

x x x He went away pretty sour. All the same, the the was planted, and it stayed.
Ever since then, these nations look complacently down upon the Lower Animals
because they can't do wrong, and complacently up at themselves because they
can. The Microbes are my own people, and I loyally and patriotically admire them
and am proud of them; yet I know in my secret heart that when it comes to rea-
soning-power they are not really a shade less comical than Man.' B.b.B.

P.S., 2,000 years still later. That note was an error. I had not given the matter
sufficient thought at that time. I am aware now that the Moral Sense is a valuable
postession,indeed inestimably valuable. Without it we could not be what we are. Life
would be monotonous, it would consist of sleeping and feeding, only, it would have
no lofty. ambitions, no noble ideals, there would be no missionaries, no statesmen,
no jails, no crime, no soldiers, no thrones, no slaves, no slaughter,--in a word, no
Civilization. Without the Moral Sense, Civilization is impossible.' B.b.B.

I have often been in the actual presence of our Emperors. More, I have been spoken to by
them. This great honor has never been vouchsafed to any other foreigner of my degree in all
the vast stretch of time during which the present Family has occupied the throne. It was ac-
corded only once before, in all history. That was nearly three million years ago. There is
a monument, to preserve the memory of it. It is rebuilt every five hundred years, by volun-
tary contributions exacted by the State. This is in obedience to an edict promulgated by
the emperor of that ancient day and dynasty, who was of a lofty nature and noted for his
benevolence, It is a matter of pride to me to know that the subject of that distinction was
of my own race--a cholera germ. Beyond this fact nothing is known of him except that he
was a foreigner. From what part of Blitzowski he came, history does not say, nor what pro-
cured him the memorable honor which the emperor bestowed upon him.

Foreigners are not hated, here; I may say they are not even disliked--they are tolerated.
The people treat them courteously, but are indifferent to them. They look down upon them,
without being distinctly conscious of it. Foreigners are regarded as inferiors everywhere
under the Blitzowski skies. Substantially that, though there are some exceptions. One at
least--Getrichquick, the principal republic. There, a third-rate foreign microbic celeb-
rity easily outranks a first-rate native one, and is received with a worshipful enthusiasm
which astonishes him away down in his private soul, and he gets more champagne than he
gets beer at home. In a Blitzowskan monarchy it is the other way: there, a Getrichquick
first-rate ranks as a fifth-rate. But he is solaced: he is a shade prouder of being fifth
-rate there than first-rate at home.

Everywhere throughout the planet of Blitzowski the foreigner ranks as an inferior, except--
as I have just said--in the mighty Republic of Getrichquick, universally known as the great-
est of all the democracies. It occupies a prodigious domain. Under its flag is the whole
of Blitzowski's stomach, which is the richest country, the most fertile, the most product-
ive and the most prodigally and variously endowed with material resources in all the micro-
bic world. In that world it is one of the two or three conspicuously great centres of trade.
Its commerce, both domestic and foreign, is colossal. Its transportation-facilities are
quite extraordinary; theme make it a distributing-centre of imposing importance. In manufac-
tures it heads all the countries in Blitzowski. It imports raw materials from the North and
ships the manufactured product to all the great nations lying toward the South. For ages it
was selfish; it cared for the prosperity and happiness of its own people only, and steadily
refused to extend its dominions in the interest of remote and suffering little nations.
Many of its best people were ashamed of this. They saw great Heartland sending the refresh-
ing blood of her gracious Civilization to many a dark and neglected nation al ing in de-
basing indolence and oriental luxury upon the confines of Blitzowski and requiring nothing
in return but subject revenue; they saw imperial Henryland, far away in the desolate North
gradually and surely spreading its dominion down 'he planet's flat expanse from the Shoulder
Range to the lofty land of the Far South--the "Majestic Dome" of the poet and the traveler--
distributing happiness and pus all the way, and in return requiring nothing of the benefited
peoples except what they had; they saw these things and were ashamed. They were ashamed,
and they rose and fought that policy at the polls and replaced it with a holier and holier one,
which they baptised with the noble name of Benevolent Assimilation. It was an epoch-making
achievement. It lifted Getrichquick out of her obscure and selfish isolation, the moment
she was worthy, and throned her in the august company of the Pirate Powers. This was in
very recent times--hardly three-hundred and fifty thousand years ago, indeed. Far away,
in the idst of the shoreless solitudes of the Great Lone Seat was a collection of mud is-
lets inhabited by those harmless bacilli which ore the food of the fierce hispaniola satan-
iensis, whose excretions are the instrument appointed to propagate disease in the human
trigonum. This archipelago was benevolently assimilated by the puissant Republic. It was
first ingeniously wrested from its owners, by help of the unsuspicious owners themselves,
then it was purchased from its routed and dispossessed foreign oppressors at a great price.
This made the title perfect, even elegant. Also it added a Great Power to Blitzowski's
riches and distinctions of that sort. The new Great Power was really no greater than it
was before; the addition of the mud-piles was about the equivalent of adding a prairie-dog
village to a mountain range, but the artificial expansion produced by the addition was so
vast that it may justly be likened to a case of "before and after": the great Captive Bal-
loon of Paris lying flat and observed of no passer-by, before filling, and the smile bal-
loon high in the air, rotund, prodigious its belly full of gas, tin wonder and admira-
tion of a gazing worldj

The native bacilli of the islets are of the kind called "benevolent" by the Blitzowski sci-
entist. That is to say, they are not disease producers. They are unusually little creatures.
I have seen several of them. They were hardly more than five feet in diameter. I mean, as
seen by my present eye--the eye of a microbe. Ordinary bacilli can be seen by a human being
with a microscope magnifying ten or twelve hundred times; but he would not be able to see
these little creatures without magnifying them considerably more than that. If you bunch a
million ordinary bacilli together on a glass slide they will appear to the naked human eye
like a minute stain, but I doubt if a similar crowd of these little Great Lone Sea island-
ers could be detected at all by the naked human eye. Yes, they are small, like their arch-
ipelago, but to hear the Republic talk about the combination, you would think she had been
annexing four comets and a constellation.

The first of my imperial masters I was privileged to see was Henry the Great. Not the first
one bearing that title--no, I do not mean that; mine was the 861st Henry the Great. By law
and usage he was called Seiner Kaiserlichedurchlaustigstehochbegabtergottallmachtiger Eight-
Sixty-One des Grossen. It sounds like German, but it isn't. Many of the 861 Greats earned
the envied title by begetting heirs in a time of scarcity, several earned it by generalship
in war and other forms of massacre, others earned it by illustrious achievements in the line
of Benevolent Assimilation, still others by acting as the Church's harlot, others still by
enriching the nobility with State lands and with large pensions and gratuities bilked from
the public till; the rest earned it by sitting still, looking wise, accepting the credit of
the great achievements of their ministers of State--and not meddling. These latter are held
in imperishable honor by the grateful nation They have their monuments. Built by the people,
by voluntary contributions--real voluntaries. And rebuilt by the people whenever time moul-
ders them to ruin.

As I have already remarked, my own Henry the Great was No. 861. This was about 3,000 years
ago--when I first came. That I should have the distinction of appearing before the emperor
was a most extraordinary thing. Because I was a foreigner, and (at that time) not noble. My
sept--the Cholera Microbes--is one of the Malignant Septs, therefore nobilities may be cho-
sen from it, but I myself was neither noble nor received by persons of noble degree. So it
naturally made a great sensation when I was commanded to the presence.

The event came about in this way. By some strange circumstance the egg of an American
flea got into Blitzowski's blood and was hatched out and drowned. Then it became fossilized.
This was about four million years ago, when the tramp was a boy. On earth I was a scientist
by profession, and I remained one after I was transformed into a microbe. Paleontology was
a passion with me. I was soon searching for fossils. I found several new ones, and this
good fortune gave me the entre into scientific society. Local, I mean. It was humble and ob-
scure, but in its heart burned the same passion for science that was consuming my own.

I no longer regretted lost America, I was among friends, admirers, helpers, and was happy.

In all ways I was enviably situated in those days. I lived in the country, in a dozing village,
an easy distance from the capital, and had for neighbors a kindly and innocent peasantry whose
quaint habits and quainter speech I loved to study. There were some billions of them, in the
village and around it, yet they seemed few and scattering, for billions count for nothing among
germs. The region was healthful and attractive; on every hand a receding and diminishing per-
spective of fair fields and gardens and parks, threaded with limpid streams and musical with
the songs of birds, stretched away to a stately mountain rampart which lifted its rugged and
broken sky-line against the western horizon--a prospect ever serene, contenting and beautiful,
and never curtained, never blotted out, for in Blitzowski there is no night. What would be the
blackest darkness to a human eye is noonday--a noonday as of fairyland, soft and rich and del-
icate--to the microbe's. The microbe's mission is urgent, exacting, he seldom sleeps, until age
tires him.

What would my rugged mountains be, to the human eye? Al), they would hardly even rank as warts.
And my limpid and sparkling streams? Cobweb threads, delicate blood-vessels which it could not
detect without the aid of the microscope. And the soaring arch of my dream-haunted sky? For that
coarse eye it would have no existence. To my exquisite organ of vision all this spacious land-
scape is alive--alive and in energetic motion--unceasing motion--every detail of it! It is be-
cause I can see the individual molecules that compose it, and even the atoms which compose the
m. .Iecules; but no microscope is powerful enough to reveal either of 1, se things to the human
eye. To the human mind they exist only theory, not in demonstrated fact. The human mind--that
wonderful machine--has measured the invisible molecule, and measured it accurately, without
seeing it; also it has counted the multitudinous electrons that compose it, and counted them cor-
rectly, without having seen one of them; certainly a marvelous achievement.

Take a man like Sir Oliver Lodge, and what secret of Nature can be hidden from him? He says:
"A billion, that is a million millions, of atoms is truly an immense number, but the resulting
aggregate is still excessively minute. A portion of substance consisting of a billion atoms is
only barely visible with the highest power of a microscope; and a speck or granule, in order
to be visible to the naked eye, like a grain of lycopodium-dust, must be a million
times bigger still."

The human eye could see it then--that dainty little speck. But with my microbe-eye I could see
every individual of the whirling billions of atoms that compose the speck. Nothing is ever at
rest--wood, iron, water, everything is alive, everything is raging, whirling, whizzing, day
and night and night and day, nothing is dead, there is no such thing as death, everything is
full of bristling life, tremendous life, even the bones of the crusader that perished before
Jerusalem eight centuries ago. There are no vegetables, all things are ANIMAL; each electron is
an animal, each molecule is a collection of animals, and each has an appointed duty to perform
and a soul to be saved. Heaven was not made for man alone, and oblivion and neglect reserved
for the rest of His creatures. He gave them life, He gave them humble services to perform, they
have performed them, and they will not be forgotten, they will have their reward. Man--always
vain, windy, conceited--thinks he will be in the majority there. He will be disappointed. Let
him humble himself. But for the despised microbe and the persecuted bacillus, who needed a
home and nourishment, he would not have been created. He has a mission, therefore--a reason
for existing: let hii do the service he was made for, and keep quiet.

Three weeks ago I was a man myself, and thought and felt men think and feel; but I have
lived 3,000 years since then, and, see the foolishness of it now. We live to learn; and
fortunate are vy when we are wise enough to profit by it.


[NOTE. Seven Thousand Years Later. Many things have gone from my memory in
the 7,000 years that have passed since then, but I still remember little incidents
connected with my introduction to that pleasant comradeship. We had a little
banquet, a very modest one, of course, for we were all poor and earned our liv-
ing by hard work in common handicrafts, but it was very good, what there was of
it. Exceedingly good, I may say. The word is not too strong, for we were more
used to fasting than feasting. We had both kinds of corpuscles, and they were
served up in six different ways, from soup and raw down to pie. The red ones
were a little high, but Tom Nash made us all laugh by wittily saying it wasn't
any matter, because the bill was so low that--that well, it has gone from me,
but I still consider it one of the wittiest things I have ever heard in my
life. And he said it offhand--he did not have to stop and think, just flirted
it out without any study, and perfectly easy and composed, the same as if he
Might be saying any little thing; and he...but was it Tom?...Ah, well, it
could have been Sam Bowen . .. or maybe John Garth or Ed. Stevens....Anyway
it was one of them, I remember it perfectly. Yes, it was a quite memorable
event, for young fellows like us. Ah, little did we suspect that we were
making history! But we were. Little did we foresee that our poor little ban-
quet was going to live forever in song and story, and in text-book and grave
chronicle, and that my most careless words were destined to be remembered,
and treasured and reverently repeated until the last germ shall fall silent
and be gathered to his rest. I think the finest part of my speech was where I
said, in concluding a lofty and impassioned tribute to the real r.obility of
Science and her devotees, "Ah, gentlemen," I said, "in the--the...in the--."
I will look it up, in one of the Universal Histories. Here it is: "Ah, gen-
tlemen, in the laboratory there are no fustian ranks, no brummagem aristo-
cracies; the domain of Science is a republic, and all its citizens are bro-
thers and equals, its princes of Monaco and its stonemasons of Cromarty meet-
ing, barren of man-made gauds and meretricious decorations, upon the one maj-
estic level!"

Of course the boys did not understand the references, and I did not explain
at that time, but it was a grand peroration and the eloquence of it carried
them clear off their feet. Eloquence is the essential thing in a speech, not
information. B.b.B.]


V.


IN MATTERS pertaining to microscopy we necessarily have advantage, here, over the scientist
of the earth, because, as I have just been indicating, we see with our naked eyes minutenesses
which no man-made microscope can detect, and are therefore able to register as facts many
things which exist for him as theories only. Indeed, we know as facts several things which
he has not yet divined even by theory. For example he does not suspect that there is no life
but animal life, and that all atoms are individual animals, each endowed with a certain de-
gree of consciousness, great or small, each with likes and dislikes, predilections and aver-
sions--that, in a word! each has a character, a character of its own. Yet such is the case.
Some of the molecules of a stone have an aversion for some of those of a vegetable or any
other creature, and will not associate with them--and would not be allowed to, if they tried.
Nothing is more particular about society than a molecule. And so there are no end of castes;
in this matter India is not a circumstance.

I often think of a talk I once had upon some of these things with a friend of mine, a re-
nowned specialist by the name of Bblbgxw, a name which I have to modify to Benjamin Franklin
because it is so difficult for me to pronounce that combination right; but that is near e-
nough anyway, because when a foreigner pronounces it it always sounds a little like Franklin,
when it doesn't sound like Smith. As I was saying, I was discussing those things with him,
and I still remember some of the remarks he made; others have faded Out of my memory, but
no matter, I wrote down the talk at the lime, and will insert that record here:


THE RECORD.


FRANKLIN is a Yellow-fever germ, but speaks a broken and fiendishly ungrammatical thyroid-
diphthyritic which I am able to follow, and could follow better if his accent were less hom-
icidal. I wish he knew Latin--however, he doesn't. It is curious, the way these bacilli
stick to their own tongues and avoid foreign ones. And yet it is not so very curious, per-
haps, seeing there is such a multitude of foreign tongues in Blitzowski that a learner
hardly knows where to begin on them. As for me, I have a talent for languages, and I like
to learn them. The time-cost is nothing to me. I can learn six in an hour, without diffi-
culty. (Microbe-time, of course, confound these troublesome time-tables!)

I may well say that, for they make my head ache. I have no trouble with microbe-time, for
I have used no other, nor had occasion to use any other, for several centuries; and so the
familiarity with human time which I once possessed has ceased to be a familiarity, and I
cannot now handle its forms with easy confidence and a sure touch when I.I.vant to trans-
late them into microbe-equivalents. This is natural. Since ever so long ago, microbe time
has been real to me, and human time a dream--the one present and vivid, the other far away
and dim, very dim, wavering, spectral, the substantiality all gone out of it. Sometimes I
shut my eyes and try to bring back the faces that were so dear to me in my human days in
America. How immeasurably remote they are, and vague and shadowy, glimpsed across that
gulf of time--mere dream-figures drifting formless through a haze! Indeed, all things are
dim to me, I think, that lie beyond it. Why, when I first began to write this little state-
ment a half a second ago, I had to keep stopping to dig down into my memory for old for-
gotten human measurements of time that I had not used nor thought of for lifetimes and
lifetimes! My difficulties were so great and my mistakes so frequent and vexatious that
for comfort's sake and accuracy's sake I stopped writing, and labored out a tabulated
translation of microbe time-divisions into human ones for my guidance and protection.
Like this:




A Pause for Comment.
Record Suspended, Meantime.


AS FAR as the table deals in seconds and minutes it is inexact. The microbe month is more than
60 human seconds; it is 1 human minute, and 12 seconds over. But I use the rough measurement
because it is handy, and near enough for all ordinary purposes. I wanted to translate a mic-
robe hour into its human equivalent, but it kept shrinking and diminishing and wasting away,
and finally disappeared from under my pen, leaving nothing behind that I could find again
when I wanted it. As nearly as I could get ax it, a microbe hour seemed to be the fiftieth
part of human second. We will let it go at that. I used to be the best mathematician in Yale
when I was in the class of '53, and to-day I am considered the best one in Blitzowski--that
is, in microbe mathematics--but I can do nothing with human mathematics now. I have tried
lately to get back the art, but my memory refuses. In the Yale days I was teer:ect In it;
indeed I was called wonderful. Justly, too, perhaps, for people used to come from great distances
to see me do eclipses, and occultations of Venus, and such things. I could do twelve simul-
taneously, blindfold, and keep the run of them all, just in my head. It was in those days
that I invented the logarhythyms, but I cannot even spell it without embarrassment now, let
alone put up a hand in them that a soph can't beat. Great days--yes, they were great days.
They will come no more. In this pathetic life all things pass, nothing abides. Even the hu-
man multiplication table has gone from me--almost utterly. It has been more than seven thou-
sand years since I could say it beyond 4 times 9 is 42. But it is no matter, I shall never need
it after I get done writing this. And besides, if I should need multiplications in this, it
may be that I can use the local multiplication table and then translate it into human. No--
that will hardly answer, everything is so small here, as compared with human dimensions. It
is not likely that 4 times 9 in microbe would amount to enougli in English to be worth while.
It would not convey enough of the idea for the reader to get it.

Having clarified the atmosphere on the time-limit and removed the confusions and perplexities
that were vexing it, I will now return to the conversation I had with Franklin.


The Record Resumed.


"FRANKLIN," I asked, "is it certain that each and every existing thing is an individual and
alive--every plant, for instance?"

"Yes," he answered.

"And is each molecule that composes it an individual too, and alive?"

"Yes."

"And is each atom that composes the molecule an individual also, and alive?"

"Yes."

"Now then, has the whole plant--a tree, for instance--feeling,? sympathies and so on, as a
tree?"

"Yes."

"Whence do they come?"

"They are imparted by the combined feelings and sympathies that exist separatelyin the mole-
cules that compose the tree. They are the tree's soul. They make the tree feel like a tree
instead of like a rock or a horse."

"Have rocks, trees and horses any feelings that are common to the three?"

"Yes. The feelings which are the product of oxygen are shared in greater or lesser degree by
all three. If the chemical compounds of a rock were the same as those of a tree and in the
same proportions, it wouldn't look like a rock, nor feel like a rock, and--"

"Well?"

"Well, it wouldn't be a rock. It would be a tree."

"I do believe it. Tell me: Inasmuch as oxygen enters into the composition of pretty much ever-
ything that exists, it would interest me to know if it imparts a special and particular feel-
ing--a feeling not imparted to a creature by any other kind of molecule?"

"Indeed it does. Oxygen is temper, and is the sole source of it. Where there is but little of
it there is but little passion; where there is more of it, there is more temper; where there is
more still, still more temper; add still more oxygen, degree by degree, keep on adding, and you
warm that temper up and up, stage by stage, till by and by you reach the ultimate of fury. Some
plants are very quiet and peaceable --you have noticed that?"

"I have."

"It is because they contain but little oxygen. Others contain more, others more still. Some are
more heavily charged withoxygen than with any other chemical. We know the result: the rose is
sweet-tempered, the nettle is hasty, the horse-radish is violent. Observe the bacilli: Some are
gentle--it means lack of oxygen. Then look at the tuberculosis-germ, and typhoid: loaded to the
mandibles with oxygen! I have some temper myself, but I am thankful to say I do not act like
those outlaws. When I am at my angriest, I am still able to remember that I am a gentleman."

Well, we are curious creatures. Sometimes I wonder if there is anybody who is not a self-deceiv-
er. He believed what he was saying, he was perfectly sincere about it; yet everybody knows that
when a yellow-fever germ's temper is up, there is no real difference between him and an insur-
rection. He evidently expected me to concede that he was a kind of a saint, and so I had dis-
cretion enough to do it, for I ite no pleasure in mutilations, and I am going to be unusually
anxious for trouble before ever I throw out any remark that is likely stir up his oxygen. Pres-
ently, I said--

"Tell me, Franklin, is the ocean an individual, an animal, a creature?"

"Sure."

"Then water--any water--is an individual?"

"Sure."

"Suppose you remove a drop of it? Is what is left an individual?"

"Yes, and so is the drop."

"Suppose you divide the drop?"

"Then you have two individuals."

"Suppose you separate the hydrogen and the oxygen?"

"Again you have two individuals. But you haven't water, any more.

"Of course. Certainly. Well, suppose you combine them again, but in a new way: Make the propor-
tions equal--one part oxygen to one of hydrogen?"

"But you know you can't. They won't combine on equal terms.

I was ashamed to have made that blunder. I was embarrassed; to cover it, I started to say we used
to combine them like that where I came from, but thought better of it, and stood pat.

"Now then," I said, "it amounts to this: water is an individual, an animal, and is alive; remove
the hydrogen and it is an animal and is alive; the remaining oxygen is also an individual, an an-
imal, and is alive. Recapitulation: the two individuals combined, constitute a third individual--
and yet each continues to be an individual.

I glanced at Franklin, but...upon reflection, held my peace I could have pointed out to him that
here was mute Nature explaining the sublime mystery of the Trinity so luminously that even
the commonest understanding could comprehend it, whereas many a_ trained master of words
had labored to do it with speech and failed. But he would not have known what I was talking
about. After a moment, I resumed--

"Listen--and see if I have understood you rightly. To-wit--All the atoms that constitute each ox-
ygen molecule are separate individuals, and each one is a living animal; all the atoms that con-
stitute each hydrogen molecule are separate individuals, and each one is a living animal; each
drop of water consists of millions of living animals, the drop itself is an individual, a living
animal, and the wide ocean is another. Is that it?"

"Yes, that is correct."

"By George, it beats the band!"

He liked the expression, and set it down in his tablets.

"Franklin, we've got it down fine. And to think--there are other animals that are still smaller than
a hydrogen atom, and yet it is so small that it takes five thousand of them to make a molecule--
a molecule so minute that it could get into a microbe's eye and he wouldn't know it was there!"

"Yes, the wee creatures that inhabit the bodies of us germs, and feed upon us, and rot us with dis-
ease. Ah, what could they have bee created for? they give us pain, they make our lives miserable,
they murder us--and where is the use of it all, where the wisdom? Ah, friend Bkshp, we live in a
strange and unaccountable world; our birth is a mystery, our little life is a mystery and a trou-
ble, we pass and are seen no more; all is mystery, mystery, mystery; we know not whence we came,
nor why, we know not whither we go, nor why we go. We only know we were not made in vain, we only
know we were made for a wise purpose, and that all is well! We shall not be cast aside in contume-
ly and unblest, after all we have suffered. Let us be patient, let us not repine, let us trust. The
humblest of us is cared for --oh, believe it!--and this fleeting stay is not the end!"

You notice that? He did not suspect that he, also, was engaged in gnawing, torturing, defiling,
rotting, and murdering a fellow.creature--he and all the swarming billions of his race. None of
them suspects it. That is significant. It is suggestive--irresistibly suggestive--insistently sug-
gestive. It hints at the possibility that the procession of known and listed devourers and perse-
cutors is not complete. It suggests the possibility, and substantially the certainty, that man is
himself a microbe, and his globe a blood-corpuscle drifting with its shining brethren of the
Milky Way down a vein of the Master and Maker of all things, Whose body, mayhap,--glimpsed part-
wise from the earth by night, and receding and lost to view in the measureless remotenesses of
Space--is what men name the Universe.


VI.


WELL, FRANKLIN," I said, "Carpe diem--quam minimum credula postero."*

He was very much pleased when I translated it for him; and got me to write it down in his tablets,
so that he could make an illuminated motto of it and stick it up in his parlor like a God-Bless-
Our-Home and have its admonition ever under his eye, for he was profoundly struck by its wisdom.
While I was complying, he took two drinks. I did not say anything, but it seemed to me that when
it came to wisdom he already had enough for the practical purposes of
this brief life.

I excused myself from going to the door with him--being shy, for I had long been intolerably re-
nowned and sought after. He understood, for he could see, himself, that the usual multitude had
massed itself, black and solid, for hundreds of yards around, hoping to get a glimpse of me. He
took a snap with his instantaneous multograph, looked at the record, and called back to me that
the number of persons present was 648,342,227,549,113. It interested him, and he put up his hand
and flung back, with a flirt or two of his fingers, the sign-language remark, 'This is the penal-
ty for being illustrious, magister!"

Oh, dear, how many million times I have heard and seen that shop-worn remark since I became fa-
mous. Each person that utters it thinks he's the first that thought of it; thinks it's a cute
phrase and felicitous, and is as vain of it as if he had cornered the fourth dimension. Whereas
it is the obvious remark; any person who was alive and not in the asylum would think of it. It
is of the grade of the puns which small wits make upon people's names. Every time they are in-
troduced to a person named Terry they dazzle-up like the sun bursting out of a cloud and say, "I
am not going to hurt you, don't look so terrified!" and then they almost perish with cackling
over that poor little addled egg that they've laid. Why doesn't it occur to them that in the very
nature of things Terry has seen it laid every day since he was born? Twain...Twain...what was
his other name? Mike? I think it was Mike, but it was long ago, centuries ago, that I used to
hear of him in that almost forgotten world that I used to inhabit; and I read his books, too,
but I do not remember what they were about, now...no, it Wasn't books, it was pictures...pict-
ures or agriculture...agri...yes, it was agriculture, I remember it perfectly, now. He was a
Californian, and his middle name was Burbank; he did miracles in the invention and propagation
of new and impossible breeds of flowers and fruits and timber, and became known all over the
world, and was finally hanged, many thought unjustly. He was coming out of a saloon sometimes
one day, and one of the times that he was coming out of it a stranger was introduced to him,
and dazzled-up like the sun bursting out of a cloud, and shouted, "Aha! he-he! he-he! if a man
require thee to go with him a mile, go with him, Twain!" and Twain shot him in five places and
he crumpled up on the sidewalk and died, many people looking on, and some regretting it. The
whole State joined in an effort to get the death-sentence commuted to a term in Congress or
jail, I do not remember which it was, now, and the governor was quite willing if the agricul-
turist would say he was sorry, but he said he could not tell a lie, and some believed him, be-
cause he had once chopped down a cherry tree because he couldn't; and then it came out that he
had already killed dozens of persons of every sex for making that remark and had concealed it
for one reason or another, and so it was judged best, on the whole, to let the sentence stand,
although everybody, even Grovenor Rossfelt, President of the United States, conceded that such
people were not necessary.

Well, certainly memory is a curious machine and strangely capricious. It has no order, it has
no system, it has no notion of values, it is always throwing away gold and hoarding rubbish.
Out of that dim old time I have recalled that swarm of wholly trifling facts with ease and pre-
cision, yet to save my life I can't get back my mathematics. It vexes me, yet I am aware that
everybody's memory is like that, and that therefore I have no right to complain. There was an
odd instance of it the other day: Wzprgfski * the historian was here, and was telling about an-
cient times, and all of a sudden the bottom fell out of the back end of his memory and spilt
every proper name he ever knew. During the interval that the infirmity lasted, he was short on
generals, poets, patriarchs and all the rest of his venerated celebrities, and long on lies
and legends and battles and revolutions and other incorporeate facts only. Presently he got
his proper-name memory back, then another piece of bottom fell out and spilt a hatful of verbs.
When it happened he was just starting to say, "And so, in the fulness of time Ggggmmmdw.* . .
."But there he went aground; the word he wanted was gone. I had to supply it myself and
start him along again. It was hfcnzz. With that umlaut over the n it means "began to dis-
integrate;" without the umlaut, the word is an active transitive past participle, and means
that the disintegration has been completed; thus it means--substantially--that the man h dead:
but not exactly that, but not really, because in Blitzowski, as I have previously remarked,
there is no such thing as death. The umlauted word is restricted to poetry; but even in poe-
try it does not mean that life has ceased; it has departed--that is all; we do not know its
new habitat, but we know it is still with us, still near us. Of the molecules which consti-
tuted its late dwelling and gave it motion and feeling--that is to say, life--many have wan-
dered away and joined themselves to new plasmic forms, and are continuing their careers in
the bodies of plants, birds. fishes, flies, and other creatures; in time the rest will follow,
till the last bone has crumbled to dust, in the far future, and dismissed its atoms, each
to seek its kind and go on with its functions indefinitely. And so our people here have no
word to signify that either a person or his spirit is dead, in our sense of that term; no,
his oxygen molecules are gradually deserting and wandering away, in groups and companies,
to furnish temper to the horse-radish, the tiger and the rabbit, each in the degree require-
d; his hydrogen, (humor, hope, cheer) as fast as it is released, will carry its happy spirit
whither it is needed, and will lift up the drooping flower and whatever other thing is des-
pondent; his glucose, his acetic acid, his--well, everything he has got will go out and seek
and find a new home, and each will continue its vocation. Nothing will be lost, nothing will
perish.

Franklin realizes that no atom is destructible; that it has always existed and will exist
forever; but he thinks all atoms will go out of this world some day and continue their life
in a happier one. Old Tolliver thinks no atom's life will ever end, but he also thinks
Blitzowski is the only world it will ever see, and that at no time in its eternity will it
be either worse off or better off than it is now and always has been. Of course he thinks
the planet Blitzowski is itself eternal and indestructible--at any rate he says he thinks
that. It could make me sad, only I know better. D.T. will fetch Blitzy yet, one of these
days.

But these are alien thoughts, human thoughts, and they falsely indicate that I do not want
this tramp to go on living. What would become of me if he should disintegrate? My molecules
would scatter all around and take up new quarters in hundreds of planes and animals; each
would carry its special feelings along with it, each would be content in its new estate, but
where should I be? I should not have a rag of a feeling left. after my disintegration--with
his--was complete. Nothing to think with, nothing to grieve or rejoice with, nothing to hope
or despair with. There would be no more me. I should be musing and thinking and dreaming
somewhere the--in some distant animal, maybe--perhaps a cat: by proxy of my oxygen I should
be raging and fuming in some oilier creature--a rat, perhaps; I should be smiling and hoping
in still another child of Nature--heir to my hydrogen--ii weed, or cabbage, or something: my
carbonic acid (ambition,. would be dreaming dreams in '"me lowly weed violet that was longing
for a showy career; thus my details would be doing as much feeling as ever, but I should not
be aware of it, it would all be going on for the benefit of those others, and I not in it at
all. I should be gradually wasting away, atom by atom, molecule by molecule, at the yeah went
on, and at law 1 should be all distributed, and nothing kft of what had once been Me. It is
curious, and not without impressiveness: I should still be alive, intensely alive, but so
scattered that I would not know it. I should not be dead.--no, one cannot call it that--but
I should be the next thing to it. And to think what centuries and ages and aeons would drift
over Me before the disintegration was finished, the last bone turned to gas and blown Away!!
wish I knew what it is going to ferl like, to lie helpless such a weary, weary time, and see
my faculties decay and depart, one by one, like lights which burn low, and flicker, and per-
ish, until the tyersksssoing gloom and darkness which--oh, away, away with these horrors,
and let me think of something wholesomer!

My tramp is only 85; there is good hope that he will live ten years longer-503,030 of my mi-
crobe years. So may it be.


The Ancient Record Continued.


VII.


As soon as I was sure Franklin was out of sight I stepped out on the bakony: looked surpris-
ed to find that people were waiting in the hope of getting a glimpse of me--fell into an at-
titude of embarrassment and consternation which is very effective in Kodak-snaps and illu-
strations. and which I have perfected by practice before the glass -then I allowed the usual
thundercrash of salutation and welcome to astonish use into another and quite stunning atti-
tude of surprise--surprise mixed with almost childish gratification--really a most fetching
thing when it is done well--then I scudded away like a dear little shy maid who has been
caught with nothing on but a blush, and vanished into my quartets, thus making the moat tak-
ing and delightful effect of all, for it always leaves the mighty multitude rent Willi storms
of happy and grateful laughter, and they shout "oh, isn't he too sweet for anything!'

Oh shocked and scornful reader, be gentle with me! Can't you see yourself in that disgraceful
picture? For it is you. There has never been anybody who would nor like to be in that place;
there has never been any one who would throw away the chance to occupy it if he bad it. The
baby microbe shows off before company; the microbe lad shows off, with silly antics. before
the little bacillus girls; also he plays pirate, eldier. doyen--anything to be conspicuous.
After that--well, after that, his appetite for notice and notoriety remains--remains always
--but he lyingly and hypocritically lets on that he has lost it. Ile hasn't lost it, he has
only lost his honesty.

Now then, be gentle with me, for that is all that I have lost, all that you and I have lost. Oth-
erwise we are what we were when we were babies and used to clew and cackle and carry on
in mommer's lap and glance at the company to collect the applause. The company were poignant-
ly ashamed of the baby, and you have been as poignantly ashamed of me--that is, you thought
you were ashamed of, but that was not so--you were ashamed of yourself, as exposed in me.

We can't help our nature, we didn't make it, it was made for us; and so we are not to blame
for possessing it. Let us be kind and compassionate toward ourselves; let us not allow the
fact to digress us and grieve us that from mornmeis lap to the grave we arc all shams and hy-
pocrites and humbugs without an exception, seeing that we did not make the fact and are in
no way responsible for it. If any teacher tries to persuade you that hypocrisy is not a part
of your blood and bone and flesh, and can therefore be trained out of you by determined and
watchful and ceaseless and diligent application to the job, do not you heed him; ask him to
cure himself first, then call again. If he is an honorable person and is meaning well, he will
give the medicine you have recommended to him an earnest and honest and sincere trial,
but he will not call again.

For centuries I have held unchallenged the reputation of being a celebrity who is to shy and
modest by nature that he shrinks (tom public notice and is pained by it. Very well, I have
earned it. By thoughtful and deeply.reasoned arts. I have played my game every day for a
lengthy procession of centuries, and played it well; I have my reward. I have copied the way
of the kings; they do not make themselves common to the public eye. A king's most valued and
valuable asset is public notice. 1Vithout it the chief charm of his difficult and burdensome
office would be wanting, and he would mourn and VOL and wish lie could trade Ins post for
one with more show to it and less wadi to do. Tradition puts this frank retort into the mouth
of old Henry MMMMMDCXXII, surnamed The Untamed: "Yes, I am fond of praises, processions,
notice, attentions, reverence, fuss and feathers! Vanities, are they? There was never a crea-
ture, particularly a god, that did not like them."

I started to tell how I came to he celebrated, but I have wandered far from my count.. It is
partly because I have long been unused to writing, and thereby have lost the art and habit
of concentration. And so I scatter too much. Then there was another difficulty: I wanted to
write in English, but could not manage it to my satisfaction, because the words, the grammar,
the forms, the spelling and everything else connected with the language had faded and become
unfamiliar to me. And the phrasing! Phrasing is everything. almost. Oh, yes, phrasing is a
kind of photography: out of focus; a blurred picture, in focus, a sharp one. One must get the
focus right--that is, frame the sentence with exactness and precision, in his mind--before
he pulls the string.


(End of Extract from the Ancient Record.)


VIII.


IT SEEMED best to fall back on the microbe tongue, and so I did it. I went back to the start
and put this Ilium), into that language, then laboriously translated it into English, just as
you see it now. It is very gcod, not many could do it better, yet in brilliancy and effective-
ness it is but the lightning-bug to the lightning. when compared with the microbic original.
Among microbe authors I hold the belt for phrasing. and I could hold it in English if I was a
mind to take the trouble.

The way I came to be celebrated was this. When I first arrived in Blitzowski I was poor and a
stranger; and as all could see that I was a foreigner, my society was not sought after. I took
cheap board with a humble family"and by their kindly help I was enabled to hire a hand-organ
and a monkey. On credit. On a royalty. I was 0 very industrious, performing all day and study-
ing the family's language all night, with the children for teachers, for they never slept,
there being no night for them; and indeed none for me except the conventional one invented
by myself.

At first I gained but few pennies, but I soon struck a goad idea. I began to sing. In English.
It was not very good singing. and was avoided; but only for a little while; for when the germs
noticed that I was using a strange tongue, and one which they had never heard before, they
were interested. I sang "Sally in Our Alley" and "I don't 'low no Coon to Fool roun' Me," and
other simple anthems, and then the crowds began to follow me around, and couldn't get enough.

I prospered. By the end of the first year I waspast master in the family's language, then I
went to work on a new one. I was still so American that that microbe year of ten minutes
and twelve seconds seemed astonishingly brief; but after that, each year that went by seemed
considerably longer than its immediate predecessor. This constantly lengthening process con-
tinued for tenyears; after that the microbe year was become fully as long to me as the half
of an American year had ever been. The older crops of Taylor children had grown so, meantime,
that several of the girls were 40 and marriageable. A microbe girl at 40 is about where an
American girl is at 20 or 25, for the climate is wonderfully healthy and the food nutritious,
and many a person lives to be 15O, which is a shade more than an entire human day.

Yes, I had prospered. But Sally and the Coon-song were beginning to show wear and invite
rocks; so, out ofprudence I reorganized my program and pulled off anotherprosperous ten
with "Bonny Doon" and "Buffalo Gals Can't You Come out To-night." Microbes like sentimental
music best.

Pretty early I had to explain what kind of a foreigner I was. This was a delicate business.
I could have told inquirers the truth, of course, for I was in practice, but there would
have been no takers. I could market a lie if I built it with judgment, but to say I was an
American and came of a race of star-bumping colossi who couldn't even see an average
microbe without a microscope, would have landed me in the asylum.

The local name of the cholera microbe is Bwilk a word equivalent to the Latin word lextali-
onis, which means well I don't remember, now, what it means, but bwilk is a good name and
much respected here. I found that there was no one in our neighborhood that had ever seen
a native of the Major Molar, or knew what the language of that region sounded like. The Ma-
jor Molar is Blitzowski's furthest-aft tooth on the port side. In the dentine of that tooth
there are some exceedingly delicate nerve-threads that traverse it horizontally, crossing
the cane-brake of perpendicular ones at right angles, and I pretended that I was a native
of one of those--the north-west one. After I had said it and was too late to mend the
statement, I remembered that Blitzowski's Major Molar was at the dentist's--awaiting re-
demption and not likely to get it, for Blitzowski is not given to paying for services or
redeeming undesirable securities so long as he can dodge. But no one noticed, and my
statement passed. Some good-hearted people thought it a pity that a respectable race
should be so traitened as to be obliged to live in such a remote and desolate away. This
touched me deeply, and I took up a collection for them.

I was fond of the Taylor children, they had grown up under my eye, many crops of them had
been dear little pets and housemates ine from their cradle-days, and it caused me a pang
when they hegan to leave the safe haven of their home and embark upon the uncertain sea
of matrimony. In the case of the boy-microbes, I did lot so much mind it, but it was very
hard to lose the girls, indeed I mild hardly bear to think of it. And to make it the hard-
er, the first to give her heart away was my favorite. This was Maggie (my love-name for
her, and used by none but her and me). I gave her that sacred name out of the secretest
chamber of my heart, when she was a little thing; and in after-years when she came to
have a budding sense of the sweetest and tenderest of all the passions and 1 told her
why that name was the name of names to me, her eyes Idled and she expressed with a kiss
the pitying words her quivering lips could not frame. The marriage made a great gap in
the family, for 981,642 of her sisters were married at the same time, and many brothers--
over a million, I do not remember the exact number, but I think I am within 30 or 35 of
it. None can know the desolation of a day like that who has not lived it. I had an hon-
ored place at the wedding solemnities, and assisted in deepening their impressiveness
by singing one of the dear old early songs; but when I tried to sing the other one the
strain upon my feelings was too great and I broke down. Neither could Maggie bear it.
From that day to this have never been able to sing 1 Don't tow No Coon" through the
end without my voice breaking.

That wedding carried my mind back to other scenes and other days, and filled it with
images painfully sweet and unforgetable. Turning the pages of my mouldy diaries now, to
refresh memory for these chapters, I find this entry, whose pathos moves me still,
after all these centuries:

May 25, Y.H. 2,501,007. Yesterday, Maggie's wedding. Last night I dreamed
of that other Maggie, that human Maggie, whose fare I shall look upon no more
in this life. In that sweet vision I her as I had seen her last--oh, dream of
loveliness, oh, creature, oh. spirit of fire and dew. oh, fairy form, trans-
figured by golden flood of the sinking sun!...God forgive me, I hurt with
a cruel spin/VI low could 1 commit that clime! And how the bean to note unmoved
the reproach in those gentle ryes and from that sweet presence unforgiven?

I wrote that passage 7,000 years ago. There is a very ea thing connected with it: I
have had that same dream, its unfaded, its pain unsoftened, once in every century since
recorded date--and always on the 24th of May of the hund year. When this had recurred
two or three times I took courage hope it was a sign--a sign that it would continue to
recur after t lapse of each century; when it had Hewed me five times I felt sure it
would continue; after that. I never had a doubt. So sure was 1, that when the sixth
century drew toward its close, I began to tally off the decades, then the years, the
months, the days, with ever increasing impatience and longing. until the hallowed day
came and again upon my slumbering mind the beautiful vision rose: I have always watches
with confidence for the dream since, as each century waned toward the memorable dare,
and in no instance have I been disappointed. Always in the dream I hear distant music`
distant and faint, but always sweet, always moving: "Bonny Doan." It was Margaret's
favorite, therefore it was mine too.

There is one very curious effect: in the dream the beautiful human girl is as beauti-
ful to me as she was when I was of her own race. This is quite unaccountable,
there is no way to explain it. Do I become human again, in the dream, and re-acquire
human notions of what is beautiful and what isn't? Really it has a plausible look, yet
it is pretty fanciful, pretty far-fetched, not very persuasive, not very likely, when
one examines it soberly. When I am awake, my standards of beauty and and loveliness
are microbic, and microbic only, and this is natural. When I am awake and my memory
calls up human faces and forms which were once beautiful so me, they are still beaut-
iful, but not with the beauty that exists by grace of race-ship--no, it is merely the
sort of beauty which I see in a flower. a bird, or other comely thing not of my own kind.
To the young gentleman-caterpillar no human being nor any other creature approaches
in charm and beauty and winsomeness the lissome and rounded young lady caterpillar whom
he loves. What is Cleopatra to him? Nothing. He would not go out of his way to look at
her. To him she would seem fluffy, gross, unshapely, she could not fire his passions.
To the vain and happy mother-octopus, the bunch of goggled and squirming fringes which
she has given birth to is beautiful beyond imagination, she cannot take her eyes off
it, when I would not give a damn for a ton of them. Indeed, to me any octopus is in-
sufferable. and I would not live with one for anything a person could give me. This
is not unreasoning prejudice. it is merely nature. We do not invent our tastes in
this matter, they come to us with our birth, they are of the many mysteries of our
being.

I am a microbe. A cholera microbe. For me there is comeliness, there is grace, there
is beauty findable. some way or some whew, in greater or lesser degree, in every one
of the nationalities that make up the prodigious germ-world--but at the head I place
the cholera' germ. To me its beauty has no near competitor. I still remember that in
the human world each of the nationalities had a beauty of ow own: there was the Italian
style. the German style. the French, the American. the Spankh, the English. the Egyptian,
the Dalwa man, the red Indian. the East Indian and a thousand other styles, civilized
and savage, and I also remember that each thought its own style the finest and best--a
condition which is repeated here in Blitzowski, from one end of him to the other. From
the scrapings of his teeth you can gather, oh, such an array of self-complacent tribes!
and from the rotting dollar hill in his pocket you can accumulate another swarm; and I give
you my word that every naked savage in the lot would pass indifferently by Maggie Taylor
the germ-belle of Henryland, if she were still existent, and go into ecstasies over the
imagined beauty of some frumpy squaw of his own particular breed who could no more
stir me than a cow could. I speak from experience. With my own eyes I have seen a heb-
uccalis maximus lose his mind over a she-one, accidentally encountered, while right in
sight were a dozen surpassingly lovely little cholera germ witches, each and every of them
more tantalizingly delicious to look at than her comrades, if possible. Of course to my mind
that spirilla was a fool; and of course, to his mind I was another one.

It is the way we are made, and we can't help it. I have never married, I shall never
marry. Is it because I lost my heart, irrecoverably when I lost it to Margaret Adams in
America three thousand years ago? It must be so. I think it is so Once in every century
she comes to me in my dream, clothed in immortal youth and imperishable beauty; and in
the dream she is as erst my idol and I adore. But when the dream passes l am myself again
and she but a dim and fair unthrilling memory; I am myself again, and worship of the budding
and beautiful of my own loved microbic race comes back to me, anti I know that for another
century I have no homage for any charm but that which looks out from blue eyes and plays
in the winsome smile of the college-maid whose privilege it is to carry in her veins the
blood of the cholera-germs--oldest and noblest and most puissant of all the race of
germs. save only the Plague-Bacillus, at sound of whose mighty name the nations uncover!

I cannot be sure of my human clear one's age, for it was long ago, but I think she was
eighteen or nineteen I think I was three or four years older than she was, but I find my-
self unable to he exact about it, all such things are so dim in my memory now. f have an
impression that the first Napoleon was reigning at the time, or that he had lately fallen
at Marathon or Philippi. whichever it was, for I am clear that a world convulsing event
was filling all men's mouths then, and I think it must have been that one. I remember
that had just graduated--class of '53--a vast event lot me, and not lightly to be mis-
placed in my memory I should think, and that was the year that General Washington went
North to assume command of the Hessians, the only time I ever saw him, so far as I
rememeber. I depend mainly on historical events to preserve my connection with my human
life, because they stay with me better than minor happenings do, on account of their pro-
minence and importance, and because I have a natural fondness for history and an aptness
for mastering its details which Professor Tolliver regarded as quite remarkable, a ver-
dict which greatly pleased me, since history was that learned and illustrious germ's
specialty.

I must explain that that "Y.H." in the above diary-date stands for "year of the Henriad."
It was like this arrogant House to cancel and wipe out the preceding ages when it cap-
tured the throne, and second stage history. with a new Year One. Speaking as a microbe,
and with a microbe's ideas of propriety, I think it was not seemly. Indeed I had felt
the same way before I was ever a microbe, for I was among the dissenters when the Ame-
rican Revolution ended successfully and Sir John Franklin and his brother Benjamin got
the Diet of Worms to establish a new Year One and name the months Germinal, and Fruc-
tidor, and all that nonsense. Such tremendous readjustments of time should be the pre-
rogative of religions only, I think. Religions achieve real and permanent epochs, where-
as no political epoch can be of that character, the very law of all political entities
being change, change. unceasing change,--sometimes advancement, sometimes retrogression,
but never rest, never repose, never fixity. Religions are of God, and they come from his
hand perfect, therefore unimprovable, but policies are of men and microbes, and unstable,
like their creators. Evolution is the law of policies: Darwin said it, Socrates endorsed
it, Cuvier proved it and established it for all time in his paper on "The Survival of the
Fittest." These are illustrious names, this is a mighty doctrine: nothing can ever remove
it from its firm base, nothing dissolve it, but evolution.


IX.


THOSE TAYLOR weddings are a land-mark in my career. It was there that I met a teacher
of music whom I was permitted to Thompson, his right name being too difficult for me. He
cream-ripening bacullus of good character and considerable education, and was attracted
by my singing, because it was so different. He came of his own accord and introduced him-
self. It made happy beyond words, for I had long been starving for intellectual companionship.
We soon became intimates. He was not a person of importance, therefore he could not ad-
vance my material interest, but he introduced me to educated friends of his, and that
was service enough. Among these were some humble scientists. Was I happy now? Indeed I
was, and most grateful. We were young. and full of enthusiasm; we lost no opportunity of
being together. We foregathered as often as the bread and butter requirements of our sev-
eral trades permitted, and in happy comradeship we searched after Nature's secrets.

Sometimes we stole a day from shop, counting-room, hand-organ, etc., and made excursions
--botanical, insectivorous, mammiferous, piscatorial, paleontological, and the like, and
every now and then, as the years danced by on joyous wing, we had the luck to make quite
fortunate discoveries. This went on for ten years. Then all of a sudden came the discovery
of discoveries--the fossil flea heretofore mentioned.


X.


WE BOYS had good times in those days. I say boys, because we still felt like boys, and be-
cause the term had stayed with us. from old habit, after we had crossed the strictly "young-
cha (boy-) frontier; and naturally enough, for we had crossed it without waxing it. We had
been training together ten years. I was 78 (microbe-time). but looked just as I had looked
30 years earlier when I first arrived: that is to say I looked my human age of that date--
about 26 or 27. Their age was about 50 when we first met. and they had then looked as hu-
mans of 25 to 28 look; the 10 years they had since added, showed: one could see that they
had grown older. In my case no shade of change was detectible. My sojourn of 30 years had
seemed a lifelong stretch of time, to me, yet exteriorly it had not aged me by a day. My
face, my figure, my strength, my young vivacity and animation--all these had kept their
youth. The boys wondered. and so did I. I puzzled over it privately a good deal. Was there
something human left in me? I had been a microbe a considerable part of a human day; could
it be that my consciousness was keeping microbe time and my body keeping human time? I
couldn't tell, I didn't know anything about it; and moreover, being tuppy,--ond just a lit-
tle frivolous by nature. perhaps--I didn't care. The mystery of my stuck-fast youth was a
valued riddle for the toys: whenever they ran out of science-conundrums they could always
fall back upon that and subject it to a new discussion.

Naturally they wanted me to help them do the theorizing, and naturally I dearly wanted to.
for the echte* scientist would rather theorize than eat; but I was reluctant. To be fair
and honest I should have to do as the scientist always does--I should have to honorably
contribute to the discussion every fact within my possession which could by any possibi-
lity be related to the matter; and so I should be obliged to reveal the secret of my ear-
lier existence, and frankly furnish all the particulars. It is not easy to exaggerate the
embarrassment of the situation I wanted to keep the respect of my comrades: to tell
them a colossal lie would not he a good way to do that, and certainly the chances were
a thousand to one, in my opinion, that they would put just that estimate upon my state-
ment.

Well, we are mere creatures of Circumstance. Circumstance is master, we are his slaves.
We cannot do as we desire, we have to be humbly obedient and do as Circumstances command.
Command--that is the word; Circumstance never requests, he always cormmands: then we
do the thing, and think we planned it. When our circumstances change, we have to change
with them, we cannot help it. Very well, there came a time when mine changed. The boys be-
gan to get suspicious of me. Why did I always shirk, and fumble, and change the subject
whenever they wanted me to help theorize upon the mystery of my persistent youthfulness?
They took that up, and began to whisper apart. When I appeared among them no face lighted
with a welcome for me, I got perfunctory greetings in place of the old hearty ones, the
group soon broke up and went away and I was left solitary and depressed. I had been happy
always, before; I was always miserable, now.

Circumstances had changed. They commanded a change on my part. Being their slave, I had to
obey. There was but one course to pursue if I would get back the boys' confidence and af-
fection: I must frankly empty my human history into the debated mystery and take the con-
sequences. Very well, I shut myself to think out the best way to proceed in the matter.
Ought I to make my statement to the comradeship assembled in a body, or would it be wis-
est to try my history on a couple of the boys, make converts of them, if possible, and
get their help in converting the rest? After much thought I inclined toward the latter
course.

There were twelve of us. I will remark here that we were all of "good stock," to use the
common phrase. We were nobodies, we were not noble, but by descent we were of the blood
twelve of the great families or classes from which all the monarchies in Blitzowski drew
their hereditary aristocracies. Not one of us had a vowel in his name, but our blood en-
titled us to acquire vowels, whereas this was not the case with persons of meaner extrac-
tion. Mainly, vowels went by favor, of course,--among the high-up,--as in all aristocra-
cies, but minor persons of the Blood could acquire them by merit, purchase, the arts
of corruption, and so forth. There was a mighty hunger for these gauds and distinctions,
but that was natural, and is one of the indications that the difference between microbes
and men is more a matter of physical bulk than anything.

There was hardly a name among us that I could pronounce, on account of the absence of
vowels, and the boys had a deal of trouble in managing my microbe-name, for I used an
alias, painstakingly invented by myself, to cover accidents; I had said I was a native
of the Major Molar, and so, as that was a far-off and quite unknown country it was rather
necessary to have a name that would inspire confidence in the hearer--that is to say a
name strange enough to properly fit a strange country. I made it out of a Zulu name and
a Tierra del Fuegan name combined, and it consisted of three clucks and a belch, and was
one of the most trying names I have ever struck. I could not pronounce it twice the same
way myself; and as for the boys they presently gave it up, and only used it, after that,
to swear with. They asked me to give them an easier one, and I gave them "Huck," an ab-
breviation of my American middle name, Huxley. On their side, and to show their thank-
fulness, they allowed me to change their names, too. I invoiced 45 literary ones, fav-
orites of mine, and after considerable drill we selected the eleven which they could
pull off with least danger to their jaws. I here append them; and with each name, the
strain of great ancestral blood, or branch of it, that flowed in the veins of the owner;
also, family crest:

LEMUEL GULLIVER. Dot-Pyogenes. Head of the Pus-breeders. Crest, Single dot.
LURBRULGRUD. Pair-Dot, Diplococcus, branch of Suppuration family. Crest, the
printer's colon.
RIP VAN WINKLE. Sarcina branch: cuboidal masses. Crest, a window-sash.
GUY MANNERTNG. Streptococcus. Erysipelas. Crest, a looped chain.
DOGBERRY. Acute pneumonia branch. Crest, a lance.
SANCHO PANZA. Typhoid. Crest, jackstraws.
DAVID COPPERFIELD. Branch with cilia. Crest, a radish, with roots adhering.
COLONEL MULBERRY SELLERS. Branch--with spores. Lockjaw, Crest, a broken needle.
LOUIS XIV. Consumption. Crest, a ruined spider-web.
KING HEROD. Diphtheria. Crest, Morse alphabet, wrecked.
RUCK. Asiatic Cholera. Crest, Group of earth-worms.
DON QUIXOTTE. Recurrent Fever. Crest, maze of hair-snakes.

Nobody knows the origin of these illustrious crests, there is no record of the great
events which they were intended to commemorate and preserve from oblivion; the events
occurred such ages and ages ago that history cannot remember them, and even legend
itself has forgotten them. Now then, for an odd thing! I distinctly remember that
under the microscope, in the earth, each of tiles families of microbes looks like
its crest, whereas whenyou observe them here, with the microbe eye, they are strik-
ingly beautiful in form and feature, and have not even a remote resemblance to their
crests. This is certainly very odd, and to my mind it is most interesting. I think
that as a coincidence it ranks away up. There was a time, long ago, when I came near
to telling the boys about this curious thing, I was so anxious to examine it and
discuss it with them, but I restrained myself. It would not have been prudent.
They were a sensitive lot, and I doubt if they would have been pleased. Another
thing: they--

But never mind that, for the present; I must get back to the real business of this
chapter. In the end, I concluded to take a couple of the boys into my confidence,
and let the others wait a while. I chose Gulliver and Louis XIV. I would have pre-
ferred Guy Mannering and David Copperfield, for certain reasons, but we were not
living in a republic, and I had to think a little about etiquette and precedence.
In Gulliver's veins was a quarter of a molecule of the blood of the reigning House,
the imperial Henries; and although the imperial Henries did not know it and would
not have cared for it if they had, Gulliver cared for it and kept himself and others
reminded of it. So I had to choose Gulliver, and choose him first. Louis XIV had
to come next. This was imperative, on account of his great blood--what he had of
it. Of course if we had had a Plague bacillus--but we hadn't, so there is no oc-
casion to go into. Gulliver was clerk in a feed-store, Louis XIV was a pill-con-
structor in the pharmacy.

I invited that pair to my poor quarters, and they came. It was the evening of the
day of the splendid discovery of the monster flea-- the discovery of the point of
his prodigious claw, to be exact. It was good time, for our enthusiasm over the
discovery had drawn us together again, and we had been like our old selves once
more. For days I had been on the point of calling Lem and Louis, but had lost
courage every time I had tried to do it, but now I knew the conditions were fav-
orable, and I struck while the iron was hot.

The boys came, and they came in good spirits. I gave them an old-time welcome
which touched them, and even brought the moisture to their eyes. I chunked up
the poor little cheap fire and made it look its cheerfulest, and we bunched our-
selves in front of it wiyh lighted pipes, and with hot punches thereto.

"Oh, come, this is great!" said Louis "this is like old times!"

"Here's to their resurrection!" cried Gulliver; and "drink hearty!" cried I, and
we did accordingly.

Then we chatted along, and chatted along, stowing the liquor hetween paragraphs,
for punctuation, until we were become properly mellow and receptive, then I broke
ground.

"Boys," I said, "I'm going to make a confession." They glanced at me with interest,
not to say apprehension. "You have all wanted me to take a hand and help unriddle
the mystery of my arrested development in the matter of age-indications, and I
have avoided the subject--not out of perversity, I give you my word, but for a
I titer reason, which I mean to lay before you to-night, and try to convince you
that my course was fair and justifiable."

Their eyes beamed gratification, and their tongues put it into ordial words:

"Shake!" they said, and we shook.

"Without a doubt you have all suspected that I had invented elixir of life, and
was preserving my youth with it. Isn't it so?"

They hesitated, then said it was so. They said they had be forced to that con-
clusion because all their other theorizings come to nothing. Then they quoted
a remark of mine which I have long ago forgotten : a hint which I had thrown
out to the effect that perhaps an elixir might be distilled from the chyle in
the veins of a ram which--

"Well, you know," continued Louis, who had instanced the remark, "you did throw
that out. When you wouldn't talk an more, we took hold of that hint and tried
to get at your secret for ourselves. We believed, for a time, that we had suc-
ceeded. We made the elixir, and tried it on a lot of decrepit and tottering
bacilli and at first the results were splendid. The poor old things brisked
up in a surprising way, and began to go to balls, and do the trapeze and win
foot-races, and show off in all sorts of antic improprieties and it was the
most pathetic and ridiculous spectacle of the century. But all of a sudden e-
very lunatic of them collapsed an went to rags and ruin."

"I remember it! Was it you boys that of up the famous she elixir that made such
an immense noise for a little while?"

"Yes," said Lem Gulliver, "and we believed you could correct and perfect it
for us if you would, and it grieved us to think you were keeping such a sub-
lime secret to yourself, when the honorable traditions of science required
you to reveal it and confer it free of reward upon the public."

"Boys," I said, "I am going to ask you, for old friendship's sake, to believe
two things, taking them from my lips without other evidence of their truth.
First, that I invented no elixir of life, second, that if I had invented one
I would have given it freely to the public. Do you believe?" They answered up
promptly:

"By the beard and body of Henry the Great, 861, we do, Huck, and are glad to!
Shake!"

Which we did.

"Now then," I said, "I will ask you to believe one more thing which is this I
don't know the secret of my persistent youth myself."

I saw the chill descend upon them. They gazed steadily at me, sorrowfully, re-
proachfully--until my eyes fell. I waited--and waited--hoping that in charity
they would break the miserable silence, but they would not. At last I said--

"Friends, old comrades, hear me, and be kind. You do not believe me, yet upon
my honor I have spoken the truth. And now I come my confession according to the
promise which I made. Possibly it may throw light upon this mystery --I hope
it may. I believe there is light in it, but I am not certain, and, as a scien-
tist, I am not permitted to accept anything, howsoever plausible, which cannot
meet and conquer the final test, the test of tests--demonstration. The first
article of my confession is this: I was not always cholera-germ."

The surprise of it made them gasp--I had suspected it would. But it lifted the
solemnities a bit, and that was a good thing.


XI.


YES, IT DID THAT. That remark delivered a blast of ozone into the atmosphere.
It was a remark that would fresh-up the curiosity of any person that ever
lived. Naturally you couldn't throw it at a pair of trained scientists and not
get attention. The new, the unheard-of, the uncanny, the mysterious--how the
dullest head welcomes them! The old mystery was riches, here was the match of
it, piled on tap of it. The scientist is not permitted to exhibit surprise, eagerness,
emotion, he must be careful of his trade-dignity--it is the law. Therefore the boys
pulled themselves together and masked their eagerness the best they could. There
was a studied scientific pause, then Louis, in a voice trembling with calm, opened
the engagement

"Huck, have you spoken figuratively, or are we [to] take that statement on a
scientific rating?"

"Scientific."

"If you were not always a cholera-germ, what were you before?"

"An American."

"A what?"

"American."

"This seems--well, it seems vague. I do not understand. What's an American?"

"A man."

"Er--that is vague, too. Lem, do you get it?"

''Search me!" He said it despairingly. Louis returned to inquest:

"What is a man, Huck?"

"A creature you are not acquainted with. He does not inhabit this planet, but another
one."

"Another one!"

"Another one!" echoed Gulliver. "What do you mean by that, Huck?"

"Why, I mean what I said."

He chuckled amusedly, and said--

"The Major Molar a planet! Well, that is good, upon my word, Here they've been try-
ing for centuries to track-out and locate the original habitat of the modesty-germ,
and...say, Huck, that's settled!"

It irritated me, but I kept the most of my temper down, and said:

"Lem, I never called it so. I wasn't referring to the Major Molar, at all."

"Oh, is that so! Say, Huck"

"I don't know anything about the Major Molar, and I don't care anything about it. I
was never there in my life!"

"What! you were nev--"

"No! I never was. I--"

"Sho! where'd you get that heart-breaking name?"

"Invented it. My real name doesn't resemble it." "What is your real name?"

"B. b. Bkshp."

"Why, Huck," said Louis, "what did you want to tell so many lies for? What was the
good of it?"

"I had to."

"Why?"

"Because if I had told the truth they would have put me in the asylum, thinking I was
out of my head."

"I don't see how that could happen. Why should the truth have Rich an effect?"

"Because it would not have been understood, and would have been considered a lie. And
a crazy one, at that."

"Come, Huck, you are straining your fancy. I guess you wouldn't have been misunderstood.
You--"

"Oh, I like that! Only a minute ago I told you two or three truths and you didn't under-
stand me. And when I said I came from another planet, Lem thought I was talking about the
Major Molar, that humble little backwoods province! whereas I was referring to--to--hang
it, I meant what I said--another planet. Not Blittowski, but another one."

Then Gulliver broke in:

"Why, you muggins, there isn't any other. Lots of germs like to play with the theory that
there's others, but you know quite well it's only theory. Nobody takes it seriously.
There's nothing to support it. Come, Huck, your attitude is distinctly unscientific. Be
reasonablethrow that dream-stuff out of your system."

"I tell you it isn't dream-stuff; there is another planet, and I was reared to maturity
in it."

"If that is so, you must know a good deal about it. And perhaps you'll enrich us with as
much of it as--"

"You needn't mock! I can enrich your knowledge-treasury as it was never enriched before,
if you will listen and reflect, instead of making fun of everything I say."

Louis said--

"It isn't fair, Lem. Stop chaffing. How would you like to be treated so?"

"All right. Go on, Huck, tell us about the new planet. Is it as big as this one?"

I found I was going to laugh; so I pretended some smoke went down the wrong way, and this
enabled me to cough past the danger-point. Then I said--

"It is bigger."

"Bigger, your granny! How much bigger?"

It was delicate ground, but I thought it wisest to go right on.

"It--well, it is so much bigger that if you were to mislay this planet in it and didn't tie
a string to it or mark the place, it would take you a good four thousand years to find it
again. In my opinion, more than that."

They stared at me a while most thankfully, then Louis got down on the floor so that he
could laugh with spacious enjoyment, and Gulliver went behind the door and took off his
shirt and brought it and folded it up and laid it in my lap without saying anything. It
is the microbe way of saying "that takes the chromo." I threw theg shirt on the floor,
and told both of them they were as mean as they could be.

That sobered them, and Lem said "Why, Huck, I didn't supose you were in earnest," and Lou-
is sat up on the floor and beganp to wipe the tears away, and said, "I didn't either,
Huck--I couldn't, you know--and it came so sudden, you see."

Then they took their seats again, and tried to look repentant and, did look sorry, and Lem
asked me to bite off another piece. If it had been almost any one else I would have struck
him, but a prudent person doesn't hit one of those deadly pus-breeders when arbitration
will do. Louis reproved Gulliver, then the pair set themselves to work to smooth my feath-
ers down and get me in a good humor again; and the kind things they said soon had that ef-
fect, for one can't pout long when voices beloved for ten years are playin the old tunes
on his heart--so to speak, for the metaphor is mixed. Soon the inquest was going along
again, all right. I furnished several minor planetary facts, then Louis said.

"Huck, what is the actual size of that planet, in straight figures?"

"Figures! oh, I couldn't ever! Ther isn't room enough in this one to hold them!"

"Now there you go again, with your extrav--"

"Here! Come to the windowboth of you. Look. How far can you see, across that plain?"

To the mountains. Sixty-five miles."

"Come to this opposite side. Now how far do you see?"

There being no mountain-barrier, we can't tell. The plain melts into !he sky; there's
no way to measure."

"Substantially, it's limitless receding and fading spaciousness, isn't it?"

"Just so."

"Very well. Let it represent that other planet; drop a single mustard seed in the mid-
dle of it, and--"

"O, fetch him a drink!" shouted Lem Gulliver; "and fetch it quick, his lie-mill's a-failing
him!"

There spoke the practical mind, the unsentimental mind--the railroad mind, it may be called,
perhaps. It has large abilities, but no imagination. It is always winter there. No, not just
that--call it about the first week of November: no snow, only threats; cloudy, occasional
drizzles, occasional wandering fogs drifting along; all aspects a little doubtful, suspi-
cious, counseling wariness, watchfulness; temperature not vicious, not frosty, only chill-
y; average, about 45 F. It is the kind of mind that does not invent things itself, and does not
risk money and worry on the development of another man's invention, and will not believe in
its value until other people's money and labor have proved it; but it has been watching, all
the time, and it steps promptly forward, then, and is the first to get in on the ground floor
and help rake in the profits. It takes nothing on trust, you can't get it to invest in a
dream at any discount, nor believe in it; but if you notice you will find that it is always
present when the dream comes true and has a mortgage on it, too.

To Lem Gulliver my planet was a dream, and would remain one, for the present. But to Louis,
who had sentiment and imagination it was a poem, and I a poet. And he said that handsome
thing, too. He said it was plain that I was endowed with a noble and beautiful gift, and
that my planet was a majestic conception, a grand and impressive foundation, so to speak,
lying ready for the architect's hand; and he said he believed that the genius that could
imagine such a foundation was competent to build upon it a very palace of enchantment--
a tumult of airy domes and towers, without, a golden wilderness of wonders within, where the
satisfied soul might wander and worship, unconscious of the flight of time, uncon--

"O, rats!" said Lem Gulliver, breaking in, "that's just your style, Louis XIV--always jump-
ing in to build a cathedral out of a hatful of bricks. Because he has spread out a big
foundation, that's enough for you, you can already see the summer-hotel he's going to put
up on it. Now I am not made in that way; I'm ready and willing to take stock in that joint
when it's built, but--finance it at this stage? oh, I think I see myself!"

"Oh, yes," retorted Louis, "that is your style, Lem Gulliver, we all know it, and we know
what comes of it, too. You are always keeping us back, with your doubts; you discourage
everything. If Huck can go on as he has begun, it will be the sublimest poem in all the
literatures; and anybody but you would believe that the mind that was able to imagine
that mighty foundation is able to imagine the palace too, and furnish the rich materials
and put them divinely together. Lie-mill, indeed! You may live to see the day when you
will wish God had given you such a mill, Lem Gulliver!"

"Oh, go it! all down but nine, set 'em up on the other alley! I'm crushed--I'm routed;
but all the same, I copper the hotel--at the present date. If you think he's got the
materials for it, all right, it's your privilege; but as for me, I reason that when a
person has laid down a foundation the size of that one, it isn't argument that it's a
sample, it's argument that you've got his pile. He's empty, Louis--you'll see."

"I don't believe it. You're not empty, are you, Huck?"

"Empty? No. I haven't begun, yet."

"There, now, Lem Gulliver, what do you say to that?"

"I say his saying it is no proof. Let him start-up his mill again: that's all. Let him
venture!"

Louis hesitated. Lem noticed it, and said, mockingly--

"You're right, Louis, I wouldn't over-strain him."

"I wasn't hesitating on account of fear, Lem Gulliver, and you needn't think it. I
was recognizing that it wasn't fair. He is entitled to a recess, to recuperate in. In-
spirations are not a mechanical affair, they do not come by command. It may well be--"

"Oh, don't apologize. It's all right; he's empty. I'm not wanting to crowd him. Give him
a rest; let him recuperate. It's just as you say: Inspirations are not mechanical things
--no, they are spiritual. Pass him the jug."

"I don't need it," said I, recognizing that I ought to come to Louis' help. "I can get
along without it."

Louis brightened up at that, and said--

"Do you think you can go ahead, Huck? do you think you can?"

"I don't only think it, I know it!"

Lem chuckled derisively, and told me to fetch on my "emptyings."


XII.


SO THE INQUEST began again. I was asked to describe my planet. I said--

"Well, as to shape, it is round, and--"

"Round?" said Gulliver, interrupting. "What a shape for a planet! Everybody would slide off
--why, a cat couldn't stay on it! Round! Oh, cork the jug--he doesn't need any inspiration!
Round! Say, Cholera--"

"Let him alone!" cried Louis, sharply. "There's neither right nor dignity in criticizing the
fanciful creations of poesy by the standards of cold reason, Lem Gulliver, and you know it."

"Well, that is so, Louis, and I take it back. You see, it sounded just as if he were throwing
out a straight fact, and so--well, it caught me off my base."

"I was throwing out a fact," I said. "If it must pass as poetry I can't help that, but it's
fact, just the same, and I stand by it and stick to it. Louis, it is fact, I give you my word
of honor it is."

It dazed him. He looked a good deal jumbled up, for a while, then he said, resignedly--

"Well, I feel all adrift. I don't quite know what to do with a situation like this, it's clear
out of my experience. I don't under stand how there could be a round planet, but I be-
lieve you think there is such a thing, and that you honestly believe you have been in it.
I can say that much, Huck, and say it sincerely."

I was pleased, and touched, and said--

"Out of my heart I thank you for that, Louis. It cheers me, and I was needing it, for
my task is not an easy one."

This was too sentimental to suit the pus-germ, and he said--

"Dear girlies! Oh--oh--oh, it is too touching! Do it some more."

I do not see how a person can act like that. To me it is a mark of coarseness. I coldly
ignored it, I would not condescend to notice it. I reckon that that showed him what I
thought about it. I now went calmly on with my work, just as if I was not aware that there
had been any interruption. I judged it cut him, but I was cold and stern, and did not
care. I remarked that my planet was called the World; that there were many countries and
oceans spread over its vast surface--"

"O, hold on!" said Gulliver. "Oceans?"

"Yes--oceans."

"And they are facts too, are they?"

"Certainly."

"Well, then, perhaps you will be good enough to tell me how they stay on? What keeps them
from spilling off?--those that are on the under side, I mean--in case there are any on the
under side --and certainly there ought to be, to keep up the uniformity of insanity proper
to such a crazy invention as that."

"There isn't any under side," I said. "The world keeps turning over in the air all the time."

"Turning over--in the air! Come--is that introduced as a fact, too?"

"Yes--and it is a fact."

"Turns over in the air, and doesn't fall! Is that it?"

"Doesn't rest on anything? Is that it?"

"Yes."

"What's it made out of? Is it gas, in a soap bubble?"

"No. Rocks and dirt."

"Turns over in the air, doesn't rest on anything, is made out of roks and dirt, and doesn't
fall! Seems too good to be true! What's the reason it doesn't fall?"

"It is kept in its place by the attraction of other worlds in the sky; and the sun."

"Other worlds!"

"Yes."

"Well! So there's more, then?"

"Yes."

"How many?"

"Nobody knows. Millions."

"Millions! Oh, sweet Maria!"

"You can make as much fun as you want to, Lem Gulliver, but all the same it's true.
There are millions of them."

"Say--couldn't you knock off a few? just a few, you know, for cash?"

"I've told you--and you can believe it or not, just as you please."

"Oh, I believe it--oh, yes indeedy! I could believe a little thing like that with both hands
tied behind me. Are they big, Huck, or little?"

"Big. The world is a puny little thing compared to the most of them."

"How handsome of you to allow it! Now that's what I call real magnanimity. It humbles me.
I bow to it."

He was going on with his mean sarcasms, but Louis was so :shamed of him, and so outraged
to see me treated so ungenerously when I was evidently speaking the truth, or at least speak-
ing what I believed to be the truth, that he cut in and shut Gulliver off in the midst of his
small-arm gun-play.

"Huck," he said, "what are the components of the World, and their proportions?"

"Offer an amendment!"--this from the tiresome pustule--"call it the Bubble. If it flies, that's
what it is; if it's solid, it's a lie; either a lie or supernatural. Supernatural lie, I think."

I took no notice of his drivel, I would not stoop to it. I addressed my answer to Louis:

"Three-fifths of the World's surface is water. Seas and oceans. That is to say, salt water
and undrinkable."

Of course Lem broke in:

"Oh, my land, that won't do! it would take ten million mountain ranges of pure salt to keep
it up to standard, and then it wouldn't. invent. Come--what makes it salt? That's it. Out with
it--don't stop to invent. What makes it salt?"

I simply answered--

"I don't know."

"Don't know! The idea! Don't know!"

"No, I don't. What makes your Great Lone Sea rancid?"

I scored, that time! He couldn't say a word. It crumpled him up like sitting down on a plug
hat. I was tickled to the pericardium; so was Louis, for it was a corker, now I tell you! You
see, Science had been fussing for ages over the riddle of what supplies the waters of the
Great Lone Sea; the riddle of whence they could come in such miraculous quantity was per-
sistently and exasperatingly in --just as was the case with earthscience in its effort to find
the source of the sea's salt-supply.

After a little, Louis said--

"Three-fifths of the surface is a mighty quantity. If it should oveflow its banks there would be
a catastrophe that would be remembered."

"It did it once," I said. "There was a rain-storm which lasted forty days and forty nights,
and buried the whole globe out of mountains and all, for eleven months."

I thought the pathos of the stupendous disaster to life would stir them; but no--with the
true scientist, science always comes first, the humanities later. Louis said--

"Why didn't it stay buried? What reduced the water?"

"Evaporation."

"How much of it did evaporation carry off?"

The water covered mountains six miles high, which overlooked ocean-valleys five miles deep.
Evaporation carried off the upper six miles."

"Why didn't it get the rest? What stopped it?"

I had not thought of that before, and the question embarrassed me. But I did not show it, be-
yond a catching of the breath, and maybe an anxious look in the face, and before these had
time to rouse suspicion I had scraped up an emergency-answer:

"There,"--with a just-perceptible pressure on the word--"there the law of evaporation is re-
stricted to the upper six miles. Below that line it can't work."

The boys looked at me so sadly, and withal so reproachfully, that I was sorry for myself, and
dropped my eyes. There was one of those oppressive silences, for a time,--the kind, you know,
that start at a weight of 3O pounds to the square inch and add 3O per second--then Lem Gul-
liver fetched a deep sigh and said--

"Well, it certainly is the insanest country that ever I've struck. But I make no moan; I'm getting
hardened to its freaks. Hand me another, Huck. Sock it to me! One--two--three--let her go,
Gallagher! Say--three-fifths is salt water; what's the next detail?"

"Ice and desert. But there's only one-fifth of that."

"Only! Only's good! Only one-fifth ice and desert! Oh, what a planet! Only one-f--"

The scorn of it was unendurable, it scorched me like fire. In a fury I threw up my hand--he
stopped--and almost to my tongue's end leaped the words--

"Look at your planet! A third of it is--"

But I caught myself in time. Slowly I closed my mouth, slowly I lowerwed my threatening hand. I
was bred in an atmosphere of refinement, I was refined by nature and instinct, and I could not sully
my lips with the word. We are strange beings, we seem to be but we go in chains--chains of
training, custom, convention, association, disposition, environment--in a word, Circumstance--
and against these bonds the strongest of us struggle in vain. The proudest of us and the mean-
est meet upon a common level, the rankless level of servitude. King, cobbler, bishop, tramp--all
are slaves, and no slave in the lot is freer than another.

I was burning, I was blazing! I had been caring nothing for my lost World; at bottom I was even
despising it, so loyal was I in my admiration for the planet which was become so dear to me by
reason of my microbe blood; but this scorn of that lost home of mine turned me into its cham-
pion, and I jumped to my feet, white to the lips with anger, and burst out with--

"Silence, and listen! I have spoken the truth--and only the truth, so help me God! That World is,
as compared with your planet, as is that horizonless plain yonder to a grain of sand! And yet it
itself is nothing--less than nothing--when its littleness is brought into contrast with the vast
bulk of the millions of suns that swim those seas of space wherein it paddles lonely and unnot-
iced, save by its own sun, its own moon. And what is a sun, and what is a moon? I will tell you.
That sun is a hundred thousand times the bulk of that World; it is made of white fire, and flames
in the far zenith 92,OOO,OOO miles away, and pours its floods of light upon the World all the
day; and when the black darkness of the night comes, then comes the moon, drifting through
the distant blue, and clothes the World in mellow light. You know no night, and you know no day
that is like the World's day. You know a light that is lovelier than these--be grateful! You live in
an eternal day of soft and pearly light through which trembles and shimmers unceasingly the
dainty and delicate fires of the opal--be grateful! it is your possession, and yours alone--no light
that shines on any other land is like it; none possesses its charm, its witchery, none is so gentle,
so dreamy, so charged with healing for the hurt mind and the broken spirit.

"There that little World--so unimaginably vast, compared with yours!--paddles about in a shore-
less solitude of space; and where are those millions of others? Lost!--vanished! invisible, when
the great sun rides in the sky; but at night--oh, there they are! colossal black bulks, lumbering
by? No!--turned to mere glinting sparks by distance!--a distance not conceivable by such as you!
The vault is sown thick with them, the vault is alive with them, trembles with them, quivers with
them! And through their midst rises a broad belt of their like, uncountable for number--rises and
flows up into the sky, from the one horizon, and pours across and goes flooding down to the other
--a stupendous arch, made all of glittering vast suns diminished to twinkling points by the awful
distance--and where is that colossal planet of mine? It's in that Belt--somewhere, God knows
where! It wanders there somewhere in that immeasurable ocean of twinkling fires, and takes up
no more room and gets no more notice than would a firefly that was adrift in the deeps of the
opal skies that bend over imperial Henryland!

"Now then, take it or leave it! I've told you the truth, and there's not a force in this planet that
can make me take back a word of it!"

All aglow with enthusiasm, Louis burst out--

"By God, there stands the palace!--I believed he could build it!"

"And by God, there stands the supernatural lie!--I knew he could hatch it!"



XIII.



BY NOW it was two o'clock in the morning, and my little thought-recorder girl--always punctual
to the min-ute--entered and broke up the sitting. The boys rose to go, but they said they didn't
want to, and they said it with the most evident sincerity, too.

Louis said it was inspiring and uplifting to listen to such a poem, and Lem Gulliver said with ferv-
ency, he wished he had my talent, so help him God he would never speak the truth again. I had
never seen them so moved. Louis said my art was perfect, and Lem said the same. Louis said he
was going to practice it himself, and Lem said he was, too; but both said they could never hope
to get up to my plane. They both said they had had a wonderful evening. These great praises made
me feel so happy that I seemed [to be walking on air, and I had no words to thank the boys enough
for them. What a change it was from that long season of aching depression and disfavor! My atro-
phied nerves cast off their apathy, and along them raced and rioted fresh new life and pleasure; I
was like one risen from the dead.

The boys wanted to rush away to the fossil-mine and tell tho whole thing to the nine others--
just what I was hoping for! My original scheme would succeed, now--these missionaries would
convert the rest of the comradeship, and I should be in full ram again, I felt sure of it.
And now they did me a parting honor: by their own invitation we stood up and clinked glasses,
shouting thus:

Louis. "To Old Times Come Again--to stay!"

Lem. "Bumpers! no heel-taps!"

Huck. "And God bless us all!"

Then they sallied out unsteadily, arm-locked, and singing a song I had taught them in those
same Old Times--a song disused tIn', many a heavy day-

"Goblskvet liikdwzan hooooclk!"

In the enthusiasm born of our great fossil-find, we had agreed to dig right along, twenty-
four hours in the day, and day after day indefinitely, in order that we might get as far
along as possible with the excavating before the news should get abroad and the interru-
ptions begin; but I was deep in a History of the World which I was dictating, to the-end
that my knowledge in that matter might n( fade out and be lost, and I was minded to fin-
ish it, now, and make good my share of the flea-mine agreement when it was done. The his-
tory of Japan would complete the formidable enterprise; I would put that together at the
present sitting, then I should be free and could devote my energies to the fossil flea
with a contented spirit and an undivided mind. Meantime the missionarying would be going
on, out there at the mine, and might I not venture to hope that by the time I appeared
there the conversions would have been accomplished--provided I strung out the story of
Japan pretty elaborately? Seemed so to me.

By good luck the thought-recording machine was out of order; it would take a little time
to fix it. It would take more if I taught Catherine of Aragon how to do it herself--so I
adopted that plan. She was a dear little thing, with a pretty good head, and quite teach-
able; for whereas she was a "benevolent" microbe--that is to say, a daughter of the peo-
ple, the masses, the humble hard-workers, the ill-paid, the oppressed, the despised, the
unthanked, the meek and docile bulwark of the Throne, without whose support it would
tumble to ruin like the card-house it really was--whereas, as I say, she was of this
breed and therefore an ass by right of birth, and by heredity entitled to be profound-
ly stupid, she was not stupid at all. She wasn't, because, by reason of an ancestral adventure
of ancient date, part of a drop of cancer-blood had trickled down to her which should have
trickled down to somebody else, and that little stain was worth much to Catherine. It lifted
her mentalities away above the average intellectual level of her caste, for the cancers are
bright, and have always been so. The other aristocracies breed a bright specimen now and
then, but with the cancers, and the cancers only, brightness is the rule.

Catherine was a neighbor's child, and she and her Geschwister were contemporaries and com-
rades of our earliest Taylor-litter--I mean the one I first knew. Both of these litters
had been my teachers in the local tongues, and in return I had conferred English, (pre-
tending it was Major Molar) upon hundreds of kids belonging to the two batches--a sort
of English, at any rate, and not really bad for "benevolents"--but Catherine learned it
the quickest of them all, and was a daisy at it. Indeed, she spoke it like a native. I
always used the English language when talking with her, in order to keep her in practice
and keep myself from forgetting it.

I did not choose that name for her--Catherine of Aragon. I should not have thought of such
a thing, for it was quite unsuitable, she was so little. In a World-microscope she would
not have showed up at all until she was magnified eighteen hundred diameters. But when
she did show up she would command exclamations of delight and admiration, for the Observer
would have to grant that she was very very pretty--pretty as a diatom. No, she chose the
name herself. She lit upon it one day when were doing the History of England, and she was
quite carried away by it and said it was the sweetest thing out of doors. She had to
have it, she couldn't do without it; so she took it. Her name, before that, was Kittie
Daisybird Timpleton, and quite suited her petite and dainty figure and exquisite complex-
ion and frivolousness, and made her look charming. In replacing unpronounceable native
names with easy human ones I always tried to select such as would not invoke prejudice
and uncharitable comment by being in violent contrast with the style of the persons dec-
orated with them.

But she wanted to be Catherine of Aragon, and was ready to cry about it, so I had to let
her have her way, though,--so applied,--it had no more fitness nor point than there was
in Lem Gulliver's latest nick-name for me, which was Nancy. Lem Gulliver is vulgar, and
resents refinement, and thinks any person who is refined is effeminate.

However, she wanted it, so I yielded and let her have it. It was just an accident that
she ever heard of Catherine of Aragon. It happened on night when I was dictating histor-
ical thoughts into the Recorder. You do not dictate words, you understand, but only
thoughts--impressions--and they are not articulated; that is to say, you do not frame
the impressions into words, you deliver them in blocks, a whole chapter in one blast--
in a single second, you know--and the machine seizes them and records them and perpe-
tuates them for time and eternity in that form; and there they are, and there they glow
and burn forever; and so luminous are they, and so clear and limpid and superbly rad-
iant in expression that they make all articulated speech--even the most brilliant and
the most perfect seem dull and lifeless and confused by comparison. Ah, if a person
wants to know what an intellectual aurora borealis is like, with the skies all one
tumultuous conflagration and downpour of divine colors and blinding splendors, let
him connect-up a Recorder and turn on one of those grand poems which the inspired
Masters of a million years ago dreamed into these machines!

Yes, you sit silent and dictate to the machine with your soul, not with your mouth;
but sometimes you utter a chance word without being aware of it you are so absorbed.
And so that was the way Cat got her new name. I was doing impressions of Henry VIII,
and was so stirred by some of his cruelties toward his first queen that I unconsciously
exclaimed, "Alas, poor Catherine of Aragon!"

That I should break out in speech while dictating, was such a surprise to Kittie that
it knocked the self-possession out of her and she stopped turning the crank to look at
me and wonder. Then the stately flow and music of the name knocked it in again and
she exclaimed with emotion--

"Oh, how sweet, oh, how recherche! Oh, I could die for such a name as that! Oh,
I think it is so charming!"

Do you notice? Just a dear little bundle of self-complacencies I affectations, that
was what she was. A single speech is enough to expose her. Even the word "die" is
an affectation, for she couldn't think die; she was a microbe, and could only think
disintegrate." But you would not catch her saying she could disintegrate for such a
name as that; no, it would not be foreign enough, not affected enough.

Well, that was some time ago, when we were doing "England, From Brutus to Edward
VII." Now then, when she came in, that morning, and interrupted that nice time I was
having with Lem and Louis, I noticed an astonishing change in her: she was grave,
dignified, calm, reposeful all her notice-begging fussy little airs and graces and
simperings and smirkings were gone, her chewing-gum corals were gone, her brass
bracelets were gone, her glass aigrette was gone, the manufactured waves were gone
from her hair, the spit-curl was gone from her forehead, her gown was dark and plain
and neat, simplicities and sincerities sat upon her everywhere, and looked out of
her eyes, and found unconscious utterance in her words and her tones when she spoke.
I said to myself, "Here is a mystery, a miracle: lo, Kittie Daisybird Timpleton is no
more, the bogus Catherine of Aragon is no more: this is t hat bogus Catherine
transmuted into the true metal, and worthy to wear the name!"

While she tinkered at the machine, repairing it under my instructions, I inquired
into the cause of the transformation, and she explained the matter at once simply,
frankly, unembarrassedly, even with a sort of glad and grateful eagerness, as it
seemed to me. She said she had picked up the book called "Science and Wealth, With
Key to the Fixtures," with the idea of finding out, for herself, what there was
about it to make the new sect, popularly and ironically called the Giddyites, set
so much store by it--with the unexpected result that within ten minutes a change
began to take place in her--an etherealizing change--a change which was volatil-
izing her flesh and turning it to spirit. She read on and on, the transforming
process continued; within the hour it was complete, and she was all spirit, the
last vestige of flesh was gone. I said--

"Catherine, you don't look it; there must be some mistake."

But she was quite sure there was not; and she was so earnest about it that I could
not doubt, and did not doubt, that she believed what she was saying. To me it was
a delusion; an hour or two earlier I would have said so, and risen superior to her,
and looked down upon her compassionately from that high altitude, and would have
advised her to put the foolish and manifest fraud out of her head and come back to
common sense and reasonableness. But not now. No. An hour or two ago and now--
those were two quite different dates. Within that brief space I had suffered a sea-
change myself. I had seen a certainty of mine dubbed a delusion and laughed at by
a couple of able minds--minds trained to searchingly and exhaustively examine the
phenomena of Nature, and segregate fact from fancy, truth from illusion, and pro-
nounce final judgment --and these competent minds had puffed my World away with-
out a moment's hesitancy, and without the shadow of a misgiving. They thought they
knew it was an illusion. I knew it wasn't.

The list of things which we absolutely know, is not a long one, and we have not the
luck to add a fresh one to it often, but I recognized that I had added one to mine
this day. I knew, now, that it isn't safe to sit in judgment upon another person's
illusion when you are not on the inside. While you are thinking it is a dream, he
may be knowing it is a planet

I was well satisfied in my mind that Catherine was the prey of an illusion, but I had
no disposition to say so, and so I didn't say it. My wounds were too sore for that,
as yet. But I talked her new condition over with her, and she made the matter very
interesting. She said there was no such thing as substance--substance was a fic-
tion of Mortal Mind, an illusion. It was amusing to hear it! Whose illusion? Why, an-
ybody's that didn't believe as she did. How simple--and how settling! Oh, dear, we
are all like that. Each of us knows it all, and knows he knows it all--the rest, to a
man, fools and deluded. One man knows there is a hell, the next one I mows there
isn't; one man knows high tariff is right, the next man knows it isn't; one man
knows monarchy is best, the next one knows it isn't one age knows there are
witches, the next one knows there aren't; one sect knows its religion is the only
true one, there are sixty-four thousand five hundred million sects that know it
isn't so. There is not a mind present among this multitude of verdict-deliverers
that is the superior of the minds that persuade and represent the rest of the
divisions of the multitude. Yet this sarcastic fact does not humble the arrogance
nor diminish the know-it-all bulk of a single verdict-maker of the lot, by so much
as a shade. Mind is plainly an ass, but it will be many ages before it finds it out,
no doubt. Why do we respect the opinions of any man or any microbe that ever
lived? I swear [I] don't know. Why do I respect my own? Well--that is different.

Catherine said there was no such thing as pain, or hunger, or thirst, or care,
or suffering of any kind: these were all fictions of the Mortal Mind; without
the presence of substance they could not exist, save as illusions, therefore
they had no existence in fact, there being no such thing as substance. She call-
ed these fictions "claims"; and said that whenever a claim applied, she could
drive it away in a moment. If it was a pain, for instance, she had only to
repeat the ormula of "the Scientific Statement of Being," as set down in the
kook, then add the words "there is no such thing as pain," and the detected fic-
tion vanished away. She said there was no so-called I isease and no so-called pain
in all the long roll of microbiclment-fictions that could not be routed and dis-
missed by the method above described. Except teeth-claims. They were fictions
like the rest, but it was safest to carry them to the dentist. This was not im-
moral, not irreligious, for it was permitted by the finder of the Giddyite rel-
igion, who took her own teeth to the painless-gas establishment, and in that
way made the departure from principle holy.

Catherine said cheerfulness was real, and depression of spirits a fiction. She
said there was not a care, not a sorrow, not a worry left in her soul. She
looked it; I had to confess it!

I asked her to put the principles of her sect into a few clear sentences, so that
I could understand them and keep them in my head, and she did it, quite without
effort:

Mortal Mind, being the idea of Supreme Refraction exhibited and sanctified in the
Bacterium in correspondence and co-ordina tion with Immortal Mind in suspension,
which is Truth, All-Good follows, of necessity, precipitating and combining with
the elements of the Good-Good, the More-Good and the Ultimate or Most-Good, sin
being a fiction of Mortal Mind operating upon Absence of Mind, nothing can be o-
therwise, Law being Law and hence beyond jurisdiction, wherefore the result is
paramount--and being paramount, our spirits are thus freed from Substance, which
is an Error of Mortal Mind, and whosoever so desires, can. This is Salvation."

She asked me if I believed it, and I said I did. I didn't really believe it, and
I don't now, but it pleased her and was a little thing to say, so I said it.
It would have been a sin to tell her the truth, and I think it is not right to
commit a sin when there is no occasion for it. If we would observe this rule
oftener our lives would be purer.

I was greatly pleased with this conversation, because it contained things which
seemed to show that the microbe mind and the human mind were substantially alike
and possessed reasoning powers which clearly placed them above the other animals.
This was very interesting.

I had an opportunity, now, to look into a matter which had been in my mind a long
time--the attitude of the microbe toward the lower animals. In my human state I
had wanted to believe that our humble comrades and friends would be forgiven and
permitted to be with us in the blessed Land of the Hereafter. I had had difficulty
in acquiring this belief, because there was so much opposition to it. In fact I
never did get it where it would stick. Still, whenever and wherever there was a
friendly dog wagging his affectionate tail, and looking up at me with his kind
eyes and asking me to swap love for love with him; or a silken cat that climbed
into my lap, uninvited, for a nap, thus flattering me with her trust; or a gra-
cious horse that took me for a friend just by the look of me and pushed his nose
into my pocket for possible sugar and made me wish he could impart his nature to
my race and give It a lift up toward his own--whenever these things happened they
always raised that hope in me again and set it struggling toward concrete belief
once more.

When I talked with opposers about this, they said--

"If you admit those because they are innocent of wrong by the law of their make,
as you say, what are you going to do about the mosquito, the fly, and those o-
thers? Where are you going to draw line? They are all innocent alike; come--where
are you going draw the line?"

It was my custom to say I didn't draw it at all. I didn't want the fly and his
friends, but no matter; what a man could stand here he could stand there, and
moreover there was a high matter concerned--common justice. By even the ele-
mental moralities, it would be unjust to let in any creature made honor-worthy
by deriving its spirit and life from God's hand and shut any other out.

But it never settled it. The opposer was human, and knew he was right; I was
human, and knew I was right. There isn't anybody that isn't right, I don't care
what the subject is. It comes of our having reasoning powers.

Once I carried the matter to a good and wise man who. . . .



XIV.



IT WAS a clergyman. He said--

"Let us proceed logically; it is the law of my training, and is a good law. Helter-
skeltering is bad: it starts in the middle and goes both ways, it jumbles the points
instead of ranking them according to seniority or importance, it gets lost in the
woods and doesn't arrive. It is best to start at the beginning. You are a Christian?"

"I am."

"What is a creature?"

"That which has been created."

"That is broad; has it a restricted sense?"

"Yes. The dictionary adds, 'especially a living being.'"

"Is that what we commonly mean when we use the word?"

"Yes."

"Is it also what we always mean when we use it with qualifying adjective?"

"Yes."

"Used without qualification, then, a dog is a creature?"

"Certainly."

"A cat?"

"A horse, a rat, a fly, and all the rest?"

"Of course."
"What verse is it which authorizes the missionary to carr gospel to the pagans?--to
the willing and to the unwilling alike."

"Whatsoever ye would that men should do unto you--'"

"No! It is infinitely broader: 'Go ye into all the world preach the gospel to every
CREATURE. Is that language plain clear, or is it foggy and doubtful?"

"Plain and clear, I should say. I cannot see anything dou about the meaning of it."

"How would you go about doctoring the meaning of it so make it apply to man only, and
shut out the other creatures? 1 art would you employ?"

"Well, the arts of shuffling and indirection, adroitly used, could accomplish it, but
I like it best as it is. I would not wish to change it."

"You are aware that the plain meaning stood at its full v, unchanged and unchallenged,
during fifteen hundred years?"

"I am."

"You are aware that the intelligence of the Fathers of Church ranks as high to-day as
does the intelligence of theologian that has followed them, and that they found no fault
with that language and did not try to improve its meaning?"

"Yes."

"You are aware that the change is a quite modern freshet of intelligence, and that up
to so late a time as three centuries ago the Christian clergy were still including the
dumb animals in the priveleges of that great commandment, and that both Catholic Priest
and Protestant were still preaching the gospel to them, in honorable obedience to its un-
compromising terms?"

"I am aware of it."

"In commanding that the gospel be carried to all the World and preached to every creature,
what was the object in view?"

"The salvation of the hearers."

"Is there any question that that was the object?"

"None has been suggested. It has not been disputed."

"Then not two, but only one inference is deducible from the language of that commandment
when it is spared jugglery and is conscientiously examined: that all of God's creatures are
included in His merciful scheme of salvation. Heaven will not look strange to us; the other
animals will be there, and it will look like home, and be home."

This was a rational view, at last, a just view, a fair and righteous view, a generous
view, and one in accord with the merciful character of the Creator. It removed all my
doubts, all my perplexities, it brought conviction to me, and planted my feet upon the
ground. The clergyman was right, I felt it to my marrow, and in the best words I could
command I tried to make him understand how grateful I was to him. My feelings were re-
vealed in my words, and they at least were eloquent I knew, whether the words were or
not, for he was much moved. I wished he would say that pleasant sentence over again,
and over again, and still again, it had been so contenting to my spirit; and really,
he seemed to divine that thought of mine, for without my saying anything he uttered it
at once and with emphasis--

"Yes, all the creatures! Be at rest as to that--they will be there; no creature design-
ed, created, and appointed to a duty in the earth will be barred out of that happy home;
they have done the duty they were commissioned to do, they have earned their reward,
they will be there, even to the littlest and the humblest."

"The littlest." The words sent a subtle chill down my hot veins.

Something rose in me: was it a shadowy doubt? I looked up vacantly, muttering absently--
"The disease-germs? the microbes?"

He hesitated--some little time; then changed the subject.

Well, as I have said before, the matter of whether our humble friends go with us to our
happy future home or not had never lost its interest with me, and so I thought I would
introduce it, now, and talk it over with Catherine. I asked her if she thought the dogs
and the horses and so on would go with us microbes and still be our pets and comrades.
It raised her interest at once. She said I knew she had formerly belonged to the most
widely spread of all the many religions of the planet--the Established Church of Henry-
land--and didn't I know that that question was always being privately discussed and
fussed over by the membership whenever the authorities were not around? didn't I know
that?

Yes, oh, yes, I said, certainly I knew it, but it had escaped my mind. It would have
hurt her if I had told her I hadn't even heard of it before, but I think it is not
right to hurt a person who is not doing any harm. Lem Gulliver would have told her,
for he has no moral sense; it is nothing to him whether he does right or doesn't. It
is the way he is made, and so it may be that he is not responsible for it. But I do
not do right because I am responsible, and I do not do right because it is right to
do right, I think it is a low motive; I do it because--because--well I have a lot of
reasons, I do not recollect which ones are the main ones now, but it is of no conse-
quence, anyway. She said she felt a strong interest in the subject, and had very de-
cided notions about it--that is, she had had--and would gladly state them for me--that
is, her present ones. But not in her own language, for that was not allowed; members
of her sect must not exhibit religious matters in their own words, because they would
be incompetently put together and would convey error. Then she began, and went along
so trippingly that I saw she had her Book by heart:

"As concerns this question, our inspired Founder instructs us that the fealty due from
the Ultimate in connection with and subjection to the intermediate and the inferential,
these being of necessity subordinate to the Auto-Isothermal, and limited subliminally
by this contact, which is in all cases sporadic and incandescent, those that ascend to
the Abode of the Blest are assimilated in thought and action by the objective influence
of the truth which gets us free, otherwise they could not."

There she stopped. Apparently I had wandered, and missed a cog somewhere, so I apologis-
ed and got her to say it again. She said it the same way. It certainly sounded straight-
forward and simple, yet I couldn't seem to get it, quite. I said--

"Do you understand it, Catherine?"

She said she did.

"Well, I seem to, but I can't make sure. Which ones do you think it is that ascend to the
Abode of the Blest?"

"We are not allowed to explain the text, it would confuse its meaning."

"Well, then, don't do it. I do not pretend to revere it, still I would not like that to hap-
pen to it. But you can tell me this much, anyway, without doing any harm. (You needn't
speak, you know, just nod your head; I'll understand.) Which ones is it that could not?
--could not otherwise, I mean? It seems to be the sporadics, but it looks as if it
might be the incandescents. Is it the sporadics? Don't speak, just nod. Nod, or shake,
according to the facts."

But she refrained. She said it would amount to explaining, and was not allowable.

"Well, are they animals? Surely you can tell me that, Catherine?"

But she couldn't. She was willing to say the formula over again, and as many times as
I pleased, but the rules were strict, and would not allow her to add to the formula,
or take from it, or change the place of a word, the whole being divinely conceived
and divinely framed, and therefore sacred.

It seemed to me that it would have been a good idea to apply this sensible rule to
the other Scriptures and paralyse the tinkers with it: the ones that squeezed the
animals out of that good and merciful text.

"Well," I said, "say it again, and say it slow. I'll tally-off as you unwind; that
is, when I think you've let out as much of an instalment as I can handle without
help, I'll give notice and you'll shut down till I take up the slack and stow it,
then you'll let out another one--and so on, and so on, till I've get it all. The
instalment plan is the best, with this line of goods. Remember--don't rush--slow
and careful is the thing. Now then--ready? Play ball!"

"Which?"

"Oh, that's a technicality. It means, Begin. Once more--ready, Unwind!"

She understood, this time, and performed perfectly. Pretty metalically, as to sound,
pretty dead-level and expressionless, like a phonograph saying its prayers, but
sharp and definite, and quite satisfactory:

"As concerns--this question--our inspired Founder--instructs us that--the fealty
due from--the Ultimate in connection with--and subjection to the--intermediate and
the inferential, these--being of necessity sub--"

"Halt! I do believe you've dealt me a sequence. Let me look at my hand."

But it was a disappointment. Good cards, but no two of the same suit. Still, it was
a hand that might be patched, perhaps. "Intermediate--Inferential"--that really loo-
ked like a pair. I felt encouraged, and said:

"Go on, Catherine, I'll draw to fill. Give me three."

But she is not educated, and she did not understand. But I did not explain; I said
the laws of the cult didn't allow it. This was a sarcasm, but it didn't penetrate.
I often fired little things like that at her, but only because she was sarcasm-proof,
and they wouldn't hurt. I have a good deal of natural wit, and when a person is that
way, he enjoys to listen to himself do it. If such a person gets the right encour-
agement, there is no limit to how high up he can develop. I think it was owing almost
entirely to Uncle Assfalt that I got mine developed so high. He loved to hear me,
and that made me keep working at it. The time that I said that about the cow that--
that--well, the rest of it has gone out of my memory, now, I can't recollect what
it, was she did, but it was that funny it seemed like Uncle Assfalt was never going
to get done laughing over it. He fairly rolled on the floor in agonies. I said--

"Never mind the three, Catty, it's another technicality. This instalment is a fail-
ure; let us try another. Go ahead."

But it was another failure. It was just a snow-flurry on a warm day: every flake
was distinct and perfect, but they melted before you could grab enough to make a
ball out of them. So I said--

"We will try another way. Sometimes, you know, if you dart a swift glance over a
tough foreign sentence you capture the general meaning of it, whereas if you stop
to meddle with details you're gone. We'll try that method. Now then--no commas, no
dashes, no pauses of any sort: start at the beginning and buzz the whole incanta-
tion through just in one solid whiz--swift, you know--Empire Express--no stop this
side of Albany. One--two--three---let her go!"

My, it was a grand effect! Away off you could hear it coming--next it was in sight
and raging down the line like a demon chasing a Christian--next second, by she
plunges, roaring and thundering, and vomiting black smoke--next, round the corner
and out of sight! Apparent dividend: scurrying leaves, whirling dust, a shower of
cinders. Even these settle and quiet down, after a little, and then there isn't any-
thing left at all.

When the furniture stopped whirling around and there was only one Catherine instead
of a ring of Catherines, I said I was willing to surrender if I could march out with
my side-arms. Then, being defeated, I felt malicious, and was going to say I believ-
ed the Founder had a "claim," and that it was a mental one, but I didn't say it. It
would only hurt Catherine, and she couldn't defend herself, because she wasn't built
like some, and hadn't any wit; and so it would not be generous in me to say it. me
in her place, and I would be back before you could wink, with a withering "Perhaps
it's you that's got the claim!" But not many would think of that. They would think
of it next day, but that is the difference between talent and the imitation of it.
Talent thinks of it at the time.

I could see that Catherine was disappointed about the failure; she had a great af-
fection for her new cult, and it grieved her to see it miss the triumph she had ex-
pected it was going to achieve--I thought I could read this in her face, poor thing
--so I hadn't the heart to confess I was permanently done trying to strike oil in
that formation: I let on that by and by when I got leisure I was going to torpedo
that well, and was feeling sure I should turn loose a gusher--a thousand barrels a
day, I said; and when I saw how glad it made her, I raised it to four thousand, the
expense being the saint, I told her to empty the incantation into the recorder--
which she did at once--and leave it there. I said I thought that what it needed was,
to be disarticulated, and resolved into its original elements, that the way it was
now, the words broke up the sense--interrupted the flow of meaning, you see--jum-
bled it all up, you understand, when there was no occasion; the machine would mash
the words together into a pulp, and grind the pulp around the way an arastra does
with pulverised ores from the mill, and when you come to clean up at the week-end,
there you are! there's rot virgin gold, caught tight and fast in the amalgam! there's
your clean and clear four dollars' worth, a thousand carats fine, rescued! Every
yellow grain captured, safe and sound, and nothing lel behind but eleven tons of
slush! It's four dollars, and every dollar worth a hundred cents on the scales;
it's not coined, but that's nothing, you've got the full-par impression, and when
you've got that you've got the whole thing: mint it if you want to, it's your priv-
ilege: coin it and stamp Henry's head on it, and it's worth pal all over Henryland,
but leave it as it is and it's worth par from one end of Blitzowski clean to the
other!

Well, it pleased her so, that I wished I had made it nine dollars. For a moment I
thought I would do it, but I had scruples about it and refrained. It would be 76
cents a ton, and I knew you con get that out of that kind of rock--no, not even
with the cyanide. Presently I sighed, and Catherine wanted to know, right away,
what was troubling me; she was just that quick in her sympathies, now that her
new religion was giving her a chance to stop thinking about her own troubles--in
fact she hadn't any, anymore, she said. I said--

I was wishing I had somebody that would talk to me about whether the animals are
going up there with us or not. You see, Catty--"

She made a spring for the window, and cried out--

"Countess! Yonder is Rev. Brother Pjorsky drowsing on the fireplug. Would you mind
asking him to step in here a minute as you pass by him?" Then she returned to her
seat, saying, "He'll love to talk with you about it. And he is very nice, too. You
remember him, don't you--the time he came here once and took up a collection? It
was years ago, I thought you would remember it. He is about the same as a priest,
but he isn't that--they don't have priests in his sect, but only Brothers, as they
call them. He used to be my spiritual father before I was orthodox; or maybe it was
before that--or perhaps it was before that again; I remember it was somewhere along
there; and so--"

"Why don't you keep a list?"

"List of what?"--proceeding toward the window.

"Salvation-trains. You ought to have a time-table."

"Why?" Oh, that vacant Why! I did hear it so often! She could overlook more points
than--oh, well she was absolutely immune to wit, it was wasted on her. "There--she's
waking him--she's telling him now...He's nestling, again, but it's all right, he'll
come when his nap's out; he won't forget."

"Nap? I thought a microbes never slept. They don't in the Major Molar."

"But he is different. We don't know how to account for it. Nobody knows. It beats
the scientists. He is not a native; he comes from the jungles of Mbumbum--emphasis
on the antepenultimate--it's a wee little isolated tribe, and almost unknown--its
name is Flubbrzwak--"

"Land! what's the matter?" she exclaimed.

I said I was sorry I made her jump; then I explained that I had had a stich in the
side; and it was quite true, too; I did have one--it was in America, I remember it
quite well, though nothing came of it. But that name! It certainly gave me a start,
for this is the rare and mysterious microbe that breeds the awful disease called
the African Sleeping Sickness--drowses the victim into a dull and heavy lethargy
that is steeped with death; he lies there week after month after month, his despair-
ing dear ones weeping over him, shaking him, imploring him to wake, beseeching him
to open his eyes, if only a moment, and look into theirs once more--just once
more--one little look of love and blessing and farewell. But let their hearts
break!--it is what the malady was invented for; he will never wake any more.

Isn't it curious and interesting?--the fact that not a microbe in all this microbe-
stuffed planet of Blitzowski ever suspects that he is a harmful creature! They
would be astonished and cruelly hurt if you should tell them such a thing. The
Nobles eat the Ignobles that is all right, it was intended they should, and so
there is no wrong in that, and they would tell you so; in turn, the Ignobles eat
them, and neither is that objectionable; both races feed on Blitzowski's blood
and tissue, and that also is proper, foreordained and void of sin; also, they
rot him with disease, they poison him, but that they do not know, that they do
not suspect. They don't know he is an animal, they take him for a planet; to
them he is rocks and dirt and landscape and one thing and another, they think
he has been provided for them, and they honestly admire him, enjoy him, and
praise God for him. And why not? they would be ingrates and unworthy of the
blessings and the bounties that have been lavished upon them if they did other-
wise. Without being a microbe I could not feel this so deeply; before I was a
microbe I do not believe I felt it at all. How alike we all are! all we think
about is ourselves, we do not care whether others are happy or not. When I was
a man, I would have turned a microbe from my door hungry, anytime. Now I see
how selfish I was; now I should be ashamed to do such a thing. So would any
person that had any religion. The very littleness of a microbe should appeal
to a person, let alone his friendlessness. Yet in America you see scientists
torturing them, and exposing them naked on microscope slides, before ladies,
and culturing them, and harrying them, and hunting up every way they can think
of to extirpate them--even doing it on the Sabbath. I have seen it myself. I
have seen a doctor do it; and he not cold from church. It was murder. I did
not realize it at the time, but that is what it was, it was murder. He conceded
it himself, in light words, little dreaming how mighty they were: he called him-
self a germicide. Some day he will know to his sorrow that there is no moral
difference between a germicide and a homicide. He will find that not even a
germ falls to the ground unnoticed. There is a Record. It does not draw the
line at feathers.

She said he belonged to the sect of the Magnanimites, and that it was very
good sect, and this Brother as good as the best. She said he she had always
had a fondness for each other when she used to be a Magnanimite, and that
that feeling still continued, she was glad to say. She said the countess was
orthodox, because she was a kind of a sort of a Noble by marriage, and it
would not be good form for her to travel the side-trails to the Abode of
the Blest, but she was a good creature and liked the Brother, and he liked
her. On she rattled:

"She's a foreigner--the countess. She's a GRQ, and--"

"What's a GRQ?"

"Getrichquick--and she was a lady there; though here, people of her family's
condition, being SBE's would have to stick to their proper place, and so--"

"What's an SBE?"

"Soiled-Bread Eater."

"Why soiled bread?"

"Because it's earned."

"Because it's earned?"

"Yes."

"Does the act of earning it soil it?"

It made her laugh--the idea that I, a grown-up, could be gnorant of an ABC fact
like that!--but I detected a sudden happy hunger in her eye which we are all
acquainted with, and which I was not sorry to see there: it comes when we think
we have discovered that we know something the other person doesn't, and are go-
ing to have a chance to unload information into him and surprise him and make
him admire us. It wasn't very often that Catherine dropped a fact that was new
to me, but she often threw an interesting new light upon an old one if I kept
shady and allowed her to think the fact itself was a valuable contribution to
my treasury. So I generally kept shady. Sometimes I got a profit out of this
policy, sometimes I didn't, but on the whole it paid.

My question made her laugh. She repeated it--apparently to taste again the re-
freshing ignorance of it:

"'Does the act of earning it soil it?' Why, don't you know--"

She stopped, and looked a little ashamed. I said--

"What's the trouble?"

"You are joking with me."

"Joking? Why should I be joking?"

"Because."

"Because what?"

"Ah, you know very well."

"I don't. I give you my word."

She looked straight in the eye, and said--

"If you are joking, I shall see it. Now I will ask you in earnest, and I think you
ought to answer in earnest: Have you ever heard of a nation--a large nation--
where earning the bread didn't soil it?"

It was my turn to laugh! I started to do it, but--Something moved me to wait a
minute; something which suggested that maybe it was not so foolish a question as
it seemed. I mused for a while. Great nations began to drift past my mind's eye--
habitants of both the planets--and I soon reached a decision, and said--

"I thought it was a foolish question, Catherine, but really it isn't when a body
examines it. I reckon we are pretty full of notion which we got at second hand
and haven't examined to see whethe they are supported by the statistics or not.
I know of a country through talking with natives of it--where the dignity of labor
is a phrase which is in everybody's mouth; where the reality of that dignity is
never questioned; where everybody says it is an honor to a person that he works
for the bread he eats; that earned bread is noble bread, and lifts the earner to
the level of the highest in the land; that unearned bread, the bread of idleness,
is tainted with discredit; a land where the sayers of these things say them with,
strong emotion, and think they believe what they say, and are proud of their land
because it is the sole land where the bread-earners are the only acknowledged ari-
stocracy. And yet I do see, that when you come to examine into it--"

"I know the land you mean! It's GRQ! Honest--isn't it GRQ?"

"Yes, it is."

"I recognised it in a minute! The, countess is always talking about it. She used
to love it when she lived there, but she despises it now, and says so, but I reckon
she has to talk that way to keep people from doubting that she's been changed and
is a real, actual Henryling, now--and you know, she is a real one, realer than the
born ones themselves, I know it by the way she talks. Well, she told me about the
dignity-of-labor gospeling, and says it's all sham. She says a mechanic is the same
there as anywhere. They don't ask him to dinner--plumber, carpenter, blacksmith,
cobbler, butler, coachman, sailor, soldier, stevedore, it's all the same all around,
they don't ask any of them. The professionals and merchants and preachers don't,
and the idle rich don't invite them--not by a dam sight, she says, and--"

"H'sh! I'm astonished at you!"

"Well, she said it, anyway; and she said they don't give a dam whether--"

"Will you be quiet! You must stop this habit of picking up and telling home every
dreadful word you--"

"But she said it--I heard her say it! The way she said it was this: she fetched
her fist down--so!--and said 'By--' "

"Never mind how she said it! I don't want to hear it. You are certainly the most
innocent animal that ever was. You don't seem to have any discrimination--every-
thing that gets in front of your rake is treasure to you. I think there was never
such a random scavenger since language was invented. Now then, let those words a-
lone; just let them alone, and start over again where they side-tracked you."

"Well, I will, and I'm sorry if I've done wrong, I wasn't meaning any harm. The
rest that she said was, that if the banker's daughter married the plumber, and
if the multimillionaire's daughter married the editor, and if the bishop's daugh-
ter married the horse-doctor, and if the governor's daughter married the coachman,
there was hell to pay!"

"Now there you go, again! I--
"
"Why, that's what she said."

"Oh, I know it, but--"

"And she said there's families that are so awful high-up and swell, that they
won't let their daughters marry any native at all, if they can help it. They save
them up till a foreign bacillus with a title comes along; then if they can agree
on the price they make the trade. But they don't have auctions, she says. Not pub-
lic ones. She's as nice as she can be, and it's most interesting to hear her talk.
She's good-hearted and malicious and all that, and is never borot and makes plenty
of friends?and keeps them, too. She's got a heart of gold, and false teeth and a
glass eye, and I think she's perfect."

"Those are the marks. I should recognize them anywhere."

"It's nice to have you say that. And I thought you would. There's a good deal to
her. I think she's awfully interesting. She', morganatic."

"Morganatic?"

"Yes. That's what she is--morganatic."

"How do you make that out?"

"Well, it's what they say. Not she herself, but the othe Neighbors, you know. That's
what they say. Morganatic."

"Yes, but how?"

"Well, her mother was a vermiform appendix?"

"Oh, good land!"

"It's what they say, anyway. They don't know who her fathe was. Only just her mother.
She was a vermiform appendix. That what they say. Morganatic."

"How in the nation is that morganatic?"

"Irregular, you know. They all say it's irregular for a vermifor appendix to have a
family anyway, to begin with, for it's never happened before, and doctors didn't be-
lieve it could happen till 111 did happen; and then to go and have it irregular be-
sides--well, it'd morganatic, you see. That's what they all say. Morganatic. Some
say it's more than morganatic, but I reckon it's not so much as that, do you think?"

"Why, hang it there's nothing morganatic about it--nothing that resembles it. The
whole thing is insane--absolutely insane, Now how can these germs be cruel enough
to ruin the countess's character in this wanton way?"

"Ruin her character? What makes you think it hurts it character?"

"But doesn't it?"

"Why no. How could it affect her character? She wasn't blame. She hadn't anything
to do with it. Why, she wasn't any more than just there, when it happened. I reck-
on another minute and she'd have been too late."


"What an idea! Hanged if you can't make the most unexpected turns, and pop out in
the most unexpected places that ever I--and there's no such thing as understanding
these mixed up and helter-skelter and involved statements of yours--why, they fuddle
a person all up, they make him dizzy, he can't tell them from sacred passages out
of Science and Wealth itself, the style is so astonishingly replicated!"

I was so sorry it escaped me! But for only half a second. Why, she was beaming with
gratitude! It wasn't a sarcasm to her. It fell short--away short! She took it for a
compliment. I hastened to get back on our course and said--

"I am very glad it didn't hurt her character; and very sincerely glad to come across
one civilization which places shame where it belongs, instead of emptying its brutal
scorn upon the innocent product of it. So these good and just people respect the
countess, do they?"

"Oh yes, they do, as far as that incident is concerned. In fact it is valuable thing
to her, because it gives her distinction."

"How?"

"Why, she's the only appendicitis there is. There's plenty inside of people, in the
hospitals and around, but she's the only one that's outside; the only one that's been
born, you know.--Irregular, and pretty morganatic, and all that, but never mind,
when all's said and done, she's the only one in history, and it's a gigantic dis-
tinction. I wish I was it, myself."

"Oh, Great Sc--"



XV



"SHE CLATTERED right along, paying no attention to my attempt to invoke the Great
Scott. Also she followed a slovenly fashion of hers, of throwing a back-handspring
clear over thirty yards of general conversation and landing right-side-up in front
of an unfinished remark of an hour before--then she would hitch-on to it, and come
lumbering along with it the same as if the hadn't been anything obstructing the
line, and no interruption to it, progress--

"So you see, there isn't any big nation, after all, where it doesn't soil the bread
to earn it, notwithstanding you stood out so stubbornly that it wasn't so." (I hadn't
done anything of the kind, but I knew it would save time and wind to leave it so,
and not argue it.) "The countess says it's all a sham, in GRQ, and of course if
there was a big nation anywhere where it wasn't a sham, it would be there, which
is a republic and a democracy, and the greatest one on the planet, and everybody
letting on to be equal and some of them succeeding, God only knows which ones, she
says! She says the sham starts at the top and runs straight to the bottom without
a break, and there isn't a da--" ("Look out!" I said)--"isn't a person in the land
that can see it. That's what she says--all blind-fuddled with bogus sentiment.

"Ranks--grades--castes--there's a million of them! that's what she says. Mesal-
liances! why, she says it's just the natural native home of them, on account of
there being so many more ranks and aristocracies there than anywhere else. She
says there's families that the very President isn't good enough to marry into--at
least until he's President. They're nearly always SBE's--tanners, or rail-split-
ters, or tailors, or prohibitionists, or some other low trade, and they've got
to climb away up above that before they can crowd into those families--and by
that time, you know, it's too late, they're already coupled. They consider it
climbing, she says, and everybody does. They admire him--admire him immensely
--for what he is now, don't you know--admire him for the respectability he's
climbed up to. They don't say, with swelling pride and noble emotion, Look at
him, the splendid SBE--he's a rail-splitter!' No, they say, with swelling pride
and noble emotion, 'Look at him--away up there!--and just think, he used to wasn't
anything but a rail-splitter!' And she says he's not ashamed of what he was, and
no occasion to, it's a distinction and a grand one, now that he's where he is;
and you'd think he would make tailors and tanners and rail-splitters out of his
boys. She says she thinks they do, but she don't remember any instances.

"So there 'tis, and I reckon you've got to come down."

"Come down?"

"Yes. Come down and acknowledge it."

"Acknowledge what?"

"That earned bread is soiled bread--everywhere on the planet of Blitzowski,
republics and all. It's the soiled bread that makes a It ion; makes it great,
makes it honored, makes it strong, props up its throne and saves it from the
junk-shop, makes its waving flag a beautiful thing to see, and bring the proud
tears to your eyes to look at it, keeps its da--keeps its Grand Dukes out of
the hog-wallow, the jail and the alms-house--if you sh'd sweep the SBE's and
their dirty bread away there wouldn't be a solitary valuable thing left in the
land! and yet, by God--"

"Oh, for goodness sake!--"

"Well, that's what she said. She said, `By--' "

"Will you hush! I tell you--"

"But she said it--the countess did. She put up her hand--away up so, with her
fist clinched and her eyes snapping, and rips out the doggondest, consoundedest,
allfiredest, thunderblast of--"

Thank heaven there was a knock on the door! It was the good Brother, the im-
pressive Sleeping-Sickness germ.

He had a gentle way with him, and a kind and winning face, for he was a Mal-
ignant; that is to say, a Noble of the loftiest rank and the deadliest, and
the gentle bearing and the kind face are theirs by nature and old heredity.
He was not aware that he was deadly; he was not aware that any Noble was dead-
ly; he was far from suspecting the shocking truth that all Nobles are deadly.
I was the only person in all Blitzowski that knew these terrible facts, and I
knew it only because I had learned it in another World.

He and Catherine gave each other a pleased and affectionate greeting, she going
on her knees to him, as etiquette required, she being an SBE and he of dizzily
lofty blood, and he patting her bowed head lovingly, and telling her she might
rise. Which she did, and waited so, until he told her she could sit. He and I
exchanged stately bows, each repeatedly waving a reverent hand toward a chair
and accompanying each wave with a courtly "After you, mlord."

We got it settled presently, by the two of us chairing ourselves with carefully
exact simultaneousness. He had a slender long box with him, which Catherine re-
lieved him of--curtsying profoundly.

Ah, he knew things, the wise old gentleman! He knew that when you are in doubt
it is safest to lead trumps. He could see that I was of a great blood; I might
be a Noble, so he treated me as one, without asking any awkward questions. I
followed his lead: I made him a Duke, without asking him anything about it.

He was munching an SBE which he had captured as he came along--eating it alive,
which is our way--and its cries and struggles made my mouth water, for it was
an infant of four weeks and quite fat and tender and juicy, and I hadn't tasted
a bite since the boys left at 2 A.M. There was enough of it for a family, there-
fore no occasion for etiquetical declining and polite lying when he offered me
a leg; I took it, and it seemed to me that I had never tasted anything better.
It was a pectin--a spring pectin--and I think them quite choice when they are
well nourished.

I knew Catherine was hungry, but this kind of game was not for her: SBE's eat
Nobles when they get a chance--war-prisoners or battle-slain--but SBE's don't
eat each other, and she was an SBE. It was a good meal, and we threw the rem-
nants to the mother, who was crying outside. She was very grateful, poor thing,
though it was but a trifling kindness, and we claimed no merit for it.

When the Brother learned that I longed to have our humble friends and helpers,
the lower animals, accompany us to the Happy Land and partake of its joys with
us, it went to his heart. He was deeply moved, and said it was a most noble and
compassionate feeling, and that he shared it with me to the uttermost. That was
good and strong and cheering language; and when he added that he not only long-
ed for the translation of the animals but believed it would happen and had no
shadow of a doubt that it would happen, my cup of happiness was full! I had
never lacked anything but a support like this to clinch my own belief and make
it solid and perfect, and now it was solid and perfect. I think there was not
a happier microbe than I, at that moment, from Henryland to GRQ, and from the
Major Molar to the Great Lone Sea. There was but one question left to ask, and
I asked it without fear or misgiving--

"Does your Grace include all the creatures, even the meanest Ind the smallest
--mosquito, rat, fly, all and every?"

"Yes, all and every!--even the invisible and deadly microbe that feeds upon
our bodies and rots them with disease!"

xxxx The stars represent the time it took me to get my breath I Jack. Yes, yes,
yes, how strangely we are made! I had always wanted somebody to say that, and
round-out and perfect the scheme of justice, making all innocent and duty-doing
life partakers of it, and I had long ago (unsuccessfully) offered an upright and
kind-hearted clergyman an opportunity to do it, yet now that somebody had
said it [at] last, it nearly paralyzed me!

The Duke saw it. I couldn't help it--he saw it. I was ashamed, Init there it
was; so I didn't make any excuses, or venture any lies, I lust stood pat. It's
the best way, when you know you are caught and there isn't anything you can do.
But the Duke was handsomely magnanimous about it; he dealt in no upbraidings,
no sarcasms, he did a better thing--he dealt in reasonings: reasonings support-
ed by facts. He said--

"You make a limit, you draw a line; do not let that trouble you, there was a time
when I did it too. It was when I lacked knowledge--that is, full knowledge; it
was incomplete--like yours. Yours is about to be amended, now--and completed--by
me. Then you will see the right, I know you need have no doubts as to that. I will
show you the facts. Arguments carry far, but nothing but facts carry home. There
are plenty of evidences on view in this room that you are a student of science,
m'lord, but you have revealed the fact--unintentionally--that there is one great
field of science-bacteriology--which you have neglected--which, at any rate, you
have not made yourself altogether familiar with. Is it so?"

Well, what was I to say? As to World-bacteriology, I was the expert of experts--
I was a past master--I knew more about it in a week than Pasteur ever knew about
it in a year. I couldn't tell the Duke that--he wouldn't know what I was talking
about. As to bacteriology here in this planet--the infinitely microscopic microbes
that infest microbes--land, I knew nothing about it! I had sometimes lazily won-
dered if they were minute duplicates of the World-microbes, and had the same ha-
to the same duties, but I had never felt interest enough in the matter to think
examining into it worth the trouble. On the whole I thought I would tell the Duke
I didn't know anything about germs and such things, and that is what I did.

It didn't surprise him any--I could see that--and it hurt my pride a little, but I
stood it and made no moan. He got up and arranged one of my microscopes--remark-
ing casually that he was a bacteriologist of some reputation--by which he meant
that he was the bacteriologist of the planet--oh, I know that tune!--and I know
how to dance to it to the singer's satisfaction, too--which I did, in the old
shop-worn way: I said I should consider myself the most ignorant of scientists
if I was not aware of that pretty well-known fact. Then he got a glass slide
out of his grooved box--which I had recognized, early, as a slide-box--and put it
under the microscope. He worked the screws and made the proper adjustment, then
told me to take a look.

Oh, well, there's no use--I was astonished! It was one of those old familiar ras-
cals which I had had under the microscope a thousand times in America, and here
was his unspeakably littler twin exactly reproduced, to the last detail. He was
a pectin--a spring pectin--a baby one, and most ridiculously like the mammoth one
(by comparison) which we had just eaten! It was so funny that I wanted to make
a joke about him; I wanted to say, let's get that little speck out on a needle-
point and make a gnat eat him, then give his remnants to his mother! But I didn't
say it. It might be that the Duke was not witty: well, you don't charm that kind
by reminding them of their defect and making them ashamed and envious. So I held
in, but it strained me some.



XVI



HE MADE a sketchy little introductory layout in the professorial style, in which
he generalized, as in an impressionist picture, the lesson which he was going to
particularize for my instruction; then he got down to his work. At this point he
discarded the local vernacular, and thenceforth employed the highest and purest
dialect of the black plague, which he spoke with a French accent--mean, it sound-
ed like it. It had long been the court language, all over Blitzowski and was now
becoming the language of science, because of its peculiar richness in several high
qualities; among them, precision and flexibility. I will remark, in passing, that
in this tongue, the scientific family-name for all germ-forms is swink. Every mic-
robe is a swink, every bacterium is a swink, and so on; just as in the World every
German, Indian, Irishman, and so on, is a man.

"Let us begin at the beginning," he said. "This mighty planet which we inhabit,
and in which we have set up our democracies, our republics, kingdoms, hierarchies,
oligarchies, autocracies and other vanities, was created for a great and wise pur-
pose. It was not chance-work, it proceeded, stage by stage, in accordance with an
ordered and systematised plan.

"It was created for a purpose. What was that purpose? That We might have a home.
That is the proper expression--a home, not a mere abiding place, stingy of comforts.
No, the design was, a home rich in comforts, and in intelligent and hard-working
subordinates to provide them for us. No microbe fails to realize this, no microbe
forgets to be grateful for it. If the microbe is also a little vain of his high
position, a little vain of his august supremacy, it must be allowed that it is
pardonable. If the microbe has by his own unanimous consent gilded himself with
the large title of Lord of Creation, it must be allowed that that also was par-
donable, seeing that it was safer to take the title than go before the country
with the matter and possibly fail to get elected.

"Very well. The planet was to be created--for a purpose. Was it created--and then
the microbe put into possession of it at once? No, he would have starved. It had
to be prepared for him. What was the process? Let us make a little planet--in fan-
cy--and see.

"Thus. We make some soil, and spread it out. It is going to be a garden, presently.
We make air, and put into it moisture; the air and the moisture contain life-nur-
turing foods in the form of gases --foods for the plants which we are going to
raise., We put into the soil some other plant-foods--potassium, phosphorous, ni-
trates, and such.

"There is plenty of food; the plant eats, is energised, and springs from the soil
and flourishes. Presently the garden is wealthy in grains, berries, melons, table-
vegetables, and all manner of luscious fruits.

"There being food now for the Lord of Creation and for the horse, the cow and
their kind, and for the locust, the weevil, and the countless other destructive
insects, we create them and set them to the table. Also the tiger, the lion,
the snake, the wolf, the cat, the dog, the buzzard, the vulture and their sort?

"Yes, we create them, but it is not a fortunate time for them, because they cannot
live on garden-stuff. They have to sacrifice themselves in a great cause. They are
martyrs. Though not by request. Being without food, they die.

"At this point we create the swinks, and they appear on the scene --with a stup-
endous mission. They come in countless multitudes, for much is required of them.
What would happen if they did not come?

"Why, the catastrophe of catastrophes! The garden would use up and exhaust the sup-
ply of essential foods concealed in the soil--the nitrates and the rest of that
nutritive menu; then it would have nothing left to live on but the slim menu furn-
ished by the air--carbon dioxide and such--and so it would get hungrier and hungrier,
and weaker and weaker, then it would gasp out its remnant of life and die. With it
all the animals would perish, the Lord of Creation along with them, and the planet
would be a desolate wilderness, without song of bird, or cry of predatory creature,
or whir of wing, or any sign of life. The, forests would wither and pass away, no-
thing would be left of all the fair creation but limitless expanses of rocks and
sand.

"Is the humble swink important in the scheme, then? Ah, yes--beyond question! What
shall we call him? What shall be his title, since he is unmicrobically modest, and
has not selected one himself? Let us name him in accordance with the plain facts.
He is the Lord Protector of the Lord of Creation, and ex-officio Redeemer of his
Planet. Let us now examine his procedure and his meth-ods.

"He arrives on the scene in his due order and at the proper and appointed time.
The microbe is well, and well fed; the samee the case with the cow, the horse and
the other creatures that on vegetable products, but there is a wilderness of
tigers, dogs, cats, lions, and other meat-eaters dying, because there isn't meat
enough to go around. The swink attacks the carcases and their previous excretions,
feeds upon them, decomposes them, and sets free a lot [of] oxygen, nitrogen and
other things necessary to the plant-table; the plant-leaves seize upon these foods
--with the exception of the nitrogen, which it must get later through the labors
of other breeds of swinks.

"Very well, the country is saved. The plants get their foods back again, and
thrive. They digest them, building them into albumins, starch, fats and so on;
these go back to the animals, who feed upon them and thrive; in digesting them
they build them into various food-forms; some of these pass to the air in their
breath and are re-captured by the plant-leaves and devoured; some of them go from
them in their excretions and are recovered by the swink and returned to the plants;
when the animals die the swink rots him and sets free the rest of the plant-foods
and they go back to the garden.

"So, the eternal round goes on: the foods fat-up the plants; they go from the
plants to the animals and fat them up; the swink recovers them and sends them back
to the plants' larder; the plants eat them again, and again forward them to the
animals. Nothing is lost, nothing wasted; there's never a new dish, and never
has been one; it's the same old sumptuous but unchanging bill of fare, and
not only the same bill, but the very same old food which was set upon the table
at creation's first meal, and has been warmed over and chewed and re-chewed, and
chewed and chewed and chewed and chewed and chewed again and again and still a-
gain and yet again at every single meal that life in any form, in land and water
and air has ever sat down to, from that original first day to this.

"It is a marvelous machinery, an amazing machinery; the precision of it, the per-
fection of it, the wonder of it--put it into your own words, I have none that are
sublime enough!

"Remove the swink from the scheme, and what have you? Rocks and sand! Rocks and
sand, stripped bare; the forests gone and the flowers, the seas without a fish,
the air without a wing, the temples without a worshiper, the thrones empty, the
cities crumbled to dust and blown away. And the armies, and the banners, and the
shouting--where are they? Do you hear a sound? It is only the wandering wind,
the lamenting wind; and do you hear that other sound?--

"The old, old Sea, as one in tears,
Comes murmuring with foamy lips,
And knocking at the vacant piers,
Calls for his long-lost multitude of ships!'

"xxxx We will look at this swink, this giant. Catherine, bring a tin cup. A pint
tin cup. Now fill it with wheat--level full. There--it represents a pound,
avoirdupois by immemorial tradition. There are 7,000 grains. Take 15 of them,
crush them in the mortar. Now wet the pulp, and make a pill of it. It is a small
pill, isn't it? You could swallow it without difficulty? Let us suppose it hol-
low--with a hole in it, pierced by the most delicate needle-point. Let us ima-
gine it the house of the swink, and summon him and his to come forth. Go on
with the fancy: behold, he comes--the procession moves! Can you see so minute
a creature? No--you must imagine him. Count!

"One--two--three--Three what? Individuals? No! It would take a year. You must
count him--how? By armies--only by armies--each a million strong. Count!"

"One--two--three." I was counting. I went on countingcounting--counting--mono-
tonously. I got to the forties.

"Go on!"

I got to the seventies.

"Go on!"

I got to the nineties.

"Go on!"

I reached a hundred.

"Stop! There he stands, a hundred million strong--his mass, the mass of a calomel
pill! Take off your hat--make reverence: you and in the presence of his sublime
Majesty the Swink, Lord Protector of the Lord of Creation, Redeemer of his Planet,
Preserver of all Life!

"Will he be forgiven, and changed to a spirit, and allowed to ascend with us to
the Land of Rest--to fold his tired hands and labor no more, his duty done, his
mission finished? What do you think?"



XVII.



AT LAST my spirit had found perfect repose, perfect peace, perfect contentment--
never again to be disturbed, never again to be tossed upon waves of doubt, I hoped
and believed. The Lower Animals, big and little, would be spirits in the Blessed
Land, as intangible as thought; airy, floating forms, wandering hither and thither,
leagues apart, in the stupendous solitudes of space, seldom glimpsed, unremarked,
inoffensive, intruding upon none--ah, why had not some one thought of this simple
and rational solution before? In the human World even the most fastidious church-
man would hail with joy and thankfulness the translation of my poor old tramp to
the Blessed Land from a repentant deathbed, quite undisturbed by the certainty of
having to associate with him there throughout eternity. In what condition? frowsy,
drunk, driveling, malodorous?--proper comrade for a disease-germ? No: as a spirit
--an airy, flitting form, as intangible as thought; in no one's way, offending none.
Yet the same charitable churchman who could forecast the tramp as a spirit and pur-
ified of offensiveness, could never in all his days happen to hit upon the logical
idea of also forecasting the rest of the ruck of life as spirits. Plainly a thing
not difficult to do after practising on Blitzowski and getting reconciled to the
process.

Something roused me out of this reverie, and I found that the Duke was talking.
Something like this:

"We have seen that the swink--and the swink alone--saved our planet from de-
nudation and irremediable sterility in the beginning; saved Us and all subordinate
life from extinction; is still standing between Us and extinction to-day; and
that if ever he deserts Us, that day is Our Doomsday, that day marks the pass-
ing of Our Great Race and of Our Noble Planet to the grave of the Things That
Were.

"Is that humble mite important, then? Let us confess it: he is in truth the on-
ly very important personage that exists. What is the suit of clothes which we
call Henry the Great, and bow before, reverent and trembling? What are the tribe
of kings, and their grandeurs? What are their armies and their navies? What are
the multitudinous nations and their pride? Shadows--all shadows--nothing is real
but the swink. And their showy might? It is a dream --there is no might but the
might of the swink. And their glories? The swink gave them, the swink can take
them away. And their riches, their prosperities-

"Let us look at that. There are some strange resemblances between Our Grand
Race and those wee creatures. For instance, We have upper classes--so have
they. That is a parallel, as far as it goes, but it is not a perfect one, for the reason
that Our aristocracy is useful and not often harmful, whereas their aristocracy
are disease-germs, and propagate deadly maladies in Our bodies.

"But the next parallel has no defect. I refer to their lower classes--their la-
boring poor. They are harmless. They work, they work intelligently, they work
unceasingly. We have seen that they save Is and Our planet; very well, they also
create Our wealth for Us, they prepare it for Our hand, We take it and use it.

"For instance. No method of separating the linen fibres in the flax from the
wood fibres has yet been devised which dispenses with the aid of the swink. He
holds the patent upon that essential. He has always been boss of the whole
rich linen industry of this planet; he is still boss of it; he keeps the mills
going; he pays the wages, he attends to the dividends. He bosses the sacking
industry, too; helps to get the jute ready. The same with other fibre-products
of several kinds.

"Swinks of various breeds help in a multitude of Our commercial industries. The
yeast-swink helps in every kitchen and every bakery on the planet. You get no
good bread without him. He conducts Our wine-business, strong-liquor business,
beer-business, vinegar-business, and so on, for Us, and does it on a mighty
scale. It is by his grace that those generous floods are poured down the
throats of the nations, and the dividends handed over by the trainload to the
capitalist.

"He sees to it that your butter is good; and your cream, your cheese, and all
sorts of boarding-house essentials.

"When the tobacco leaf sprouts, the swink is there--on duty, and faithful to
his trust. He will never leave that leaf until he has helped it with his best
strength and judgment through every one of its curing-processes; and when it
reaches your mouth the flavor and the aroma that make it delicious to your
taste and smell, and fill your spirit with contentment and thanks, are his
work. He oversees, and superintends, and makes profitable beyond the dreams of
the statistician the entire tobacco-industry of this great planet, and every
day the smoke of the burnt offerings that go up in praise and worship of this
unknown god, this god whose labors are not suspected and whose name is never
uttered by these ignorant devotees, transcends in volume all the other altar-
smokes that have gone skyward during the preceding thirty years. Pray correct
me if I seem to fall into error at any time, for we are all prone to do this
when stirred by feeling.

"These are great services which we have been tallying off to the credit of
Our benefactor, the humble swink, the puissant swink, the all-providing swink,
the all-protecting swink. Is the tale finished? Is there yet another service?
Yes--and a greater still. This:

"In their time, the trees and the plants fall, and lie. The swink takes hold. He de-
composes them, turns them to dust, mingles them with the soil. Suppose he didn't do
this work? The fallen vegetation would not rot, it would lie, and pile up, and up,
and up, and by and by the soil would be buried fathoms deep; no food could be grown,
all life would perish, the planet would be a lifeless desert. There is but one in-
strument that can keep this vast planet's soil free and usable--the swink."

"Oh, dear me," I muttered to myself, "the idea of ruling God's most valuable creatures
out of heaven, and admitting the Blitzowskis!"

"There. Let us finish. We complain of his aristocracy--his disease-germs. All We can
think about, when the swink is mentioned, is his aristocracy's evil doings. When do
We ever speak of the laboring swink, Our benefactor, Our prosperity-maker? In effect,
never. Our race does not even know that he is Our benefactor, none knows it but here
and there a student, a scholar, a scientist. The public--why, the public thinks all
swinks are disease-breeders, and so it has a horror of all the race of swinks. It is
a pity, too, for the facts and the figures would modify its hostilities if it had
them and would examine them.

"When the plague-swink starts upon a raid, the best he can c o, while it lasts, is to
kill 2 1/2 per cent of the community attacked--not the nation, merely the few commun-
ities visited. Nowadays, I mean. He did a larger trade in bygone ages, before science
took hold of his case. He kills 2 1/2 per cent; then he has to lie still for years. The
cholera-swink does even a slenderer business; then he also must postpone his next raid
for years. Both of these are harshly talked about and dreaded. Why? I don't know. None
but mere outlying corners of the planet ever see either of them during entire life-
times. Meantime the laborer-swink is supporting all the prospering all the nations--
and getting neither thanks nor mention."

He dropped into the vernacular:

Take all the other disease-germs in a mass, and what do they accomplish? They are re-
sponsible for ten graves out of a hundred, that is all. It takes them half a lifetime
to bring down the average sooflasky try as hard as they may; and all that time his bro-
ther ink the laborer has been feeding him, protecting him, enriching--and getting nei-
ther thanks nor notice for it. To use a figure, he swink gives the public a thousand
barrels of apples; the public v,. nothing--not a word; then it finds a rotten apple
in the cargo, and--what does it do then, Catherine?"

"Raises--"

"Shut up!" I shouted, just in time.

"It's what the countess says, I heard her say it myself. She said--"

"Never mind what she said; we don't want to hear it!"



XVIII.



I WAS CHARMED with the Duke's lecture. Its wonders were new to me, and astonishing. At
the same time, they were old to me, and not astonishing. In the World, when I was stud-
ying micrology under Prof. H. W. Conn, we knew all these facts, because they were all
true of the microbes that infest the human being; but it to find them exactly duplicat-
ed in the life of the was new to me microbes that infest the human being's microbes.
We knew that the human race was saved from destruction in the beginning by the microbe;
that the microbe had been saving it from destruction ever since; that the microbe was
the protector and preserver and ablest propagator of many of the mightiest industries
in the Earth; that he was the personage most heavily interested in the corporations
which exploited them, and that his expert service was the most valuable asset such cor-
porations possessed; we knew that he kept the Earth's soil from being covered up and
buried out of sight and made unusable; in a word, we knew that the most valuable cit-
izen of the Earth was the microbe, and that the human race could no more do without
him than it could do without the sun and the air. We also knew that the human race
took no notice of these benefactions, and only remembered the disease-germ's ten
per cent contribution to the death-rate; and didn't even stop with that unfairness, but
charged all microbes with being disease-germs, and violently abused the entire stock,
benefactors and all!

Yes, that was all old to me, but to find that our little old familiar microbes were
themselves loaded up with microbes that fed them, enriched them, and persistently
and faithfully preserved them and their poor old tramp-planet from destruction--oh,
that was new, and too delicious!

I wanted to see them! I was in a fever to see them! I had lenses of two-million pow-
er, but of course the field was no bigger than a person's finger-nail, and so it wasn't
possible to do a considerable spectacle or a landscape with them; whereas what I had
been craving was a thirty-foot field, which would represent a spread of several miles
of country and show up things in a way to make them worth looking at. The boys and I
had often tried to contrive this improvement, but had failed.

I mentioned the matter to the Duke, and it made him smile. He said it was a quite sim-
ple thing--he had it at home. I was eager to bargain for the secret, but he said it
was a trifle and not worth bargaining for. He said--

"Hasn't it occurred to you that all you have to do is to bend an X-ray to an angle-
value of 8.4, and refract it with a parabolism, and there you are?"

Upon my word, I had never thought of that simple thing! You could have knocked me
down with a feather.

We rigged a microscope for an exhibition at once, and put a drop of my blood under
it, which got mashed flat when the lense got shut down upon it. The result was beyond
my dreams. The field stretched miles away, green and undulating, threaded with streams
and roads, and bordered all down the mellowing distances with picturesque hills. And
there was a great white city of tents; and everywhere were parks of artillery, and
divisions of cavalry and infantry--waiting. We had hit a lucky moment; evidently
there was going to be a march-past, or something like that. At the front where the
chief banner flew, there was a large and showy tent, with showy guards on duty, and
about it were some other tents of a swell kind.

The warriors--particularly the officers--were lovely to look at, they were so trim-
built and so graceful and so handsomely uniformed. They were quite distinct, vividly
distinct, for it was a fine day, and they were so immensely magnified that they look-
ed to be fully finger-nail high.*

Everywhere you could see officers moving smartlybout, and they looked gay, but the
common soldiers looked sad. Many wifeswinks and daughter-swinks and sweetheart-
swinks were about--crying, mainly. It seemed to indicate that this was a case of war,
not a summer-camp for exercise, and that the poor labor-swinks were being torn from
their planet-saving industries to go and distribute civilization and other forms of
suffering among the feeble benighted, somewhere; else why should the swinkesses
cry?

The cavalry was very fine; shiny black horses, shapely and spirited and presently
when a flash of light struck a lifted bugle (delivering a command which we couldn't
hear) and a division came tearing down on a gallop it was a stirring and gallant
sight, until the dust rose an inch--the Duke thought more--and swal-lowed it up in
a rolling and tumbling long gray cloud, with bright weapons glinting and sparking
in it.

Before long the real business of the occasion began. A battalion of priests arrived,
carrying sacred pictures. That settled it: this was war; these far-stretching masses
of troops were bound for the front. Their little monarch came out now, the sweetest
little thing that ever travestied the human shape, I think; and he lifted up his
hands and blessed the passing armies, and they looked as grateful as they could, and
made signs of humble mu! real reverence as they drifted by the holy pictures.

It was beautiful--the whole thing; and wonderful, too, when those serried masses swung
into line and went marching down the valley under the long array of fluttering flags.

Evidently they were going somewhere to fight for their country, which was the little
manny that blessed them; and to preserve him and his brethren that occupied the other
swell tents; and to civilize and grab a valuable little unwatched country for them
somewhere. But the little fellow and his brethren didn't fall in--that was a notice-
able particular. But the Duke said it was without doubt a case of Henry and Family
on a minute scale--they didn't fight; they stayed at home, where it was safe, and
waited for the swag.

Very well, then--what ought we to do? Had we no moral duty to perform? Ought we to
allow this war to begin? Was it our duty to stop it, in the name of right and righteous-
ness? Wasnot it not our duty to administer a rebuke to this selfish and heartless
Family?

The Duke was struck by that, and greatly moved. He felt as I did about it, and was
ready to do whatever was right, and thought we ought to pour boiling water on the
Family and extinguish it, which we did.

It extinguished the armies, too, which was not intended. We both regretted this, but
the Duke said that these people were nothing to us, and deserved extinction anyway
for being so poor-spirited as to serve such a Family. He was loyally doing the like
himself, and so was I, but I don't think we thought of that. And it wasn't just the
same, anyway, because we were sooflaskies, and they were only swinks.



XIX.



THE DUKE presently went away, and left my latest thought simmering in my mind--
simmering along in the form of reverie: "it wasn't just the same, anyway, because we
were sooflaskies, and they were only swinks." There it is: it doesn't make any dif-
ference who we are or what we are, there's always somebody to look down on! somebody
to hold in light esteem or no esteem, somebody to be indifferent about. When I was a
human being, and recognized with complacency that I was of the Set-Aparts, the Cho-
sen, a Grand Razzledazzle, The Whole Thing, the Deity's Delight, I looked two upon the
microbe; he wasn't of any consequence, he wasn't worth a passing thought; his life
was nothing, I took it if I wanted it, it ranked with a mark on a slate--rub it out,
if you like. Now that I was a microbe myself I looked back upon that insolence, that
human indifference, with indignation--and imitated it to the letter, dull-witted
unconsciousness and all. I was once more looking lown; I was once more finding a
life that wasn't of any importance, And sponging it out when I was done with it.
Once more I was of the Set-Aparts, the Chosen, a Grand Razzledazzle, and all that,
and had something to look down upon, be indifferent about. I was a sooflasky; oh,
yes, I was The Whole Thing, and away down below me was the insignificant swink--
extinguishable at my pleasure--why not? what of it? who's to find fault?

Then the inexorable logic of the situation arrived, and an-nounced itself. The in-
exorable logic of the situation was this: there being a Man, with a Microbe to in-
fest him, and for him to be indifferent about; there being a Sooflasky, with a Swink
to infest him and for the said Sooflasky to be indifferent about: then it follows,
for a certainty, that the Swink is similarly infested, too, and has something to
look down upon and be indifferent to and sponge out upon occasion; and it also fol-
lows, of a certainty, that below that infester there is yet another infester that
infests him--and so. on down and down and down till you strike the bottomest bot-
tom of created life--if there is one, which is extremely doubtful.

However, I had reached down to comfort, at any rate, and an easy conscience. We
had boiled the swinks, poor things, but never mind, it's all right, let them pass it a-
long; let them take it out of their infesters--and those out of theirs--and those
again out of theirs--and so on down and down till there has been an indemnifying
boiling all the way down to the bottomest bottom, and everybody satisfied; and glad
it happened, on the whole.

Well, it's a picture of life. Life everywhere and under any and all conditions:
the king looks down upon t wheoere; noble, the noble looks down upon the commoner,
the commoner at the top looks down upon the next commoner below, and he upon the
next, and that one upon the next one; and so on down the fifty castes that cons-
titute the commonalty--the fifty aristocracies that constitute it, to state it
with precision, for each commonalty-caste is a little aristocracy by itself, and
each has a caste to look down upon, plum all the way down to the bottom, where
you find the burglar looking down upon the house-renting landlord, and the land-
lord looking down upon his oily brown-wigged pal the real estate agent--which is
the bottom, so far as ascertained.



XX.



I GLANCED over my paper on the currency, and found it lucid, interesting, and ac-
curate. It had been written long before. In those early days in Blitzowski I made
it a point to put upon paper the new things I learned, lay the thing away, then
take it out from time to time in after years and examine it. There was generally
something to correct--always, I may say; but in the course of time I got all er-
rors weeded out. This paper on the currency had been through that mill. I found
it satisfactory, and gave it to Catherine to put away again.

That was 3,000 years ago. Ah, Catherine, poor child where art thou now? Where art
thou, thou pretty creature, thou quaint sprite! Where is thy young bloom, thy
tumultuous good heart, thy capricious ways, thine unexpectednesses, oh thou un-
catchable globule of frisky quicksilver, thou summer-flurry of shower and sun-
shine! You were an allegory! you were Life! just joyous, careless, sparkling,
gracious, winning, worshipful Life! and now--thou art dust and ashes these thir-
ty centuries!

This faded old paper brings her back. Her hand was the last that rested upon it.
She was a dear child; and just a child--it is what she was; if I knew the place
her finger touched, I would kiss it.

There was a time when a pair of young adventurers, exploring a found a spot which
pleased them, and there they began a village, and it was Rome. The village grew,
and was the capital of kings for some centuries; and made a stir in the world,
and came to be known far and wide; and became a republic, and produced illustrious
men; and produced emperors, next, some of them tolerably tough; and when Rome was
seven or eight hundred years old, Jesus was born in one of her provinces; by and
by came the Age of Faith, and the Dark Ages, and the Middle Ages, extending through
a procession of centuries, Rome looking on and superintending; and when she was
eighteen hundred years old, William the Conqueror visited the British isles on bus-
iness; and by and by came the Crusades, and lasted two centuries, and filled the
world with a splendid noise, then the romantic show faded out and disappeared,
with its banners and its noise, and it was as if the whole thing had been a dream;
by and by came Dante and Boccacio and Petrarch; and after another by and by came
the Hundred Years' War; and after a while Joan of Arc; and soon the Printing
Press, that prodigious event; and after another while the Wars of the Roses, with
forty years of blood and tears; and straight after it Columbus and a New World;
and in the same year Rome decreed the extirpation of the witches, for she was
more than twenty-two hundred years old, now, and tired of witches this good while;
after that, during two centuries not a lantern was sold in Europe and the art of
making them was lost, the tourist traveling at night by the light of roasting old
mothers and grandmothers tied to stakes 32 yards apart all over the Christian
world, which was gradually getting itself purified and would eventually have ac-
complished it if some one had not chanced to find out that there wasn't any such
thing as a witch, and gone and told; two centuries have dragged by since; Rome,
that was once a fresh little village in a solitude, is more than twenty-six hun-
dred years old, now, and is named the Eternal City, and what were her palaces in
Christ's time are mouldering humps of weed-grown bricks and masonry in ours, and
even Columbus's lonesome continent has put on some age, and acquired some popu-
lation, and would be a surprise to him if he could come back and see the cities
and the railroads and the multitudes.

Musing over these things made it seem a long, long time since the two adventurers
had started that village and called it Rome; and yet, I said to myself, "it isn't
as long a stretch of centuries as has passed over my head since that girl took
this old manuscript from me and put it away; I wish I knew the place her fingers
touched."

It is a good chapter, and I will insert it here. Its facts about the money of that
day will be valuable in this book.


THE CURRENCY


IN ONE matter of high importance civilization in Blitzowski can claim a distinct
superiority over the civilizations of the World. Blitzowski has, by ancient Bund,
a uniform currency. You don't have to buy a supply of foreign pocket-change when
you are preparing for a voyage, nor get your letter of credit made out in curren-
cies you are not familiar with. The money of all the countries goes at par in all
the other countries.

When the idea was first suggested it was received with great doubt, for it propos-
ed the simplifying and sanitation of a most crazy and intricate puzzle. Every na-
tion had its own currency, and so had every little tuppenny principality, and the
same deplorable condition of things prevailed which must necessarily prevail where-
ver that kind of a chaos exists. It is illustrated by the experiences of a great-
great-grandfather of mine who found himself traveling in Germany, one time.

There were 364 sovereign princes doing business in that State in those days--one
per farm. Each had a mint of his own; each coined five or six hundred dollars'
worth of money every year and stamped his picture on it; there were 3,230 diff-
erent breeds of coin in circulation; each had a home-value of its own, each had
a name of its own. No man in the country could name all the names, nor spell the
half of them; every coin began to lose value when it crossed its own frontier,
and the further it went the faster it inched.

My ancestor was an Assfalt, and he was a General, because he had been on the gov-
ernor's staff when he was young, to fill a vacancy that had three weeks to run.
He was in Germany for his health, and by he doctor's orders he had to walk five
miles and back every day. t I Ion inquiry, he found that the cheapest course was
nothe-east-and by-nothe, nothe-east-half-east, because it took him across only
five frontiers; whereas if he got careless and fell off a point to starboard it
took him across seven, and a point to port was worse still, because it took him
across nine. These latter were much the best roads, but he was not able to afford
them, and had to stick to the muddy one, although it was bad for his health, which
he had been sent there on purpose to improve. Any other person would have per-
ceived that the cheap road was really bad economy, but you couldn't ever beat a
simple proposition like that into an Assfalt.

He was summering in the capital village of the Grand Duchy of Donnerklapperfeld
at the time, and he used to load up with twenty dollars' worth of the local coin
every morning, and start, right after breakfast--every alternate day, with a new
suit of clothes on, costing about twenty dollars and worth eight and a half. It
was an outrage, that price, but he had to buy of the Duke, who was able to have
everything his own way, and didn't allow any other tailor to keep shop there.

At the local frontier, 300 yards from the inn, the General had to pay export
duty on his clothes, 5 per cent ad valorem. Then they let him through the gate
and a uniformed foreigner on the other side of it halted him and collected 5
per cent import duty on the same, and charged him an exchange-discount on
his foreign money--another 5 per cent.

The game went right along, like that. He paid export and import duty at every
gate, and one discount for exchange-tax each time: two dollars per gate, 5 times
repeated. The same, coming back; twenty dollars for the trip. Not a copper
left; and yet he hadn't bought a thing on the road. Except just privileges
and protection. He could have gotten along without the privileges, and he
didn't really get any protection--not from the government, anyway.

Every day ten dollars went for exchange, you see. The General was reconciled to that,
but he considered that the daily ten that went for duties was a pure extravagance, a
sheer waste; because it ate up the clothes every two days and he had to buy another
suit.

Assfalt was there 90 days. Forty-five suits of clothes. But I am a protectionist--which
he wasn't--and I think that that was all right; but when you start out with a fat and
honest dollar and have it melt entirely away to the last grease-spot just in shaves
on exchange, I think it's time to call a halt and establish an international cur-
rency, with dollars worth a hundred cents apiece from the North Pole to the South,
and from Greenwich straight around, both ways, to 180. Such is Blitzowski style, and
nobody can better it, I reckon.

The coin unit of the planet is the bash, and is worth one-tenth of a cent, American.

There are six other coins. I will name them, and add their (closely approximate) Am-
erican values:

Basher-10 bash. Value, 1 cent.
Gash-50 bash. Value, our nickel.
Gasher-100 bash. Value, our dime.
Mash-250 bash. Value, our quarter.
Masher-500 bash. Value, our half dollar.
Hash-1,000 bash. Value, our dollar.

Then comes the paper. It begins with the dollar bill, and runs along up: 1 hash, 2
hash, 5 hash, 10 hash, 20 hash, 50 hash.

Then the name changes, and we have the

Clasher-100,000 hash. Value, 100 dollars.
Flasher-1,000,000 hash. Value, 1,000 dollars.
Slasher-100,000,000 hash. Value, 100,000 dollars.

The purchasing power of a bash, in Henryland, equals the purchasing power of a dollar
in America.

In the beginning there was a good deal of trouble over selecting the names for the
money. It was the poets that made the difficulty. None but business men had been put
upon the commission appointed to suggest the names. They put a great deal of time and
labor upon the matter, and when they published their proposed list everybody was
pleased with it except the poets. They fell foul of it in a solid body, and made re-
morseless fun of it. They said it would forever mash all sentiment, all pathos, all
poetic feeling out of finance, because there wasn't a name in the lot that any lang-
uage, living or dead, could find a rhyme for. And they proved it. They flooded the
land with impassioned couplets whose first lines ended with those coin-names, and
went all right and rich and mellow all down the second till they struck the home-
stretch, then they pulled a blank, every time, and nobody won out.

The commission was convinced. They decided to sublet the contract to the poets, and
that was wisdom; the poets selected the names bash, mash, and so on, after a good
deal of wrangling among themselves. The names were accepted by the commission and
ratified by a referendum, and there they stand, to this day, and will abide. They
are excellent for poesy, the best in existence, I think. Compare them with other
financial nomenclature, and see:

sovereign, gulden, centime, eagle, doubloon,
piastre, nickel, obolus, shekel, bob,
florin, groschen,
ruble, shinplaster, pfennig,

and so on. On a financial epic for a chromo--impromptu, mile heat, single dash--
a single sooflaski poet could take the field all by himself against the combined talent
of Christendom, and walk over the course in an awful solitude, warbling his gashes
and mashes and hashes and ashes just as easy!--and annex that chromo--and where
would the others be, I ask you? Still back in the first quarter somewhere, trying to
blast rhymes out of that obstinate list, and not the least chance in the living world!


At this point Catherine reminded me that my Advanced Class in Theological Arith-
metic would be arriving right after breakfast, and breakfast was already on the
fire. There was no time to spare; so she set herself to the crank and I ground the
History of Japan Down to Date into the recorder, and was not sorry to see my
gigantic History of the World complete at last. It began with an impressionist
cloud which I could make nothing of when I reversed the machine to see how Japan
had panned out. The rest was clear, but that was a fog. Then Catherine took the
receiver, and recognized that it was that passage from Science and Wealth--boned.
Boned of its words and compressed into unarticulated thought. It was a good kind
of a nut, in its way, and I left it there for the future history-student to whet
his teeth on.

I was impatient to get out to the fossil-field now, and see what sort of luck my
"poem" was having with the boys in full congress assembled; so I thought I would
turn my class in Theological Arithmetic over to my assistant and start for the
field at once. I had to stay, however; the assistant disappointed me. He was out
at the field himself, as it turned out; he was out there listening to the wonderful
tale and getting quite carried away by it. He had the soul of a poet, he was born
for enthusiasms, and he had an imagination like that microscope I have just been
talking about. He was good and true and fine, and by nature all his leanings were
toward lofty ideals. It will be perceived by this that he was no twin of his bro-
ther, Lem Gulliver. The name I had given him was a pretty large compliment, but
it was the right one Sir Galahad. He didn't know what it stood for, any more than
Lem knew what his name stood for, but I knew, and was satisfied with my work as a
god-father.

Sir Galahad had been my favorite pupil from the beginning, and my brightest. He
had risen by his own merit to his high place as my right hand in my little col-
lege--if I may call my modest school by so large a name. He was as fond of morals
as I was, and dest as and of teaching them. I found it safest to be present when
he was leading certain of the classesnot because I doubted his honesty, for I
didn't, but because it was necessary to put a shrinker upon his imagination from
time to time. He never said anything he did not believe to be true, but he could
imagine any extravagant thing to be true that came into his head; then he imme-
diately believed it was true, and straightway he would come out flat-footed and
say it was true. But for this infirmity he would have been greatabsolutely great
--in his class-expositions of certain of our high specialties. It was a charm and
a wonder to hear him discourse upon Applied Theology, Theological Arithmetic,
Metaphysical Dilutions, and kindred vastnesses, but I could listen with all the
more comfort if I had my hand on the air-brake.

When at last I got out to the fossil-mine that afternoon I found the work at a
stand-still. All interest was centred in the romance which Louis and Lem had
brought from me: the lie, as Lem called it, the poem, as Louis called it. It had
made a rousing stir. For now, the boys had been discussing it, some taking Lem's
view, some taking Louis', but nobody taking mine. But everybody wanted to hear
me tell the rest, and so I was pretty well satisfied with the situation. I
began by explaining that in the World, Man \A .1', the Great Inhabitant, enjoy-
ing there the same supremacy in toyed in the planet Blitzowski by the Sooflasky.
I added--

The individuals are called Homan Beings, the aggregate is filled the Human Race.
It is a mighty aggregate; it numbers fifteen hundred millions of souls."

"Do you mean that that is all there are in the entire planet?"

The question burst in about that form from the whole clan in sarcastic voice.
I was expecting it, and was not disturbed by it.

"Yes," I said, "it's all there are--fifteen hundred millions."

There was [a] general explosion of laughter, of course, and Lem said--

"Why, my land, it doesn't even amount to a familyI've got more blood-kin than
that, myself! Fetch the jug, his factory's running dry!"

Louis was troubled--disappointed--my poem wasn't keeping up to standard, in the
matter of grandeur; I could see it in his face. I was sorry for him, but I wasn't
worrying. Louis said, reluctantly--

"Think, Huck. There's a discrepancy. It is careless art, and no occasion for it.
You see, yourself, that so trifling a group is quite out of proportion to the
vastness of its habitat; here it would be swallowed up and lost in our meanest
village."

"I guess not, Louis. I'm not careless--it's you. You are premature with your con-
clusion. The returns are not all in yet--there's a detail lacking."

"What detail?"

"The size of those Men."

"Ah--their size. Aren't they like us?"

"Why, yes, they look like us, but only as to shape and countenance, but when it
comes to bulk--well, that is a different matter. You wouldn't be able to hide
that Human Race in our village."

"No? How much of it, then?"

"Well, to he exact, not any of it."

"Now that's something like! You are working up to standard, Huck. But don't go
too far the other way, now. I--"

"Let him alone, Louis!" said Lem; "he's got his old works going again, don't
discourage him, give him full swing. Go it, Huck, pull her wide open! Your
reputation's a suffering: you might as well die for a sheep as a lamb--tell us
we couldn't even hide one of those bullies in our village!"

"Sho," I said, "you make me smile! his mere umbrella would spread from your
North Pole far and away below your Equator, and hide two-thirds of your wee
Planet entirely from sight!"

There was an immense excitement.

"Shirts! shirts!" the gang shouted, springing to their feet, and the shirts
began to sail about me and fall upon me like a snow-flurry.

Louis was beside himself with joy and admiration, and flung his arms about me,
murmuring, half-choked with emotion--

"Oh, it's a triumph, a triumph, the poem is redeemed, it is superb, it is un-
approachable, its sublime head strikes the very zenith--I knew it was in you!"

The others carried on like mad for a while screaming with care-free fun and
delight, electing me by acclamation Imperial Hereditary High Chief Liar of
Henryland, With Remainder to Heirs Male in Perpetuity, then they began to
shout--

"Dimensions! dimensions! hooray for His Nibs, give us his particulars!"

"All right," I said, "any you want. To start with,--supposing this planet of yours
wore clothes, I give you my word I've seen more than one Man who couldn't
crowd into them without bursting them--yes, sirs, a man who could lie down on
Blitzowski and spread over both sides and stick over at both ends."

They were perfectly charmed, and said that this kind of lying was something
like, and they could listen to it by the week; and said there wasn't a liar
in all history that could come up to my knee; and why did I go and hide this
splendid talent, this gorgeous talent all this time? and now go ahead--tell
some more!"

I was nothing loath. I entertained them an hour or two with details of the
Monster and of his World, naming nations and countries, systems of government,
chief religions, and so on--watching Lurbrulgrud out of the corner of my eye all
the time, and expecting to hear from him by and by. He was one of your natural
doubters, you know. We all knew he was taking notes privately--it was his way.
He was always trying to ambush somebody and catch him in contradictions and
inveracities. I could see that the boys didn't like it this time. They were
plainly annoyed. You see, they thought it very handsome of me to make up all
those variegated .and intricate lies for their amusement, and it wasn't fair
to expect me to remember them, and get called to book for them. By and by,
sure enough, Grud fetched out his notes, set his eye upon them, and opened
his mouth to begin. But at a sign from the others, Davy Copperfield covered
it with his hand and said--

"Never you mind; you hold your yawp. Huck doesn't have to make good. He has
given us a wonderful exhibition of what imagination cart do when there is gen-
ius behind it, and he did it to let us have a good time, and we've had it--is
that the straight word, boys?"

"It is that--every time!"

"Very well then--hold your yawp, I say it again--you can't spring any traps here,
you can't fetch him to book."

"And that's the word with the bark on it!" said the boys. "Take a walk, Crud!"

But I interposed, and said--

"No, "let him ask his questions--I don't mind. I'm ready to answer.

They were quite willing, in that case. They wanted to see how I would come out.

"I told on!" said Lem Gulliver. "There's going to be some bets on this game.
Ask your first question, Grud, then stop."

Grud said--

"Huck, along in the beginning you threw out a good deal of brag about the Cuban
War, as you called it. You furnished some amusing statistics of that skirmish;
will you be kind enough to repeat them?"

"Stop," said Lem. "Two to one on each separate statistic; two bash to one he
fails on each. Come--who puts up?"

The boys looked unhappy and didn't say anything. Of course Lem jeered; that
was the way he was made. It angered Louis, and he sung out--

"I take you!"

"Hanged if I don't, too!" piped up Sir Galahad.

"Good! Any more?" No answer. Lem rubbed his hands together in malicious glee,
and said, "Here--the same odds that he doesn't answer any question right, in
the entire list! Come--what do I hear?"

I waited a moment, then said--

"I take you."

The boys broke out in a rousing shout and kept it up till Lem's temper was
pretty thoroughly tried, but he knew better than to let it slip--oh, no, that
would have been nuts for the boys--any boys He allowed the noise to quiet down,
then he said--

"You take it! You do! I like your discretion. Go ahead with your answer."

The boys bunched their heads together over Grud's notes, and waited eagerly. I
said--

"We sent 70,000 men to Cuba--"

"Score one!--for Huck!"

That was from the boys.

"We lost of them, killed and wounded together, 268."

"Score two--for Huck!"

"We lost 11 by disease--"

"Score three--for Huck!"

"--and 3,849 by the doctors."

"Score four--for Huck!"

"We mustered-in 130,000 men besides the 70,000 we sent to Cuba--kept them in camp
in Florida."

"Score five--for Huck!"

'We added the entire 200,000 to the pension roll."

"Score six--for Huck!"

We made a major general out of a doctor for gallantry at the it battle of San
Juan--"

"Score seven--for Huck!"

"--in sending his pills to the rear and saving life with the bullet."

"Score eight--for Huck!"

"Huck, you furnished some medical statistics of what you called Jap-Russian War
--whatever that may be. Please repeat them."

"Of 9,781 sick Jap soldiers brought from the front in one batch to Japan for mil-
itary hospital treatment, only 34 died."

"Score nine--for Huck!"

"Of a single batch of 1106 wounded Jap soldiers brought to van for military hos-
pital treatment because their wounds were too serious for treatment in the field
hospitals, none died. All got ell, and the majority of them were able to return
to the front and I id so. Of the 1106, three had been shot through the abdomen,
three through the head, and six through the chest."

"Score ten for Huck! And ten thousand for the Japanese military medical service!"

"Huck, in speaking of the American Medical Service--"

"Wait--I did not speak of it. We haven't any. We have never had any, at any time.
What I said was, that the people call it the Medical Service sometimes, sometimes
they call it The Angels of Death, but they are not in earnest when they use either
of the terms. We have a Surgical Service, and there is none better; but the other
industry is in two divisions, and has no general name covering both. Each is in-
dependent, performs a special service, and has a name of its own--an official name,
furnished by the War Department. The War Department calls one of them the Typhoid
Service, the other the Dysentery Service. The one provides typhoid for the Reserves
-Camps, the other provides dysentery for the armies in the field. At another place
in my informations I also told you that the lessons of the Cuban War were not lost
upon the Government. Immediately after that conflict it reorganized its military
system and greatly improved it. It discarded soldiers, and enlisted doctors only.
These it sends against the enemy, unencumbered by muskets and artillery, and car-
rying 30 days' ammunition in their saddlebags. No other impedimenta. The saving in
expense is quite extraordinary. Where whole armies were required before, a single
regiment is sufficient now. In the Cuban War it took 142,000 Spanish soldiers five
months to kill 268 of our defenders, whereas in the same five months our 141 doc-
tors killed 3,849 of our said defenders, and could have killed the rest but they
ran out of ammunition. Under our new system we replace 70,000 soldiers with 69
doctors. As a result we have the smallest army on our planet, and quite the most
effective. I wanted to lay these particulars before you because, while they are
not required by your list of questions, they throw a valuable general light upon
the whole body of interrogatories. Pardon me for interrupting the game with this
excursion. Now go on with your questions."

But by this time a decided change had come over the boys, and they burst into an
excited chorus of--

"Wait! wait, we're coming in!"

And very eager they were, too, and began to get out their money and push it under
Lem's nose, boldly offering to take the whole of the 182 remaining questions on
Lem's original proposition. But he declined. He had already lost 20 bash to Louis
and 20 to Galahad, and matters were getting pretty serious for him. Yes, he declin-
ed. He said--without any considerable sugar in it--

"You had your chance, you didn't take it, you're out, and you'll stay out."

Then they got yet more excited, and offered him two to one. No --he wouldn't. They
raised it. Raised it to 3 to 1; 4 to 1; 5 to 1; 6-7-8 to one! He refused. They
gave it up, and quieted down. Then I said--

"I'll give you 50 to 1, Lem."

By George, that raised a shout! Lem hesitated. He was tempted.

The boys held their breath. He studied as much as a minute. Then he said--

"No-o. I decline."

It fetched another shout. I said--

"Lem, I'll do this: two to one I miss on no detail of the 182. Come--if I miss on
a single detail, you take the whole pot; isn't that a fat enough thing for you?--
a seasoned old sport like you?

The taunt fetched him! I was sure it would. He took me up. I It( n he set his teeth,
and held his grip, till I had scored 33 without a miss--the boys breathing hard,
and occasionally breaking out into a hasty burst of applause--then he let fly in a
rage and swore there was chicane here, and frothed at the mouth, and shook his fist
in my face and shouted--

"This whole thing's a swindle--a put-up swindle! I'll pay the others, but not you.
You got those lies by heart and laid for me, and I was too dull to see it. You knew
I'd offer bets, and you laid for me. But you'll get nothing by it, I can tell you
that. Betting on a sure thing cancels the bet, in this country!"

It was a handsome triumph for me, and I was exceedingly comfortable over it. The
boys cried--

"Shame, shame, you shirk!" and were going to force him to hand over my winnings,
but I saw my chance to do some good by setting a moral example. To do it might be
worth more to me, in the way of trade, if it got talked about among families inter-
ested in morals, than the money; so I made the boys let him alone, and said--

"I can't take the money, boys, I can't indeed. My position does not permit me to
gamble; indeed it requires me to set my face against gambling. Particularly in
public, and I regard this occasion as in a sense public. No, I cannot accept the
pot; to me, situated as I am, it would be tainted money. I could not conscient-
iously use it, except in the missionary cause. And not even in that cause, except
under certain restrictions. In my discourse upon the World I spoke of the long
and bitter war of words which was waged in America over tainted money and the
uses which it might be legitimately put to. In the end it was decided that no
restriction at all could properly 1, be put upon its use. For that reason I
left the country, and came here. I said these parting words; said them in pub-
lic: 'I go,' I said-- to return no more; I renounce my country; I will go where
it is clean, I cannot live in a tainted atmosphere.' I departed--I came hither.
My first breath of the atmosphere of Blitzowski convinced me that I had made
a signal change, my friends and dear comrades!"

The boys took it for a compliment--I had judged they would--and they gave me three
times three with, enthusiasm, and followed it with a rousing chckk (tiger). Then I
proceeded.

"Where I disagreed with that verdict of my then-countrymen was upon a detail which
persons less inflexibly, less inveterately moral than myself might regard as a quib-
ble. I took the stand that all tainted money lost its taint when it left the hand
that tainted it, except when employed abroad to damage a civilization superior to
our own. I said, do not send it to China, send it to the other missionary fields,
then it will go clean and stay so. I mentioned to you the country called China
this afternoon, you may remember.

"No, I cannot take these tainted stakes, because now I am out of reach of China.
I never intended to take then anyway; I was only betting for amusement--yours and
mine. And I did not win them; I knew, all the time, I wasn't winning them, and
wouldn't be entitled to them."

"Hel-lo! how do you make that out?" the boys exclaimed.

"Because it's as Lem said--I was betting on a sure thing. Those were merely facts,
not creations of fancy--merely common historical facts, known to me this long
time; I couldn't make a mistake in them, if I tried."

That was a sly and well-considered attempt to undermine and weaken the boys' ob-
stinate conviction that my World and all my details were smart inventions--lies.
I glanced at their faces--hopefully; then my spirits went down--I hadn't scored;
I could see it. Lem was feeling happier and more respectable than had been his
case a little while before, but it was observable that he had his doubts as to
my having come into our contest with honest cards unstacked. He said--

"Huck, honor bright. Didn't you cram? Didn't you get that raft of details by
heart for this occasion?"

"Honor bright, I didn't, Lem."

"All right, I believe you. Moreover I admire you; and that is honest. It shows
that you have a splendid memory and--what is just as valuable--a recollection
that answers up promptly when equired to produce a thing,--a recollecting-fac-
ulty which always instantly knows just which pigeon-hole to find it in. In many
a case the professional liar lacks the latter gift, and it beats him in the end, to
a certainty; his reputation begins to dwindle, it fades gradually out, and you
cease to hear of him."

He stopped there, and began to put on his shirt. I waited for his head to come
through, supposing he would finish then. But apparently he had already finished,
for he did not say anything more. It took me several seconds to realize that
there was a connection between his random remarks about professional liars and
me. Yes, there was a connection, I could perceive it now. And he had been paying
me a compliment. At least that was his idea of it. I turned to the boys, intend-
ing to let them help me enjoy the joke, but--ah, well, they hadn't seen any.
They were admiring, too--on the same basis. It was certainly a discouraging lot!
The laugh I was arranging turned into a sigh.

Presently Sir Galahad took me aside, and said--trying to suppress his excitement--

"Tell me confidentially, master, I will keep it honorably to myself: was it lies,
or was it really facts--those wonders, those marvels?"

I replied sadly--

"Why tell you, my poor boy? you would not believe me; none believes me."

"But I will! Whatever you tell me, I will believe. It is a promise--and sacred!"

I hugged him to my breast, and wept upon him, saying--

"No language can tell how grateful I am for this! for I have been so depressed,
so discouraged, and I was hoping for so different a result. I swear to you, my
Galahad, I have not made one statement that was not true!"

"Enough!" he said, with fervor, "it is enough; I believe it, every word. And I
long to hear more. I long to hear all about that stupendous World and the Hum-
ming Race, those sky-scraping monsters that can step from one end of this planet
to the other in two strides. They have a history- I know it, I feel it--an old
and great and stirring history--would Grak* [*One of the principal deities.] I
knew it, master!"

"You shall, my precious boy--and at once. Go to Catherine of Aragon, tell her to
reverse the recorder, and turn the crank. The entire history of the World is in
it. Go--and Grak bless you!"

Straightway he was gone. It was his way, when he was excited.

When I got back to the boys, Lem Gulliver was already busy with a scheme. I sat
down and listened. His idea was to get up a company and put my Lie on the market.
He called it that. He said there wasn't anything on the planet that could compete
with it for a moment. It could absorb all the little concerns in the business,
on its own terms, and take the entire trade. It would be a giant monopoly, and
you wouldn't have any trouble about the stock, indeed you wouldn't. No trouble
about it, and no uncertainties; just get up a little inexpensive syndicate among
ourselves, and water the stock, and--

"Water your granny!" said Grud, "it's all water, now; you can't find a solid place
in a million tons of it. How--"

"Never you mind," said Lem, "you wait--you'll see. All we want is to start right,
and she'll go like a hurricane. First, we want a name for her--a grand name; an
impressive name--come, make a suggestion, somebody."

"Standard Oil."

I offered that.

"What's Standard Oil?"

"The most colossal corporation in the World, and the richest."

"Good--that's settled. Standard Oil she is! Now then--"

"Huck," said Grud, "you can't market a lie like that, all in one hunk. There isn't
any nation that can swallow it whole."

"Who said they could? They don't have to. They'll take it on the instalment plan--
there don't any of them have to take any more of it than they can believe at a time.
Between rests."

"Well, I reckon that'll do--it looks all right, anyway. Who'll work the flotation?"

"Butters."

"What--that bucket-shop dysentery germ?"

"Plenty good enough, all the same. He knows the game."

"So he does," said Davy Copperfield; "but would you let him keep our capital in his
safe?"

"No. Keep it in the stove, and have two firemen, in two watches, four hours off and
four on."

"Well, I reckon that'll answer. But wouldn't Butters feel humiliated?"

"The Butterses ain't that kind."

Hang them, they were actually getting ready to chip in! I never saw such a volatile
lot; you could persuade them to anything in five minutes. Their scheme would absolute-
ly destroy me! Parents would not send their young sons to my Institute to be taught
morals by an incorporated liar.* If the Standard Oil should fail of success, my ease
and comfort would be gone, there would be nothing left but the organ, the monkey, and
bitter hard toil with little rest.

I was in a sort of panic, and well I might be. I must stop this
disastrous scheme at once.

How? by persuasion? Not on your life! Golden dreams are not blown out of frenzied heads
by that process. No--there is a way--one way, and only one, not two: you must see that
golden dream and raise it--raise it to the limit!

My mind was working with a rush, by now--working full head--you could hear it rumble.
Swiftly l turned over this, that and other project--no good!...Time was flying! But at
last, the nick of time I struck it, and knew I was saved! My anxiety, worry, my ter-
ror, vanished; and I was calm. "Boys," I said,


* [About the middle of the second decade I began to teach morals. The additional money thus
earned furnished me some lacking little comforts which were very welcome. I painted my
sign myself, on a square of tin, and at first I displayed it on my back when I was around
with my organ, but for some reason it did not draw; so then I nailed it on the house door:


INSTRUCTION GIVEN IN
Political Morals
Commercial Morals
Ecclesiastical Morals
and
Morals.


Pupils applied at once, and I soon had my classes going. Many of the people said my morals
were better than my music, if anything. It sounds like flattery but they were in earnest,
I think. I generally found the people to be straight-speakers.]



XXI.



THEN I stopped.

That is the way to get the attention of a fussy and excited young crowd. Start to say some-
thing; then pause; they notice that, though they hadn't noticed your words--nor cared for
them, either. Their clack ceases; they set their eyes upon you, intently, expectantly. You
let them do that for about eight seconds, or maybe nine, you meantime putting on the expres-
sion of a person whose mind has wandered off and gotten lost in a reverie. You wake up, now,
give a little start,--that whets them up! you can see their mouths water. Then you say, quite
indifferently, "Well, shall we be starting along?--what time is it?" and the game is in your
hands.

It's a disappointment. They are sure you came within an ace of saying something important,
and are trying to keep it back, now--out of prudence, maybe. Naturally, then, they are eager
to know what it was. You say, oh, it wasn't anything. Of course, then, they are just bound to
find out; so they insist and insist, and say they won't stir a step until you've told them what
it was. Everything is safe, now. You've got their whole attention; also their curiosity; also
their sympathy; they've got an appetite. You can begin. Which I did. I said--

"It's really of no consequence, but if you want to hear it, yot shall; but don't blame me if
it isn't interesting; I've already indicated that it isn't. That is, now."

"What do you mean by now?" said Davy Copperfield.

"Well, I mean it would have been interesting if--well, it was a scheme I happened on when I
was on my way out here this afternoon, and I was rather full of it for a while, for I thought
maybe we could scrape together a little capital among us, and--and--I confess it looked pretty
promising, but--well, it isn't any matter now, and there's no hurry, there isn't a person that
knows how to find it but me--I'd give him ten years and he couldn't find it!--so it's perfect-
ly safe; it'll keep, and in a year or two or three when we've got the Standard Oil on its legs
and going, we--gee, but that's a good name! It'll make it go--you'll see. If we hadn't anvthing
but just that name it would be enough. I feel just as certain that three years from now--or may-
be four,--the Standard Oil--"

"Hang the Standard Oil--stick to the scheme!" cried Lem Gulliver, with peppery impatience; "what
is the scheme?"

"That's it!" they all chimed in together, "fetch it out, Huck, tell us!"

"Oh, I've no objection to telling you, for it'll keep, years and years; nobody knows where it
is but me, and as for keeping, the best thing about gold is--"

"Gold!"

It took their breath, it made them gasp.

"Gold!" they shouted, hot-eyed, dry-throated, "Where is it? tell its where! stop fooling around
and get to the point!"

"Boys, be calm, do not get excited, I beg of you. We must be prudent; one thing at a time is
best. This will keep, I assure you it will. Let it wait--that is wisest; then, in six or seven
years, just as soon as the Standard Oil--"

"Thunder and blazes, let the Standard Oil do the waiting!" they cried. "Out with it, Huck. Where
is it?"

"Ah, well," I said, "of course if it is your unanimous desire and decision to postpone the Stan-
dard Oil utterly until after we--"

"It is! it is!--utterly, entirely, never to be touched until we've made that scoop, and you give
the word. Go ahead now and tell us --tell us everything!"

I recognized that the Institute of Applied Morals was saved. "Very well, then, I will place the
thing before you, and I think you will like it."

I bound them to secrecy, with proper solemnities, then I told them a tale that crisped their
hair, it was of such a heating nature. The interest was intense. Sometimes they breathed, but
generally they forgot to. I said the Major Molar was a section of a curving range of stupendous
brown cliffs which stretched away, no one knew how far--thousands of miles. The rock was a con-
glomerate of granite, sandstone, feldspar, pitchblend, lapis lazuli, 'dobies, verde antique,
freestone, soapstone, grindstone, basalt, rock salt, epsom salts, and every other ore that con-
tains gold, either free or in a matrix. The country was exceedingly rough and forbidding and
desolate, and it had taken me several months to explore a hundred miles of it, but what I had
seen of it had satisfied me. I had marked one place, in particular, where I would sink a shaft
some day if I lived and ever got hold of capital enough for the job. And now, in my belief,
that happy day was come. Were the boys content with the scheme?

Were they! Oh, well!

So that was settled. The enthusiasm was away up--away high up--up to the topmost top. Standard
Oil was flat. We went home gay.

The truth was, I couldn't really tell whether the scheme was worth anything or not. Still, I had
pretty fair hopes. I got them from putting this and that together and drawing an inference.
Blitzowski had almost certainly seen better days, at some time or other, for he had the dentist-
habit. Among the poor and defeated, none but people who have been well off, and well up, have
that expensive habit.

I was satisfied with the way I had played that game. People who are on fire with a splendid new
scheme are cynical and chilly toward a new one if you spring it on them suddenly and beseech
them to look at it. It is best to be indifferent, and disinclined, then they get an appetite,
and do the begging themselves.



XXII.



CATHERINE SAID she had turned the crank a while for Sir Galahad and he went wild with delight
and astonishment over my History of the World, then he rushed away with the Recorder and said
he was going to shut himself up with it at home and master its entire contents before ever he
rested.

I had saved my College of Morals, by interposing a gold mine between it and the dangerous Stan-
dard Oil; it was only an emergency-gold mine, I only invented it to stop that gap; but now that
it was invented, and the boys joyfully insane about it, I must land by it or invent something
still richer and better, to take its place. I thought over a lot of substitutes, such as eme-
rald mines and opal mines, and diamond mines, but I had to give them up, Blitzowski would turn
out to be quite barren of those things, for sure. I fell back on the gold. I got to working up
a hope. The more I worked at it, and coaxed it, and reasoned with it, the less and less chimer-
ical it seemed. It is the right way to do with a hope; it is like any other agriculture: if you
hoe it and harrow it and water it enough, you can make three blades of it grow where none
grew before. If you've got nothing to plant, the process is slow and difficult, but if you've
got a seed of some kind or other--any kind will answer--you get along a good deal fast-
er. I had one. It was a dream. I planted the dream. It turned up in my memory just at the time.
I believe something in dreams. Sometimes. I had not believed in this one when it happened, but
that was because I hadn't any use for it then. It was different, now. A dream that comes only
once is oftenest only an idle accident, and hasn't any message, but the recurrent dream is quite
another matter--oftener than not it has come on business. This one was that kind. I wondered,
now, that I hadn't had this thought at the time. It was a good dream, and well put together.

First I dreamed that I was patiently chewing my way through a very long and delicate nerve in
one of Blitzowski's back teeth--lower jaw--and feeling him rock and sway mountainously in
response to the pain; this went on for some weeks, and at last I fetched out into a vast cav-
ity, a cavity of imposing grandeur, with walls that stretched up and up and up through an ever-
dimming twilight until lost in the ultimate thick darkness, for his mouth was shut at the time.

By and by the dream came again. But this time I found the stupendous Cave filled; Blitzowski
had been to the dream-dentist,

After an interval it came a third time. In my dream the plug was transparent. It was disposed
in three vast strata, each about a third of a mile thick, (microbe measure). The top one was
dove-colored, the next one had the tint of oxydized silver, the bottom one was yellow.

I called up those dreams, now, and studied them; a little doubtfully at first, but under pain-
staking and intelligent cultivation they improved. In the end, the crop arrived at puberty,
and was satisfactory. I was in a condition of mind bordering on enthusiasm. The mine was there,
sure--pretty dreamy, yes, pretty dreamy, but there, anyway; I could see it! just as if it were
before my eyes: top stratum, a third of a mile deep--cement; next stratum, amalgam; bottom
stratum, gold! good, straight, honest dentist's gold, 23 carats fine!

And as for the quantity. I fell to measuring it--for fun. Very soon the towering figures began
to take hold of my imagination! How natural that was! It is the way we are made. I began in
fun; in fifteen minutes I was sobering down to earnest. And how natural that was, too! In the
alembic of my fancy--without my noticing it, so absorbed was I in my ciphering--my dream-
gold was turning into the real metal, and my dream was turning into a fact. At least into a per-
suasion. Very well, it didn't take the persuasion long to harden into a conviction. So there
is where I had presently arrived: I was convinced that the dream was a straight and honorable
and perfectly trustworthy photograph of an existent actuality. Which is to say, all doubts
and questionings had sifted out of my mind, by now, and disappeared, and I was believing, up
to the hilt, that that mighty treasure was really yonder and waiting for us in the sub cel-
lar of Blitzowski's tooth. Between believing a thing and thinking you know it is only a small
step and quickly taken. I soon took it, and was prepared to say to all comers, "It isn't a
mere probability, I know the gold is there." It's the way we are made. We could be better
made, but we wouldn't be interesting, then.

By my stingiest and most conservative and exacting illeasine ment, I was obliged to admit
that that wad of gold was not a shade less than half the bigness of a human buckshot!
It was colossal--unthinkable----it was absolutely breath-taking! Yet there it was--there
were the figures--there was no getting them.

What might I compare this astonishing deposit with? Klondike? It made me smile. Klondike
was but a peanut-pedlar's till, alongside of it. The Big Bonanza, then? Let us consider. The Big
Bimaliza was discovered in Nevada seven years before I was born--a stupendous body of rich
silver ore, the like of which had never been heard of in the world before. Two day-laborers
discovered it, and took into partnership in the secret a saloon keeper and a broker; they
bought the ground for a song, and in two weeks they were hundred-millionaires. But the Big
Bonanza was nothing you might say, less than nothing--compared with the measureless mass
of wealth packed away in the deeps of Blitzowski's tush. A speck of gold worth 2,000 slasher
would not be detectible under a Intinan microscope until magnified seventeen hundred and
fifty six diameters. Let some one else go on now, and cipher out the whole value of that
tooth, if desired, it makes me tired.

The spectacle of this incredible wealth dazed me, I was like one drunk--drunk with delight,
with exultation! I had never had any money before, to speak of, and I didn't know what to
do with it, it was a positive embarrassment--for some minutes. I had never cared for mon-
ey before, but now I cared for it. So suddenly as this I was changed like that! We are strangely
made!

What would the boys say when I told them! How would they feel, what would they say, when
they pulled their stampeded wits together and realized how limitlessly rich they were! Oh,
how would they feel when they realized that they couldn't possibly spend their yearly income,
even though they should hire the imperial Henryland Family to help!

I was impatient to summon them and tell them the great news. I reached out my hand to touch
the bell--

Wait! Something in me seemed to say, don't be precipitate reflect!

I obeyed the mysterious impulse, and reflected.


X X X X


I reflected hard, for an hour. Then I sighed, and said to mys "It is only fair; it is I that
discovered the mine; if it had not been f me it would never have been discovered at all; it
would not be j for them to have a twelfth apiece, and I no more."

I reflected further, and decided to keep half, and let them ha the other half among them. It
seemed to me that that was right a fair, and I felt quite satisfied.

I was going to ring, now--

That warning stopped me again.


X X X X


I reflected another hour. Then I saw that they could never use much money?it would be imposs-
ible. A third of the property would be quite sufficient for them, modest as were their needs, unfam-
iliar as they were with m--

I reached for the bell.


X X X X


After a season of deep reflection I recognized that they would never be able to spend judiciously
any more than a fourth of that mass of riches--

X X X perhaps not even a tenth. Indeed, with so much as a tenth, would not the poisonous spirit
of speculation enter insidiously into them? would it not undermine their morals? had I a right to
place such a temptation before such young and inex--


X X X ah, no, no, I must not betray them, I must do my duty by them, I should never be able to
sleep again if I should be the instrument of their moral ruin. Oh, the bare thought of it is
more than I--

X X X Yes, it would be best for them that I keep the gold. No harm would come to them then, and the
reflection that I had saved them pure would always be my sufficient reward--I could ask no other,
no sweeter, no nobler.

X X X But I would not allow them to go wholly shareless in this good fortune that was come to
me; no, they should have part of the amalgam mine. They should do the work on both mines, and
have part of the amalgam for their labor. I would determine what part, upon further reflection.
And they could have all the cement.

I then went to bed.


(1905)



The Refuge of the Derelicts


Chapter 1


TELL HIM to go to hell!"

"So that was the message the footman brought you from the Admiral!" said Shipman, keeping as
straight a face as he could, for he saw that his friend the young poet-artist was deeply wound-
ed, therefoto this was not a proper time for levity. He loved the poet-artist better than he
loved any other creature; loved him as a mother loves her child; loved to touch him, pat him,
look into his eyes, loved to listen to his voice, knew his footstep from any other, and thrill-
ed to it. And so, for him, this was not a time to laugh, this was not a time to add a pang to
that smarting wound. He made him sit down on the sofa by him, laid a caressing hand upon his
knee, and said, "You have been so excited, George, that you haven't been altogether clear in
your narrative. You called at the Admiral's house--that much is clear--you sent in your request
for a ten-minute interview--that is clear, too--the footman came back with an invitation--"

"Yes"--bitterly--"invitation to go to hell!"

"Clear again. But the rest of it is confused. You think you have explained to me how you came
to go there without an introd net ion, and you also think you have made me understand what your
project was, but it's a mistake; I didn't get it. You are calmer, now, George; tell me the whole
thing; maybe I can help you."

"No," said George, "You are mistaken as to the project, I only said I had a project, I didn't
tell you what it was. I was coming to that. It is great and fine and will be costly; it may be
a dream, but it is a noble dream--that I know." The thought of it lit the poet's deep eyes as
with a sunbeam. "I went there to ask him to subscribe to it."

"What is the project?"

"A monument."

"A monument?"

"Yes."

"To whom?"

"Adam."

Shipman was caught unprepared, and he burst out with--

"Gr-reat Scott!"

He was almost startled from his base, but he immediately followed his give-away exclamation with
a remark intended to express pure admiration, and "save his face," which it did. The poet was
visibly pleased, and said--

"I'm so glad you like the idea, David."

"Why, I couldn't help but like it, George. I think it's one of greatest and most unusual ideas I
have ever heard of. I wonder it has never been thought of before."

"So do I. But I am glad it wasn't."

"You may well be. It is an august idea, there's nothing to compare with it, nothing that approach-
es it. None but a poet's mind could ever have conceived it!" and he seized the dreamer's hand
and crushed into it the rest of the enthusiasm he was persuading himself to feel.

"It is wonderful, isn't it, David?" said George, flushing with pleasure.

"Boy, it's great! And you will succeed, too."

"Do you really think so, David?"

"Think it? I know it! Another couldn't, but you will. Because your heart is in it; and when your
heart is in a thing, George, you've got the words to match, words that persuade, words that con-
vince. Is that a of people you hope to round-up? Give it to me."

He ran his eye down it.

"Do you know any of these, George?"

"Well, no--I don't."

"It's no matter, I know them, and I'll steer you. It's a large thing, and will take us both. I'll
furnish the bait, and you'll land the fish. Tell me--what was your plan? As regards the Admiral,
for instance."

"Plan, David? Why--I hadn't any."

"Hadn't any plan! How did you mean to go at him?"

"I was only going to tell him the idea, and ask him to subscribe. That was all."

"And you a perfect stranger! Why, George, that was no way to do. How could you be so innocent?
Don't you know that in all cases where you are interested and the other person isn't, there are
four thousand wrong ways to go at him, and only one right one?"

"Why, no, I didn't know it. It wouldn't ever have occurred to me, David. Do you mean that the one
right way to go at one person is the same way to go at all the others?"

"Broadly speaking, yes. You must apply the same persuader in all the cases."

"David, you surely can't mean all?"

"Yes, all. The whole human race."

"David, if you are not joking, what is the one right way?"

"Purchase. Bribery. Bribery and corruption."

The poet was dumb for a minute--paralysed. Then he said, gravely--

"I was in earnest, David. It isn't kind to treat it like this."

Shipman laid an affectionate hand upon his shoulder, and said--

"Forgive me, lad, I meant no harm, I wouldn't hurt you for the world--you know that. I was too a-
brupt, that was all. It misled you. I was not joking, I meant what I said, and what I said is true
--I give you my word it is. Now, as soon as I come to expl--"

"But David! Look at that list. Think what you are saying. The purest people, the noblest people,
the--some of them not rich, but there isn't gold enough in Klondike to--"

"Money? Dear me, I didn't say anything about money--I wasn't thinking of it. I--"

"Why, David, you said--"

"Buy? Bribe? So I did, but I didn't say buy with money."

"Oh, well, goodness knows I don't know what you are driving at. If you think you know, yourself, I
do wish you--"

"I do know, George, I do indeed. What I was meaning was, that every human being has his price, every
human being can be bought.

"Now you are saying it again! yet you said, only a minute ago--"

"Hush! Let me talk. You interrupt me so, I can't arrive anywhere. Now then, the thing is perfect-
ly simple. Listen. Every human being has a weak place in him, a soft spot. In one it is avarice--you
buy him with money; in another it is vanity--you beguile him through that; in another it is a com-
passionate heart--you work him to your will through that; in another--a mother, for instance--it is
adoration of a child, perhaps a crippled one, an idiot--she sells a politician her husband's vote for
a judas-kiss bestowed upon her bratling; she doesn't know she is being bribed, but she is; the others
don't suspect that they are selling themselves, but they are. It is as I tell you: every person has
his price, every person can be bought, if you know where his weak spot is. Do you get the idea now?"

There was no answer; the poet was lost in thought. The burden of his thought was: "How true it is,
no doubt.....poor human nature!...what children we are--and don't know it, don't suspect it.....the
proudest of us, the biggest of us, purchasable! purchasable with a toy.....Even the old Admiral, too?--
bronzed by the storms of all the seas, old, white-headed, beloved of his friends as Arthur was by his
knights, brave as Launcelot, pure as Galahad.....what might his price be!"

Meantime Shipman had retired to his den with the list, and was making skeleton notes. He finished them,
then sat musing a moment. Ills thoughts ran something like this:

"God knows it's the insanest idea that ever.....but it's colossal, there's no denying that.....and new
--oh, yes indeed, there's nothing stale about it How can he be so serious over it? But he is. He sees
only the dignity of it, the grandeur of it; to him it has no frivolous side, to him there is no glimmer
of the humorous about it. My, but he is innocent!--poet to the marrow, dreamer, enthusiast.....conceive
of his selecting these people to place such a project before, and strike them for contributions! No
matter, they are bribable--for this queer project or any other, if he follows my instructions--borrowed
from Lord Bacon--and concentrates his forces upon their weak spots."

A minute or two later he was saying to his pupil:

"Now then, here we have the campaign planned out. Take these notes, and think them over at your leisure
--they point out the weak spots of each person in your list--come whenever you like, and we will elabo-
rate the matter with talk. To each in turn I will certify you before your visit--then you will be expect-
ed, and your road will be smooth."

"Oh, it's ever so lovable in you, David!"

"I know it. First,--and right away--you will assault the Admiral again. I will telephone him. As you didn't
give your name before, he won't know it was you he sent that invitation to." The poet colored and shifted
his body nervously, but said nothing. "Now I will post you about the Admiral. He is a fine and bluff old
sailor, honest, unworldly simple, innocent as a child--but doesn't know it, of course--knows not a thing
outside of his profession, but thinks he knows a lot--you must humor that superstition of course--and he
does know his Bible, (just well enough to misquote it with confidence,) and frankly thinks he can beat
the band at explaining it, whereas his explanations simply make the listener dizzy, they are so astronom-
ically wide of the mark; he is profoundly religious, sincerely religious, but swears a good deal, and com-
petently--you mustn't notice that; drinks like a fish, but is a fervent and honest advocate and supporter
of the temperance cause, and does what he can to reclaim the fallen by taking the pledge every now and
then as an example, with the idea that it is a great encouragement to them; he can't sing, but he doesn't
know it--you must ask him to sing; is a composer--good land!--and believes he is a musician; he thinks he
is deep, and worldly-wise, and sharp, and sly, and cunning, and underhanded, and furtive, and not to be
seen through by any art, whereas he is just glass, for transparency--and lovable? he is the most lovable
old thing in the universe."

"My word, what a person! David, is he insane?"

"He? If he is, he has never suspected it. And the man that suggests it to him will do well to take a bas-
ket along to carry what's left of him home in. Do you want a basket? There's one in the other room."

"No. I am not going to need it. David, he seems to have quite a lot of vulnerable points--bribable points--"

"No he hasn't. He has only one. I haven't spoken of it yet. These others are to show you what to talk about,
when you get started, and how to talk--they are aids, helpers, and very useful--but the one I haven't men-
tioned is the one that opens the door to his heart and put him up for sale. That one, properly handled,
will thaw him out and start his talking-mill--then you've got him!"

"I see! It's his magnificent achievements, his illustrious record, Isis great deeds in the war, his--"

"No, it isn't; it's his cat."

The poet was paralysed again, for a moment; then he regained his voice--

"His cat?"

"That's it. You get at him through his cat. He is bribable through his cat, but in no other way. In all o-
ther ways, his probity is adamant, he is as chaste as the driven snow, he is unpurchasable. But don't forget
the cat. Work the cat; work him for all he is worth. Go along, now; I will telephone the Admiral you are on
the way."


Chapter 2


The Admiral


HE WAS eighty years old. Tall; large; all brawn, muscle and health; powerful bass voice, deep and resonant.
He was born at sea, in the family's home, which was a Fairhaven whaleship, owned and commanded by his father.
He was never at school; such education as he had, he had picked up by odds and ends, and it was rather a junk
-shop than a treasury; though that was not his idea of it. He had very decided opinions upon most matters, and
he had architected them himself. Sometimes they were not sound, but what they lacked in soundness hey generally
made up in originality.

He spent seventy years at-sea, and then retired. He had now been retired ten years. He had never served in a war-
ship, and did not get his title from the government; it was a token of love and homage, and was conferred upon him
by the captains of the whaling fleet.

He was sitting in an arm-chair when George entered, and close at hand were various objects which were
necessary to his comfort: grog, a Bible, a Dibdin, a compass, a barometer, a chronometer, pipes, tobacco,
matches, and so on. His ancient face was mottled with pinks, reds, purples and intermediate tints, and
wrinkled on the plan of a railroad map; his head was wonderfully bald and slick and shiny and dome-like,
and stood up out of a fence of silky white hair in a way to remind one of a watermelon in a bucket. Friends
who liked to pester him said --not in his hearing, but to get it reported to him--that the flies used to slip,
on his baldness, and fall and cripple themselves, and that in his native good-heartedness he rigged shrouds,
made of thread, so that they could go aloft and return without risk.

He motioned George to a chair, then snuggled back into his own, with a contented grunt, and began to exam-
ine his guest with a calm and unblinking and prejudiced eye. This silent inquest was a little em-barrassing
for the guest; an effect which was distinctly enhanced when the Admiral presently began to reinforce it
with audible comments--under the impression that he was thinking to himself:

"Pale...slim....anemic...half-fed...timid. Lawyer?...doctor?...school-teacher? No. Not those. Hard to make
him out...Good enough face, all but the eye: Has a malignant eye. What's his game, should you say? Has a
game, of course; they all have Wants my influence, I reckon--most of them do. Wants to get a billet in
the navy. They all think I've been in the navy Job where he'll have a salary and nothing to do...it's the
usual thing. Well, to come down to business, what does this one want, do you reckon? Paymaster? no. Cap-
tain's secretary? no. Those require work. Not in this one's line. Ah, ten to one he wants to be chaplain.
Yes, that's it. Well, I'll beat his game." Without taking his eye from the uncomfortable poet the Admiral
reached for a pipe, lit it, and resumed. "That chair makes him squirm. They all squirm when they sit in
that chair. They think I put them in it by accident Chaplain--him! Probably couldn't expound a miracle to
save his life. But that's nothing, I've never seen one that could. No--and when I show them the trick they
are jealous, and resent it; and they feel their ambition stirring in them, and they pipe to quarters and
clear for action, and start in all cocky and conceited and do their idiotic damdest to put me in the
wrong; and when I break in and tell them to go to--I say!--" (this in a trumpet-blast that made the poet
jump), "can you expound the miracles?"

"Can I, sir?"

"Yes, you. Can you do it?"

"Really, I am afraid not, sir."

The Admiral stared at him with astonishment, the sternness in his face perceptibly relaxing a little, and
muttered to himself--audibly --"a modest one, at last!--I never expected to see it." Then to the poet, with
the eager light of controversy rising in his eyes--

"Try it, young man, try it! Let's see what you can do; take any in the lot--pick your own miracle, and make
sail. Try an easy one, first-off."

George found himself feeling relieved and measurably comfortable all at once. The Admiral's soliloquy and
David's instructions had furnished him a safe cue, and he knew how to proceed. He said, with judicious hu-
mility--

"Anywhere but here, Admiral Stormfield. But here, if you will excuse me--"

"And why not here?"

"Because David Shipman warned me. He said 'Keep out of that subject if you don't want to come to grief, you
would only expose yourself; Admiral Stormfield could give any man of your calibre ninety in I lie game and
win out with one hand tied behind him.”

"Did he say that? Did he?" The old gentleman was profoundly pleased.

"Yes, that is what he said. And he--"

The cat came loafing in--just at the right time, the fortunate time. George forgot all about the Admiral,
and cut his sentence off in the middle; for by birth and heredity he was a worshiper of cats, and when a
fine animal of that species strays into the cat-lover's field of vision is the one and only object the cat-
lover is conscious of for one while; he can't take his eyes off it, nor. his mind. The Admiral noted the ad-
miration and the welcome in George's face, and was a proud man; his own face relaxed, softened, sweetened,
and became as the face of a mother whose child is being praised. George made a swift step, gathered the cat
up in his arms, gave him a hug or two, then sat down and spread him out across his lap, and began to caress
his silken body with lingering long strokes, murmuring, "Beautiful creature...wonderful creature!" and such
things as that, the Admiral watching him with grateful eyes and a conquered heart. Watching him, and talk-
ing to himself--aloud:

"Good face--full of intelligence....good eye, too--honest, kind, couldn't be a better one....a rare person,
and superior--superior all around--very different from the run of lubbers that come here begging for in-
fluence--tadpoles that think they are goldfish--"

And so on and so on. What was become of the poet's "malignant eye" all of a sudden? If the question entered
the Admiral's head at all, , it created no disturbance there, aroused no concern; the Admiral's latest view
of a thing was the only one he cared for; he had never been a slave to consistency.

The caressing of the purring cat went on, its flexile body hanging over at both ends, its amber eyes blink-
ing slowly and contentedly, its strong claws working in and out of the gloved paws in unutterable satisfact-
ion, the pearl-lined ears taking in the murmured ecstasies of the stranger and understanding them perfectly,
and deeply approving them, the Admiral looking on enchanted, moist-eyed, soaked to the bone with happiness.

By and by he sprang up abruptly and shook himself together with the air and look of one who is pulling him-
self out of a dream, and began to move briskly about, muttering, "Manners? What the hell have I been think-
ing about?--and him a guest?"

He got a feather-duster and zealously dusted off a leathern armchair that had no dust on it, handling the
duster not like a housemaid who is purifying furniture but like a chief of police who is dispersing a mob
with a club; then he polished the leather with his silk handkerchief until it was as shiny as his own head;
finally he stood aside and said, with a wave of his hand--

"Do me the honor. I'm ashamed. I don't know how I came to give you that chair, it's not fitting for the
likes of you."

George began a polite protest, and got as far as that he was "quite comfortably seated, and--" The Admiral
interrupted, with a burst as of thunder--

"Do as I tell you!" and the poet had accomplished the change before the curtains had stopped quaking.

The Admiral was pacified, and muttered to himself, "lie don't mean any harm, all he wants is discipline--
has been brought up loose and harum-scarum, the way they do on land." Meantime he was busy stuffing a pipe.
He handed it to George, lifted a leg, gave a siren uous forward-rake upon its under-half with a match--suc-
cessfully; in fact that kind of a rake would have lit a nail. He held the match to the pipe, while he word-
ed another apology--

"You mustn't mind--I never meant any unpoliteness, but just as I was going to reach for a pipe for you,
Bags came a-loafing in, and when a cat comes my way I forget myself for a minute."

"So do I!" responded the poet, eagerly. "Why, I shouldn't ever be able to keep my head, with a cat like
this one anywhere between me and the horizon."

The emphasis on that word fell with a most pleasant thrill upon the Admiral's ear, and he said, with af-
fectionate pride in his tone--

"Now he is a daisy, ain't he?"

The response to this was up to standard. The Admiral, chatting comfortably about his cat, and weaving
into the meshes of his theme another apology as he went along, got a little table and placed it bet ween
his chair and George's, set bottle and glasses on it, seated himselff, brewed a couple of punches, re-
marked, "now we'll take a bit of oinfort," then got some photographs of the cat out of his pocket and
spread them out on the table for inspection. The cat was interested at once. He leaped upon the table,
sniffed at the bottle and at each punch in turn, then arched his neck, curved a paw, and flirted the
photographs off the table one at a time, the Admiral observing the performance admiringly, and remark-
ing, "graceful? it ain't any name for it!" The cat bent down over the edge, inspecting the fallen cards
longingly and turning his lively head this way and that, then he cast An eloquent glance at the Admiral,
who said, "he's asking me to get them for him, you see?" and.proceeded to pick them up and replace them,
saying "notice that thankfulness in his eye and the way he acts? talk ain't any plainer;"_ the cat ea-
gerly flirted them off as fast as they were restored, the Admiral remarking "notice that? You'll see
he'll keep it up as long as it int'rests him--always does." The patient pick-ing-up and the cheerful
flirting-off continued for a minute or two, then t lie cat sat up and began to lick his paws and use
them to rake forward his ears and scrub his cheeks, paying no further attention to the re placing of
the cards. "You notice?" said the Admiral, with a successful prophet's satisfaction, "didn't I tell
you he would? oh, I know him, I reckon! now I'll show you the pictures."

But he was disappointed. The cat lay down and stretched himself out lengthwise of the table, which was
only about two and a half feet long--stretched himself to his utmost length, with each end of him pro-
jecting a trifle beyond the edge. His body covered the cards and left but scant room for the bottle
and glasses. The Admiral sighed, and said--

"Well, I wanted to show them to you, but it ain't any matter; there's plenty of time, and maybe he'll
think of something else he wants to do, pretty soon. Often he does. Every night when we play cards on
this little table--me and my grand-niece or her Aunt Martha--he comes and spreads out all over it the
way he's doing now, and is most un oin monly in the way; you have to play on him, you know, because
there isn't any other place, he flats out so; and if he gets a chance he flirts off the tricks with
his paw; and if he lays down on a trick, the game's up; you can't get at it, because he don't like to
be disturbed....Well, we can talk, anyway, whilst he's thinking up something fresh to do--say! now
the light's coming just right--look at him! ain't he the very blackest object that ever cast a gloom
in the daytime? Do you know, he's just solid midnight-black all over, from cutwater to tip-end of
spanker-boom. Except that he's got a faint and delicate little fringe of white hairs on his breast,
which you can't find at all except when the light strikes them just right and you know where to look.
Black? why, you know, Satan looks faded alongside of Bags."

"Is that his n--"

"Look at him now! Velvet--satin--sealskin; can't you pick them out on him? Notice that brilliant sheen
all down his forrard starboard paw, and a flash of it in the hollow of his side, and another one on
his flank: is it satin, or ain't it?--just you answer me that!"

"It is satin, it's exactly the name for it!"

"Right you are. Now then, look at that port shoulder, where I light don't strike direct--sort of twi-
light as you may say: does it just pre-cisely counterfeit imperial Lyons velvet, forty dollars a yard,
of don't it: come!"

"It does, I take my oath!"

"Right, again. The thickest fur and the softest you ever s--there! catch it in the shadow! in the deep
shadow, under his chin--ain't it sealskin, ain't it? ain't it the very richest sealskin you--say! look at
him now. He's just perfect now; wait till he gets through with that comfortable long summer-Sunday-
afternoon stretch and curls his paw around his nose, then you'll see something. You'll never know how
black he is, nor how big and splendid and trim-built he is till he puts on his accent....Th--there it is--
just the wee tip of his pink tongue showing between his lips--now he's all there!--sheen and gloom
and twilight--satin, sealskin, velvet--and the tip of his tongue like a fire-coal to accent him, just the
blackest black outlay this side of the sub-cellars of perdition,--now I ask you honest, ain't he?"

The poet granted it, and poured out praise upon praise, rapture upon rapture, from his sincere soul,
closing with--

"He is the last possibility of the beautiful! But oh, Admiral! how did you ever come to name him--"

"Bags? Sho, that's not his name, it's only his nom de plume. His name's Bagheera."

"Bagheera! Admiral, I could hug you for that! And he's worthy of it, too. If anybody can add anything
to that praise, all right, let him try."

"You forgive me, don't you?" said the Admiral, oozing gratification 110m every pore; "I reckon I knew
what I was about when I promoted him to that." He rose and moved toward his book-shelves. He took out
a volume and patted its brown back. "Here she is," he said. "Kipling. Volume VII, Collected Works.
Jungle Book. Immortal?"

"It's the right word, Admiral, in my opinion."

"You bet you! It'll outlast the rocks. Now I'm going to read to you out of this book. You look at the
cat, and listen: 'A black shadow dropped down into the circle. It was Bagheera the Black Panther, inky
black all over,'--now notice, keep your eye on the cat--'inky black all over, but with the panther mark-
ings showing up in certain lights like the pattern of watered silk.' There--don't he fill the bill? ain't he
watered silk? look at his high-lights--look at his twilights--look at his deep glooms! Now you listen
again: 'He had a voice as soft as wild honey dripping from a tree, and a skin softer than down.' Bags!"

The cat raised a sleepy head, and delivered an inquiring look from a blinking eye.

"Speak!"

The cat uttered a quivery-silvery mew.

"You hear that? is it soft as wild honey dripping from a tree? fills the bill don't it? Times, it is
that rich and soft and pathetic and musical you wouldn't think it was a cat at all, but a spirit--
spirit of a cat that's gone before, as the saying is. You ought to hear him when he's lone-some and
goes mourning around empty rooms hunting for us; why, it just breaks your heart. And he's full of
talent; full of tricks and oddities that don't belong in a cat's line, which he invented out of his
own head."

"Could I see him do some of them?"

"--sh!" said the Admiral, putting his finger to his lips. "Change the subject. He seems to be asleep,
this last half-a-minute, but that ain't any proof; it's just as likely he's awake, and listening. In that
case you couldn't get him to do a thing. He's just like a child about that; the more you want him to
show off, the more he won't do it to save your life."

"Admiral, is he so bright that he--"

"Understands? Every word!"

"I think, myself," George began, doubtfully, "that some animals understand a good deal of what we
say--"

The Admiral stepped over and whispered at the poet's ear--

"Every word! Wasn't that what I said?"

"Yes, but--"

"I said it, didn't I? Well, it means par. He understands every word. Now I'll prove it"--still whis-
pering. "It's a fad of his, to play with fire, and--"

"What, a cat play with fire?"

"Not so loud! Yes; it's because he found out that other cats don't. That's the way he's made--orig-
inality's his long suit; he don't give a damn for routine; you show him a thing that's old and set-
tled and orthodox, and you can't get him to take any int'rest in it, but he'll trade his liver for
anything that's fresh and showy. Now I'll light a little alcohol lamp and set it over yonder on the
floor, and if he hasn't overheard us he'll put it out with his paw when he gets up; but if he is
shamming and listening, now, he'll put up a disappoint on us, sure: he'll go over and give it an
indifferent look and pass by on I I ie other side, like the Good Samaritan."

The little lamp was duly lighted and placed, and the experimenters waited, in a solemn silence, for
the result. Pretty soon--

"Watch him!" said the Admiral. "He's turning on his back to--look at that! when he gets that stretch
completed and everything taut, he'll be twice as long as you think he is. There--how is that? as long
an stiff as a deer-carcass that's frozen for transportation, ain't it? Notice the flash of that sheen
on his garboard strake, port side of his keelson, just forrard of the mizzen channels--ain't that a
gloss for you! Now then--stand by for a surge, he's going to gape. When he gets his mouth full-spread,
look in, and see how pink he is inside, and what a contrast it is to his thunder-black head. There
you are! ain't it pretty? ain't it like a slice out of a watermelon?...Now--stand by again-he's going
to break out his spinnaker."

The cat rose, added some fancy touches to his luxurious stretch, then lie skipped to the floor and
started across the room, making long final stretch-strides which extended first one hind leg and then
the other far to the rear--then he discovered the lamp, and made straight for it with strong interest.
The Admiral whispered, in high gratification--

"I bet you he didn't hear a word we said! Come, this is luck!"

The cat approached to within a foot of the lamp, then began to circle warily around it and sniff at
it.

"It's the way he always does," whispered the Admiral, "he'll attack it in a minute."

The cat presently stopped, stood high, raised a paw--

"You see that? ain't it a pretty curve? he'll hold that paw that way as much as a half-a-minute,
measuring his distance--sometimes he'll hold it out as straight as a stunsl-boom and--there, see him
strike? Didn't fetch it this time, but you'll see he'll never let up till he does."

"Admiral, he burnt his fur; I smell it."

"That's nothing, he always does; he don't care. Another whack! ain't it graceful? ain't it resolute,
ain't it determined? He's going to try with the other paw, now. He was left-handed when he was born,
but I learnt him ambidexterousness when he was little...There!--that was a good spat, you could hear
it! That's four--about next time he'll fetch it There! what'd I tell you?--he's done it."

The cat gave his paws a lick or two, then loafed off to a corner and stretched himself out on
the floor. George said he could not have believed in this extraordinary performance if he hadn't
seen it; that he had never heard of a cat before that would attack fire. He wanted to know who
taught him.

"Nobody. It was his own idea. Took it up when he was a kitten. But never mind that--that ain't
the thing that's before the house." The Admiral gave his head a prideful toss, and added, "the
thing that is before the house is, did I prove it? That's the thing for you to answer: did I,
or didn't I?"

"Prove what?"

The Admiral was a little nettled.

"Come! what did I start out to prove?"

"Well, I don't qui--I--"

"You've forgot, by gracious!--that's it--forgot it a'ready! Didn't I say he understood every
word? Didn't I say I would prove it? Well, then--have I, or haven't I?"

George began to stammer and hesitate, showing that the proof had missed him; that he didn't
know what it consisted in, and was fighting for time and revelation. The Admiral was surprised
at his stupidity, and said with severity--

"Didn't I tell you, that if he was actually awake and overhearing us he would understand every
word and wouldn't do a thing? Well, didn't he put out the lamp? Now then, what does it prove?
It proves that he didn't overhear us, don't it? And that proves that he under stands every
word when he does overhear, don't it? I knew perfectly well I could prove it, I told you so
before."

The Admiral had him under his severe and unrelenting eye, and so he was obliged to confess the
"proof," for diplomacy's sake, though deep down in his heart he couldn't seem to see any con-
vincing con nection between the evidence and the alleged fact. However, he had wit enough to
throw out a nicely buttered remark which beguiled the Admiral away from the danger-line and
saved the situation: lie said it was perfectly wonderful the way the Admiral could "argue."
The old gentleman melted to that rather gross contribution; he was pleased the midriff, and
said complacently--

"Well, they all say the old man can do a tidy thing in that line now and then, but I don't know
--I don't know."

The poet followed up his advantage with more butter, and still more butter, until all possible
peril was overpassed, and quite new and safe ground reached. To-wit, music. The poet was fond
of it, the Admiral was fond of it--here was a rew tie; the two men were already friends,
through the ministrations of the cat, their mutual passion for music added several degrees of
Fahrenheit to the friendship; by this time the Admiral had dropped all formalities and was call-
ing the poet by his first name. Also, he was requiring George to come often--"the oftener
the better." George was more delighted than he could tell in words. It seemed a good time to
bring forward his great project, and he did it. His delivery accomplished, he watched the
Admiral's face with anxious solicitude. That patch-quilt remained calm. No lights, no shadows,
no changes of any kind moved across its surface. The Admiral was thinking. Thought he was
thinking. He was often calm and expressionless, like that, when he thought he was thinking.
After a silence so extended that the poet was beginning to lose heart and wish he had not ven-
tured so soon, the Admiral lifted his glass and said gravely--

"I have examined it, I have looked it all over in my mind, carefully. I .ee the grandeur of
it. Drink!--then we will talk."

The poet was profoundly relieved; his spirits revived, and he cried--

"Thank you, thank you, Admiral, for being willing to discuss it!"

"Willing, yes, and glad to. Discussion throws light. I always want to I iscuss a thing, no mat-
ter how well I am disposed to it; it's best to feel your way on a strange coast, so I always
take soundings."

"It's the wise course--I know it. I wish I did it more myself."

"You'll come to it--you're young, yet, and we don't learn such hings early." He disposed himself
comfortably, and took a pipe, and passed one to George; then he resumed. "A monument to Adam,
says you. Very well, let's look at the case. Now then, I'm going to admit, to start with, that of
all the minor sacred characters, I think the most of Adam. Except Satan."

"Satan?"

"Yes. Jimmy differs. That's all right, it's her privilege."

"Her?"

"Yes--her. What of it? She's an orphaness. Also, Aunt Martha differs. That's all right, too,
it's her privilege--although she's only a second cousin, and not an aunt at all. It's what
we call her--aunt. Yet she's no more an aunt than you be, although she's a Prisbyterian. It's
only a formality--her being an aunt is. It's only her being it through being a second cousin
to some of our ancestors, I don't know which ones. But she's gold!--and don't you forget it.
She's been with mc twenty years; ten at sea, and ten here on land. She has mothered Jimmy
ever since she was a baby."

"Ever since--since--she was a baby?"

"Certainly. Didn't I just say it?"

"I know; but I mean, which she?"

"Which she? What are you talking about with your which she?"

"I--well, I don't quite know. I mean the one that was a baby. Was she the one?"

The Admiral nearly choked with vexation; his face turned storm-blue, its railroad-lines turned
fire-red and quivered over it like light-nings; then he did the thundering himself:

"By God, if you say it again I'll scalp you! you've got me so tangled up that I--say! can you
understand this? Aunt Martha--SHE--understand?--mothered Jimmy ever since she was a baby--ever
since SHE was a baby! SHE--get it?"

The poet--still uncertain--gave up, and falsely indicated compre hension with a strenuous nod,
to pacify the Admiral and avert war. Things quieted down, then, and the Admiral growled his sat-
isfaction:

"I'm glad. Glad I've succeeded. It's been admitted before this, that I can state a thing pretty
limpid when I try. Very well, then. As I was saying, she did the thing I said. And nobody could
have done il better--I'll say that, too. Jimmy's twenty-one, now. Baby on shore, first; then
all of a sudden an orphaness, and so remains to this day, although at sea ten years, as I told
you before. Aboard my ship. Along with Aunt Martha, who fetched her. I've been her father, Mar-
tha's been her mother; mother, old maid, and a Prisbyterian, all at the same time, a combin-
ation to beat the band. Heart of gold, too, as I told you before. Sixty years old, and sound
as a nut. As for the name, I hought of it myself. I gave it to her."

"Martha is a good name," suggested the poet, in order to say something, it being his turn.

"Martha? Who said anything about Martha? Can't you keep the run of the ordinariest conversation?
--say, can't you?"

"Oh, I--you see--well I understood you to say that she--"

"Hang it, what you understand a person to say hasn't got anything to do with what the person
says, don't you know that? I was talking about Jimmy--my grand-niece."

"Oh, I see, now. I quite misunderstood, before, for I thought you said she was only twenty-one,
and--"

"I did say it! George, take something; damned if you don't need it; your mind is failing. Now
then, listen, and I'll try to put it so that even you can understand it. Aunt Martha is sixty--
second cousin out of sources of antiquity--old maid, Prisbyterian from cat-heads to counter--
get it? Very well. Jimmy is twenty-one--grand-niece--ex-fathered by otc, ex-mothered by Martha
--orphaness to this day--orpluntess to this dry--get it? Very well. Now we come to the place
where you stuck: it was her I named, not Martha--get it? Named her James Fletcher Stormfield;
named her for her little brother that had gone before, as t he saying is. It broke my heart
when he went--the dearest little felh w! but I saved the name, and there's comfort in that, I
can tell you. As long as I've got Jimmy and the name, the world ain't going to get blacker than
I can stand, although she's nothing but an orphaness when all's said and done, poor little
thing. But--gold, all gold, like our Aunt Martha out of the geological period. Got it all,
now, haven't you George?"

"All, and a thousand thanks, Admiral--you're ever so good."

He stopped with that, and thought he would economise words whenever he could, now, so as to
keep out of trouble, and also trick the Admiral into sticking to his subject. The Admiral re-
sumed:

Now that we've got that settled, we'll return back to Adam and see if we can pull him off. I
wish Aunt Martha was on deck, but it's her will tell below. You see, she-- Bags!" In the midst
of the black velvet mask two disks of fire appeared--gleamed intensely for a moment, then he
mask closed upon them and blotted them out. "He heard me, you see. Bags! turn out and tell
your Aunt Martha to report in the chart room." The Admiral waited a moment, the fires did not
reappear; then he explained, regretfully: "That's the way with a cat, you know--any cat; they
don't give a damn for discipline. And they can't help it, they're made so. But it ain't real-
ly insubordination, when you come to look at it right and fair--it's a word that don't apply
to a cat. A cat ain't ever anybody's slave or serf or servant, and can't be--it ain't in him
to be. And so, he don't have to obey anybody. He is the only creature in heaven or earth or
anywhere that don't have to obey somebody or other, including the angels. It sets him above
the whole ruck, it puts him in a class by himself. He is independent. You understand the size
of it? He is the only independent person there is. In heaven or anywhere else. There's always
somebody a king has to obey--a trollop, or a priest, or a ring, or a nation, or a deity or
what not--but it ain't so with a cat. A cat ain't servant nor slave to anybody at all. He's
got all the independence there is, in heaven or anywhere else, there ain't any left over for
anybody else. He's your friend, if you like, but that's the limit--equal terms, too, be you
king or be you cobbler; you can't play any I'm-better-than-you on a cat--no, sir! Yes, he's
your friend, if you like, but you've got to treat him like a gentleman, there ain't any other
terms. The minute you don't, he pulls his freight. And he--say! you get that new tint?--on the
curve of his counter--see it? delicate coppery mist, faint as dream-stuff--just like you
catch it for a second in a mesh of the purple-black hair of a girl when the slant of the sun
is right, ain't it so? Gone, now. Aunt Martha says--George, you'll like Aunt Martha."

"I'll be glad to, Admiral, and I'm sure I shall."

"Oh, yes, you will, there's no doubt about it." After a moment, he added, casually, "she has a
ferocious temper."

"Is that so?"

"The worst there is. I wouldn't blame her, for she didn't make her temper, it was born in her;
I wouldn't blame her if she didn't hide it; but I have to blame her for that, because it's
deception."

George tried to say the kindly and modifying thing--

"Maybe she is only trying to keep it down, Admiral, instead of con-cealing it--and there
should be merit in that."

"No, I know her--she just hides it, lets on it ain't there; she don't let a sign of it slip.
She's deep, Martha is; you could be with her yea and years and never find out she had it if
I hadn't told you." A silence ensued; George could not think of any appropriate thing to say.
The Admiral added, "she swears a good deal." George started, but ventured nothing. "You can't
break her now," continued the Admiral, "it's too late; she's sixty, you see, and she's been
at it twenty years. Picked it up from the sailors."

George thought of saying, "and from you, perhaps?" but concluded t o stay on safe ground, now
that he was doing well. He had been wanting to know Aunt Martha, on account of her heart of
gold, but he hoped for better luck, now. He was afraid of her. The Admiral drifted tranquilly
along with his treasonable revelations.

"Well, she's been through a lot, poor thing, and it's only right to make allowances. You see,
she got a blight."

Pause.

"A blight?"

"That's it." (Pause.) "Got a blight."

This conversation was difficult.

"Got--er--got a--"

"That's it. Blight." (Pause.) "Early."

"How--er--how sor--unfortunate."

"Right again. She wasn't quite seventeen, he was just the same age." "Oh--I see: unhappy love-
passage."

"Yes, that was the trouble. Reefing a gasket in a gale, and fell off the foretogallantstunslboom.
No-o--come to think, that was another one--the first one. This one's boat was smashed by a bull
whale after he was struck, and a wave washed him down his throat--unhurt. He was never seen again."

"How dreadful!"

"Yes. You don't want to speak of it to her, she can't bear it." "I can easily believe it, poor
lady."

"No, she can't. It blighted her. Blighted yet. They were to 've been married as soon as he got
to be mate, and he was already boat-steerer. It's the uncertainty that makes her life so mournful."

"Un-- What uncertainty?"

"About his fate, you know."

"Why--I thought he went down the whale's throat?"

"Yes, that's it; that's what happened to him, poor boy."

"Yes, I understand that, but what I meant was, what was the uncertainty?"

"Why--well, as to what went with him after that, you know."

"Why, Admiral, there couldn't be any uncertainty as to that, could there?"

"I don't rightly know. At bottom, as between you and me, I don't think him likely to turn up a-
gain, but I don't say it, of course, and--"

"Does anybody think it likely that he--"

"She does; yes, she can't give up the hope that he'll fetch around yet, poor thing. She's to be
pitied, I think."

"Indeed with all my heart I pity her. It is one of the saddest things I have ever heard of. But
surely, after all these many many unrevealing years she--"

"No, nothing can convince her. You see, she's a Prisbyterian, and it makes her feel near to Job
in the whale's belly--nearer than you and me can ever feel, not being situated like her--and she
can't help feeling that what's happened once can happen again."

"True--but in that other case it was only three days, whereas in this one it is a whole generation
and more. The cases are very different."

"I know it, but she holds to it that Job was old, and maybe, being superannuated, that way, he
would have struck the limit before this, but her Eddy being young and hardy it could be different
with him. But I know you wouldn't ever find any way to comfort her anyhow, because he was the
only one the whale got. The others escaped, you see, and got drowned."

George struggled with this proposition, but could not work his way through the fog of it. He fin-
ally said--

"I don't quite see how his being the only one the whale got affected his unhappy case either one
way or the other."

"That's what I think; but she keeps brooding over his being in there so long without any company.
So lonesome, you see."

"I--yes--yes, I seem to see it, but I should not have thought of that," said George, bewildered.

"Well, it troubles her, every time she thinks of it. So dark in there, you see, and nothing doing.
Night all the time, you know, and such a sameness and so dull. She longs to be with him."

George was not able to drum up a comment.

"Yes, it's a hard life for her, George; hard for her, hard for him, if he's there yet, which is
far from likely, in my opinion, and I've thought it over a good deal. She always sees him the
same way."

"How do you mean, Admiral?"

"Young, you know--not seventeen. Sees him the same way: young, fresh, rosy, brim full of life
and the joy of it; always sees him the way he was when she saw him last, swinging down the road
after his kiss, with his white ducks, and his tarpaulin with a dangling ribbon, and his blue neck
-scarf, and his blue-bordered broad collar spreading upon his shoulders; sees him like that, with
the sunset painting him all red and gold and glorious--the last sight of him she was ever going
to see, George."

"How pitiful, how pathetic!"

"Yes, that is what I say. Sees him always just so--blooming, boyish, beautiful. Always the same
--never adds a day; stands still in his youth, and she gets old and older, and gray and grayer,
and--"

"That's pitiful, too!"

"It's the right narne for it, George. Well, for ten years it was sweetheart and sweetheart; then she
reconnized that she was outgrowing him--twenty-seven too old for seventeen--so she had to make
a change; so she gradually got to regarding him as her son."

"How curious!"

"Yes. Well, that was all right and satisfactory till she drifted away from him wider and wider
till last year she reconnized that the whole gap between them was forty-two years; then she shifted
him to grandson. And there he is now. If she lives, he's good for a twenty-year rest. Then she'll
promote him again. George, she's had a bitter hard time, and I want you to try to overlook her de-
fect and feel the best and charitablest you can towards her, considering everything."

"O, God knows I would not add a pain to her sorrows for anything this world has to give!"

"I'm glad to hear you say that, George, it shows you've got a good heart. Jimmy's always kind and
gentle to her. She's got the devil's own temper, too, but never shows it. I want you to know Jimmy."

"I shall be g--glad to, I'm sure."

It didn't sound quite like it.

"She'll play the penola for you. She's musical, like the rest of the breed. When she's a little fur-
ther along I'm going to learn her to work the squawkcstrelle. Say! look at him, look at his eyes!--
locomotive head-lights, ain't it? Look at his attitude: whole body advanced and rigid; one front paw
lifted and curved and motionless--looks so, but it ain't; he's putting it down, but you can't detect
any motion to it; he's letting on that I'm a bird and he's creeping up on me and I don't know it;
see him whimper and whisker with his lips and not make anything but just barely a little flicker of
sound--a cat never does that but when it's slipping up on a bird and lusting after it; starboard
paw's down at last--lifting the port one, now, but you can't perceive it; see him glare at me--never
budges his eyes from me nor winks; six feet to come, and it'll take him five minutes; see him droop
his belly, note, most to the floor, and whimper with his mouth and quiver his tail; I'll turn my
face away, now and let on I don't know there's any danger around--it's part of the game--he expects
it."

By and by the cat completed his imperceptible journey; then squatted close to the floor, worked his
haunches and twitched his lithe tail a moment, then launched himself like a missile from a catapult
and landed with a smashing impact upon the Admiral's shoulder. Before he could be seized he was away
again. The Admiral was as vain of the performance as if it was the world's last wonder and he the
proprietor of the sole miracle?monger that could achieve it.

"Does it every day," said he. "Often he--come in!"

It was Aunt Martha. Seeing the stranger, she was going to retreat, but the Admiral gripped her by
the hand and led her in, saying cordially--

"Don't you mind, it's nobody but George. Here she is, her own self, George--Martha Fletcher, heart
of gold, chief mate, brains of the house--there1 ain't she a daisy?" He swept her figure with an ad-
miring look, gave a wave of his hand as if to say, "what did I tell you?--up to sample, ain't she?"
then he bustled her into a chair and finished the introduction.

The poet had been expecting to be afraid of her if chance should some day bring him face to face
with her, but he was pleasantly disappointed. There was nothing formidable about her, nothing to
frighten any one; on the contrary, she was charming. Her hair was white and wavy and silky, she
had a soft voice, her face was beautiful with the beauty of kindliness, human sympathy and the
grace of peace, and upon her sat a gentle dignity which any could see belonged to her by right of
birth. The Admiral beamed affection and admiration upon her, and the poet could not help doing the
same--tempered, in some degree, by the remembrance of what he had heard about her profanities and
her temper. His interest in her grew by swift stages, and in no long time he found himself condon-
ing those defects, and even trying to believe they were not really defects at all, but only eccen-
tricities, and not important. By and by she arrived at the errand she had come about: she wanted
to advertise for a lodger. George pricked up his ears.

The Admiral said there was no occasion--there was money enough, and to spare. Aunt Martha said,
no matter, the empty rooms were a reproach--some one ought to be enjoying them; even a charity-
lodger who paid nothing would answer; she was not particular, as to that, but it was on her con-
science that those good rooms were going to waste--and so she gently stuck to her point. The Ad-
miral wavered, then an-rendered, saying--

"All right, Aunt Martha, you would have it your own way sooner or later, anyhow, you are so ob-
stinate when you are set. Go ahead and advertise."

She thanked him sweetly, and rose to go. George thought that now was his chance or never; so he
made bold to say--

"If the Admiral would be willing, Miss Fletcher, do you think you could try me for a month and
see if I would do? I am leaving my lodgings to-day." Which was not true.

"The very thing!" This from the Admiral. "Get your kit aboard and begin right away. I'll not let
her overcharge you."

"Abner, I was not going to do it,--you know that," said the aunt in gentle reproach.

"Yes, you had it in your mind, I saw it. Go and fetch your things, George, you can look to me for
protection. Another plate for supper, Martha--you hear?"

George brought his belongings and delivered them to the old sailor who did duty as the Admiral's
butler, bos'n, second mate and one thing or another, then he called on his friend David and rep-
orted his great luck in securing lodgings in the Admiral's house. David asked why he had needed
to do that, and George explained:

"It took me two hours to get him down to Adam and the monument, and that is as far as I've got,
he scatters so. I hope to land him, but it will take time. He's worth it, though; he's worth no
end of effort, I think. So I call it good luck that I got the lodgings. And there's another rea-
son: I was lonesome where
I was."

"Well, that's at an end, now, sure!" said David. "Sure--whether you like each other or not."

"I'll tell you our talk, David, then you can judge which it is."

When he had finished, David conceded that the new relationship did not seem to have anything cold
about it. Then he added:

"You have done well, George, you have indeed. Well and judiciously. You've gone far with the Ad-
miral. It is good diplomacy and a creditable performance. I hope you will land him, and I also
believe you will."

"I am glad to hear you say it, David. It will take time, as I've said, but that's nothing; it's
not going to be dull."

"Oh, on the contrary. Inasmuch as you want society, you are in even better luck than you think
for, George."

"How is that? Are you thinking of Aunt Martha?"

"No--outsiders. Proteges of the Admiral."

"Proteges?"

"Yes. Life's failures. Shipwrecks. Derelicts, old and battered and broken, that wander the ocean
of life lonely and forlorn. They all drift to him; and are
made welcome."

"David, it is beautiful! He didn't mention this."

"He? No, he wouldn't be likely."

"Then it's all the more beautiful!"

"So it is. They drop in on him, whenever they please, and he comforts them. A poor old pathetic
lot."

"I want to see them, David; I'd like to know them."

"Well, you will, if the Admiral sees that sort of spirit in you. Otherwise not. It is thought
that he helps them with his purse as well as with his sympathies; in fact, between you and me,
I know he does, but you will keep this knowledge to yourself. He's a man, George--he's a whole
man. There's delicacies in him that you wouldn't suspect, he seems so rough."

"I suspected them, the minute the cat came in, David!" said George, proud of his penetration.
"Delicacies are of the heart; and the minute the cat came in, his heart was exposed. He was not
much better than a pirate when he was talking to himself before that; but afterwards it was
very different. And a good deal of a relief to me, too. Once he started to reveal to me how
Bags stands in the matter of morals, but changed the subject when Bags let an eye fall open,
showing that he wasn't asleep. I recognized, then, that what he had been going to let out was
something shady, or partially so, and he didn't want to hurt Bags's feelings."

"It was like the Admiral. Privately his friends have a name or two for his house,--half a do-
zen, in fact--founded on his special compassion for life's failures--ironical names, but
there's no sting in them: 'Haven of the Derelict,"Refuge of the Broken Reed'--that's a couple
of them."

"Why, they're lovely, David! It's the lead of irony transmuted into the gold of homage. Do
you--"

"Wait--I want to give you a point, while I think of it. Talk temper-ance--general temperance--
with the Admiral, if you want to--he likes the subject--but don't go into the history of it;
at least don't go away back; don't go back as far as Father Matthew. Because mention of that
name is a thing he can't stand. It has been tried. By an ignorant person. Ignorant and inno-
cent. He was fooled into doing it by a friend of the Admiral's who knew a secret and tender
spot in the old mariner's history and wanted to get some effects out of it without taking the
risk of putting his own finger on it. They say that the eruption of profanity that ensued
lasted several hours and has not been equaled since Vesuvius buried Herculaneum. Do as I tell
you: leave Father Matthew alone--let the Admiral's volcano sleep."

"All right, I will, but tell me about it. Why should the name rouse him so?"

"Because it reminds him of an incident of his early life which he hates the memory of. It was
like this. Away back, fifty or sixty yearsago, when the Admiral was about twenty-five, he came
back from a three-year voyage to find a melancholy change at home in New Bedford and Fairhaven:
Father Matthew, the great apostle of temperance, had been sweeping New England like a prairie-
fire, and everybody had joined the Father Matthew Societies and stopped drinking. When Storm-
field realized the situation, his heart almost broke. Not a comrade would drink with him, he
had to drink all alone, and you know what that means to a sociable soul. He wandered the streets
disconsolate, bereft, forsaken; nobody wanted his company, the girls cut him, he was not asked
to the parties and the dances.

"And he had come home so triumphant, so joyful! For he had been promoted from mate to captain,
and was full of the glory of it, and now there was nobody interested in his honors, no one
cared to hear about them. He endured his sufferings as long as he could, then he broke his jug
and surrendered, and sent in his name to be balloted for at the Father Matthew Society's next
meeting. That same night his crew arrived--Portuguese and Kanakas from the Azores--and at
daybreak in the morning he sailed.

"He was gone three years. He was firm; he drank not a drop the whole time, but it was a bitter
hard battle, from the first day to the last--with the grog circulating among those brown men
every few hours, and his mouth watering for it unspeakably! For he had begun to repent of what
he had done before he was out of sight of land; he repented every day and all the days, for
three years--and most deeply of all on the last one, which was fearfully cold, with a driving
storm of wind and snow, and he had to plow the fleecy deck and face the gale, dry--oh, so dry!
and those brown people comforting themselves with hot grog every little while and he getting
the whiff of it; and so, the minute he made port he bought a jug and rushed to the Society and
hit the secretary's desk with his fist and shouted--

"'Take my name off your cussed books, I'm dying of a three-years' thirst!'

"The secretary said, tranquilly--

"Hasn't ever been on--you were black-balled."

"Those are the facts, George." That far in his talk David was serious; possibly he was serious in
the rest of it; most people would have doubted it; George might have doubted it himself if he had
been differ-ently made. "You would think, George, that after the incident had had a year's wear,
the soreness would have passed out of it and left nothing behind but a text for the Admiral to
joke about; it is what would have happened if anybody else had been in the Admiral's place, but
in his ease it did not happen. With him it has remained a serious matter, and when you consider
the make of him you can understand why. To him the thing stands for one thing only: bitter Toss,
irreparable loss. Suppose a happy bridegroom should lie in a trance three years: would not he
recognize that he could never catch up, in this life? Well, that is the way the Admiral feels."

There was a sigh, and George said--

"I am glad you have shown me this aspect of it, David. At first I saw only one side, and so it
seemed funny, but I see now that it is not. It would pain me to laugh at it now; I think it would
pain any one who has any heart."

"Yes, I am sure it would. George, be has borne this sorrow for fifty years, without outward com-
plaint; borne it with dignity, borne it with a certain composure. One cannot reflect upon this
and not revere him."

"You could not say a truer thing than that, David. I feel just as you do about it."

"In a large sense it is a blighted life. Yet it has been blest to him, and richly blest to o-
thers, for it has borne precious fruit. It has made him the friend and brother of all upon
whom disaster and blight have fallen; out of it has grown the 'Haven of the Derelict,' the
'Refuge of the Broken Reed.--

"David," said George, deeply touched, and awed, "that incident of the long ago was not an
accident, it was meant, and it had a purpose. The hand of Providence was in it--I know it, I
see it. It was no earthly hand that black-balled him."

"I have never doubted it," said David, impressively; "there are no accidents, all things have
a deep and calculated purpose; sometimes the methods employed by Providence seem strange and
incongruous, but we have only to be patient and wait for the result: then we recognize that
no others would have answered the purpose, and we are rebuked and humbled."



Chapter 3

From George's Diary


I WAS in time for supper. The Admiral sat at the head of the table, Aunt Martha at the foot;
I and the cat (the latter on a high baby-chair ) sat on one side, and Jimmy and a middle-aged
lady in rather loud and aggressive young-girl dress on the other. The Admiral made the intro-
ductions. He called the elderly girl the Marcheeza di Bianca --"otherwise White," he added,
"Eyetalian for White." The marchesa corrected his pronunciation--

"Markayza," she said, unpleasantly.

The Admiral was not troubled. He nodded at me and said, tranquilly--

"In a way, she's right; they say it that way over there, they being backward in their spell-
ing, but over here it's not right, because the Constitution don't allow it. The Constitution
says we've got to pronounce words the way they are spelt." jimmy and the aunt glanced up at
him doubtfully, (or maybe it was reproachfully,) and the marchesa opened her mouth--"Close
it!" said the Admiral fiercely, and was obeyed. "Ies spelt the same as cheese, and when I
heave it out, cheese it is." He glared around, from face to face. "Any objections?"

None were offered. The ancient sailor-butler was serving. He was tall, grave, grizzled,
muscular, he wore sailor-clothes, was stiff-legged on the near side, and had the gait of
a carpenter's compass when it is semi-circling its course across a grotmd-plan; for one
of his legs tote made of wood, or iron, or some other rigid material. The Admiral and his
family called him Bos'n, and he always answered "aye-aye, s'r," re. gardless of sex. George
noticed that he skipped the cat. The Admiral noticed that George noticed. He explained:

"Bags don't eat with the rest of the family, he waits, and eats by himself. It's his own i-
dea. But he most always comes and loolcs on, because he likes company, and wants to hear
the talk. Often he takes a hand in it himself."

Jimmy and the aunt cast that mystic glance at him again. It seemed to me that it might
mean "Remember, there is a stranger present; he is not used to you, and will misunder-
stand." If that was the look's message, there was nothing to show that it reached port;
the Admiral went on talking about the cat's interest in dinner-conversations and partici-
pation in them, and pretty soon he was enlarging. It did not take him long to enlarge to
where he was giving samples of what the cat had actually said on one or another occasion.
Then the ladies seemed to give it up. They looked resigned; and I did not see them em-
ploy that glance any more. I felt sorry for them, but there was nothing I could do; at
least nothing but try to relieve the situation by changing the subject. I did that a cou-
ple of times, but it did no good, the Admiral changed it back as soon as it suited him.
He got to reporting political and theological views--of the cat's--which were manifestly
beyond and above a cat's reach, and although I could easily see that this distressed his
ladies and made them bend their heads and look at their plates, he did not seem to be a-
ware of it himself. He quoted remarks--of the cat's --which were often discreditable and
sometimes profane, and then made the matter worse by approving and defending them. It was
a sufficiently embarrassing situation. Now and then he would throw out a remark of the
cat's that was really and extravagantly outrageous; then he would look aggressively around
upon the company, as if he were expecting a revolt, and wishing for it. But it never hap-
pened, and he had to put up with his disappointment the best he could. He realized that
there was doubt in the air, and it annoyed him, and made him want to remove it. Instead of
reasoning the matter with us, he sought refuge in a transparent absurdity; he asked the cat
if he had quoted him correctly. The cat always said something back; then the Admiral would
cast a lurid look of triumph upon the company and say, "I reckon that settles it!" whereas
it settled nothing, for we could not understand the cat. But we had to leave it his way,
there was no other course. By help of our silence, which he translated into assent, he was
able to establish all his points. This pleased him, and made him periodically happy, and
saved us from getting flung out of the window.

When the dinner was ended, with its procession of alternating storms and calms, fearful perils
and blessed rescues, I realized that I had had an interesting time, and said so. The Admiral was
perceptibly flattered and gratified, and confessed, on his part, that he had seldom participated
in a more informing and satisfying "discussion." That was his word. If he had searched the dict-
ionary through, he could not have found a more fiendishly inappropriate one. It was the kind of
discussion a saw has with a saw-log. My indignation rose, for a moment, for it was very trying to
have him empty that offensive word upon me in that bland way, but I held my peace and put my feel-
ings away, and it was better so. To have challenged the word would merely have brought on another
discussion--of his kind--with no profit to any one.

He was feeling good and sociable, now, and we all went to his parlor in a promisingly comfortable
condition of mind. Under the pleasant influences of punch and pipe the Admiral presently broke
ground on the monument scheme of his own volition, and explained it to the ladies. It produced
effects--one could see it in their faces. The Admiral then proceeded, without waiting for com-
ments:

"When you come to consider the minor sacred characters, it seems to me that Satan and Adam--"

"Abner!" This from Aunt Martha, with gentle surprise.

"Now then, what's the matter with you?"

"Abner, Satan is not one of the sacred characters."

"The h--alifax he ain't!"

"Why, no, he isn't. But don't lose your temper, dear heart."

The mild admonition and the affectionate epithet modified the Admiral, and he dropped into what
I suspected was his favorite argumentative plan of hunting an objection down:

"Martha, ain't he in the Book?"

"Yes."

"Martha, is it a holy Book?"

"Yes."

"All holy?"

"Yes, it is all holy."

"Is there another word for it?"

Aunt Martha hesitated; as one might who is becoming uncertain of his ground. The Admiral took no-
tice, gave a complacent nod, and furnished the word himself:

"Sacred Scriptures, ain't it?"

"Ye-s."

"The, ain't it?"

"I--I know; yes."

"What does the stand for? The only one that's sacred, ain't it?" Aunt Martha's gun was silent.

"Well, then!" and he began to tally-off the conceded points on his fingers, point by point: "One,
it's in the Book--you give in to that. Two, the Book's holy. Three, it's all holy, says you. Four,
it's the sacred Scriptures. Five, it's the sacred Scriptures. Grand total: holy, all holy, sacred,
the sacred. Very well, then; when a thing is so utterly and altogether and absolutely and uncom-
promisingly and all-solitary-and-alone sacred, without any competition in the business, how are
you going to make out that there's anything in it that ain't sacred? You just answer me that, if
you think you can!"

This burst of remorseless logic seemed to wither Martha. One might imagine her a rumpled and col-
lapsed flag that has been hauled down; whereas the Admiral looked as pleased as a mine might that
has done its job well and blown up an assaulting party. Smiling benignantly upon the wreckage, he
was about to start his talk again, when the marchesa sniffed and dropped a comment:

"Putting buttons in the contribution-plate don't make them holy."

Martha and Jimmy glanced at her. As to what the glances meant I could not be sure, but to me they
seemed to mean, "Don't do that!" Then, before the Admiral could open up on the marchesa--which he
was evidently going to do--Jimmy said, persuasively--

"Please begin over again, Uncle Abner, I want to hear all I can about. the monument before bedtime,
and no one can make it so interesting as you."

The storm-cloud flitted out of his face and he went at his work at once, quite evidently gratified
by that just remark.

"As concerns Satan and Adam, I was going to say I rank them about on a par among the minor pro-
phets, and--"

"Prophets!" scoffed the marchesa, and was going to enlarge, when the Admiral turned a warning eye
upon her and put the ends of his thumbs and of his middle fingers together in the form of an open
mouth--for a moment, then impressively brought the parts together, thus closing that mouth. The
marchesa closed hers. The Admiral resumed:

"I rank them about on a par, as regards intelligence. And yet Satan was one of the oldest of the
sacred characters, and therefore--"

He stopped and glanced around, apparently to see if that word was going to be attacked again. It
didn't happen.

"The idea that he ain't a sacred character! Suppose you handle him in a humorous lightsome way just
once,--only just once--in a magazine, if you want to know! You'll have all the pulpits and deacons
and congregations on your back in a minute, in the correspondence-columns, for trifling in that un-
solemn way about a person that's in the Bible. Haven't you seen it? Don't you know it's so?"

Nobody ventured dissent.

"You know mighty well it is. That's the reason you don't try to call the hand. Very well then. As
I was saying, Satan was very old and experienced, yet he didn't outrank Adam in intelligence, which
was only a child, as you may say, though grown up. How do I make it out? I will tell you. Satan of-
fered all the kingdoms to our Savior if he would fall down and worship him. Did he own them? No.
Could he give title? No. Could he deliver the goods? No. Now I'll ask you a question. If a slave
was to go to a king and offer to trade him his own kingdom for a dollar and a half, how would we
rank him for intelligence? Way, way, way down! ain't it so?"

He polled the company; there was not an opposition vote.

"Carried. Now then, I'll ask you another question. Can you find anything anywhere in Satan's his-
tory that's above that mark, for intelligence? No. In the Middle Ages he was always building
bridges for monks in a single night, on a contract--and getting left. Ain't it so? And always fin-
ishing cathedrals for bishops in a single night, on a contract--and getting left. Ain't it so? And
always buying Christian souls, on contracts signed with red Christian blood--and getting left. E-
very time. Can you find a case where they didn't do him, as the saying is? There isn't one. Did
he ever learn anything? No. Experience was wasted on him. Look at his trades; he was as inadequate
in the last one as he was when he first started. Finally--I'll ask your attention to this: didn't
he start in to convert this whole world to sin and pull in everybody and range them under his ban-
ner? Certainly. Hasn't he been hard at it for centuries and centuries? Certainly. Well, how does
the thing stand now--is it his world? No, sir! if he has converted nine-tenths of it it's the most
you can say. There! Now then, you answer me this: is he one of life's failures?" He paused, took
a drink, wiped his lips thoughtfully, and added: "One of them? why, he's It!"

Then the idea of Satan's being a life's failure seemed to touch him, and he said with a little
quiver in his voice:

"Well, he's out of luck--like so many--like so many--and a body has to pity him, you can't help
it."

I was not expecting to be moved by any gentle word said about Satan, but the Admiral surprised me
into it. It was ridiculous, but at the moment it seemed a natural thing and a matter-of-course.
Well, I suppose that it isn't so much what a man says that affects us as the way he says it. I
will make a note of it. The Admiral began--

"We will now examine Adam. As far as--"

The soft rich note of a Japanese temple-bell interrupted: "plungplung--plung-plung--plung-plung--
plung-plung!" Then the bos'n's deep voice pealed through the house-

"E-i-g-h-t bells--starboard watch turn out!"

"Divine service," said the Admiral, and rose and took his place behind a stand that had some re-
ligious books on it. The young girl Jimmy seated herself at the piano, which was equipped with a
pianola attachment. Footsteps were heard approaching, and a rustling of gowns, and several ser-
vants entered softly and stood against the wall. The Admiral read a prayer from the Episcopal
prayer-book, and did it nobly. To me it seemed a marvelous performance. Where did he get that
great art, that rare art? David says there are only a hundred and thirteen people in the world
who know how to read. When he hears the Admiral he will add one to his list.

Then the Admiral read a familiar hymn. This was the first time that the deeps and graces and sub-
limities of that hymn were ever revealed to me. The congregation--save the Admiral--sang the piece,
Jimmy playing it with the pianola-thing which the renowned musical professionals puff so much.
Then the Admiral prayed a prayer of his own make. With a word or two it invoked a blessing upon
the national government. Next, it implored salvation for the "anchor watch"--apparently a brevity-
title for his college of derelicts; then he implored salvation for his mother and father, dead a
generation ago; then for the household, servants and all; then for me. He paused, now, and there
was silence for some seconds. Then he bowed his head, and added in a low voice--

"And humbly I beseech, O Lord, salvation for one other....not named."

It startled me. Who was the unnamed one? Alt--Satan? No. I put that out of my mind. The sentiment
for Satan had of course been an accidental thing born of his discourse about him, and not perma-
nent. Then--why, it must have been himself! I was sorry. It suggested theatrical humility--show-
off humility, for people to admire--and he to finely and faultlessly genuine, to worshipfully
genuine, up to that moment! It was as if the robes of an image of gold had blown aside and expos-
ed legs of clay. loot sorrier than loot tell. I went to bed depressed.



Chapter 4

From George's Diary, a Week Later


This is not a dull house. The human interest is pervasive here, pervasive and constant. I did not
know, before, how interesting our race can be; I only knew how uninteresting it can be. I see,
now, that it was uninteresting merely because I had no close contact with it, and not because the
people of my acquaintanceship were commonplace. In a single week I have come to doubt if there
are any uninteresting people. Certainly most people are commonplace,--a word which, taken apart
and examined, merely means that their tastes, ideals, sympathies and mental capacities are below
your standard--a word which contains and conveys the fact that those people are dull to you--but
when you get on the inside of them--well, I begin to think that that is quite another country.
If to be interesting is to be uncommonplace, it is becoming a question, with me, if there are
any commonplace people.

Broadly speaking, my previous contacts have been with persons whose ways and standards did not
tally with mine, and I thought that that was the reason their company was a weariness to me. But
I see that that could have been a mistake. If I had happened to get at their insides I think I
should have found interesting things hidden there. Books? Yes, books. So the bos'n says. He says
a man's experiences of life are a book, and there was never yet an uninteresting life. Such a
thing is an impossibility. Inside of the dullest exterior there is a drama, a comedy, ands trag-
edy. The bos'n says there is no exception to the rule. But how difficult it is to get at those
poems!

My life was dull before luck got me into this house; I had only outsides to contemplate, but here
it is the other way. Here I have opportunity to penetrate beyond the skin. The contacts with the
household are frequent, and the same is the case with the derelicts and their intimates. As a
rule I have not had friends before, but only acquaintances; they talked the news and gossip of
the day--which was natural--and hid their hurts and their intimate joys--which was also natural
--and so I took them for light-weights and commonplace, and was not glad of their society. Lord,
they all had their tragedies!--every one of them, but how could I suspect it?

Formerly if a person had said to me, "Would you like to know Smith the letter-carrier?" it would
not have occurred to me to say yes. But I should say it now, believing as I now do that a man's
occupation is not a mirror of his inside; and so I should want to know Smith and try to get at
his interior, expecting it to be well charged with interest for me.

The fact is, I do know Smith the (ex-)letter-carrier, though it is only by accident that I have
used him as an illustration. He is a derelict. I asked hiss to sit, and am painting his portrait.
He is from a distant State and city. His young wife is there. He is silent and abstracted, and
usually sits apart, with his head bent, and thinks his thoughts, and does not smile. When he sup-
posed I was meaning to charge him for the portrait he looked up, pulled his wandering mind home
with an effort, and said no, he had no money; I explained that it was not a matter of money, I
only wanted to paint it for practice and he could have it when it was done. The idea did not
seem to take hold. I could see that he was vaguely wondering what use it could be to him; he
looked up vacantly--the problem had baffled him; I said "for your wife"--then his eyes filled.

The first sitting thawed him a little; before the second one was ended he was telling me how
he was occupying himself and how the Admiral came to run across him and add him to his accum-
ulation of human wreckage; in the third sitting the thawing reached still further into his
mass and he talked about his boyhood and his parents, his playmates and his brothers and sis-
ters; in the fourth the melting was nearly complete and he talked freely and trustingly of
some of the things hidden away in the deeps of his heart--such as the happinesses of his mar-
ried life, and how Mary looked, and how she talked, and what her opinions seers, on this and
that and the other matter of moment, and how sterling she was, and how sane, and how good-
hearted, and all that; and in the fifth--in the fifth the last ice-shield broke away and out
came the tragedy! There is always one, if you can get at it. Often it looks trivial on paper,
but never is trivial when it trickles out before you tinged with heart's blood.

This tragedy will look trivial to an outsider. It cannot be put in words that could save it
from that. The conventions are in the way; they blur our vision, and keep us from perceiving
that the sole tragic thing about a hurt is the hurt itself and its effect upon the sufferer,
not the noble or ignoble factors and conditions involved in the infliction of it. The pre-
sent tragedy is a brief story. This is what happened.

Smith was nineteen years old, and was already a journeyman machinist, with a year's savings
laid up. He had a good reputation as a workman, a good wage, a permanent job, and a sweet-
heart to his taste. He had reached the very top of his ambition, his dearest dream was real-
ized; he was grateful, proud, satisfied, happy, to a degree beyond any words of his to ex-
press. His family were proud of him, his friends were proud of him; this was the best and
the most that a duke or a king could have, and so he believed he felt just as kings feel.
What could he want more? Nothing.

He lived, moved, and had his being in this delicious incense, the approval, amounting to
deference, of his family and friends. He and they were all of humble estate--mechanics and
laborers. His father Wes a day laborer and unschooled; his mother took in washing; his
Mary's people were conditioned in like way; her father was a pavior, her mother a washerwoman,
Mary was a helper. The two families lived high up in mean tenement houses.

Young Smith had given himself a pretty fair education, by sitting up nights, and was fond of
study. He and Mary spent their evenings in study together. They married--he nineteen and she a
year younger. They went on with their studies, and were perfectly happy. For a year. Smith re-
peated that. "For a year."

I noted it; it foretold disaster. There was a competitive examination, for the office of letter-
carrier. Smith entered the competition--"just to see what he could do," he said; he did not need
the place, and did not want it. To his and Mary's astonishment--and joy--he cunt out on top and
got it! With something near to a moan he added, "that was where our ruin began--lord, if I had
only lost it!"

The pride and exultation of the two families and the friends exceeded all bounds. Smith's and
Mary's happiness soared to the limit of human endurance; they thought they felt as kings feel
when accident promotes them to emperorship. When Smith appeared for the first time in his uni-
form the families and the friends did not stop with admiration, they were awed; so awed that
they acted more like strangers than friends; they were constrained, their tongues were crippled,
they talked disjointedly, they were embarrassed, and they embarrassed him. He was an officer
of the government of the United States, and they were --what they were; they could not bridge
the chasm. It took the old-time easy familiarity all out of them.

That was the beginning of the tragedy. Next, the uniform introduced certain compulsions. Among
other things, it--I can't recal his precise words, I wish I could, for they were beyond all art
for innocent quaintness; but the sense of them Wes this: it raised them to a higher and more ex-
acting social plane than they had been occupying before and they had to live up to the change,
which was costly. I risked a delicate question and asked him who these exclusives might be--
though of course I did not use that word. The inquiry did not disturb him; he Wes quite simple
and frank about it, and said-

"Shop-clerks, sales-ladies, and such. And there was a steamboat mate and a type-writer."

Mary had to get some suitable clothes. Smith had to take to cigarettes--he had not smoked at all,
before. Also, he had to site above five-cent drinks, which made treating a noticeable burden. He
paused, at this point, reflected, then recalled another detail--collars; he had to wear white on..

The next step was inevitable: they had to move into better quarters, they must live up to the u-
niform, and to the new social altitude. Slight as the added rent w., it was a burden. They vis-
ited their new associates, and were visited by them. This had a foreseeable result: it presently
broke off intercourse with the old friends, for between these and the new people were several
inharmonies--discords in the matter of clothes and manners, furniture, upholstery, ideals,
interests, and so on. When the two classes met at Smith's there were embarrassments and a frost.
Intercourse between the Smiths and their ancient and cordial friends ceased, by and by, and the
couple were left to the new people and a frivolous and empty and cheerless life.

Next stage. The added expenses were infinitely trifling, would have seemed so to the reader's
ear, at any rate--but no matter, they strained Smith's purse beyond its strength. He could not
bear to reveal this to Mary, and he didn't. When he was depressed and sore and she put her arms
about his neck and begged him to tell her what was the matter, he said it was headache and made
him feel a little down. Then, with a loving desire to cheer him up, she would take the worst
way she could have found: she would invite their fashionables to cake and tea, and make another
expense. When at last he was at his wits' end--

"What do you reckon I did?' he asked, looking at me out of what one might have mistaken for
the face of a dead man, so wan and white it was. "Lord God forgive me, I began to rob the let-
ters!"

Mary did not know, nor suspect--until the black day when the officers came, and tore him from
her dinging arms and his heart almost broke under the misery of hearing her despairing shrieks
and moans and sobs.

He was in prison two years. When he got out, not even his light fashionables would associate
with him, and they had cut Mary long before. The brand was upon him, the machinists' union re-
jected him, he could get no work. For three years he "has been in hell." The words are his. He
has drifted hither and thither, and earned bread when he could. But for the Admiral, who hap-
pened upon him when he was at his lowest, death by starvation would have been his fate, he
thinks. It is seven months since he last saw Mary; and then she did not know him. A fall on
the ice injured her spine, and she is a helpless invalid. Her mind has failed. She is in the
tenement again, with her old father and mother.



Chapter 5

From George's Diary--the Same Day


AT THIS point I shifted the subject, for it was bearing too hard upon the young fellow's spir-
its--and upon mine too. I tried a reference to the monument, hoping that the change would
change his mood. It did.At the mere mention of Adam's name his temper rose with a flash,
and it was wonderful to see what a customarily reserved man can do with his tongue when an
inspiring theme comes its way. It was like Vesuvius in eruption. Lava, flame, earthquake,
sulphurous smoke, volleying explosions--it was all there, and all vindictive and unappeas-
able hostility and aversion. I sat enchanted, dumb, astonished, glad to be there, sorry when
the show was over.

One would have supposed Smith was talking about an intimate enemy--an enemy of last week, of
yesterday, of today, not of a man whom he had never seen, and who had been dust and ashes for
thousands of years. The reason for all this bitter feeling? It was very simple. "He brought
life into the world," said Smith. "But for him I should not have been born--nor Mary. Life
is a swindle. I hate him."

After a panting moment or two he brought forth another surprise for me. To-wit, he was unre-
servedly and enthusiastically in favor of the monument! In a moment he was in eruption again.
This time it was praises of Adam, gratitude to Adam, exaltation of his name. The reason of
this attitude? Smith explained it without difficulty:

"He brought death into the world. I love him for it." After a little he muttered, like one
in a reverie, "death the compassionate....the healer of hurts....man's only friend...." He
was interrupted, there--the bos'n came in for a sitting.

The bos'n didn't think much of me the first day or two, because there was an impression around
(emanating from David,) that I was a poet; but when he found that my trade was artist in paints
the atmosphere changed at once and he apologised quite handsomely. He had a great opinion of
artists, and said the Admiral was one. I said I was glad, and would like to see his pictures,
and the bos'n said--introducing a caution--

"That's all right, but don't let on. When you want anything that's private out of the Admiral,
don't let on. He might he in the mood, and he mightn't. As soon as the mood takes him he'll
open up on it himself--you'll see--but not any sooner. There ain't anybody that can unlock
him on a private lay till he's ready. Not even Miss Jimmy, not even Aunt Martha."

I said I should remember, and be careful. I repeated that I was glad the Admiral was an art-
ist. The bos'n responded, with feeling and emphasis.

"An artist he is--I can tell you that. Born to it, I think. And he ain't only just an artist,
he's a hell of an artist!"

The form of a compliment has nothing to do with its value--it is the spirit that is in it
that makes it gold or dross. This one was gold. This one was out of the heart, and I have
found that an ignorant hot one out of the heart tastes just as good as does a calm, judicial,
reasoned one out of an educated head. I hope to be a hell of an artist myself some day, and
hear the bos'n concede it.

As I was saying, the bos'n arrived. The ex-postman went away. I settled myself for a stage-
wait. The bos'n was just from the looking-glass, but no matter, he would prink again; his
first sitting had taught me this. But it was no matter, he couldn't well be uninteresting,
no matter what he might be doing, for he was good to look at; besides, he was generally talk-
ing, and his talk was not bosons. He was past sixty, but looked considerably younger, and
had a fine and tall figure and an athletic body--a most shapely man when standing before the
glass, with his artificial leg quiet. He had a handsome face and an iron jaw, and that tran-
quil and business-like eye which men and tigers have so much respect for. He is very like-
able. We chatted while he prinked. Mainly about Smith. Presently I said I was sorry to see
that Smith was a pessimist.

"A whichimist?" inquired the bos'n, turning a glance of interest at me over his shoulder,
while rearranging for the fourth time the sailor-knot in his flowing neckerchief.

"Pessimist."

"Good word. As good as they make. What's a pessimist?"

"The opposite of an optimist."

"Another one. What are they both?"

"An optimist is cheery and hopeful--looks on the bright side of things. A pessimist is just
the other way. Smith has no business to be a pessimist, he is too young."

"Is--is he? What's your age, Mr. Sterling?"

"Twenty-six."

"What's his?"

"About the same."

He came and took his seat and arranged his pose.

"He oughtn't to be a pee--pes--"

"Pessimist. No, he oughtn't. He has had trouble, he is in trouble, but at his age he oughtn't
to give himself up body and soul to his sorrows. He ought to be more of a man. Shutting him-
self up to selfishly brood over his troubles and pet them and magnify them is a poor business,
and foolish. He ought to look on the bright side of life."

"Now then," said the bos'n, "I'll set you right. Aunt Martha set me right when I was thinking
the same as you, and I'll pass it along--then you'll see the rights of it, too. Smith's made on
another pattern from you. Well, he can't help that. He didn't make his pattern, it was born to
him, the same as yours was born to you. Smith don't brood mainly over his troubles; he's built
so's 't he's got to suffer and sweat over everybody the's. You read the papers, don't you?"

"So does Smith. Do you read the telegraph news--all of it?"

"Yes, all of it."

"This morning, as usual?"

"Yes."

"How did you feel, after it--cheerful?"

"Yes. Why?"

"Comfortable?"

"I--well, I don't remember that I didn't."

"All right. It's the difference between you and Smith. He can't read the paper and not break
his heart. Other people's freebies near kill him. It's because he was born tender, you see--
not indifferent." I winced a little. He took up the paper and began a search, turning it this
way and that, and still talking along. "You see, if a person shuts himself up inside of him-
self and don't worry about anybody's troubles but his own, he....I can't seem to find the
telegraphs....he can get to be considerable of an octopus--"

"Optimist."

--"optimist, by and by, you know; and manly, and all that....oh, now I'm striking the tele-
graphs....and can look on the bright side of life and....here they area....admire himself."

He uttered that vicious sarcasm so absently and so colorlessly that for a quarter of a second
I hardly felt its teeth go in; then the bite took hold. I tried to look unaware, but I prob-
ably merely looked ashamed, and sorry I had exposed my self-complacency so brashly. He began
to read the head-lines; not with energy and emphasis, but with a studied seeming of indiffer-
ence and lack of interest which I took for a hint that perhaps that was my way of reading and
feeling such things:

"Child crushed by mobile before its mother's eyes."

"Factory burned, 14 young work-girls roasted alive; thousands look-ing on, powerless to help."

"Little Mary Walker not found yet; search relaxing; no hope left; father prostrate, mother
demented."

"Aged couple turned out in the snow with their small effects by landlord for lack of rent-
money; found et midnight by police, unconscious; rent-money due, $1.75."

I recognized all these items; I had already read them, but only with my eyes, my feelings
had not been interested, the sufferers being strangers; but the effect was different, now.
The words were the same, but each of them left a blister where it struck. I was ashamed,
and begged the bos'n to stop, and said I was a dog, and willing and even =does to confess
it. And so he softened, and put away the paper and said--

"Oh, I beg pardon; but as you said you'd already read them, I thought it wouldn't be any
harm to--to--why, Smith was up at daylight reading them. And b'god he was near to crying
over them!"

"Hang it, so am I, now, but--but--well, I never took the thing in, before."

"Oh, that's all right," said the bos'n, soothingly, "you ain't to blame, you can't help the
way you're made. And Smith, he can't help the way he's made. Land, he takes the whole suf-
fering world into his heart, and it gives him hell's-bells, I can tell yowl Why, Mr. Ster-
ling, that man takes into his inside enough of the human race's miseries in a day to last
a real manly man thirty years!"

"Oh, rub it in, I'm down, rub it in!"

"No,"--appealingly--"don't talk like that, Mr. Sterling, I'm not saying anything, I'm only
trying to show you that a person ain't to blame that's made--made--well, that's made the way
you be. So's 't you'll feel good."

"Oh, thanks, it's ever so kind of you! I haven't felt so good in a year."

"Now I'm right down glad of that. Say--Mr. Sterling, Smith ain't twenty-six, he's sixty."

"Lord, I understand, I understand!"

"Yes, that breed--people that's made that way--people that have to bear the world's miseries
on top of their own--why, it makes them old long before their time; they can't find any bright
side of life. Lord, yes, it makes them old, long, long before their time. But it's different with
your make, you know; you might live a thou--"

"Oh, let up, and change the subject! Haven't I said I'm a dog? Well, then, have some pity!"



Chapter 6

George's Diary--Continued


THE PAST few days have been like all the days I have spent in this house--full of satisfactions
for me.Every day the feeling of the day before is renewed to me--the feeling of having been
in a half-trance all my life before--numb, sluggish-blooded, sluggish-minded--a feeling which
is followed at once by a brisk sense of being out of that syncope and awake! awake and alive;
alive to my finger-ends. I realize that I am a veteran trader in shadows who has struck the sub-
stance. I have found the human race. It was all around me before, but vague and spectral; I
have found it now, with the blood in it, and the bones; and am getting acquainted with it. That
is, with the facts of it; I had the theories before. It is pleasant, charming, engrossing. In-
cidentally, I am also getting acquainted with myself. But it is no matter, it could not well
be helped, the bos'n is around so much. I do not really care.

I have not lost my interest in the monument--that will stay alive, there is no fear as to that
--but the human race has pushed it to second place.

The Admiral, of his own motion, is allowing me to use what he calls the ward-room as a studio.
It is spacious and airy, and has plenty of light. The derelicts and the friends of the derelicts
have the freedom of it, night and day. They come when they please, they sit around and chat,
they smoke and read, and the Admiral "pays the freight," as the slang phrase goes. And they sit
to me. They take an interest in each other's portraits, and are candid with criticisms. They
talk to me about themselves, and about each other. That I get the entire man--fourfifths of him
from himself and the other fifth from the others. I find that no man discloses the completing
fifth himself. Sometimes that fifth is to his credit, sometimes it isn't; but let it be which-
ever it may, you will never get it out of the man himself. It is the make of the man that deter-
mines it. The bos'n says there are no exceptions to this late. He says every man is a moon and
has a side which he toms toward no- body: you have to slip around behind if you want to see it.

I began on the Admiral's portrait this morning. Every derelict that happened in was at once in-
terested. They sat around and kept one eye on the brush, the other on the sitter, and talked.
It was very pleasant. "Uncle 'Rastus" was one of the group--Rastus Timson. He is a colored
man; 70 years old; large, compact, all big bone and muscle, very broad-shouldered, prodigiously
strong--can take up a barrel of beer and drink from the bung; shrewd, good-natured, has a sense
of humor; gets up his opinions for himself, and is courageous enough to change them when he
thinks he has found something better; is plain, sincere, and honest; is ready and willing to de-
bate deep questions, and gets along pretty well at it; has a pronounced Atlas-stoop, from carry-
ing mighty burdens upon his shoulders; wears what is left of a once hat--a soft ruin which slumps
to a shapeless rumple like a collapsed toy balloon when he drops it on the floor; the remains of
his once clothes hang in fringed rags and rotting shreds from his booms and yard-arms, and give
him the sorrowfully picturesque look of a ship that has been through a Cape Horn hurricane--not
recently, but in Columbus's time. He lives by such now-and-then whitewashing jobs as he can pick
up; was a Maryland slave before the War. In those distant times he was a Dunker Baptist; later,
a modified Methodist; later still, a Unitarian, with reservations; he is a freethinker now, and
unattached--"goes in a procession by himself, like Jackson's hog," as the bos'n phrases it. A
good man and a cheerful spirit; the other derelicts like him; his is a welcome face here.

He lives at "Aunty Phyllis's" humble boarding house, where the derelicts Jacobs and Cully put
up--"the Twins," as the bos'n calls them. Aunty Phyllis was born and brought up in Maryland--
Eastern Shore. She was a slave, before the War. She is toward seventy, stands six feet one in
her stockings, is as straight as a grenadier, and has the grit and the stride and the warlike
bearing of one. But, being black, she is good-natured, to the bone. It is the born privilege
and prerogative of her adorable race. She is cheerful, indestructibly cheerful and lively; and
what a refreshment she isl Her laugh her breezy laugh, her inspiring and uplifting laugh--is
always ready, always on tap, and comes pealing out, peal upon peal, right from her heart, let
the occasion for it be big or little; and it is so cordial and so catching that derelict after
derelict has to forget his troubles and join in--even the ex-postman.

She is a Methodist, and as profoundly and strenuously religious as Uncle 'Rastas isn't. The
pair are close friends in other things, but in the greater matter of religion--well, they debate
that. Pretty much all the time; at least Aunty Phyllis debates it and 'Rastas listens; he does
not get much chance to air his side. There is apparently but one text: are there such things
as special provi-dences, or aren't there? Aunty Phyllis "knows" there are, 'Rastas denies it.
It is going to take time to settle this. Both belligerents were on hand to-day, and of course
there was a debate; but when I began on the Admiral's portrait the new interest suspended it.

After some general chat the Admiral drifted into the matter of the monument, and I was glad
of that, for his views regarding Adam had only been hinted, as yet, not developed.

"As concerns Adam in general," said the Admiral, "I have been thinking him over several days,
and I have to stand where I stood before; I have to rank him with the minor sacred charac-
ters, like Satan. But I want to be fair to Adam, and I make allowances; he hadn't had Satan's
experiences, he hadn't Satan's age; if he had have had, I don't say but what it might have
been different. But we have to judge by the facts we have, we can't go behind the record; we
have to look at what he did, not at his might-have-dones. Adam was only a child, when you do
him square justice, and so I don't hold him down to the mark the way I do Satan--I make al-
lowances. Now then, you want to put Adam out of your minds, and take another child--it's the
only way to get a right focus on the situation and understand it, because you've always been
bred up to the fact that Adam was a full grown man, and so you forget to remember that he
could be a man and a child both at the same time, and was. Well, put another child in his
place. You say to that child, 'let this orange alone: The child understands that--ain't it
so? Ain't it so, Aunty Phyllis?"

"Yes, manse Stormfield, de child un'stan'."

"Next, you say to the child, 'if you disobey, arrested development and ultimate extinction
shall be your portion.' What does that mean, Aunty Phyllis?"

"Umhh! Bless yo' soul, honey, if I was to die for it I couldn't tell you!"

Of course those long words compelled her wonder and admiration and brought out of her a pow-
erful laugh--it was her way of expressing applause.

"What does it mean, 'Rastus?"

"Deed'n'deed, I don't know, manse Stormfield."

"Why don't you know?"

"Becaze I hain't ever struck dem words befo'."

"Very well, that was the case with Adam. How was he going to know what 'surely die' meant?
Die! He hadn't ever struck that word before; he hadn't ever seen a dead creature, there hadn't
ever been a dead creature for him to see; there hadn't ever been any talk about dead things,
because there hadn't ever been any dead things to talk about."

He paused, and waited for the new idea to take hold. Presently Aunty Phyllis said--

"Well, dat do beat met But it's so--I never see it befo'. It's so, sure as you bawn. Po'
thing, it didn't mean nothin' to him, no mo'n de 'rested distinction mean to me when I
hain't ever beam 'bout it befo'."

The other derelicts granted that this was a new view, and sound. Sound and surprising. The
Admiral was charmed. He resumed.

"Now then, Adam didn't understand. Why didn't he come out and say so? Why didn't he ask what
'surely die' meant? Wouldn't he, if he had felt scared? If he had understood those awful words he
would have been scared deaf and dumb and paralysed, wouldn't he? Aunty Phyllis, if they had been
said to you, you would have left the apple alone, wouldn't you?"

"Yes, marse Stormfield, I mos' sholy would."

"I wouldn't teetched it if it was de las' act," said Uncle 'Rastas, fervently.

"Very well, it shows that he didn't suppose it was anything serious. The same with Eve.
Just two heedless children, you see. They supposed it was some little ordinary punish-
ment--they hadn't ever had any other kind; they didn't know there was any other kind.
And to it was easy for Satan to get around them and persuade them to disobey."

The mother-heart of Aunt Phyllis was touched, and she said--"Po' little Adam--po' lit-
tle Eve! It was de same lflce my little Henry: if I say, 'doh you is, a-snoopin"roun'
dat sugar agin; you dast to tetch it once, I lay I'll skin you!' Cose de minute my
back's turned he's got de sugar; 'caw he don't Wyer nothin' for de skinnin', de way
I skun him. Yes-suh, I kin see it all, now--dey didn't k'yer nothin' for de skinnin',
de way de good Lord allays skun 'ern befo'."

Uncle 'Rastas highly admired this speech, and admitted it, which greatly pleased Aunt
Phyllis. 'Rastas added--

"It's plain to me, dey wam't fa'rly treated. If de was a Adam--which people says now-
adays de wasn't. But dat ain't nothin, justice is justice, en I want him to have de
monument."

"Me too!" from Aunt Phyllis.

Two new converts. I was prospering. The Admiral proceeded with his examination of Adam.

"As far as I can see, he showed up best in naming animals. Considering that he hadn't
ever seen any animals before, I am of the opinion that he did it very well indeed, as
far as he got. He had a sure touch, on the common ones--named them with insight and ju-
dacity, and the names stick, to this day, after all the wear and tear they've been
through; it was when he struck the big ones and the long ones that he couldn't cash-
in. Take the omithorhyncus, for instance."The music of it and the majestic outlandish-
ness of it broke Aunty Phyllis up again, and it took her a while to laugh out her ad-
miring astonishment.

"Omithorhyncus." The Admiral paid out the great word lingeringly; it tasted good to him.
"As we know, he skipped the ornithorhyneus. Left him out of the invoice. Why?"

He looked blandly around for answers. The others showed diffidence about entering the
field, but Aunty Phyllis ventured--

"'Fraid of him, I bet you! I wouldn't gone anear him, not for pier 'Rastas turned upon
her and said argumentatively--

"You old fool, what does you know about him?"

"You mine yo' manners, 'Rastas Timson, er I lay I'll take 'n wipe de flo' wid youl What
does I know 'bout him! I reckon I knows dis much: dey never gin him no name like dat
less'n he deserve it. So dah, now!"

'Rastas--with the grateful air of one who has received new light--"Well, it--yas, it
sutenly do look reasonable. When a body git a name like dat, a body deserve it."
(Thoughtful pause.) "Same like Phyllis."

The Admiral lifted his hand, and Phyllis quenched the battle-light in her eye, and re-
served her retort. The dipsomaniac Strother, a dreamy and melancholy wreck, muttered
absently, with a sigh--

"Ornitho...tho...rhyncus. Sounds like...like...well, I know I've had it."

The Admiral resumed--

"In my judgment the alphabet was just beginning to accumulate, in that early day, and
there wasn't much of it yet, and so it seems reasonable that he had to skip it because
he couldn't spell it." The company did not need to speak out their praise of this strik-
ing and happy solution, their faces did the office of their tongues, and did it with an
eloquence beyond the arts of speech. After a little, Jimson Flinders--young colored gen-
tleman--stenographer, sub-editor of his race's paper--visitor--dressy--thinker, in a way
--somewhat educated --said, with honest admiration--

"Why, it's so simple and plain and dead-sure, that what makes me wonder, is, that there
didn't somebody hit on it long and long ago." This brought emphatic nods of agreement and
approval, and the Admiral could not entirely conceal his pleasure. He took up his theme
again.

"Adam skipped a lot of the creatures. This has been the astonishment of the world for--
well, from away back. Ages, as you may say. But you can see, now, how it was. He didn't
want to skip, he wanted to do his honest duty, but there he was--he hadn't the ammunition.
He was equipped for short names, but not the others. If a bear came along --all right, he
was loaded for bear. There was no embarrassment. The same if a cow came along; or a cat,
or a horse, or a lion, or a tiger, or a hog, or a frog, or a worm, or a bat, or a snipe,
or an ant, or a bee, or a trout, or a shark, or a whale, or a tadpole--anything that
didn't strain his alphabet, you know: they would find him on post and tranquil; he would
register them and they would pass on, discussing their names, most of them pleased--such
as leopards and scarlet tanagers and such, some of them pained--such as buzzards, and al-
ligators, and so on, the others ashamed--such as squids, and polecats, and that kind; but
all resigned, in a way, and reconciled, reconnizing that he was new to the business and
doing the best he could. Plain sailing, and satisfactory, you see. But in the course of
trade, along comes the pterodactyl--"

There was a general gasp.

"Could he spell that? No, sir. Solomon couldn't. Nor no other early Christian--not in that
early time. It was very different from now, in those days. Anybody can spell pterodactyl
now, but--"

The eager and the ignorant interrupted the Admiral and asked him to instruct them in that
formidable orthography, but he shivered slightly and hastened on, without seeming to hear--

-"but in those old early geological times the alphabet hadn't even got up to the Old Red
Sandstone period yet, and it was worse in Adam's time, of course; so, as he didn't want
to let on that he couldn't spell it, he just said, 'Call again, office hours over for to-
day,' and pulled down the shades and locked up and went home, the same as if nothing had
happened.

"It was natural, I think, and right enough, too. I would have done it; most people would.
Well, he had a difficult time, limited the way he was, and it is only fair for us to take
that into account. Every few days along would come an animal as big as a house--grazing
along, eating elephants and pulling down the synagogues and things: 'Dinosauriumiguanodon,'
says Adam; 'tell him to come Sunday;' and would close up and take a walk. And the very
next day, like enough, along comes a creation a mile long, chewing rocks and scraping
the hills away with its tail, and lightening and thundering with its eyes and its lungs,
and Eve scoops up her hair over her arm and takes to the woods, and Adam says `Megather-
iomylodonticoplesiosauriasticum--give him his first syllable and get him to take the rest
on the instalment plan: which it seems to me was one of the best ideas Adam ever had,
and in every way creditable to him. He had to save some of the alphabet, he couldn't
let one animal have it all, it would not have been fair, anyway.

"I will say it again, I think Adam was at his level best when he was naming the crea-
tures, and most to be praised. If you look up your fossiliferous paleontology, I ack-
nowledge you will have to admit that where he registered one creature he skipped three
hundred and fifty, but that is not his fault, it was the fault of his alphabet-plant.
You can't build a battleship out of a scrap-heap. Necessarily he couldn't take the
whole of one of those thirteen-syllabers and pay spot cash; the most he could do was
to put up a margin. Well, you know what happens to that kind of financing."



Chapter 7

George's Diary--Continued


AT THIS point the march.a came tripping girlishly forward from the other end of the
ward-room, the bos'n half-spiraling along after her, pivoting on his game leg--with a
corky squeak--and fetching a curve with his good one, in accordance with the require-
ments of his loco. motion-plant. The poor old girl was girlishly indignant about some-
thing--one could see it in her eyes and in her manner. She came straight to the Admi-
ral and broke into his discourse with a complaint against the bos'n. Another man
would have been annoyed; the Admiral was not. He is frequently a little sharp with
the marchesa, but as a rule he soon softens and looks remorseful and begins to betray
his discomfort and repentance in ways which beg forgiveness without humbling him to
the spoken prayer. It is a mystery; I don't understand it. She is fretful, offensive,
ungracious, disagreeable, ungrateful, impossible to please, and I can't see why these
people don't fly out at her every day and give her what she deserve. But they don't.
They put up with it, they are mistakenly gentle with her, and of course she gom right
on. Every time I think the bos'n is going to let her have it, he most strangely doesn't.
He says irritating things to her whenever he can think of any to say, but there is no
viciousness in them, no temper; often they are merely idiotic, yet he is not idiotic.
He doesn't seem to know they are idiotic; they seem to drop out of him without intent-
ion and without consciousness. But they irritate the marchesa, and then he don't seem
to understand why they should. If he would give her a dre.ing-down once, it would do
her good. And he is quite competent. But no, she can't seem to exasperate him into a
harshness. The same with Jimmy and Aunt Martha: they are persistently and devilishly
kind to her, in spite of all she can do. They even strain the human possibilities to
be benevolent to her: for they go with her daily on her long and objectless tramps a-
bout the streets, and she in that outrage that she wears--tricked out in a gay and
girly costume which is all of twenty years too young for her; and stared at, and she
and her escort laughed at, by everybody that com. along, of course. What can the mys-
tery be? Every time I think the bos'n is going to explain it, he don't. The some with
Jimmy and Aunt Martha. And they are all like what the boss said about the Admiral: if
you want to get at his privacies, wait till it suits him to start the subject himself
--you will get nothing by trying to start it. Every night the Admiral prays for the
salvation of that unnamed person again, and I would like to know if it is himself, but
I suppose I must wait until some member of the family starts the subject. This only
keeps my curiosity fretting, and does no good. I have to assume that it is the Admiral,
and it is not pleasant--a bluff and open self-appreciation is more in his line.

The marchesa's temper was pretty well up; she was flushed, and her lips quivered ner-
vously. The Admiral listened patiently to her charges; respectfully, too, though there
was nothing in them. It turned out that she and the bos'n had been having a scrap over
the Rev. Caleb Parsons--again. This was a visitor--not a derelict. He is what we call
a "regular," as distinguished from casual visitors to the Anchor Weeds. He is disliked.
That is enough for the marchcsa: she always manages to like--or think she likes--who-
ever or whatever is disliked by the rest of us. So she is championing Mr. Parsons in
these days--just as she had championed Satan until the Admiral took him under his wing
that night, then she turned against him, horns, hoofs and all, and was so bitter that
she said she wouldn't lend him a shovel of coal if he was freezing to death. That is
what the bos'n said she said, but she denied it and was in a great fury about it, and
said she never said coal at all, she said brimstone. As if that made any great differ-
ence! And she complained to the Admiral and said the bos'n was always distorting her
words and making them seem worse than they were, and she wanted him punished;
whereas the bos'n complained that she was always distorting his words. And he was
right. So was she. Both of them were persistently guilty of that same offence.

As I have said, the Watch did not like Rev. Mr. Parsons; it was not because he wasn't
a good enough man, and well-meaning, but because. he hadn't any .talent and was over-
sentimental. He was always getting thunderstruck over the commonest every-day
things the Creator did and saying "Lo, what God hath wrought!" The bos'n called him
Lo, for short, the Anchor Watch adopted it, and this aggravated the marchesa, and
she added it to her list of grudges against the bos'n, and between them they made
it do good service in their debates. It was upon trifles like this that the marchesa
lived and throve.

As usual, the present charges were of no consequence, and not worth coming to the
Admiral about, but hc listened, good man, without fret. She wanted the bos'n put in
irons--a thing she was always longing to accomplish, but she never could. She had
two or three of these little charges this time. To begin with, she said she was re-
marking upon Mr. Parsons's early history and how good he was, and at last had his
reward and heard God call him to His ministry; and she said the bos'n interrupted her
and said it was probably an echo, the call was from the other direction--

And she was going on to give the bos'n down the banks, when the Admiral put up his
hand for silence. Then he sat there and thought it out. Thought it out, and gave his
verdict. To this effect: that the sky can't produce an echo, for the sky is made of
air and emptiness; a call coming from below would have to have something hard and
solid tee hit against and rebound from, otherwise it would keep on going and never
be heard of again: so, as this call was heard, it is proof that it did not come from
below; not coming from below, it could not be an echo, and wasn't; not being an echo,
it had to come down from above, and did; therefore, the bos'n was "in the wrong, and
is decided against. But there is no punishment, no harm being intended. We will
pass to the nod charge if you please, madam."

The marchesa blazed out and denounced the verdict as being "rotten with nepotism:"
and on top of that she shook her little nubbin of a fist in the Admiral's face and
called him plainly and squarely a "hardened and shameless old nepot."

The Admiral winced, but made no retort. Everybody was shocked and offended, and Aunty
Phyllis spoke out without reserve and said it warn't to nobody's credit to live on
the Admiral's goodness and hostility and then call him a teapot. The marchesa would
have resented this, and Aunty Phyllis cleared for action and invited her to come on,
but the Admiral interfered. Then once more he asked for the next charge, and the
marchesa furnished it:

"He said I was so deaf I couldn't read fine print."

The Admiral's face clouded up and he gave the bos'n a severe look and said--

"Torn Larkin, what do you say to this charge?"

The bos'n answered, without bitterness, but in a wounded tone--"I give you the honest
truth, sir, I never said it. She is always distorting my words. All I said was, that
she was so near-sighted she couldn't hear it thunder."

The Admiral went away down down into this difficult thing with a patience and a judi-
cial calm that were beyond belief. He reasoned it out, detail by detail, and decided
that both parties were in the wrong--because:

"Deafness has nothing to do with reading fine print--it is a matter of vision, not
auricularity. Therefore the charge has no legal standing, no basis; it falls to the
ground of its own weight. The defendant was in the wrong to make it, it not being
true; but the plaintiff cannot daim that it is a slander, because, true or untrue,
it is merely an infirmity, and innocent of criminality, all infirmities being visit-
ations of God and visitations of God being not actionable, by reason of lack of jur-
isdiction. The other charge is of the same nature, substantially. Whether true or
false, the act of not being able to hear it thunder on the part of a near-sighted
person is not reprehensible, because not intentional, not dependent the one upon the
other, and both coming under the head of infirmities--hence properly recognizable as
visitations of God and not actionable, therefore not slanderous, by reason of lack of
jurisdiction. And so it is manifest that both parties to these charges are guilty:
the defendant for making them with probable intent to slander, and the plaintiff for
claiming them as slanders when they are not slanders because based upon infirmities
and not avoidable. And both parties arc innocent, of a necessity, considering the
circumstances; the defendant being innocent of accomplishing his probable design,
and the plaintiff through not being able to convict him of it, although such Was her
intention. The ms. are dismissed."

Sometimes he makes my head ache, it is so difficult to understand him. And I can't
see how he understands himself, when he strips and goes floundering out into these
tumbling seas of complexities, but he probably does; thinks he does, I know; and cer-
tainly he always gets through, and wades ashore looking refreshed and all right.



Chapter 8

George's Diary--Continued


I HAD the hope that we were going to get back to Adam, now, but it failed. The march-
esa was not in any degree satisfied with the way things had gone with her, and she
could not reconcile herself to the idea of leaving these so; and so she begged for
one more chance. The Admiral sighed, and told her to go ahead; go ahead, and try
to let this be the last, for the present. Whereupon she accused the been to this
effect:

"He said I said the lack of money is the root of all evil. I never said it. I was quot-
ing, and said the love of money is the root of all evil."

The Admiral's eyes flashed angrily and he burst out with--

"Another of your damned trivialities! Now look here, marcheesa--"

He stopped there. His lips remained parted, the fire in his eyes sank down to a smoul-
der. He sat like that--thinking--and he had that faraway look which comes upon him
when something has hit his thought a blow and stunned it, or sent it wandering in
other fields. In the stillness he loomed there on his raised platform like that,
looking like a bronze image, he was so motionless. We sat looking at him, and wait-
ing. You could hear the faint wailing of the winds outside, rising and falling, ris-
ing and falling, you could catch the rumble and murmur of the distant traffic. Pre-
sently he muttered, as to himself--

"The lack of money....the lack....is the root of all evil. The...."

He fell silent again. There was no passion in his face, now; the harshness had pass-
ed out of it and left only gentleness. As one in a reverie, his eyes began to drift to
this figure and that and the other, and dwell a little space upon each--dreamily, and
no words uttered. Naturally my gaze journeyed with his.

Lord, those pathetic figures! Here, and there and yonder they hung limp upon their
chairs, lost to the present, busy with the past, the un-returning past--there,
brooding, they hung, the defeated, the derelicts! They all had a droop; each a
droop of his own, and each telling its own story, without need of speech. How el-
oquent is an attitude--how much it can sayI When a silence falls, we who are alive
start out of our thoughts and look about us, but it descends upon these dead-in-
hope like the benediction of night, and conveys them gently out of this workaday
world and the consciousness of it.

There sat Strother the dipsomaniac, his graying head drooped, gazing at the floor--
and not seeing it. He was awake only a moment ago, he is dreaming now, already. A
flabby ruin, his flesh colorless and puffy with drink, his nerves lax, his hands
uncertain and quivery. You would not think it, but he was a man, once; and held
up his head with the best; and had money to waste--and wasted it and had a wife
who lived in the light of his eyes; and four children who loved him with a love
that made him proud, and paid him a homage that made him humble, so innocent and
honest and exaggerated it was. Well, his money is gone, the respect of men is gone,
his self-respect is gone, his life is bankrupt; of all his possessions nothing is
left but five accusing graves, and memories that tear his heart!

Near by, droop "the Twins." They are always together. In a bygone time Jacobs was
rich, and his money made him happy--happier than anything else could have made
him. Cully was his coachman. Speculation impoverished Jacobs; sudden and great
wealth came to Cully from a departed Australian uncle, and Jacobs became Gully's
coachman. By and by, speculation made a pauper of Cully. New in their gray age
they are derelicts. The Admiral finds odd jobs for them when he can, their bro-
ther derelicts helping in this when opportunity offers. They board cheaply with
Aunty Phyllis's humble colored waifs and hand-to-mouths, and come here to dream
their great days over again, and count up the money they used to have, and mourn
over this and that and the other disastrous investment, and reason out, for the
thousandth time, just how each mistake came sobs made, and how each and all of
them could have been so easily avoided if they had only done so and so. Then they
sigh and sorrow over those dreary "onlies"....and take up the tale again, and go
wearying over it, and over it, and over it, in the same old weather-worn and goalless
track, poor old fellows!

Other derelicts sit drooping, here and there--the forgotten ex-Senator, once so il-
lustrious and so powerful; the ragged General, once so great, once so honored--long
ago; the Poet, once so popular and to prosperous, until he took a stand for straight
talk and principle, and lost his place on the magazine and never could get another
start. And to on and so on, derelict after derelict--a melancholy landscape to cast
your eye over. And beyond them, walking wearily to and fro, to and fro, to and fro,
like a tired animal in a cage, is Peters the inventor. He is always doing that. I
wonder when he rests? If you speak to him he gives you a dazed look and a wan smile,
and takes up his dreary tramp again. He scraped and scraped, spent and spent, and
was always going to get his great invention launched--next month--the month after,
sure--then, oh, then the roses would come back to his young wife's cheeks, and she
would have silks to her back, only just wait a little while! And he saw her youth
pass, and age come, and the patient face fade toward the inevitable--and that came,
and left him forlorn, to fight his fight alone. Always the vision was rising before
him of a capitalist--a capitalist who would give his great invention to the world
and add another splendid factor to its advancing civilization and its fabulous
forces. There was nothing. needed but that capitalist--who never came. In his des-
peration, Peters committed a forgery, and sat in a prison five years, eating his
heart out. Now be walks the floor, and dreams of what might have been--what might
have been--what might have been! if only the capitalist had come!

The ex-postman haunts his neighborhood--out of a natural fellow-feeling for him,
perhaps; and droops his head and dreams of his ruined life, and of how it came
about.

The Admiral was still gazing, lost in thought. He came to himself, now, and said,
very quietly--

"The lack of....both are true! The case is dismissed."

I thought it a good verdict, but the marchesa was of another opinion--mainly be-
cause she was disappointed again, most likely--and she began to ran against it
fiercely. Nobody interrupted her, and she kept it up until she ran out of vitriol.
But it did good service. Its electricity cleared the air; drove away the gloom,
and let in some cheerfulness. We all felt better, the Admiral chinked up and was
himself again. I think he was grateful to the marchesa; he looked so, and he said
to her, in almost a petting way, as it seemed to me--

"Let it go, marcheesa, put it behind you and lees go about and try a slant up to
wind'ard, so to spelk, and forget about it--change the subject, you understand, if
we can find one. It's wholesome--a change is --if a person hits it right."

Two or three suggested a return to Adam, and wanted to hear the rest about him,
in case there was anything lacking to make his rehabilitation complete. It flatter-
ed the Admiral, and he looked nearly as gratified as he was.

"Well," he said, reflectively, "let me see. Since you want it, I think there's a
word more that I would like to say. Only just a word, in palliation of his simple-
ness and unworldliness, as you may say. Eve's, too. I think it was beautiful, the
amount they didn't know about common ordinary things. Take the matter of clothes,
for instance. It is perfectly astonishing,, the way they would go about like--like
that. And perfectly unconcerned, too. But I am not reproaching them for it--no,
just the contrary. They are to be praised. They had the right kind of modesty, to
my mind--the kind that ain't aware of itself. I think it's a much better sort than
these statutes that stand around in parks with a fig-leaf on to set a good example.
I believe it's a mistake. Who ever follows it? Nobody. Adam and Eve didn't think
about their modesty, didn't fuss about it, didn't even know they had it; and so it
was sound modesty, real modesty; whereas some people would have gone blustering
around. The more I think of those beautiful lives of theirs, the more I lean to the
idea of the monument.

"And there's other reasons. Adam is fading out. It is on account of Darwin and that
crowd. I can see that he is not going to last much longer. There's a plenty of signs.
He is getting belittled to a germ--a little bit of a speck that you can't see with-
out a microscope powerful enough to raise a gnat to the size of a church. They take
that speck and breed from it: first a flea, then a fly, then a bug, then cross
these and get a fish, then a raft of fishes, all kinds, then cross the whole lot
and get a reptile, then work up the reptiles till you've got a supply of lizards
and spiders and toads and alligators and Congressmen and so on, then cross the en-
tire lot again and get a plant of amphibiums, which are half-breeds and do business
both wet and dry, such as turtles and frogs and ornithorhyncuses and so on, and
cross-up again and get a mongrel bird, sired by a snake and dam'd by a bat, result-
ing in a pterodactyl, then they develop him, and water his stock till they've got
the air filled with a million things that wear feathers, then they cross-up all the
accumulated animal life to date and fetch out a mammal, and start-in diluting again
till there's cows and tigers and rats and elephants and monkeys and everything you
want down to the Missing Link, and out of him and a mermaid they propagate Man, and
there you are! Everything ship-shape and finished-up, and nothing to do but lay low
and wait and see if it was worth the time and expense.

"Well, then, was it? To my mind, it don't stand to reason. They say it took a hund-
red million years. Suppose you ordered a Man at the start, and had a chance to look
over the plans and specifications--which would you take, Adam or the germ? Naturally
you would say Adam is business, the germ ain't; one is immediate and sure, the other
is speculative and uncertain. Well, I have thought these things all over, and my
sympathies are with Adam. Adam was like us, and so he seems near to us, and dear.
He is kin, blood kin, and my heart goes out to him in affection. But I don't feel
that way about that germ. The germ is too far away--and not only that, but such a
wilderness of reptiles between. You can't skip the reptiles and set your love on the
germ; no, if they are ancestors, it is your duty to include them and love them. Well,
you can't do that. You would come up against the dinosaur and your affections would
cool off. You couldn't love a dinosaur the may you would another relative. There
would always be a gap. Nothing could ever bridge it. Why, it gives a person the dry
gripes just to look at him!

"Very well, then, where do We arrive? where do we arrive with our respect, our homage,
our filial affection? At Adam! At Adam, every time. We can't build a monument to a
germ, but we can build one to Adam, who is in the may to turn myth in fifty years
and be entirely forgotten in two hundred. We can build a monument and save his name
to the world forever, and we'll do it! What do you say?"

It was carried, with a fine enthusiasm; and it was beautiful to see the pleasure beam
out all over the Admiral when that tribute burst forth. My own pleasure was no less
than his; for with his favor enlisted in my enterprise, it was recognizable that a
great step had been made toward the accomplishment of the grandest dream of my life.



Chapter 9

The Diary Continued


TEN DAYS LATER. The derelicts get a certain easment by talking to me about their sor-
rows. I can see it. I thought it was because my sympathy was honest and prompt. That
is true, it is a part of it, the bos'n says, but not all of it. The rest of it, he
says, is, that I am new. They have told their stories to each other many times, for
grief is repetitious; and this kind of wear eventually blunts a listener's interest
and discourages the teller, then both parties retire within their shells and feed
upon that slow-starving diet, Introspection. But a new ear, an untired ear, a fresh
and willing and sympathetic ear--they like that!

About a week ago the bos'n said another thing:

"They've all one burden to their song, haven't they?"

"Yes. Sorrow."

"Right enough, but there's more than one kind of sorrow. There's the kind that you
haven't helped to bring about--family bereavements, and such; and then there's the
kind that comes of things you did, your own self, and would do so different if it
was to do over again."

"Yes, I get the idea. That kind is repentance. It's when you have done a wrong thing."

"You've got the name right--repentance. But you don't cover enough ground with it.
Repentance ain't confined to doing wrong, sometimes you catch it just as sharp for
doing right."

I doubted that, and said it was against experience.

"No against teaching," the bos'n retorted. "You get taught, right along up, that if
you always do the rightest you can, your conscience will pat you on the back and be
satisfied; but experience learns a person that there's exceptions to the rule. We've
got both kinds here." We couldn't argue it any further, because there was an inter-
ruption. Aunt Martha of the welcome face and the lovely spirit shone in upon us like
another sunbeam, for a moment, to say the Admiral wanted the large Atlas and couldn't
find it, and did the bos'n know where it was? Yes, and said he would go and send for
it right away, adding, "it got left behind at Hell's Delight when we broke camp there
--I forgot it."

That cost a private summer resort, instituted by the Admiral for the derelicts.
Hell's Delight was not its official name; in fact it never had one. In the beginning
the Rev. Lo-what-God-hath-Wrought had called it "The Isles of the Blest," and every
one liked it, but when the bos'n got to referring to it by that other name it was
soon adopted because it was short and unpretentious, and the pretty one fell into
disuse and was forgotten.

I began to take note, and presently found that the bos'n was right about the conflict-
ing sources of repentance. The revealments of my sitters showed that several of them
were penitents of the class that regret and grieve over righteous things done. It cost
me a pang to have to register these exceptions to the fairer and pleasanter law of my
teaching and training, but it had to be done, the hard facts of experience put in
their claim and stood by it and made it good.

For instance, there was the case of Henry Clarkson, Poet: the derelict with the deep
eyes, the melancholy eyes, the haunting eyes, the hollow face, the thin hands, the
frail figure--draped in that kind of clothes that hang, droop, shift about the person
in unstable folds and wrinkles with every movement, take a grip nowhere, and seem to
have nothing in them. He is old, yet is not gray, and that unpleasant incongruity
makes him seem older than he really is; his hair is long and black, and hangs lank
and straight down beside his face and reminds one of Louis Stevenson.

The first stage of his life went well enough. He struggled up, poor and unaware of
it, his heart full of the joy of life and the dance-music of hope, his head full of
dreams. He climbed and climbed, diligently, laboriously, up through mean employments,
toward a high and distant goal, and there was pleasure in it. He kept his eye fixed
steadily on that goal, expecting to make it, determined to make it, and he did make
it, and stood on that high place exultant, and looked out over the world he had con-
quered with his two hands. Far down on the earth stood the memory of him, the vision
of him--shop-boy, errand-boy, anything you please; and here he stood, now, on this
dizzy alp, at twenty-eight, his utmost ambition attained: literary person, rising poet,
first assistant editor of a magazine!

It was a wonderful thing to see, how the old dead fires flamed up in his eyes when
he got to that proud climax and stood again in fancy upon that great summit and sur-
veyed his vanquished world! And he lingered there lovingly, and told me all about
the sublimities of the position, and the honors and attentions it brought him; told
me how the greatest in the region round about fellowed him with themselves, and fam-
iliarly chatted and laughed with him, and consulted him on large affairs; and how
there was a seat for him at the dais-table of every banquet, and his name on the
program for a stirring poem; and how satisfied with him the aging editor-in-chief
was, and how it was well understood and accepted that he was to be that great func-
tionary's successor, all in good time....

He was so eager, so earnest, so inspired, so happy, so proud, in the pouring forth
of these moving memories, that he made me lose myself! I was no longer I, he was no
longer the mouldering derelict: be lived his sumptuous and coruscating romance over
again under my eyes, and it was all as if I was in it and living it with him! How
real it was!

Then all of a sudden we crumbled to ash., as it were! For his tale turned down-hill
on the sunset side; his voice and his face lost their animation; the pet of fortune,
All,: courted of men, was gone, the faded derelict was back again--all in a moment.
It seemed to make a chill in the air.

He told me how his ruin came about, and how little he was expecting it, how poorly
prepared for it. Everything was going well with him. He had recently seen one of his
grandest dreams come to fruit: he had issued his poems in a volume; a fine large step
for a person who had been of the ephemerals before; he felt that permanent fame, real
fame, even national fame, was close ahead of him, toot. The poems wouldn't bring mo-
ney, but that was nothing, poems are not written for that. And he had made still an-
other large step--his idol had appointed the wedding day. The pair had been waiting
until the editorial salary should reach a figure that would support two in a fairly.
adequate way. It had reached it, now, and would by and by double with the impending
chief-editorship. Well, it was at this time of all times, when the poet's sun was
blazing at high noon, that the disaster fell.

He made a discovery one morning, while reading proof. It was an article in praise of
an enterprise which some unusually good people were getting up for the profit of the
working girl, the mechanic, the day laborer, the widow, the orphan--for all, indeed,
who might have poor little hoards earning mere pennies in savings banks. These could
get into the enterprise on the instalment plan, and on terms so easy that the poor-
est could not feel the burden. For the first year the dividend would be ten per cent
--not a mere possible or probable ten per cent, but "guaranteed." In the second year
this would certainly be increased by fifty per cent, and in all probability doubled.
Parties proposing to subscribe for the stock must lose no time. It could be had at
par during thirty days; after that, for thirty days, the price would be 1.25; after
which the price would be augmented by another 25.

The discoverer was as happy as Columbin. He had saved the magazine! But for the ac-
cident that he had happened to be reading proof that morning, to relieve the proof-
reader of a part of his burden and hasten the "make-up," this vile masked advertise-
ment would almost certainly have gone into the forms, escaping detection until too
late. He canied the poisonous thing to the sanctum, and laid it before the chief ed-
itor. Without a word; for he did not want to betray his joy and pride in his lucky
achievement. The chief ran his eye over the opening paragraph, then looked blandly
up and said--

"Well?"

That was all. No astonishment, no outraged feelings, no--well, no nothing. just tran-
quillity. Not even a compliment to the discoverer. Young Clarkson .s very much sur-
prised--not to say stunned. It took him a little while to find some words to say.
Then, said he--

"Please read a little more of it, and you will see that it is really a masked adver-
tisement--smuggled past the staff by the advertising agent, without doubt."

"Umm. You think so, do you?"

"I feel sure of it, sir. It came near getting into the forms; I stopped it just in
time."

"You did, did you?"

"Yes, sir."

The chief's manner was very calm, very placid, almost uncomfortably so.

"Mr. Clarkson, have you been officially authorized to stop articles?" A faint red
tinge appeared in the chief's cheek and a just perceptible glimmer as of summer
lightnings in his eye when he said this.

"Oh, no, sir, certainly not! I only thought-- "

"Then will you be kind enough to tell me why you took it upon yourself to stop this
one?"

"I--I--why, I hardly know what to say, I am so--so unpre--I thought I was doing the
magazine a great service to stop it--and time was precious."

"Umm. What was your objection to the article?"

"If you would only read it, Mr. Haskell! then you would see what it is, and you would
approve what I did. I meant no harm, I was only--If you will read it, you will see
that it is just the old wrecked "Prize-Guess" swindle hidden under a new name. It rob-
bed hundreds of thousands of poor people of their savings before, and is starting out
now to do the like again. The magazine's moral character and reputation are without
spot, and this article could heavily damage these great assets; and so I at once--"

"Yes, you did Well, well, let it go, I think you meant well. Sit down; I will throw some
light."

Henry took a seat, wondering what kind of light he was going to get. The chief said--

"I do not wish to mince matters, and I will be perfectly frank. This is a great and
prosperous periodical; to continue so, it must sail with the times. The times are
changing--o'e must change with them, or drop behind in the race. Very well, this is
immoral advertising and iniquitous, but the others are engaging in it, and we've got
to fall into line. Our board of directors have so decided. It pays quintuple rates,
you see; that hits them where they live. It is odious, it is infamous, it kept me
awake several nights, thinking of the shame of it--that this should come upon my
gray head after an honorable life! .... But it is bread and butter; I have a family;
I am old, I could not get another place at my time of life if I should lose this one;
I must stick to it while my strength lasts. I have had principles, and have never
dishonored them--you will grant me that?"

"Indeed I do--oh, out of my heart!"

"Well, they are gone, I have turned them out of doors--I could not afford them. Ah,
you stung me so, when you brought this accusing thing here! I was getting wonted to
my chains, my slavery, by keeping them out of sight. I wanted to strike you for re-
minding me."

"Forgive me! I did not know what I was doing."

"Oh, it wasn't you--it was myself, slapping my own face over your shoulder, so to
speak. I have succumbed, Benson has succumbed. He wrote that article--by command of
the directors. Henry, you have a good place here. In time you will step into my shoes,
Benson into yours. I will not advise you--that is, urge you--I cannot venture such
a responsibility as that--but if you are willing to stay with us under the new con-
ditions, I shall be glad--more glad than I can say. Will you sby?"

"It is hard to part with you, sir, for you have been a good friend to me, but I feel
I must not stay. Indeed I could not. I could not bear it."

"How right you are, my boy, how absolutely right! I am grown so uncertain of my
species of late that I was afraid--half afraid, at any rate--that you would stay. You
are young, you can get another place--this world is for the young, they are its kings."

Henry went to the counting-room, got his money, left his resignation, and went forth
into the world a clean man and free.

Then, proud and light of step, he went to his bride elect, and told her his news....

Those dots are to indicate that a blank in Henry's tale occurred at that point.

I felt that blank. The derelicts are always leaving such. They skip a great episode
--maybe the greatest in their lives--and pass, without dropping so much as a crumb
of that feast, to their next stage. You get not a trace of that episode except what
your imagination can furnish you.

Henry supposed he could get a new berth right away. He was mistaken; it did not hap-
pen. He went seeking, from town to town. For a while he was merely surprised at his
non-success; but by and by he was dismayed. Terror succeeded dismay. They turned him
out of his last boarding house; his money was all gone. He wandered everywhitherfur-
ther and still further away, subsisting as he could, doing what he could find to do,
in whatever corner of the earth, he chanced to be--shoveling sand, scouring pavements,
sawing wood, selling papers, finally doing clog dances and general utility in a
"nigger" show. After three years of this, he surrendered; from Australia he wrote
Mr. Haskell and begged for his place again, saying he was done with virtue and its
rewards, and wanted to eat dirt the rest of his days.

After a month or two the answer me--from Benson: Haskell was dead, Benson was chief,
now, and sorry there was no vacancy on the staff.

It is thirty-three years since Henry resigned, on that proud day, that unforgettable
day; he has never had another literary situation since. He has wandered and wandered,
regretting, lamenting, and at last he is here, member of the Anchor Watch, a forlorn
and cheerless derelict--with all hope of better things gone out of him long ago.

So ends his tale. Now then, he is one of those people the bos'n classified to me: peo-
ple who do a thing they know to be clearly right, absolutely right and clean and hon-
orable, and later come to grieve over it and repent it. Henry has been miserably griev-
ing over that good and righteous act of his for thirty years. Benson is well off, in-
fluential, important, honored, stands high in his guild from one ocean to the other,
is a deacon or a church committee or something, and has children and a grandchild. It
makes me wretched to see this poor derelict clasp his head with his hands and impo-
tently cry out in his anguish--"Oh, to think I could be in his place, if only I had
not been such a fool--oh, such a fool, such a vain, stupid, conceited fool! Oh, why
did I ever do that insane thing!"

It seems a tragic tale to me. I think it is tragic. When he finished it my mind ran b
ack over it and again I saw him make his eager climb, a hopeful and happy boy; and I
climbed with him, and felt for him, hoped for him; when he stood on his great summit
a victor, I was there, and seemed to be in the sky, we were so far aloft and the
spread of plain and mountain stretched so wide and dwindled to such dreams in the
fading distances; and I turned with him when his trouble came; I was with him when he
reached the abyss, his life ruined, his hopes all dead --and behind us that stately
summit still glittering in the blue!

HOW could it affect me like that? how could it seem a tragedy to me? Because it
contained a disappointed life, and the woe of a human heart--that was all. Apparently
that is all that is necessary to make tragedy; apparently conditions and altitudes have
nothing to do with the site and the reality of the disaster--they are conventions, their
measurements are without a determining standard.

If I had gone into particulars about that "summit," the conventions would have belit-
tled the tragedy and made it seem to you inconsequential. But I will famish the par-
ticulars now. The summit was a summit to the boy who made the fight for it, and to
the man who conquered it and lost it; but it would not have been a summit to you who
are reading this. The magazine was a religious periodical in an interior city; as im-
portant as any other religious magazine, but a place on its staff or at the staff's
head would not have been considered a Matterhorn by the average budding hero.

Yet--toward it this poor defeated poet has looked for thirty years, and seen it cold-
ly glinting in the sky, and wished he had thrown away his fatal honor and stayed there
--there where would be with him now, in his loveless age, those children and that
grandchild, destined for him, lost to him by his own act, whose faces he has never
seen and will never see. To him this is tragedy.



Chapter 10

Diary--Continued


THERE is a new face or two every day--gone the next, perhaps. When they are derelicts,
they are usually members of the Watch who have been off wandering in the world for re-
freshment. Some are gone a week, or a month or two, some are gone half a year. Then
they come back eager to see the old stay-at-homes and tell their adventures; they
bring fresh new blood, you see, and are very welcome. There are perhaps thirty stay-
at-homes. These lodge not far away, and they drift to the house at one time or another
every day and every night when the weather will let them. Their desultory occupations
are not much of a hindrance. They use the ward-room as a club; they loaf in and out at
their pleasure; from breakfast till midnight some of them are always on hand, weather
or no weather; on pleasant nights, and at the Admiral's two Sunday services, they ga-
ther in force. Members only, and the household, are allowed at those services. A good
while ago chance visitors used to come, some out of general curiosity, some to stare
at the derelicts, some to hear the Admiral read, and get the thrill of his organ-voice
and his expression. He would not have that so no visitors get in, now, not even the
"regulars," with the exception of Lo and two or three other clergymen. Some of the aged
derelicts who had a religion once, haven't any now, but they all come. It is their tri-
bute of reverence to the Admiral, and does them credit. Once, in the days when outsiders
were admitted, one of the strangers smiled superciliously when the Admiral mispronounced
a word; Bates, the infidel, who sat near, leaned over and whispered to him, "Straighten
your face--if you want any of it left when you leave this placer He was obeyed; he was
a man-o'- vvarsman before his derelict days, and can still furnish to an offender the
kind of look that carries persuasion with it. The bos'n says all the derelicts are loy-
al to the Admiral.

The flitters--Members that come and go--are very numerous. They bring tales and tidings
from all over the continent and from all about the globe. It is astonishing, the miles
they cover, and the things they see and hear and experience. My days here seem rather
a brisk dream than a flesh-and-blood reality. I believe I have not had a dull day yet,
nor one that hadn't part of a romance in it somewhere.

The bos'n claims that there isn't an entirely bad person in the whole Membership, Hit-
ters and all. He says there is a good spot in each one; that in a lot of cases many pe-
ople can't find it and don't, but that the Admiral can and does--every time; and Martha
too. He says it isn't smartness, it's instinct, sympathy, fellow-feeling--which is to
say, it is a gift, and has to be born in a person, can't be manufactured. He says it can
be trained, and developed, away up--but you have to have the gift to start with, there's
no other terms.

I said it would probably puzzle a person to find the good spot in the marchesa.

"No," he said, "she's got it. She loves children; she'll do anything for a child--any-
body's."

"Give it candy, perhaps. Is that it?"

"More than that--go through fire for it."

"Bos'n, aren't you romancing, now?"

"No--there's those that saw her do it. It was a tenement house. She went in and helped,
just like a fireman--she did indeed. A woman with a child in her arms slumped down on
a hall floor, smothered by the smoke. A fireman saved her, but the marcheesa saved the
child. She gathered it up and fetched it down three iron fire-escape ladders, through
black smoke that hid her half the time, the crowd cheering; and that mother was laying
for her at the bottom and nearly hugged the life out of her when she got down, being
one of those Irish mothers with a heart in her the site of a watermelon, and the crowd
cheered her over and over again, and the firemen said she was a brick; and she's honor-
ary member of No. 29 ever since, and can wear the badge and go in the procession and
ride the engine if she wants to--yes, sir, and welcome."

"My word!"

"Good spot, ain't it?"

"I should say so! Who could ever have believed it?"

"Well, she's so full of ginger and general hellishness a person naturally wouldn't--but
there 't is, you see. You can't ever tell what's in a person till you find out. Look at
Satan, for instance."

"Satan?"

"Oh, helm-a-lee--bard-a-port! Of course I don't mean the sacred one, I mean the derelict
that thinks he's it. Now to look at his wild eye and hear him talk, you'd think there's
nothing in him but everlasting schemes for hogging money--hogging it by the cart load,
the ship load, the train load, though dem seldom it is he sees a cent that's his own--
yet he's got his good spot, Martha will tell you so. 'Why, the very reason he's so unfa-
miliar with a cent is that the minute he's got it he gives it away to any poor devil
that comes along. It's the way he's made, you see; it's his good spot; they've all got
it. Including you."

"Thanks, awfully! What is my good spot?"

"Damned if I know. But you've got it--everybody has. You know a cat's passion is fish.
Particularly somebody else's fish. 'There's an awful lot to a cat--anybody knows that.
Now then, you can train a cat up, in an ecclesiastical way, till it is that sunk in
righteousness you couldn't any more get him to break the Sabbath than you could get a
cowboy to keep it; but all the same, you lay a fish down and turn your back and there
ain't real religion enough in that whole ornithological species to save that cat from
falling. Especially a tomcat. For they're the limit, you know. Look at Bags. He don't
miss the services, does he? No; you couldn't get him to. And as for self-sacrifice,
why, in the coldest weather he'll quit a warming-pan to sleep on a sermon. It shows
you how earnest he is; it shows you how anxious he is to do just right. But all the
same, although he looks purified, he ain't transmuted all through, and when the time
of stress comes you'll find there's hunks of unconverted cat in him yet. Now you lay
out a fish handy, and you'll see. He would hog that fish if it was his last act. Well,
what fish is to a cat, cigars are to Satan--just a wild unmeasurable passion. to you
know by that, that for him to give away his last cigar is to give away his blood--
ain't it so? Well, I've seen him do it! It's just as I told you--there's a good spot
tucked away somewhere in everybody. You'll be a long time finding it, sometimes, if
you ain't born to it, hilts the Admiral and Martha, but I haven't spent twenty years
with that pair, and ten of it here and in Hell's Delight, not to get convinced it's
so."

I said I felt bound to believe him, "but who is this Satan--and where is he?

"Oh, there's no telling. He's a flitter. But he'll turn up; he's never gone for very
long. I was thinking he was here when you came, but I remember, now, he Was just gone.
He's a busy cuss--as busy es the other one."

"Why do they call him by that name?"

"They? Because it's what he calls himself. He thinks he is Satan."

"Oh--I understand it, now."

"Understand what?"

"Why, the reason of it. He's crazy."

The bos'n gave me a solemnly inquisitive look, and then translated the look into words:

"Well....are you acquainted with anybody that ain't?"

"That ain't? What do you mean?"

"Oh, when you come down to it fine, there's some that ain't as crazy as others, but as
far as I've come along the road I haven't run across any yet that was perfectly straight
in their minds. You see, everybody is a little crazy--some about one fool thing, some
about another, and nearly all of them harmless--but as foes person that ain't any way
crazy at all, damn'd if there's any suchl"

"Oh, come!"

"Well, now, honor bright, do you know anybody that's right down sane--to the bottom?"

"Very well, then, honor bright, I am quite sure I am, myself."

"Oh, you--with your Adam monument!"

I thought that this was carrying jesting a little too far; so I made a stiff bow whose
meaning could not be easily misunderstood, and strode away. pretty haughtily.



Chapter 11

Diary Continued


Perhaps it was natural enough and human enough for the Poet to feed daily for thirty
years upon the memory of a disaster which wrecked his life, and for the General, the
ex-Senator, the inventor and others of our derelicts to do the .me. But is it natural
and human for a couple of persons to keep up a mere dispute that long?--a dispute that
can never be settled?--a dispute about a matter of not the least consequence?

Well, natural or unnatural, we have a case of it here. Thirty years ago Uncle 'Rastus
hired himself out to work on a farm on top of a high hill in a New England State, and
there he found Aunt Phyllis, who was the farmer's cook. They at once began to dispute
about the question of special providence, and from that day to this they have continued
the debate whenever there was opportunity.

Two years later, luck added another matter to argue about. They discussed it a few
weeks; dropped it, took it up again a year later; and again after two or three years;
once more after a longer interval; then gave it a rest--apparently for good and all.
But not so. After a quiescent interval of as much as half a decade, they got out that
hoary mossback once more, today, and gave it a final overhauling. This aged contention
had its origin in a heroic act performed by 'Rastus twenty-eight years ago. These are
the details.

One summer afternoon a pair of visitors drove up from the town down below in the val-
ley--the charming and beautiful young wife of a wealthy citizen, and her child, aged
two years. Toward sunset the lady started homeward. The horse was young and nervous,
and unacquainted with hill-work. The farmer and his family stood on the porch and
watched the start with some uneasiness. There was a straight stretch of slanting road
feet third of a mile, downward from the house, and the first half of it was visible
from the porch, but at that point a curtain of trees intervened and hid the rest.

The buggy made the first two or three hundred yards at a safe gait, then it began to
move faster--faster--still faster; soon it began to fly; then the dust rose up in a
cloud and hid it, just as it was reaching those intervening trees. It was a narrow
road; at the end of the straight slant there was a very sharp turn and an unfenced
precipice.

The fanner said, "Oh, my God, there is no hope for those--no power on earth can save
their lives!" and he and his family sprang from the porch and went racing down the
hill through the dust-cloud--not to help, but to mourn; not to save, but to seek the
dead and do such reverent service as they might. When they reached that sharp elbow,
--right therc, right at that deadly spot--they saw, dim and spectral in the settling
dust, the horse standing at ease, with 'Rastus at its head, and nobody hurt!

It was unbelievable--clearly unbelievable--yet it was so. 'Rastus had been coming up
from town with his farm-team, and had halted at the turn to rest. He heard a noise,
and looked up the road and saw the dust-cloud sweeping down upon him. When the inter-
val between him and it had diminished to fifty steps, he got a vague glimpse of the
horse's head, and understood. With an undisturbed head, and all his wits about him,
he stepped to the right spot and braced himself; and the next second he grabbed the
flying horse and stood him up on his hind legs!

The news sped to the town, but was not believed. Every one saicl the feat was impos-
sible; that it was beyond the strength of the strongest man on the continent. But no
matter, it had actually been performed, the proofs of it were unassailable, and had
to be accepted. The news papers applauded it; for several days people climbed up
from the town to look at the spot, and wonder how the incredible thing was done;
'Rastus was a hero; there was not a white man nor a white woman in the region round
about who was ashamed to shake hands with him; wherever he appeared the people took
him by his horny black hand and gave it a good grip, and many said, "I'm proud to
do it!" Last happiness of all, the rich man handed 'Rastas his check foot thousand
dollars--the first time in his life that 'Rastus had ever owned above thirty doll-
ars at one time.

Then that dispute began. Aunt Phyllis charged 'Rastus with cheat-ing. He was indig-
nant, and said--

"It's a lie. Who has I cheated?"

"Dat gen'Iman. De idea o' you thkin' a thousan' dollars! De hoss en harness en buggy
warn't wuth it, en you knows it mighty well."

"Woman, what's de matter wid yo' brains? What is you talkin' 'bout?"

"Nemmine 'bout my brains, you stick to de pint, days all. You ain't gwyneter dodge it
whah I is. You cheated, to I ain't gwyneter let you fo'git it, mind I tell you!"

"I didn't,"

"You did1"

"I didn't!"

"You did! Dey warn't wuth mo'n eight hund'd dollars--anybody'll tell you so. Now look
at dat. You save' eight hund'd dollars for de gen'Iman, en take a thousan'. It's
cheatin', dot's what it is. No Christian wouldn't 'a' done it, nobody but a lovv-
down infdel would. S'pose you was to die--right now? Dat's it--s'pose you was to die?"

"Well, s'pose I was to? Den what?"

"Ain't you got no shame, 'Rastus? How'd you like to 'pear up dah, wid dem two hund'd
dollars stickin' toys' han's?"

"I'd hole my head up, days what I'd do. Hain't you got no sense, can't you git nothin'
thoo yo' head? You's got de whole thing hindside fust--can't you see dat?"

"Who? me? How has I got it hindside fust?"

"Beene you keep arguin' dat de gen'Iman gimme de thousan' dollars for savin' de boss
en de buggy, but if you had any sense you'd know he didn't gimme it for dat, at all."

"De nation he didn't!"

"No, he didn't."

'Well den, you 'splain to me what be did give it to you for, if you think you kin."

"Why, for savin' his fambly."

"For savin' his fambly, you puddn'head1"

"Yes, for savin' his fambly. Anybody'll tell you so."

"In my bawn days I never see sick a numskull. Rastus, don't you laiow it don't stan'
to reason? Now you pay 'tention--I's gwyneter show you. It's a new hoss en a good one,
ain't it?

"Yas."

"Cost five hund'd en fifty dollars, didn't it?"

"Yas."

"New buggy, ain't it?"

"Yas."

"Cost two hund'd en fifty, didn't it?"

"Yas."

"Dat make eight hund'd widout de harness, don't it?"

"Yas."

"Y. save' de whole outfit, didn't you?"

"Yas."

"Dat's eight hund'd dollars mouth ain't it?"

"Yas."

"Now den, we's got down to de fambly. How much is de lady's do'es wuth?"

"How's I gwyneter know?"

"Well, I knows. Dey's spang-bang new, en dey cost a hund'd en sebenty-fo' dollars.
How much is de chile's clo'es south?"

"I don't know nothin"bout de chile's clo'es."

"Well, I does. Dey cost twenty-five dollars. So, den, all de clo'es cost a hund'd
en ninety-nine, ain't it?"

"Oh, yas, yas, yas, I reckin so. Git done wid de business,"

"Now den, what's de lady wuth?"

"Lan', you make sot tired wid dis foolishness, How's I gwyneter know what she's
wuthr

"What's de chile wuth?"

"I don't k'yer nothin"bout it, to I ain't gwyneter say nothin' 'bout it."

"Now den, I's gwyneter come back to de harness. I knows what de harness cost, and so
does you, en I's gwyneter c'rect you if you tries to fo'git en make a mistake 'bout
it. What did de harness cost, 'Rastus?"

"It cost--cost--"

"I has my eye on you, 'Rastus."

"Cost fifteen dollars...Damn de harness!"

"Now den, 'Rastus, de fac's is all in. All de thousan' dollars is 'counted for. You
been 'cusin' me o' gittin' de matter hindside lost, en it hurt me to hear you say dat,
'caze it make it seem like I ain't got good sense; but 'Rastus, de figgers shows you
was in de wrong en I was in de right. Dey shows you he didn't give you de thousan'
dollars for savin, de fambly, he give it to you for savin' de truck. En he didn't
pay full up, nuther, 'caze he owes you fo'teen dollars on de harness!"

It all happened twenty-eight years ago, when these dear old things were young--only
forty. 'Rastus bought a farm for sixteen hundred dollars, paid a thousand down and
borrowed the six hundred on mortgage. During eighteen years, by working sixteen hours
a day and watching the pennies and economising on clothes and tobacco, he made e-
nough to pay the interest each year and reduce the debt ten dollars per annum; then
the rheumatism claimed him for her own and he gave the property to a nephew and wan-
dered out into the world. He turned up here, in the course of time, and has been free
of the wardroom ever since, and has had the Anchor Watch's privileges here and in
Hell's Delight--as good a man and as contented a soul as I know. The nephew still
runs the farm, pays the interest, and in ten years has reduced the mortgage by
thirty dollars. The child that survived the runaway through 'Rastus's once famous
miracle has a pros-perous huband and a family, is beautiful in character and in per-
son, is happy, and to this day does not know that any one ever saved her life.

As I have said that long-neglected dispute was resurrected to-day. At the close of
it Aunty Phyllis had a happy idea, and fetched it out with glee, and confidence, and
vast expectations. But 'Rastus was loaded, that time! Phyllis said--

"You is de man dat'sallays sayin' de' ain't no sich thing as special providence. If
'twarn't for special providence, what would 'a' went wid dat buggy en harness? Who
put you in dat road, right exackly in de right spot, right exackly at de right road,
right exackly at the right half-second?--you answer me dat if you kin!"

"Who de nation sent de hoss down dah in sich a blame' fool fashion?"



Chapter 12

From Intermittent Diary


I HAVE skipped a week. Trifles of interest got in the way, and it was easier to skip
than to write. One of the trifles was a "regular"--Stanchfield Garvey, called "Gover-
nor." The title dates from away back, years and years ago. He served four years as
Secretary of a territory, and meantime as Acting Governor twice or thrice, during
brief absences of the actual Governor. Once "Governor" Garvey, always Governor Garvey;
once General on a Governor's staff, always General; once justice of the peace for a
year, always "Judge" thenceforth to the grave--such is our American system. We have
a thoroughly human passion for titles; turning us into democrats doesn't dislodge
that passion, nor even modify it. A title is a title, and we value it; if it chance
to be pinchbeck no matter, we are glad to have it anyway, and proud to wear it, and
hear people utter it. It is music to us.

Governor Garvey is eighty years old, but does not look nearly so old. He is a good
six feet hi gh, and very slender; he has thebearing of a gentleman; his hair is short
and thick, and is silver-white; his face is Emersonian, and he has intellect, but as
it is of an ill-ordered and capricious and unstable sort, his face mis-states and o-
ver-states its character and bulk. However, his eyes correct these errors. They are
kind and beautiful and unsteady, and they tell you he is weak and a visionary. He is
not a derelict, but that is because the Admiral saved him from it several years ago
by getting him a job as rough-proof reader on an evening paper--an easy berth which
pays him ten dollars a week and supports him. He has a bed and an oil stove in a
small room in a tenement house, and is his own chambermaid and cook.

He began life as a printer's apprentice in a western city. He was sixteen or seven-
teen, then, and had a common-school education of a meagre sort, which he tried to en-
large by studying, nights. Without serious success; for he was shavings, not anthra-
cite. That is to say, that whatsoever thing he undertook, he went at it in a blaze of
eagerness and enthusiasm and burnt the interest all out of it in forty-eight hours,
then dropped it and went at something else in another consuming blaze. During the four
years of his apprenticeship he carried his conflagrations into the first chapter of
every useful book in the Mechanic's Library, but never any further than that in any in-
stance. And so, whereas he picked up a slight smattering of many breeds of knowledge,
his accumulation was valueless and unusable, it was a mere helter-skelter scrap-heap.

For a week or two, in the beginning, he had a burning ambition to be a Franklin; so
he lived strictly on bread and water, studied by the firelight instead of using can-
dles, and practised swimming on the floor. Then he discarded Franklin, and imitated
somebody else a while. This time an orator; and went around orating to his furniture
with pebbles in his mouth. Next, he proposed to be a great lawyer, and with this idea
he read Blackstone a couple of weeks. Next, with an earnest desire to make men better
and save them from the pains of that fierce hell which all believed in in those days,
he studied for the ministry for a while. But his path was beset with difficulties.
Not his path, his wash; for he washed from one religion to another faster than he
could keep count, and never landed on the shore of any one of them long enough to
dry his feet. He has kept up these excursions all his life. He has sampled all the
religions, he has been an infidel, he is a Christian Scientist, now. I mean, this week.

Nobody could ever tell what he would do next. His friends and family expected much of
him, for he was bright above the average, but he disappointed every hope of theirs as
fast as it was born. He was always dreaming--of doing good to his fellow-man, as he
supposed--whereas at bottom his longing was for distinction, though he didn't suspect
it. When he was studying to be a Franklin, he copied Franklin's brief and pregnant
rules of conduct and stuck them in the frame of his mirror. He lived by them until he
recovered from the Franklin disease, then he lived by the next model's rules, and the
next and the next. When a model hadn't a set of rules, he supplied him with one. In
his time he has lived by more different kinds of rules than has any other experimenter
in right and rigid conduct. He has a set now, drawn from "Science and Health," and
thinks he understands what they mean.

When he was twenty years old, he resolved upon a visit to his people. They lived in a
village a hundred miles away. It was in the winter time. He gave no notice that he was
coming. He thought it would be romantic to arrive at midnight, and surprise them in the
morning. This was not well conceived, for the family had moved to another house, and
the one which they had been occupying was now occupied by an old doctor who hadn't
any romance in him, and by his two maiden sisters who had long ago outlived their ro-
mantic days. Stanchfield slipped into the house the back way, and up stairs with his
boots in his hands. He undressed in the dark in his room, and got into bed with the old
maids, whom he supposed were his brothers. Presently one of them said, drowsily--

"Mary, don't crowd so!"

Stanchfield began to scramble out, and he was feeling very sick and scared, and much
ashamed. He had been nurturing a beard, and one result of this was that the other maid
cried out "There's a man in the bed!" and both maids began to scream. Stanchfield fled,
just as he was, and met the doctor on the stairs, with a candle in one hand and a butch-
er knife in the other. An explanation followed, and the doctor brought the clothes.

Two or three nights afterward, Stanchfield sat in his room at home, reading, also
dreaming. At four in the morning be started out to call on a young lady--without look-
ing at the clock. He hammered on her door a good while, then her father appeared, shiv-
ering in his dressing-gown, learned his business, admitted him to a freezing parlor,
and sat there silent and lowering for an hour--waiting for an opportunity to say some-
thing cruel. At last Stanchfield timidly asked when Miss Louise would be down.

"As soon as she's done dressing for breakfast! Won't you wait-oh, do!"

Stanchfield was in the town a fortnight. In that time he joined the Sons of Temperance,
agreed to make a speech at a temperance mass meeting, and meantime he furnished the mot-
toes for the torchlight procession; but when the time came he was on the other side and
made an impassioned plea for unlimited whiskey.

When he was twenty-three and had been a journeyman printer a year, he returned to his
village home, bought the weekly paper for five hundred dollars, borrowing the money at
ten per cent, and at once reduced the subscription price one half. He made a clean paper!
and worked hard; but he got but a meagre subsistence out of it for widowed mother and
her young family. He paid his interest every year, but was never able to pay any of the
principal. At the end of six years he gave the paper to his creditor and moved to another
town. There he bought a part of a paper on credit, and fell in love with a girl in a
neighboring town and engaged himself to her. A few weeks afterward he engaged himself
to a girl in his new home-town. He found himself in a difficulty, now, and did not quite
know how to get out of it. It seemed to him that the right way, the honorable way,
would be for him to go and explain to girl No, 1 and abide by her decision as to what
he should do. He told his project to girl No. 2, who remarked that he would marry her
--and now--and he could afterward go and explain to No. at his leisure, if he wanted to.

So said, so done. No. 2 was a good and patient and valuable wife to him--as far as any
wife could be valuable to such a weather-vane: After three years he gave his share of
the paper to his creditor and moved to another town, where he bought a wee little bus-
iness, on credit, and at once cut prices till there was no profit in it. He scrambled
along for four years, meantime making and losing friends continually by changing his
religion and his politics every three months; then he chanced upon a new opening. In
his apprenticeship-days, eighteen years before, a great lawyer had taken an interest
in him, and this acquaintanceship came good, now. The lawyer got him appointed Secre-
tary of one of the new territories.

He made a good Secretary, for he performed his duties well and faithfully, and was a
strictly honest man where honest men were scarce. He was very popular, he had the con-
fidence and the friendship of the whole territory, and for four years he and his wife
knew to the full what comfort and happiness were. Then the territory was elevated to
Statehood. There was much fussing at slates for other State officers in his party, but
none about the Secretaryship: no one thought of giving that post to anybody but him.

But he had to have a freak on nomination-night--he wouldn't have been himself if he
had failed of that. He would not go to the convention. For two reasons: he thought
candidates ought to keep away from conventions--they ought to leave the delegates un-
embarrassed to choose the candidates. Also, the convention was to meet in a liquor
saloon, and he could not conscientiously enter there, for his turn to be a prohibi-
tionist had come around again, lately. His friends could not persuade him, his wife
could not persuade him. Very well, the thing happened which all expected except him-
self: he was left off the ticket.

A few months later the State assumed command, the territory went out of business, and
he with it. There was nothing for him to do; he could find no employment. By and by he
and his wife gave up and went home--expensively; so recklessly expensively that they
spent all their savings on the road. Poor creatures, they had never had a real holiday
in their lives, before, and knew they might never have another one. It turned their
heads and abolished their prudence. For thirty years Garvey's friends stood by him,
for he was good at heart, and without stain, and well beloved. During all that time
they found place after place for him, but he lost them all. Lost them by throwing them
away to hunt for something better. He always gave satisfaction to others, but could
never be satisfied himself.

Eight years ago his wife died. After that, he had nothing to care for, nothing to live
for, and he went wandering. Her devotion had been his stay and support; such courage
as ever he had had she gave him; after each of his thousand failures she lifted him
out of his abysses of despondency and found for him a new hope. For three years he
drifted in a starless gloom, rudderless; then the Admiral found that proof-reading job
for him, and he holds it yet; his old hankering to throw away good things to hunt for
better ones is dead in him. He spends all his evening with the Anchor Watch, and has,
for company and sympathisers, the General, the ex-Senator, the Poet, and one or two
other derelicts who look back upon a special disaster which ruined their lives, and
which they only live to regret and repent and mourn over. From the day that the Gover-
nor stood stanchly by his principles and lost the Secretaryship he has lamented that
righteous act, and cursed it and bitterly grieved over it. It has wrung his heart for
forty years. If he could only get back there and have that chance again! That is the
dirge he sings. That, and how much of sorrow and privation and humiliation he could-
have saved his patient and faithful wife if he had not been such a fool, oh, such a
fool!" And who knows? she might be with him now and blessing him! Ah, yes; and what
would he not give to see that dear face once more! And so he murmurs along, and it is
pitiful to hear.



Chapter 13

Intermittent Diary--Continued


INTERRUPTING myself to gossip about the Governor has made a blank where the Plum Duff
occurred. By help of Jimson Flinders the colored stenographer and sub-editor, I can
fill it now. The bos'n says plum duff is the sailor's luxury-dish in whaleships, and
is a dough pudding with raisins in it, as distinguished from dough pudding plain.
It is served once a week--usually on Sundays. Duff is probably the fo'-castle way of
pronouncing dough; and a good enough way, too, if it be righteous to pronounce tough
tuff. Plum Duff, here in the Haven of the Derelicts, is the Anchor Watch's name for
Entertainment-Night. And well named, too. It is the night that has the intellectual
raisins in it, and is as welcome here as is plum duff at sea.

The weather was bad, but no matter, we had a full house. All the derelicts were pres-
ent, all the "regulars," and all the "casuals"--in fact, everybody possessing the high
privilege of assisting at Plum Duffs. We had as many as fifty people on hand. This
time the feature of the evening was to be a lecture, in the form of a story, illustrat-
ed by "living pictures" thrown upon a screen. Subject, "The Benevolence of Nature."
Lecturer, Rev. Lo-what-God-hath-Wrought. Edgar Billings, amateur naturalist, was to
manage the picture-machinery. He stood at one end of the great room with his apparatus,
and the lecturer stood by the vast white screen at the other.

The idea of illustrating the story was a late thought; so late that there was no time
for lecturer and illustrator to go over the ground. in detail together, but apparently
this kind of particularity was not going to be needed. Lo gave Billings a synopsis of
the story, and Billings said it was a plenty; said he had just the pictures for it,
and could flash the right one onto the canvas every time, sure, and fit every incident
of the tale to a dot as it went along. Billings is an earnest and sincere and good-
hearted creature, but hasn't much judgment.

First we had some music, as usual, Jimmy doing the pianola-business and the Admiral
the orchestrelle, then the lecturer began. He said it was most wonderful, most touch-
ing and beautiful, our dear old Mother Nature's love for her creatures--for all of
them, from the highest all the way down the long procession of humbler animated na-
ture to the very worms and insects. He dwelt at some length upon her unfailing good-
ness to her wards, and said he wished especially to note one feature of it, her in-
tricate and marvelous system of providing food for the animal world; her selection
of just the right and best food for each creature, and placing each creature where
its particular kind of food could never fail it. Her tender protection, he said, was
over all--the humble spider, the wasp, the worm, all the myriads of tiny and help-
less life, were under her watchful eye, and partakers of her loving care. By Mr.
Billings's help he would exhibit this love as exercised toward two or three of the
lowliest of these creatures, and would ask the house to remember that the same love
and the same protection were exercised in the same way toward the unspecified myr-
iads and millions that creep and fly about the earth. Should these little creatures
be grateful? Yes. If we understood their language we should hear them express that
gratitude, should we not? Without a doubt, yes, without a doubt. Might he try to
put himself in their place and speak for them? He would make the effort, putting
it in the form of a little story.

The room was then darkened; an intensely bright great circle appeared upon the
white screen; the lecturer began to read:


THE STORY


Once there was a dear little spider, who lived in a web pleasantly situated, and was
expecting a family; and she was very happy--happy, and tenderly grateful to the dear
Mother Nature that gave her so lovely a world to live in, and surrounded her with
so many comforts, and made her little life so sweet and beautiful--

Instantly a wide-spreading web appeared upon the screen and in the middle of it a
hairy fat spider as big as a watermelon, with bundles of crumpled legs which seemed
to be all elbows. It made the audience start, it was so alive, and sharp-eyed and real.
The lecturer glanced at it, looked uncomfortable, and moved a little away. After a
pause to recover his serenity, he resumed his reading.

She was lonely, and sweetly sad, for her dearest, her heart's own, her young husband,
was absent, and she was fondly dreaming of him and longing for his return--

A smaller devil of the spider species--evidently the husband--appeared on the frontier
of the web, took a hesitating step or two toward his wife, then changed his mind and
began to crawl slowly and imperceptibly backward toward foreign parts.

She was very hungry, for she had been without food for a whole day; but did she lose
faith? did she complain, as we too often do? No; dropping her eyes meekly, she mur-
mured, "Our dear Mother Nature will provide--"

A sudden commotion on the screen attracted all eyes. With a rush which broke the smooth
web into waves the big wife swept down upon the poor cowering little husband, and as
she sunk her fangs into him and began to suck he struggled and squirmed in so pitiful
a way that many of the audience turned away their eyes, not being able to bear the sight
of it. There were some subdued and scarcely audible chucklings here and there, but
they lasted only a moment. The lecturer took one glance, and looked embarrassed--as
one could see, for his face came within the circle of light--also he looked as if he
was not comfortable in his stomach. Soon he went on with his reading. He had to stick
to his text; he was not a person who could change it to meet an emergency.

Now came an event which filled her mother-heart with joy--the birth of the expected
family. Out from the silken bag attached to her body poured a flood of little darlings,
dainty little spiderlings, hundreds and hundreds of them, and she gathered them to
her maternal breast in a rapture of gratitude and joy--

And in an instant there it was, on the screen!--a mighty swarm of frisky little spi-
ders the size of horseflies-just a tumultuous confusion of ten thousand legs all
squirming at once. They attacked their mother.

She tried to get away, but they overflowed her, overwhelmed her, and began to chew her
legs and her body--a horrible sight! The lecturer did not take a look this time. No,
he made a half-motion to do it, but changed his mind and went on reading.

Her first thought, poor little mother, was, how should she find food for her nine hun-
dred little darlings; but her second was, "Nature will provide." What a lesson for us
it is! Ah, my friends, when the larder is empty and in our despair we know not where
to turn, let us remember the faith of this humble insect and imitate it and be
strengthened by it; let us be brave, and believe, with her, that nourishment will be
provided for our little ones.

At this moment, dear friends, arrived a wasp. In a sunny meadow she had digged a hole
and prepared a cosy home for the dear offspring she was expecting. Now she was abroad
to secure food for that offspring. Her happy heart was singing, and the burden of that
grateful song was, "Nature will provide." She hovered over our mother-spider, then
descended upon her--

Instantly it was on the screen! A wasp the size of a calf swooped down upon wide-
spreading wings, gripped the struggling mother-spider, and slowly drove a sting as
long as a sword, deep into her body. The audience gasped with horror to see that hid-
eous weapon sink in like that and the spider strain and quiver and rumple its legs in
its agony, but the lecturer ventured no look; he went right on with his reading.

The spider was not killed, my friends, it was only rendered helpless. That was the in-
tention. It was to serve as food for the wasp's child, and would live a week or two--
until half eaten up, in fact. She deposited an egg on the spider's body, carried her
prey to her dark home in the ground, crammed the prisoner in there and went for more,
radiant with that spiritual joy which is the reward of duty done. In two days the wasp's
child was born, and was hungry; and there at hand was its food, the melancholy spider,
faintly struggling and weary. With a deep hymn of gratitude to kind and ever-watchful
Nature, who allows none of her children to suffer, the larva gnawed a hole in the spi-
der's abdomen, and began to suck her juices while she moaned and wept--

Straightway the revolting banquet was pictured upon the screen, the larva munching its
way, most comfortable and content, into the spi_ der's vitals, and the helpless spider
feebly working its legs and probably trying to think of a grateful sentiment to utter
that would not sound too grossly insincere.

Has the spider been forgotten? is the spider forsaken in its time of sorrow and dis-
tress? Ah, no, my friends, neither she nor any other creature is ever forgotten or
ever forsaken. Soon the spider will have the reward of its patience, its faith, its
loving trust. In six days the half of it will have been eaten up, then it will die,
and pass forever to that sweet peace, that painless repose which is provided for all,
howsoever humble and undeserving, who keep a contented spirit and cheerfully do the
duties allotted to them in their sphere. I will now show with Mr. Billings's help,
how wonderfully we have been provided with yellow fever and malaria by the ministra-
tions of a humble little mosquito which--

And-s-o-on, and so on. It would take me too long to write down the rest of it, but
it was very interesting. Everybody was pleased, and many said they shouldn't want to
eat anything for a week. It seemed to me that it was a most charming and elevating
entertainment, and others thought the same, and said it was ennobling. They said
they never should have thought of such ways to feed animals, and regarded it as most
intelligent and grand. I think the Rev. Mr. Lo will stand on a higher plane with us
hereafter than he did before. Many shook hands with him and congratulated him, and
he was greatly pleased and thankful. Bates the unbeliever conceded that the lecture
had given him a new view of the benevolence of Nature.


(1905 and 1906)



The Fable of the Yellow Terror




A LONG, long time ago the Butterflies held a vast territory which was flowery and fra-
grant and beautiful. The Butterflies were of many kinds, but all the kinds were richly
clothed and all had a fine and cultivated taste in colors and were highly trained in
etiquette, and de-portment and in the other graces and accomplishments which make the
charm of life in an advanced and elegant civilization. There was not another civili-
zation among the animals that approached that of the Butterflies. They were very proud
of it, insufferably proud of it, and always anxious to spread it around the planet and
cram it down other people's throats and improve them.

They had an idea that they were the only people that knew the true way to be happy and
how to lam happiness into other people and make them good. So they sent missionaries
to all the pagan insects to teach them how to be tranquil and unafraid on a deathbed,
and then sent trader-bugs to make them long for the deathbed, and then followed up the
trader-bugs with diplomat-bugs and undertaker-bugs to perfect the blessings of the con-
ferred civilization and furnish the deathbed, and charge for the funeral. There was
hardly a single Butterfly of all the millions that did not boast of this civilization
with his mouth, and laugh at it in private. For truly it was a whitewashed humbug, and
few there were that prayed for it. Except with the mouth.

The Butterflies had what is called a cinch on a great and profitable art. This was the
art of making honey. Also a cinch on another great and profitable art. This was the art
of killing. For in those days the Butterfly had a sting. He not only had a sting but he
was the only bird in the world that had studied out how to use it scientifically and
devastatingly. it made him Boss. There was not a weak and ignorant nation that could stand
against him. Multitudes were nothing to him bird in the world--nothing at all. If they
had a property he wanted, he went there and took it, and gave them his civilization in the
place of it, and was pleased with himself, and praised his Maker for being always on his
side, which was quite true, and for giving him such a chance to be noble and do good.

His whole time was taken up in shoving his civilization and his honey. His whole ambition
was to widen and ever widen the market for his honey, and get richer and richer and rich-
er and holier and holier and holier all the time.

At last he had covered all the ground but one. That was the vast empire of the Bees. He
tried to get in there, but was warned away. He kept trying, but the Bees kept discouraging
him. Courteously, but firmly. The Bees were a simple and peaceable folk, poor and hardwork-
ing and honest, and they did not want any civilization. They begged to be let alone; they
held out against all persuasions. They wanted no honey, and said so. They did not know how
to make it themselves, and did not wish to learn. They still held out. Courteously and
kindly, but firmly.

At last the Butterflies were tired of this. They said that a nation that had a chance to
get civilization and buy honey and didn't take it was a block in the way of progress and
enlightenment and the yearning desires of Cod, and must be made to accept the boon and
bless the booner; so they set about working up a moral-plated pretext, and soon they found
a good one, and advertised it. They said that those fat and diligent and contented Bees,
munching grass and cabbage, ignorant of honey, ignorant of civilization and rapacity and
treachery and robbery and murder and prayer and one thing and another, and joying in their
eventless life and in the sumptuous beauty of their golden jackets, were a Yellow Peril.

It took. It went like wildfire. It was a splendid phrase. It didn't seem to have any mean-
ing, as applied to a far-away and unoffending mighty multitude that hadn't a desire in the
world but to stay by themselves and be let alone, but that did not signify: a Yellow Peril
is a Yellow Peril, and a shuddery and awful thing to think of and has to be crushed, mashed,
obliterated, whether there is any such thing or not.

So each of the different tribes of Butterflies sent in a two-hundred-dollar missionary with
the private purpose of getting him massacred and collecting a million dollars cash damages
on him, along with a couple of provinces and such other things as might be lying around;
and when the Bees resisted, civilization had its chance! When it got through, there wasn't
a Bee that wasn't bruised and battered and sore, and most humble and apologetic and submis-
sive.

The enlightened world of Butterflydom rejoiced and gave thanks. And properly; for wasn't
the Yellow Peril over and done with, for good and all?

It looked so. Then there was a great peace, and a holy tranquillity, and the Finger of God
was visible in it all, as usual. When a paying job is finished and rounded up, he is a cross
-eyed short-sighted person indeed who can't find the Finger of God in it.

Things went on handsomely. And handsomer and handsomer all the time. The Bees began to like
honey and buy it. And they liked it better and better, and bought more and more of it, and
civilization was happy to the marrow. One clever tribe of Bees even began to learn how to
make honey itself--which made civilization proud, and it said "They are rising out of their
darkness--we have lifted them up--how noble we are, and how good." Next that tribe wanted
to learn the other great art, the sacred monopoly of the loftiest of civilizations--the art
of how to kill and cripple and mutilate, scientifically. And they did learn it, and with as-
tonishing quickness and brilliancy. Whereupon civilization rejoiced yet more, and was proud-
er of its nobleness and beneficence than ever.

For a time. Then there was an episode. This progressive tribe of Bees had picked up another
specialty of all high civilizations, ancient and modern--land grabbing; and presently, while
working this specialty it came into collision with a vast tribe of Butterflies who were likewise
out grabbing territory, and a fight resulted. The Bees showed that they had learned to be
remarkably prompt and handy with their stings, those little weapons which education had been
so harmless until education taught them what God had intended the weapons for.

There was a market for wise observations, now, and a grave gray Grasshopper supplied it.
He said to a prominent Butterfly.

"You have taught one tribe of Bees how to use its sting, it will teach its brother-
tribe. The two together will be able to banish all the Butterflies some day, and keep
them out; for they are uncountable in numbers and will be unconquerable when educated.
Also, you have given the Bees the honey-appetite--forced it upon them--and now the
frenzy of it will never leave them. Also, you have taught the brilliant tribe how to
make it, and you will see results. They will make as prime an article of honey as any
Butterfly can turn out; they will make it cheaper than any Butterfly can make it; they
are here on the spot, you are the other side of the world, transportation will cost
them nothing--you can't compete. They will get this vast market, and starve you out,
and make you stay at home, where they used to beg you to stay, and you wouldn't listen.
That will happen, no matter how this present scuffle may turn out. Whether Bee or But-
terfly win, it is all the same, the Butterfly will have lost the market. There are five
hundred million Bees; it is not likely that you can whip them without combining, and
there is nothing in your history to indicate that your tribes can combine, even when
conferring enlightenment and annexing swag are the prize. Yet if you do not subdue them
now, before they get well trained and civilized, they may break over the frontiers some
day and go land-grabbing in Europe, to do honor to your teaching. It may be that you
will lose your stings and your honey-art by and by, from lack of practice, and be and
remain merely elegant and ornamental. Maybe you ought to have let the Yellow Peril a-
lone, as long as there wasn't any. Yet you ought to be proud, for in creating a some-
thing out of a nothing, you have done what was never done before, save by the Creator
of all things."

The Butterfly gave thanks, coldly, and the Grasshopper asked for his passports.



Passage from "Glances at History" (suppressed.)


Date, 9th century


X X X IN A SPEECH which he made more than 500 years ago, and which has come
down to us intact, he said:

We, free citizens of the Great Republic, feel an honest pride in her greatness, her
strength, her just and gentle government, her wide liberties, her honored name, her
stainless history, her unsmirched flag, her hands clean from oppression of the weak
and from malicious con-quest, her hospitable door that stands open to the hunted and
the persecuted of all nations; we are proud of the judicious respect in which she is
held by the monarchies which hem her in on every side, and proudest of all of that
lofty patriotism which we inherited from our fathers, which we have kept pure, and
which won our liberties in the beginning and has preserved them unto this day. While
that patriotism endures the Republic is safe, her greatness is secure, and against
them the powers of the earth cannot prevail.

I pray you to pause and consider. Against our traditions we are now entering upon an
unjust and trivial war, a war against a helpless people, and for a base object--rob-
bery. At first our citizens spoke out against this thing, by an impulse natural to
their training. To-day they have turned, and their voice is the other way. What
caused the change? Merely a politician's trick--a high-sounding phrase, a blood-
stirring phrase which turned their uncritical heads: Our Country, right or wrong! An
empty phrase, a silly phrase. It was shouted by every newspaper, it was thundered
from the pulpit, the Superintendent of Public Instruction placarded it in every
school-house in the land, the War Department inscribed it upon the flag. And every
man who failed to shout it or who was silent, was proclaimed a traitor--none but those
others were patriots. To be a patriot, one had to say, and keep on saying, "Our Coun-
try, right or wrong," and urge on the little war. Have you not perceived that that
phrase is an insult to the nation?

For in a republic, who is "the country?" Is it the Goverriment which is for the mo-
ment in the saddle? Why, the Government is merely a servant--merely a temporary ser-
vant; it cannot be its prerogative to determine what is right and what is wrong, and
decide who is a patriot and who isn't. Its function is to obey orders, not originate
them. Who, then, is "the country?" Is it the newspaper? is it the pulpit? is it the
school-superintendent? Why, these are mere parts of the country, not the whole of
it; they have not command, they have only their little share in the command. They
are but one in the thousand; it is in the thousand that command is lodged; they must
determine what is right and what is wrong; they must decide who is a patriot and
who isn't.

Who are the thousand--that is to say, who are "the country?" In a monarchy, the
king and his family are the country; in a republic it is the common voice of the peo-
ple. Each of you, for himself, by himself and on his own responsibility, must speak.
And it is a solemn and weighty responsibility, and not lightly to be flung aside at
the bullying of pulpit, press, government, or the empty catch-phrases of politicians.
Each must for himself alone decide what is right and what is wrong, and which course
is patriotic and which isn't. You cannot shirk this and be a man. To decide it a-
gainst your convictions is to be an unqualified and inexcusable traitor, both to
yourself and to your country, let men label you as they may. If you alone of all the
nation shall decide one way, and that way be the right way according to your convict-
ions of the right, you have done your duty by yourself and by your country--hold up
your head! you have nothing to be ashamed of.

Only when a republic's life is in danger should a man uphold his government when it
is in the wrong. There is no other time.

This republic's life is not in peril. The nation has sold its honor for a phrase. It
has swung itself loose from its safe anchorage and is drifting, its helm is in pir-
ate hands. The stupid phrase needed help, and it got another one: "Even if the war
be wrong we are in it and must fight it out: we cannot retire from it without dis-
honor." Whv, not even a burglar could have said it better. We cannot withdraw from
this sordid raid because to grant peace to those little people upon their terms--
independence--would dishonor us. You have flung away Adam's phrase--you should
take it up and examine it again. He said, "An inglorious peace is better than a dishon-
orable war."

You have planted a seed, and it will grow.

(early 1900s)



Passage from "Outlines of History" (suppressed.)


Date, 9th century


x x x BUT IT WAS impossible to save the Great Republic. She was rotten to the heart.
Lust of conquest had long ago done its work; trampling upon the helpless abroad
had taught her, by a natural process, to endure with apathy the like at home; multi-
tudes who had applauded the crushing of other people's liberties, lived to suffer
for their mistake in their own persons. The government was irrevocably in the hands
of the prodigiously rich and their hangers-on, the suffrage was become a mere machine,
which they used as they chose. There was no principle but commercialism, no patrio-
tism but of the pocket. From showily and sumptuously entertaining neighboring titled
aristocracies, and from trading their daughters to them, the plutocrats came in the
course of time to hunger for titles and heredities themselves. The drift toward mon-
archy, in some form or other, began; it was spoken of in whispers at first, later
in a bolder voice.

It was now that that portent called "The Prodigy" rose in the far South. Army after
army, sovereignty after sovereignty went down under the mighty tread of the shoemaker,
and still he held his conquering way--North, always North. The sleeping republic a-
woke at last, but too late. It drove the money-changers from the temple, and put the
government into clean hands--but all to no purpose. To keep the power in their own
hands, the money-changers had long before bought up half the country with soldier-
pensions and turned a measure which had originally been a righteous one into a machine
for the manufacture of bond-slaves--a machine which was at the same time an irremov-
able instrument of tyra for or every pensioner had a vote, and every man and woman
who had ever been acquainted with a soldier was a pensioner; pensions were dated back
to the Fall, and hordes of men who had never handled a weapon in their lives came
forward and drew three hundred years' back-pay, The country's conquests, so far from
being profitable to the Treasury, had been an intolerable burden from the beginning.
The pensions, the conquests, and corruption together, had brought bankruptcy in spite
of the maddest taxation, the government's credit was gone, the arsenals were empty,
the country unprepared for war. The iriaGry and naval schools, and all commissioned
offices in the army and navy, were the preserve of the money-changers; and the stand-
ing army--the creation of the conquest-days--was their property.

The army and navy refused to serve the new Congress and the new Administration,
and said ironically, "What are you going to do about it?" A difficult question to answer.
Landsmen manned such ships as were not abroad watching the conquests--and sunk
them all, in honest attempts to do their duty. A civilian army, officered by civilians,
rose brimming with the patriotism of an old forgotten day and rushed multitudinously
to the front, armed with sporting-guns and pitchforks--and the standing army swept
it into space. For the money-changers had privately sold out to the shoemaker. He
conferred titles of nobility upon the money-changers, and mounted the republic's
throne without firing a shot.

It was thus that Popoatahualpacatapetl became our master; whose mastership des-
cended in a little while to the Second of that name, who still holds it by his Viceroy
this day.



Passage from a Lecture



THE MONTHLY meeting of the Imperial Institute took place on the 18th. With but two
exceptions the seats of the Forty Immortals were occupied. The lecturer of the eve-
ning was the distinguished Professor of the Science of Historical Forecast. A part
of his subject concerned two of the Laws of Angina Pectoris, commonly called the
Mad Philosopher; namely, the "Law of Intellectual Averages" and the "Law of Period-
ical Repetition." After a consideration, at some length, of cognate matters, he said:

I regard these Laws as established. By the terms of the Law of Periodical Repeti-
tion nothing whatever can happen a single time only; everything happens again, and
yet again, and still again--monotonously. Nature has no originality--I mean, no
large ability in the matter of inventing new things, new ideas, new stage-effects.
She has a superb and amazing and infinitely varied equipment of old ones, but she
never adds to them. She repeats--repeats--repeats--repeats. Examine your memory
and your experience, you will find it is true. When she puts together a man, and is sat-
isfied with him, she is loyal to him, she stands by him through thick and thin for-
evermore, she repeats him by billions and billions of examples; and physically and
mentally the average remains exactly the same, it doesn't vary a hair between the
first batch, the middle batch and the-last batch. If you ask--

"But really--do you think all men are alike?" I reply--

"I said the average does not vary."

"But you will have to admit that some individuals do far overtop the average--intellect-
ually, at least."

Yes, I answer, and Nature repeats those. There is nothing that she repeat. If I may
use a figure, she has established the general doesn't intellectual level of the race at
say, six feet. Take any billion men and stand them in a mass, and their head-tops will
make a floor--a floor as level as a table. That floor represents the intellectual alti-
tude of the masses--and it never changes. Here and there, miles apart, a head will pro-
ject above it a matter of one intellectual inch, so to speak--men of mark in science,
law, war, commerce, etc.; in a spread of five thousand miles you will find three heads
that project still an inch higher,--men of national fame--and one that is higher than
those by two inches, maybe three--a man of (temporarily) world-wide renown; and finally,
somewhere around the circumference of the globe, you will find, once in five centuries
of waiting, one majestic head which overtops the highest of all the others--an author,
a teacher, an artist, a martyr, a conqueror, whose fame towers to the stars, and whose
name will never perish, never fade, while time shall last; some colossus supreme above
all the human herd, some unmated and unmateable prodigy like him who, by magic of the
forces born in him, turned his shoe-hammer into the sceptre of universal dominion. Now
in that view you have the ordinary man of all nations; you have the here-andthere man
that is larger-brained and becomes distinguished; you have the still rarer man of still
wider and more lasting distinction; and in that final head rising solitary out of the
stretch of the ages, you have the limit of Nature's output.

Will she change this program? Not while time lasts. Will she repeat it forever? Yes. For-
ever and ever she will do those grades over and over again, always in the same proportions,
and always with the regularity of a machine. In each million ofpeople, just so many 2 inch
superiorities; in each billion, just so many 2 inch superiorities--and so on; and always
that recurrent solitary star once in an age, never oftener, never two of them at a time.

Nature, when pleased with an idea, never tires of applying it. She makes plains; she
makes hills; she makes mountains; raises aincez spicuous peak at wide intervals; then
loftier and rarer ones, cont. apart; and finally a supreme one six miles high. She uses
this grading process in horses: she turns out myriads of them that are all of one common
dull gait; with here and there a faster one; at enormous intervals a conspicuously
faster one; and once in a half century a celebrity that does a mile in two minutes. She
will repeat that horse every fifty years to the end of time.

By the Law of Periodical Repetition, everything which has happened once must happen again
and again and again--and not capriciously, but at regular periods, and each thing in its
own period, not another's, and each obeying its own law. The eclipse of the sun, the oc-
cultation of Venus, the arrival and departure of the comets, the annual shower of stars--
all these things hint to us that the same Nature which delights in periodical repetition
in the skies is the Nature which orders the affairs of the earth. Let us not underrate the
value of that hint.

Are there any ingenuities whereby you can discredit the law of sui-cide? No. It is estab-
lished. If there was such and such a number in such and such a town last year, that number,
substantially, will be re-peated this year. That number will keep step, arbitrarily, with
the in-crease of population, year after year. Given the population a century hence, you
can determine the crop of suicides that will be harvested in that distant year.

Will this wonderful civilization of to-day perish? Yes, everything perishes. Will it rise
and exist again? It will--for nothing can happen that will not happen again. And again, and
still again, forever. It took more than eight centuries to prepare this civilization--then
it suddenly began to grow, and in less than a century it is become a bewildering marvel.
In time, it will pass away and be forgotten. Ages will elapse, then it will come again; and
not incomplete, but complete; not an in-vention nor discovery nor any smallest detail of it
missing. Again it will pass away, and after ages will rise and dazzle the world again as it
dazzles it now--perfect in all itsparts once more. It is the Law of Periodical Repetition.

It is even possible that the mere names of things will be reproduced. Did not the Science
of Health rise, in the old time, and did it not pass into oblivion, and has it notlatterly
come again and brought with it its forgotten name? Will it perish once more? Many times, I
think, as the ages drift on; and still come again and again. And the forgotten book, Science
and Health, With Key to the Scriptures--is it not with us once more, revised, corrected, and
its orgies of style and construction tamed by an educated disciple? Will it not yet die,
once, twice, a dozen times, and still at vast intervals rise again and successfully chal-
lenge the mind of man to understand it? We may not doubt it. By the Law of Periodical Repe-
tition it must happen.


(early 1900s)



History 1000 Years from Now

A translation


THE COMPLETION of the twenty-ninth century has had at least one effect which was no doubt
common to the completion of all the centuries which have preceded it: it has suddenly con-
centrated the thoughts of the whole thinking and dreaming world upon the past. To-day no
subject but the one--the past--can get much attention. We began, a couple of years ago, with
a quarrel as to whether the dying century closed with the 3ist of December 2899, or whether
it would close with the last day of last year, and it took the entire world the best part
of a year to settle it; then the past was taken hold of with interest, and that interest
has increased in strength and in fascination ever since. To-day men are reading histories
who never cared for them before, and men are writing them who had found no call to work
such veins previously. Every day brings forth a new history--or shall we say a dozen new
ones? Indeed we are floundering in a flood of history.

It will be difficult to condense these narratives into a sketch, but the effort is worth-
while; at least it seems so to the present writer. This sketch must be drawn, fact by fact,
trifle by trifle, from the great general mass, therefore it will not be possible toq uote
the authorities, the number of names and books would be too great for that. And we must
make a bare sketch answer, we cannot expand much; we must content ourselves with a mere
synopsis.

It is now a thousand years since the happy series of accidents--occurred which after many
years rescued our nation from accident--or democracy and gave it the blessed refuge and
shelter of a crown. We say a thousand years, and it was in effect that, though the hist-
ories are not agreed as to the dates. Some of them place the initial events at nine cen-
turies ago, some at ten, others at eleven. As to the events themselves, however, there is
less disagreement.

It is conceded that the first of these incidents was the seizure, by the government in
power at the time, of the group of islands now called the Vashington Archipelago. Vash-
ington--some say George, some say Archibald--was the reigning President, hence the name.
What the group was called before is not now known with certainty, but there is a trad-
ition that our vast Empire was not always called Filipino, and there are those who be-
lieve that this was once the name of that archipelago, and that our forefathers adopted
it in celebration of the conquest, and out of pride in it. The universal destruction of
historical records which occurred during the long and bloody struggle which released us
from the cruel grip of democracy makes our history guesswork mainly--alas that it should
be so!--still, enough of apparently trustworthy information has survived to enable us to
properly estimate the grandeur of that conquest and to sketch the principal details of
it with a close approach to exactness.

It appears, then, that somewhere about a thousand years ago the Filipino group--if we may
use the legendary name--had a population of 2.600,000--Hawkshaw places it at more than
this, as does also Dawes--a population higher in civilization and in the arts of war and
manufacture than any other in existence.


(January 1901)



Old Age



I THINK it likely that people who have not been here will be interested to know what it is
like. I arrived on the thirtieth of November, fresh from carefree and frivolous 69, and
was disappointed.

There is nothing novel about it, nothing striking, nothing to thrill you and make your eye
glitter and your tongue cry out, "Oh, but it is wonderful, perfectly wonderful!" Yes, it
is disappointing. You say, "Is this it?--this? after all this talk and fuss of a thousand
generatiops of travelers who have crossed this frontier and looked about them and told what
they saw and felt? why, it looks just like 69."

And that is true. Also it is natural; for you have not come by the fast express, you have
been lagging and dragging across the world's continents behind oxen; when that is your pace
one country melts into the next one so gradually that you are not able to notice the change:
70 looks like 69; 69 looked like 68; 68 looked like 67--and so on, back, and back, to the
beginning. If you climb to a summit and look back--ah, then you see!

Down that far-reaching perspective you can make out each country and climate that you cross-
ed, all the way up from the hot equator to the ice-summit where you are perched. You can
make out where Infancy merged into Boyhood; Boyhood into down-lipped Youth; youth into in-
definite Young-Manhood; indefinite Young-Manhood into definite Manhood; definite Manhood
with aggressive ambitions into sobered and heedful Husbandhood. and Fatherhood; these into
troubled and foreboding Age, with graying hair; this into Old Age, white-headed, the temple
empty, the idols broken, the worshippers in theirgraves, nothing left but You, a remnant,
a tradition, belated fag-end of a foolish dream, a dream that was so ingeniously dreamed
that it seemed real all the time; nothing left but You, centre of a snowy deso-lation, perch-
ed on the ice-summit, gazing out over the stages of that long trek and asking Yourself
"would you do it again if you had the chance?"


(December 1905)