The Complete Short Stories of Mark Twain

\"Then there are lower animals than Man! This remarkable passage can mean nothing else. Man himself is extinct, but they may still exist. What can they be? Where do they inhabit? One's enthusiasm bursts all bounds in the contemplation of the brilliant field of discovery and investigation here thrown open to science. We close our labors with the humble prayer that your Majesty will immediately appoint a commission and command it to rest not nor spare expense until the search for this hitherto unsuspected race of the creatures of God shall be crowned with success.\" The expedition then journeyed homeward after its long absence and its faithful endeavors, and was received with a mighty ovation by the whole grateful country. There were vulgar, ignorant carpers, of course, as there always are and always will be; and naturally one of these was the obscene Tumble-Bug. He said that all he had learned by his travels was that science only needed a spoonful of supposition to build a mountain of demonstrated fact out of; and that for the future he meant to be content with the knowledge that nature had made free to all creatures and not go prying into the august secrets of the Deity. 1875

THE CANVASSER'S TALE POOR, SAD-EYED stranger! There was that about his humble mien, his tired look, his decayed-gentility clothes, that almost reached the mustard-seed of charity that still remained, remote and lonely, in the empty vastness of my heart, notwithstanding I observed a portfolio under his arm, and said to myself, Behold, Providence hath delivered his servant into the hands of another canvasser. Well, these people always get one interested. Before I well knew how it came about, this one was telling me his history, and I was all attention and sympathy. He told it something like this: My parents died, alas, when I was a little, sinless child. My uncle Ithuriel took me to his heart and reared me as his own. He was my only relative in the wide world; but he was good and rich and generous. He reared me in the lap of luxury. I knew no want that money could satisfy. In the fullness of time I was graduated, and went with two of my servants-- my chamberlain and my valet--to travel in foreign countries. During four years I flitted upon careless wing amid the beauteous gardens of the distant strand, if you will permit this form of speech in one whose tongue was ever attuned to poesy; and indeed I so speak with confidence, as one unto his kind, for I perceive by your eyes that you too, sir, are gifted with the divine inflation. In those far lands I reveled in the ambrosial food that fructifies the soul, the mind, the heart. But of all things, that which most appealed to my inborn esthetic taste was the prevailing custom there, among the rich, of making collections of elegant and costly rarities, dainty objets de vertu, and in an evil hour I tried to uplift my uncle Ithuriel to a plane of sympathy with this exquisite employment. I wrote and told him of one gentleman's vast collection of shells; another's noble collection of meerschaum pipes; another's elevating and refining collection of undecipherable autographs; another's priceless collection of old china; another's enchanting collection of postage-stamps--and so forth and so on. Soon my letters yielded fruit. My uncle began to look about for something to make a collection of. You may know, perhaps, how fleetly a taste like this dilates. His soon became a raging fever, though I knew it not. He began to neglect his great pork business; presently he wholly retired and turned an elegant leisure into a

rabid search for curious things. His wealth was vast, and he spared it not. First he tried cow-bells. He made a collection which filled five large salons, and comprehended all the different sorts of cow-bells that ever had been contrived, save one. That one--an antique, and the only specimen extant--was possessed by another collector. My uncle offered enormous sums for it, but the gentleman would not sell. Doubtless you know what necessarily resulted. A true collector attaches no value to a collection that is not complete. His great heart breaks, he sells his hoard, he turns his mind to some field that seems unoccupied. Thus did my uncle. He next tried brickbats. After piling up a vast and intensely interesting collection, the former difficulty supervened; his great heart broke again; he sold out his soul's idol to the retired brewer who possessed the missing brick. Then he tried flint hatchets and other implements of Primeval Man, but by and by discovered that the factory where they were made was supplying other collectors as well as himself. He tried Aztec inscriptions and stuffed whales--another failure, after incredible labor and expense. When his collection seemed at last perfect, a stuffed whale arrived from Greenland and an Aztec inscription from the Cundurango regions of Central America that made all former specimens insignificant. My uncle hastened to secure these noble gems. He got the stuffed whale, but another collector got the inscription. A real Cundurango, as possibly you know, is a possession of such supreme value that, when once a collector gets it, he will rather part with his family than with it. So my uncle sold out, and saw his darlings go forth, never more to return; and his coal-black hair turned white as snow in a single night. Now he waited, and thought. He knew another disappointment might kill him. He was resolved that he would choose things next time that no other man was collecting. He carefully made up his mind, and once more entered the field-- this time to make a collection of echoes. \"Of what?\" said I. Echoes, sir. His first purchase was an echo in Georgia that repeated four times; his next was a six-repeater in Maryland; his next was a thirteen-repeater in Maine; his next was a nine-repeater in Kansas; his next was a twelve-repeater in Tennessee, which he got cheap, so to speak, because it was out of repair, a portion of the crag which reflected it having tumbled down. He believed he could repair it at a cost of a few thousand dollars, and, by increasing the elevation with masonry, treble the repeating capacity; but the architect who undertook the job had never built an echo before, and so he utterly spoiled this one. Before he meddled with it, it used to talk back like a mother-in-law, but

now it was only fit for the deaf-and-dumb asylum. Well, next he bought a lot of cheap little double-barreled echoes, scattered around over various states and territories; he got them at twenty per cent. off by taking the lot. Next he bought a perfect Gatling-gun of an echo in Oregon, and it cost a fortune, I can tell you. You may know, sir, that in the echo market the scales of prices is cumulative, like the carat-scale in diamonds; in fact, the same phraseology is used. A single- carat echo is worth but ten dollars over and above the value of the land it is on; a two-carat or double-barreled echo is worth thirty dollars; a five-carat is worth nine hundred and fifty; a ten-carat is worth thirteen thousand. My uncle's Oregon echo, which he called the Great Pitt Echo, was a twenty-two carat gem, and cost two hundred and sixteen thousand dollars--they threw the land in, for it was four hundred miles from a settlement. Well, in the mean time my path was a path of roses. I was the accepted suitor of the only and lovely daughter of an English earl, and was beloved to distraction. In that dear presence I swam in seas of bliss. The family were content, for it was known that I was sole heir to an uncle held to be worth five millions of dollars. However, none of us knew that my uncle had become a collector, at least in anything more than a small way, for aesthetic amusement. Now gathered the clouds above my unconscious head. That divine echo, since known throughout the world as the Great Koh-i-noor, or Mountain of Repetitions, was discovered. It was a sixty-five-carat gem. You could utter a word and it would talk back at you for fifteen minutes, when the day was otherwise quiet. But behold, another fact came to light at the same time: another echo-collector was in the field. The two rushed to make the peerless purchase. The property consisted of a couple of small hills with a shallow swale between, out yonder among the back settlements of New York State. Both men arrived on the ground at the same time, and neither knew the other was there. The echo was not all owned by one man; a person by the name of Williamson Bolivar Jarvis owned the east hill, and a person by the name of Harbison J. Bledso owned the west hill; the swale between was the dividing-line. So while my uncle was buying Jarvis's hill for three million two hundred and eighty-five thousand dollars, the other party was buying Bledso's hill for a shade over three million. Now, do you perceive the natural result? Why, the noblest collection of echoes on earth was forever and ever incomplete, since it possessed but the one- half of the king echo of the universe. Neither man was content with this divided ownership, yet neither would sell to the other. There were jawings, bickerings, heart-burnings. And at last that other collector, with a malignity which only a

collector can ever feel toward a man and a brother, proceeded to cut down his hill! You see, as long as he could not have the echo, he was resolved that nobody should have it. He would remove his hill, and then there would be nothing to reflect my uncle's echo. My uncle remonstrated with him, but the man said, \"I own one end of this echo; I choose to kill my end; you must take care of your own end yourself.\" Well, my uncle got an injunction put on him. The other man appealed and fought it in a higher court. They carried it on up, clear to the Supreme Court of the United States. It made no end of trouble there. Two of the judges believed that an echo was personal property, because it was impalpable to sight and touch, and yet was purchasable, salable, and consequently taxable; two others believed that an echo was real estate, because it was manifestly attached to the land, and was not removable from place to place; other of the judges contended that an echo was not property at all. It was finally decided that the echo was property; that the hills were property; that the two men were separate and independent owners of the two hills, but tenants in common in the echo; therefore defendant was at full liberty to cut down his hill, since it belonged solely to him, but must give bonds in three million dollars as indemnity for damages which might result to my uncle's half of the echo. This decision also debarred my uncle from using defendant's hill to reflect his part of the echo, without defendant's consent; he must use only his own hill; if his part of the echo would not go, under these circumstances, it was sad, of course, but the court could find no remedy. The court also debarred defendant from using my uncle's hill to reflect his end of the echo, without consent. You see the grand result! Neither man would give consent, and so that astonishing and most noble echo had to cease from its great powers; and since that day that magnificent property is tied up and unsalable. A week before my wedding-day, while I was still swimming in bliss and the nobility were gathering from far and near to honor our espousals, came news of my uncle's death, and also a copy of his will, making me his sole heir. He was gone; alas, my dear benefactor was no more. The thought surcharges my heart even at this remote day. I handed the will to the earl; I could not read it for the blinding tears. The earl read it; then he sternly said, \"Sir, do you call this wealth? --but doubtless you do in your inflated country. Sir, you are left sole heir to a vast collection of echoes--if a thing can be called a collection that is scattered far and wide over the huge length and breadth of the American continent; sir, this is

not all; you are head and ears in debt; there is not an echo in the lot but has a mortgage on it; sir, I am not a hard man, but I must look to my child's interest; if you had but one echo which you could honestly call your own, if you had but one echo which was free from incumbrance, so that you could retire to it with my child, and by humble, painstaking industry cultivate and improve it, and thus wrest from it a maintenance, I would not say you nay; but I cannot marry my child to a beggar. Leave his side, my darling; go, sir, take your mortgage-ridden echoes and quit my sight forever.\" My noble Celestine clung to me in tears, with loving arms, and swore she would willingly, nay gladly, marry me, though I had not an echo in the world. But it could not be. We were torn asunder, she to pine and die within the twelvemonth, I to toil life's long journey sad and alone, praying daily, hourly, for that release which shall join us together again in that dear realm where the wicked cease from troubling and the weary are at rest. Now, sir, if you will be so kind as to look at these maps and plans in my portfolio, I am sure I can sell you an echo for less money than any man in the trade. Now this one, which cost my uncle ten dollars, thirty years ago, and is one of the sweetest things in Texas, I will let you have for-- \"Let me interrupt you,\" I said. \"My friend, I have not had a moment's respite from canvassers this day. I have bought a sewing-machine which I did not want; I have bought a map which is mistaken in all its details; I have bought a clock which will not go; I have bought a moth poison which the moths prefer to any other beverage; I have bought no end of useless inventions, and now I have had enough of this foolishness. I would not have one of your echoes if you were even to give it to me. I would not let it stay on the place. I always hate a man that tries to sell me echoes. You see this gun? Now take your collection and move on; let us not have bloodshed.\" But he only smiled a sad, sweet smile, and got out some more diagrams. You know the result perfectly well, because you know that when you have once opened the door to a canvasser, the trouble is done and you have got to suffer defeat. I compromised with this man at the end of an intolerable hour. I bought two double-barreled echoes in good condition, and he threw in another, which he said was not salable because it only spoke German. He said, \"She was a perfect polyglot once, but somehow her palate got down.\"

1876

THE LOVES OF ALONZO FITZ CLARENCE AND ROSANNAH ETHELTON 1 IT WAS well along in the forenoon of a bitter winter's day. The town of Eastport, in the state of Maine, lay buried under a deep snow that was newly fallen. The customary bustle in the streets was wanting. One could look long distances down them and see nothing but a dead-white emptiness, with silence to match. Of course I do not mean that you could see the silence--no, you could only hear it. The sidewalks were merely long, deep ditches, with steep snow walls on either side. Here and there you might hear the faint, far scrape of a wooden shovel, and if you were quick enough you might catch a glimpse of a distant black figure stooping and disappearing in one of those ditches, and reappearing the next moment with a motion which you would know meant the heaving out of a shovelful of snow. But you needed to be quick, for that black figure would not linger, but would soon drop that shovel and scud for the house, thrashing itself with its arms to warm them. Yes, it was too venomously cold for snow-shovelers or anybody else to stay out long. Presently the sky darkened; then the wind rose and began to blow in fitful, vigorous gusts, which sent clouds of powdery snow aloft, and straight ahead, and everywhere. Under the impulse of one of these gusts, great white drifts banked themselves like graves across the streets; a moment later another gust shifted them around the other way, driving a fine spray of snow from their sharp crests, as the gale drives the spume flakes from wave-crests at sea; a third gust swept that place as clean as your hand, if it saw fit. This was fooling, this was play; but each and all of the gusts dumped some snow into the sidewalk ditches, for that was business. Alonzo Fitz Clarence was sitting in his snug and elegant little parlor, in a lovely blue silk dressing-gown, with cuffs and facings of crimson satin, elaborately quilted. The remains of his breakfast were before him, and the dainty and costly little table service added a harmonious charm to the grace, beauty, and richness of the fixed appointments of the room. A cheery fire was blazing on the hearth.

A furious gust of wind shook the windows, and a great wave of snow washed against them with a drenching sound, so to speak. The handsome young bachelor murmured: \"That means, no going out to-day. Well, I am content. But what to do for company? Mother is well enough, Aunt Susan is well enough; but these, like the poor, I have with me always. On so grim a day as this, one needs a new interest, a fresh element, to whet the dull edge of captivity. That was very neatly said, but it doesn't mean anything. One doesn't want the edge of captivity sharpened up, you know, but just the reverse.\" He glanced at his pretty French mantel-clock. \"That clock's wrong again. That clock hardly ever knows what time it is; and when it does know, it lies about it--which amounts to the same thing. Alfred!\" There was no answer. \"Alfred! . . . Good servant, but as uncertain as the clock.\" Alonzo touched an electric bell button in the wall. He waited a moment, then touched it again; waited a few moments more, and said: \"Battery out of order, no doubt. But now that I have started, I will find out what time it is.\" He stepped to a speaking-tube in the wall, blew its whistle, and called, \"Mother!\" and repeated it twice. \"Well, that's no use. Mother's battery is out of order, too. Can't raise anybody down-stairs--that is plain.\" He sat down at a rosewood desk, leaned his chin on the left-hand edge of it and spoke, as if to the floor: \"Aunt Susan!\" A low, pleasant voice answered, \"Is that you, Alonzo?\" \"Yes. I'm too lazy and comfortable to go down-stairs; I am in extremity, and I can't seem to scare up any help.\" \"Dear me, what is the matter?\" \"Matter enough, I can tell you!\" \"Oh, don't keep me in suspense, dear! What is it?\" \"I want to know what time it is.\" \"You abominable boy, what a turn you did give me! Is that all?\" \"All--on my honor. Calm yourself. Tell me the time, and receive my blessing.\" \"Just five minutes after nine. No charge--keep your blessing.\" \"Thanks. It wouldn't have impoverished me, aunty, nor so enriched you that you could live without other means.\" He got up, murmuring, \"Just five minutes after nine,\" and faced his clock.

\"Ah,\" said he, \"you are doing better than usual. You are only thirty-four minutes wrong. Let me see . . . let me see. . . . Thirty-three and twenty-one are fifty-four; four times fifty-four are two hundred and thirty-six. One off, leaves two hundred and thirty-five. That's right.\" He turned the hands of his clock forward till they marked twenty-five minutes to one, and said, \"Now see if you can't keep right for a while . . . else I'll raffle you!\" He sat down at the desk again, and said, \"Aunt Susan!\" \"Yes, dear.\" \"Had breakfast?\" \"Yes, indeed, an hour ago.\" \"Busy?\" \"No--except sewing. Why?\" \"Got any company?\" \"No, but I expect some at half past nine.\" \"I wish I did. I'm lonesome. I want to talk to somebody.\" \"Very well, talk to me.\" \"But this is very private.\" \"Don't be afraid--talk right along, there's nobody here but me.\" \"I hardly know whether to venture or not, but--\" \"But what? Oh, don't stop there! You know you can trust me, Alonzo--you know you can.\" \"I feel it, aunt, but this is very serious. It affects me deeply--me, and all the family--even the whole community.\" \"Oh, Alonzo, tell me! I will never breathe a word of it. What is it?\" \"Aunt, if I might dare--\" \"Oh, please go on! I love you, and feel for you. Tell me all. Confide in me. What is it?\" \"The weather!\" \"Plague take the weather! I don't see how you can have the heart to serve me so, Lon.\" \"There, there, aunty dear, I'm sorry; I am, on my honor. I won't do it again. Do you forgive me?\" \"Yes, since you seem so sincere about it, though I know I oughtn't to. You will fool me again as soon as I have forgotten this time.\" \"No, I won't, honor bright. But such weather, oh, such weather! You've got to keep your spirits up artificially. It is snowy, and blowy, and gusty, and bitter

cold! How is the weather with you?\" \"Warm and rainy and melancholy. The mourners go about the streets with their umbrellas running streams from the end of every whalebone. There's an elevated double pavement of umbrellas stretching down the sides of the streets as far as I can see. I've got a fire for cheerfulness, and the windows open to keep cool. But it is vain, it is useless: nothing comes in but the balmy breath of December, with its burden of mocking odors from the flowers that possess the realm outside, and rejoice in their lawless profusion whilst the spirit of man is low, and flaunt their gaudy splendors in his face while his soul is clothed in sackcloth and ashes and his heart breaketh.\" Alonzo opened his lips to say, \"You ought to print that, and get it framed,\" but checked himself, for he heard his aunt speaking to some one else. He went and stood at the window and looked out upon the wintry prospect. The storm was driving the snow before it more furiously than ever; window-shutters were slamming and banging; a forlorn dog, with bowed head and tail withdrawn from service, was pressing his quaking body against a windward wall for shelter and protection; a young girl was plowing knee-deep through the drifts, with her face turned from the blast, and the cape of her waterproof blowing straight rearward over her head. Alonzo shuddered, and said with a sigh, \"Better the slop, and the sultry rain, and even the insolent flowers, than this!\" He turned from the window, moved a step, and stopped in a listening attitude. The faint, sweet notes of a familiar song caught his ear. He remained there, with his head unconsciously bent forward, drinking in the melody, stirring neither hand nor foot, hardly breathing. There was a blemish in the execution of the song, but to Alonzo it seemed an added charm instead of a defect. This blemish consisted of a marked flatting of the third, fourth, fifth, sixth, and seventh notes of the refrain or chorus of the piece. When the music ended, Alonzo drew a deep breath, and said, \"Ah, I never have heard 'In the Sweet By- and-By' sung like that before!\" He stepped quickly to the desk, listened a moment, and said in a guarded, confidential voice, \"Aunty, who is this divine singer?\" \"She is the company I was expecting. Stays with me a month or two. I will introduce you. Miss--\" \"For goodness' sake, wait a moment, Aunt Susan! You never stop to think what you are about!\" He flew to his bedchamber, and returned in a moment perceptibly changed in his outward appearance, and remarking, snappishly:

\"Hang it, she would have introduced me to this angel in that sky-blue dressing-gown with red-hot lapels! Women never think, when they get a-going.\" He hastened and stood by the desk, and said eagerly, \"Now, Aunty, I am ready,\" and fell to smiling and bowing with all the persuasiveness and elegance that were in him. \"Very well. Miss Rosannah Ethelton, let me introduce to you my favorite nephew, Mr. Alonzo Fitz Clarence. There! You are both good people, and I like you; so I am going to trust you together while I attend to a few household affairs. Sit down, Rosannah; sit down, Alonzo. Good-by; I sha'n't be gone long.\" Alonzo had been bowing and smiling all the while, and motioning imaginary young ladies to sit down in imaginary chairs, but now he took a seat himself, mentally saying, \"Oh, this is luck! Let the winds blow now, and the snow drive, and the heavens frown! Little I care!\" While these young people chat themselves into an acquaintanceship, let us take the liberty of inspecting the sweeter and fairer of the two. She sat alone, at her graceful ease, in a richly furnished apartment which was manifestly the private parlor of a refined and sensible lady, if signs and symbols may go for anything. For instance, by a low, comfortable chair stood a dainty, top-heavy workstand, whose summit was a fancifully embroidered shallow basket, with varicolored crewels, and other strings and odds and ends protruding from under the gaping lid and hanging down in negligent profusion. On the floor lay bright shreds of Turkey red, Prussian blue, and kindred fabrics, bits of ribbon, a spool or two, a pair of scissors, and a roll or so of tinted silken stuffs. On a luxurious sofa, upholstered with some sort of soft Indian goods wrought in black and gold threads interwebbed with other threads not so pronounced in color, lay a great square of coarse white stuff, upon whose surface a rich bouquet of flowers was growing, under the deft cultivation of the crochet-needle. The household cat was asleep on this work of art. In a bay-window stood an easel with an unfinished picture on it, and a palette and brushes on a chair beside it. There were books everywhere: Robertson's Sermons, Tennyson, Moody and Sankey, Hawthorne, Rab and his Friends, cook-books, prayer-books, pattern-books--and books about all kinds of odious and exasperating pottery, of course. There was a piano, with a deck-load of music, and more in a tender. There was a great plenty of pictures on the walls, on the shelves of the mantelpiece and around generally; where coigns of vantage offered were statuettes, and quaint and pretty gimcracks, and rare and costly specimens of peculiarly devilish china. The bay-window gave upon a garden that was ablaze with foreign and domestic flowers and flowering shrubs.

But the sweet young girl was the daintiest thing these premises, within or without, could offer for contemplation: delicately chiseled features, of Grecian cast; her complexion the pure snow of a japonica that is receiving a faint reflected enrichment from some scarlet neighbor of the garden; great, soft blue eyes fringed with long, curving lashes; an expression made up of the trustfulness of a child and the gentleness of a fawn; a beautiful head crowned with its own prodigal gold; a lithe and rounded figure, whose every attitude and movement was instinct with native grace. Her dress and adornment were marked by that exquisite harmony that can come only of a fine natural taste perfected by culture. Her gown was of a simple magenta tulle, cut bias, traversed by three rows of light-blue flounces, with the selvage edges turned up with ashes-of-roses chenille; over-dress of dark bay tarlatan with scarlet satin lambrequins; corn-colored polonaise, en panier, looped with mother-of-pearl buttons and silver cord, and hauled aft and made fast by buff velvet lashings; basque of lavender reps, picked out with valenciennes; low neck, short sleeves; maroon velvet necktie edged with delicate pink silk; inside handkerchief of some simple three-ply ingrain fabric of a soft saffron tint; coral bracelets and locket-chain; coiffure of forget-me-nots and lilies-of-the-valley massed around a noble calla. This was all; yet even in this subdued attire she was divinely beautiful. Then what must she have been when adorned for the festival or the ball? All this time she had been busily chatting with Alonzo, unconscious of our inspection. The minutes still sped, and still she talked. But by and by she happened to look up, and saw the clock. A crimson blush sent its rich flood through her cheeks, and she exclaimed: \"There, good-by, Mr. Fitz Clarence; I must go now!\" She sprang from her chair with such haste that she hardly heard the young man's answering good-by. She stood radiant, graceful, beautiful, and gazed, wondering, upon the accusing clock. Presently her pouting lips parted, and she said: \"Five minutes after eleven! Nearly two hours, and it did not seem twenty minutes! Oh, dear, what will he think of me!\" At the self-same moment Alonzo was staring at his clock. And presently he said: \"Twenty-five minutes to three! Nearly two hours, and I didn't believe it was two minutes! Is it possible that this clock is humbugging again? Miss Ethelton! Just one moment, please. Are you there yet?\"

\"Yes, but be quick; I'm going right away.\" \"Would you be so kind as to tell me what time it is?\" The girl blushed again, murmured to herself, \"It's right down cruel of him to ask me!\" and then spoke up and answered with admirably counterfeited unconcern, \"Five minutes after eleven.\" \"Oh, thank you! You have to go, now, have you?\" \"Yes.\" \"I'm sorry.\" No reply. \"Miss Ethelton!\" \"Well?\" \"You--you're there yet, ain't you?\" \"Yes; but please hurry. What did you want to say?\" \"Well, I--well, nothing in particular. It's very lonesome here. It's asking a great deal, I know, but would you mind talking with me again by and by--that is, if it will not trouble you too much?\" \"I don't know--but I'll think about it. I'll try.\" \"Oh, thanks! Miss Ethelton! . . . Ah, me, she's gone, and here are the black clouds and the whirling snow and the raging winds come again! But she said good-by. She didn't say good morning. She said good-by! . . . The clock was right, after all. What a lightning-winged two hours it was!\" He sat down, and gazed dreamily into his fire for a while, then heaved a sigh and said: \"How wonderful it is! Two little hours ago I was a free man, and now my heart's in San Francisco!\" About that time Rosannah Ethelton, propped in the window seat of her bedchamber, book in hand, was gazing vacantly out over the rainy seas that washed the Golden Gate, and whispered to herself, \"How different he is from poor Burley, with his empty head and his single little antic talent of mimicry!\" 2 Four weeks later Mr. Sidney Algernon Burley was entertaining a gay luncheon company, in a sumptuous drawing-room on Telegraph Hill, with some capital imitations of the voices and gestures of certain popular actors and San

Franciscan literary people and Bonanza grandees. He was elegantly upholstered, and was a handsome fellow, barring a trifling cast in his eye. He seemed very jovial, but nevertheless he kept his eye on the door with an expectant and uneasy watchfulness. By and by a nobby lackey appeared; and delivered a message to the mistress, who nodded her head understandingly. That seemed to settle the thing for Mr. Burley; his vivacity decreased little by little, and a dejected look began to creep into one of his eyes and a sinister one into the other. The rest of the company departed in due time, leaving him with the mistress, to whom he said: \"There is no longer any question about it. She avoids me. She continually excuses herself. If I could see her, if I could speak to her only a moment--but this suspense--\" \"Perhaps her seeming avoidance is mere accident, Mr. Burley. Go to the small drawing-room up-stairs and amuse yourself a moment. I will despatch a household order that is on my mind, and then I will go to her room. Without doubt she will be persuaded to see you.\" Mr. Burley went up-stairs, intending to go to the small drawing-room, but as he was passing \"Aunt Susan's\" private parlor, the door of which stood slightly ajar, he heard a joyous laugh which he recognized; so without knock or announcement he stepped confidently in. But before he could make his presence known he heard words that harrowed up his soul and chilled his young blood. He heard a voice say: \"Darling, it has come!\" Then he heard Rosannah Ethelton, whose back was toward him, say: \"So has yours, dearest!\" He saw her bowed form bend lower; he heard her kiss something--not merely once, but again and again! His soul raged within him. The heart-breaking conversation went on: \"Rosannah, I knew you must be beautiful, but this is dazzling, this is blinding, this is intoxicating!\" \"Alonzo, it is such happiness to hear you say it. I know it is not true, but I am so grateful to have you think it is, nevertheless! I knew you must have a noble face, but the grace and majesty of the reality beggar the poor creation of my fancy.\" Burley heard that rattling shower of kisses again. \"Thank you, my Rosannah! The photograph flatters me, but you must not allow yourself to think of that. Sweetheart?\"

\"Yes, Alonzo.\" \"I am so happy, Rosannah.\" \"Oh, Alonzo, none that have gone before me knew what love was, none that come after me will ever know what happiness is. I float in a gorgeous cloudland, a boundless firmament of enchanted and bewildering ecstasy!\" \"Oh, my Rosannah!--for you are mine, are you not?\" \"Wholly, oh, wholly yours, Alonzo, now and forever! All the day long, and all through my nightly dreams, one song sings itself, and its sweet burden is, 'Alonzo Fitz Clarence, Alonzo Fitz Clarence, Eastport, state of Maine!'\" \"Curse him, I've got his address, anyway!\" roared Burley, inwardly, and rushed from the place. Just behind the unconscious Alonzo stood his mother, a picture of astonishment. She was so muffled from head to heel in furs that nothing of herself was visible but her eyes and nose. She was a good allegory of winter, for she was powdered all over with snow. Behind the unconscious Rosannah stood \"Aunt Susan,\" another picture of astonishment. She was a good allegory of summer, for she was lightly clad, and was vigorously cooling the perspiration on her face with a fan. Both of these women had tears of joy in their eyes. \"So ho!\" exclaimed Mrs. Fitz Clarence, \"this explains why nobody has been able to drag you out of your room for six weeks, Alonzo!\" \"So ho!\" exclaimed Aunt Susan, \"this explains why you have been a hermit for the past six weeks, Rosannah!\" The young couple were on their feet in an instant, abashed, and standing like detected dealers in stolen goods awaiting Judge Lynch's doom. \"Bless you, my son! I am happy in your happiness. Come to your mother's arms, Alonzo!\" \"Bless you, Rosannah, for my dear nephew's sake! Come to my arms!\" Then was there a mingling of hearts and of tears of rejoicing on Telegraph Hill and in Eastport Square. Servants were called by the elders, in both places. Unto one was given the order, \"Pile this fire high with hickory wood, and bring me a roasting-hot lemonade.\" Unto the other was given the order, \"Put out this fire, and bring me two palm-leaf fans and a pitcher of ice-water.\" Then the young people were dismissed, and the elders sat down to talk the sweet surprise over and make the wedding plans.

Some minutes before this Mr. Burley rushed from the mansion on Telegraph Hill without meeting or taking formal leave of anybody. He hissed through his teeth, in unconscious imitation of a popular favorite in melodrama, \"Him shall she never wed! I have sworn it! Ere great Nature shall have doffed her winter's ermine to don the emerald gauds of spring, she shall be mine!\" 3 Two weeks later. Every few hours, during some three or four days, a very prim and devout-looking Episcopal clergyman, with a cast in his eye, had visited Alonzo. According to his card, he was the Rev. Melton Hargrave, of Cincinnati. He said he had retired from the ministry on account of his health. If he had said on account of ill-health, he would probably have erred, to judge by his wholesome looks and firm build. He was the inventor of an improvement in telephones, and hoped to make his bread by selling the privilege of using it. \"At present,\" he continued, \"a man may go and tap a telegraph wire which is conveying a song or a concert from one state to another, and he can attach his private telephone and steal a hearing of that music as it passes along. My invention will stop all that.\" \"Well,\" answered Alonzo, \"if the owner of the music could not miss what was stolen, why should he care?\" \"He shouldn't care,\" said the Reverend. \"Well?\" said Alonzo, inquiringly. \"Suppose,\" replied the Reverend, \"suppose that, instead of music that was passing along and being stolen, the burden of the wire was loving endearments of the most private and sacred nature?\" Alonzo shuddered from head to heel. \"Sir, it is a priceless invention,\" said he; \"I must have it at any cost.\" But the invention was delayed somewhere on the road from Cincinnati, most unaccountably. The impatient Alonzo could hardly wait. The thought of Rosannah's sweet words being shared with him by some ribald thief was galling to him. The Reverend came frequently and lamented the delay, and told of measures he had taken to hurry things up. This was some little comfort to Alonzo. One forenoon the Reverend ascended the stairs and knocked at Alonzo's

door. There was no response. He entered, glanced eagerly around, closed the door softly, then ran to the telephone. The exquisitely soft and remote strains of the \"Sweet By-and-By\" came floating through the instrument. The singer was flatting, as usual, the five notes that follow the first two in the chorus, when the Reverend interrupted her with this word, in a voice which was an exact imitation of Alonzo's, with just the faintest flavor of impatience added: \"Sweetheart?\" \"Yes, Alonzo?\" \"Please don't sing that any more this week--try something modern.\" The agile step that goes with a happy heart was heard on the stairs, and the Reverend, smiling diabolically, sought sudden refuge behind the heavy folds of the velvet window-curtains. Alonzo entered and flew to the telephone. Said he: \"Rosannah, dear, shall we sing something together?\" \"Something modern?\" asked she, with sarcastic bitterness. \"Yes, if you prefer.\" \"Sing it yourself, if you like!\" This snappishness amazed and wounded the young man. He said: \"Rosannah, that was not like you.\" \"I suppose it becomes me as much as your very polite speech became you, Mr. Fitz Clarence.\" \"Mister Fitz Clarence! Rosannah, there was nothing impolite about my speech.\" \"Oh, indeed! Of course, then, I misunderstood you, and I most humbly beg your pardon, ha-ha-ha! No doubt you said, 'Don't sing it any more to-day.'\" \"Sing what any more to-day?\" \"The song you mentioned, of course. How very obtuse we are, all of a sudden!\" \"I never mentioned any song.\" \"Oh, you didn't?\" \"No, I didn't!\" \"I am compelled to remark that you did.\" \"And I am obliged to reiterate that I didn't.\" \"A second rudeness! That is sufficient, sir. I will never forgive you. All is over between us.\" Then came a muffled sound of crying. Alonzo hastened to say: \"Oh, Rosannah, unsay those words! There is some dreadful mystery here, some hideous mistake. I am utterly earnest and sincere when I say I never said

anything about any song. I would not hurt you for the whole world. . . . Rosannah, dear! . . . Oh, speak to me, won't you?\" There was a pause; then Alonzo heard the girl's sobbings retreating, and knew she had gone from the telephone. He rose with a heavy sigh, and hastened from the room, saying to himself, \"I will ransack the charity missions and the haunts of the poor for my mother. She will persuade her that I never meant to wound her.\" A minute later the Reverend was crouching over the telephone like a cat that knoweth the ways of the prey. He had not very many minutes to wait. A soft, repentant voice, tremulous with tears, said: \"Alonzo, dear, I have been wrong. You could not have said so cruel a thing. It must have been some one who imitated your voice in malice or in jest.\" The Reverend coldly answered, in Alonzo's tones: \"You have said all was over between us. So let it be. I spurn your proffered repentance, and despise it!\" Then he departed, radiant with fiendish triumph, to return no more with his imaginary telephonic invention forever. Four hours afterward Alonzo arrived with his mother from her favorite haunts of poverty and vice. They summoned the San Francisco household; but there was no reply. They waited, and continued to wait, upon the voiceless telephone. At length, when it was sunset in San Francisco, and three hours and a half after dark in Eastport, an answer to the oft-repeated cry of \"Rosannah!\" But, alas, it was Aunt Susan's voice that spake. She said: \"I have been out all day; just got in. I will go and find her.\" The watchers waited two minutes--five minutes--ten minutes. Then came these fatal words, in a frightened tone: \"She is gone, and her baggage with her. To visit another friend, she told the servants. But I found this note on the table in her room. Listen: 'I am gone; seek not to trace me out; my heart is broken; you will never see me more. Tell him I shall always think of him when I sing my poor \"Sweet By-and-By,\" but never of the unkind words he said about it.' That is her note. Alonzo, Alonzo, what does it mean? What has happened?\" But Alonzo sat white and cold as the dead. His mother threw back the velvet curtains and opened a window. The cold air refreshed the sufferer, and he told his aunt his dismal story. Meantime his mother was inspecting a card which had disclosed itself upon the floor when she cast the curtains back. It read, \"Mr.

Sidney Algernon Burley, San Francisco.\" \"The miscreant!\" shouted Alonzo, and rushed forth to seek the false Reverend and destroy him; for the card explained everything, since in the course of the lovers' mutual confessions they had told each other all about all the sweethearts they had ever had, and thrown no end of mud at their failings and foibles--for lovers always do that. It has a fascination that ranks next after billing and cooing. 4 During the next two months many things happened. It had early transpired that Rosannah, poor suffering orphan, had neither returned to her grandmother in Portland, Oregon, nor sent any word to her save a duplicate of the woeful note she had left in the mansion on Telegraph Hill. Whosoever was sheltering her--if she was still alive--had been persuaded not to betray her whereabouts, without doubt; for all efforts to find trace of her had failed. Did Alonzo give her up? Not he. He said to himself, \"She will sing that sweet song when she is sad; I shall find her.\" So he took his carpet-sack and a portable telephone, and shook the snow of his native city from his arctics, and went forth into the world. He wandered far and wide and in many states. Time and again, strangers were astounded to see a wasted, pale, and woe-worn man laboriously climb a telegraph-pole in wintry and lonely places, perch sadly there an hour, with his ear at a little box, then come sighing down, and wander wearily away. Sometimes they shot at him, as peasants do at aeronauts, thinking him mad and dangerous. Thus his clothes were much shredded by bullets and his person grievously lacerated. But he bore it all patiently. In the beginning of his pilgrimage he used often to say, \"Ah, if I could but hear the 'Sweet By-and By'!\" But toward the end of it he used to shed tears of anguish and say, \"Ah, if I could but hear something else!\" Thus a month and three weeks drifted by, and at last some humane people seized him and confined him in a private mad-house in New York. He made no moan, for his strength was all gone, and with it all heart and all hope. The superintendent, in pity, gave up his own comfortable parlor and bedchamber to him and nursed him with affectionate devotion. At the end of a week the patient was able to leave his bed for the first time.

He was lying, comfortably pillowed, on a sofa, listening to the plaintive Miserere of the bleak March winds and the muffled sound of tramping feet in the street below--for it was about six in the evening, and New York was going home from work. He had a bright fire and the added cheer of a couple of student- lamps. So it was warm and snug within, though bleak and raw without; it was light and bright within, though outside it was as dark and dreary as if the world had been lit with Hartford gas. Alonzo smiled feebly to think how his loving vagaries had made him a maniac in the eyes of the world, and was proceeding to pursue his line of thought further, when a faint, sweet strain, the very ghost of sound, so remote and attenuated it seemed, struck upon his ear. His pulses stood still; he listened with parted lips and bated breath. The song flowed on--he waiting, listening, rising slowly and unconsciously from his recumbent position. At last he exclaimed: \"It is! it is she! Oh, the divine flatted notes!\" He dragged himself eagerly to the corner whence the sounds proceeded, tore aside a curtain, and discovered a telephone. He bent over, and as the last note died away he burst forth with the exclamation: \"Oh, thank Heaven, found at last! Speak to me, Rosannah, dearest! The cruel mystery has been unraveled; it was the villain Burley who mimicked my voice and wounded you with insolent speech!\" There was a breathless pause, a waiting age to Alonzo; then a faint sound came, framing itself into language: \"Oh, say those precious words again, Alonzo!\" \"They are the truth, the veritable truth, my Rosannah, and you shall have the proof, ample and abundant proof!\" \"Oh, Alonzo, stay by me! Leave me not for a moment! Let me feel that you are near me! Tell me we shall never be parted more! Oh, this happy hour, this blessed hour, this memorable hour!\" \"We will make record of it, my Rosannah; every year, as this dear hour chimes from the clock, we will celebrate it with thanksgivings, all the years of our life.\" \"We will, we will, Alonzo!\" \"Four minutes after six, in the evening, my Rosannah, shall henceforth--\" \"Twenty-three minutes after twelve, afternoon, shall--\" \"Why, Rosannah, darling, where are you?\" \"In Honolulu, Sandwich Islands. And where are you? Stay by me; do not leave me for a moment. I cannot bear it. Are you at home?\"

\"No, dear, I am in New York--a patient in the doctor's hands.\" An agonizing shriek came buzzing to Alonzo's ear, like the sharp buzzing of a hurt gnat; it lost power in traveling five thousand miles. Alonzo hastened to say: \"Calm yourself, my child. It is nothing. Already I am getting well under the sweet healing of your presence. Rosannah?\" \"Yes, Alonzo? Oh, how you terrified me! Say on.\" \"Name the happy day, Rosannah!\" There was a little pause. Then a diffident small voice replied, \"I blush--but it is with pleasure, it is with happiness. Would--would you like to have it soon?\" \"This very night, Rosannah! Oh, let us risk no more delays. Let it be now!-- this very night, this very moment!\" \"Oh, you impatient creature! I have nobody here but my good old uncle, a missionary for a generation, and now retired from service--nobody but him and his wife. I would so dearly like it if your mother and your Aunt Susan--\" \"Our mother and our Aunt Susan, my Rosannah.\" \"Yes, our mother and our Aunt Susan--I am content to word it so if it pleases you; I would so like to have them present.\" \"So would I. Suppose you telegraph Aunt Susan. How long would it take her to come?\" \"The steamer leaves San Francisco day after tomorrow. The passage is eight days. She would be here the 31st of March.\" \"Then name the 1st of April; do, Rosannah, dear.\" \"Mercy, it would make us April fools, Alonzo!\" \"So we be the happiest ones that that day's sun looks down upon in the whole broad expanse of the globe, why need we care? Call it the 1st of April, dear.\" \"Then the 1st of April it shall be, with all my heart!\" \"Oh, happiness! Name the hour, too, Rosannah.\" \"I like the morning, it is so blithe. Will eight in the morning do, Alonzo?\" \"The loveliest hour in the day--since it will make you mine.\" There was a feeble but frantic sound for some little time, as if wool-lipped, disembodied spirits were exchanging kisses; then Rosannah said, \"Excuse me just a moment, dear; I have an appointment, and am called to meet it.\" The young girl sought a large parlor and took her place at a window which looked out upon a beautiful scene. To the left one could view the charming Nuuana Valley, fringed with its ruddy flush of tropical flowers and its plumed and graceful cocoa palms; its rising foothills clothed in the shining green of

lemon, citron, and orange groves; its storied precipice beyond, where the first Kamehameha drove his defeated foes over to their destruction--a spot that had forgotten its grim history, no doubt, for now it was smiling, as almost always at noonday, under the glowing arches of a succession of rainbows. In front of the window one could see the quaint town, and here and there a picturesque group of dusky natives, enjoying the blistering weather; and far to the right lay the restless ocean, tossing its white mane in the sunshine. Rosannah stood there, in her filmy white raiment, fanning her flushed and heated face, waiting. A Kanaka boy, clothed in a damaged blue necktie and part of a silk hat, thrust his head in at the door, and announced, \"'Frisco haole!\" \"Show him in,\" said the girl, straightening herself up and assuming a meaning dignity. Mr. Sidney Algernon Burley entered, clad from head to heel in dazzling snow--that is to say, in the lightest and whitest of Irish linen. He moved eagerly forward, but the girl made a gesture and gave him a look which checked him suddenly. She said, coldly, \"I am here, as I promised. I believed your assertions, I yielded to your importunities, and said I would name the day. I name the 1st of April--eight in the morning. Now go!\" \"Oh, my dearest, if the gratitude of a lifetime--\" \"Not a word. Spare me all sight of you, all communication with you, until that hour. No--no supplications; I will have it so.\" When he was gone, she sank exhausted in a chair, for the long siege of troubles she had undergone had wasted her strength. Presently she said, \"What a narrow escape! If the hour appointed had been an hour earlier--Oh, horror, what an escape I have made! And to think I had come to imagine I was loving this beguiling, this truthless, this treacherous monster! Oh, he shall repent his villainy!\" Let us now draw this history to a close, for little more needs to be told. On the 2d of the ensuing April, the Honolulu Advertiser contained this notice: MARRIED In this city, by telephone, yesterday morning, at eight o'clock, by Rev. Nathan Hays, assisted by Rev. Nathaniel Davis, of New York, Mr. Alonzo

Fitz Clarence, of Eastport, Maine, U.S., and Miss Rosannah Ethelton, of Portland, Oregon, U.S. Mrs. Susan Howland, of San Francisco, a friend of the bride, was present, she being the guest of the Rev. Mr. Hays and wife, uncle and aunt of the bride. Mr. Sidney Algernon Burley, of San Francisco, was also present but did not remain till the conclusion of the marriage service. Captain Hawthorne's beautiful yacht, tastefully decorated, was in waiting, and the happy bride and her friends immediately departed on a bridal trip to Lahaina and Haleakala. The New York papers of the same date contained this notice: MARRIED In this city, yesterday, by telephone, at half-past two in the morning, by Rev. Nathaniel Davis, assisted by Rev. Nathan Hays, of Honolulu, Mr. Alonzo Fitz Clarence, of Eastport, Maine, and Miss Rosannah Ethelton, of Portland, Oregon. The parents and several friends of the bridegroom were present, and enjoyed a sumptuous breakfast and much festivity until nearly sunrise, and then departed on a bridal trip to the Aquarium, the bridegroom's state of health not admitting of a more extended journey. Toward the close of that memorable day Mr. and Mrs. Alonzo Fitz Clarence were buried in sweet converse concerning the pleasures of their several bridal tours, when suddenly the young wife exclaimed: \"Oh, Lonny, I forgot! I did what I said I would.\" \"Did you, dear?\" \"Indeed, I did. I made him the April fool! And I told him so, too! Ah, it was a charming surprise! There he stood, sweltering in a black dress-suit, with the mercury leaking out of the top of the thermometer, waiting to be married. You should have seen the look he gave when I whispered it in his ear. Ah, his wickedness cost me many a heartache and many a tear, but the score was all squared up, then. So the vengeful feeling went right out of my heart, and I begged him to stay, and said I forgave him everything. But he wouldn't. He said he would live to be avenged; said he would make our lives a curse to us. But he can't, can he, dear?\" \"Never in this world, my Rosannah!\"

Aunt Susan, the Oregonian grandmother, and the young couple and their Eastport parents, are all happy at this writing, and likely to remain so. Aunt Susan brought the bride from the islands, accompanied her across our continent, and had the happiness of witnessing the rapturous meeting between an adoring husband and wife who had never seen each other until that moment. A word about the wretched Burley, whose wicked machinations came so near wrecking the hearts and lives of our poor young friends, will be sufficient. In a murderous attempt to seize a crippled and helpless artisan who he fancied had done him some small offense, he fell into a caldron of boiling oil and expired before he could be extinguished. 1878

EDWARD MILLS AND GEORGE BENTON: A TALE THESE TWO were distantly related to each other--seventh cousins, or something of that sort. While still babies they became orphans, and were adopted by the Brants, a childless couple, who quickly grew very fond of them. The Brants were always saying: \"Be pure, honest, sober, industrious, and considerate of others, and success in life is assured.\" The children heard this repeated some thousands of times before they understood it; they could repeat it themselves long before they could say the Lord's Prayer; it was painted over the nursery door, and was about the first thing they learned to read. It was destined to become the unswerving rule of Edward Mills's life. Sometimes the Brants changed the wording a little, and said: \"Be pure, honest, sober, industrious, considerate, and you will never lack friends.\" Baby Mills was a comfort to everybody about him. When he wanted candy and could not have it, he listened to reason, and contented himself without it. When Baby Benton wanted candy, he cried for it until he got it. Baby Mills took care of his toys; Baby Benton always destroyed his in a very brief time, and then made himself so insistently disagreeable that, in order to have peace in the house, little Edward was persuaded to yield up his playthings to him. When the children were a little older, Georgie became a heavy expense in one respect: he took no care of his clothes; consequently, he shone frequently in new ones, which was not the case with Eddie. The boys grew apace. Eddie was an increasing comfort, Georgie an increasing solicitude. It was always sufficient to say, in answer to Eddie's petitions, \"I would rather you would not do it\"-- meaning swimming, skating, picnicking, berrying, circusing, and all sorts of things which boys delight in. But no answer was sufficient for Georgie; he had to be humored in his desires, or he would carry them with a high hand. Naturally, no boy got more swimming, skating, berrying, and so forth than he; no boy ever had a better time. The good Brants did not allow the boys to play out after nine in summer evenings; they were sent to bed at that hour; Eddie honorably remained, but Georgie usually slipped out of the window toward ten, and enjoyed himself till midnight. It seemed impossible to break Georgie of this bad habit, but the Brants managed it at last by hiring him, with apples and marbles, to stay in. The good Brants gave all their time and attention to vain endeavors to regulate Georgie; they said, with grateful tears in their eyes, that Eddie needed no efforts of theirs, he was so good, so considerate, and in all ways so perfect.

By and by the boys were big enough to work, so they were apprenticed to a trade: Edward went voluntarily; George was coaxed and bribed. Edward worked hard and faithfully, and ceased to be an expense to the good Brants; they praised him, so did his master; but George ran away, and it cost Mr. Brant both money and trouble to hunt him up and get him back. By and by he ran away again-- more money and more trouble. He ran away a third time--and stole a few little things to carry with him. Trouble and expense for Mr. Brant once more, and besides, it was with the greatest difficulty that he succeeded in persuading the master to let the youth go unprosecuted for the theft. Edward worked steadily along, and in time became a full partner in his master's business. George did not improve; he kept the loving hearts of his aged benefactors full of trouble, and their hands full of inventive activities to protect him from ruin. Edward, as a boy, had interested himself in Sunday-schools, debating societies, penny missionary affairs, anti-tobacco organizations, anti- profanity associations, and all such things; as a man, he was a quiet but steady and reliable helper in the church, the temperance societies, and in all movements looking to the aiding and uplifting of men. This excited no remark, attracted no attention--for it was his \"natural bent.\" Finally, the old people died. The will testified their loving pride in Edward, and left their little property to George--because he \"needed it\"; whereas, \"owing to a bountiful Providence,\" such was not the case with Edward. The property was left to George conditionally: he must buy out Edward's partner with it; else it must go to a benevolent organization called the Prisoner's Friend Society. The old people left a letter, in which they begged their dear son Edward to take their place and watch over George, and help and shield him as they had done. Edward dutifully acquiesced, and George became his partner in the business. He was not a valuable partner: he had been meddling with drink before; he soon developed into a constant tippler now, and his flesh and eyes showed the fact unpleasantly. Edward had been courting a sweet and kindly spirited girl for some time. They loved each other dearly, and--But about this period George began to haunt her tearfully and imploringly, and at last she went crying to Edward, and said her high and holy duty was plain before her--she must not let her own selfish desires interfere with it: she must marry \"poor George\" and \"reform him.\" It would break her heart, she knew it would, and so on; but duty was duty. So she married George, and Edward's heart came very near breaking, as well as her own. However, Edward recovered, and married another girl--a very excellent one she was, too.

Children came to both families. Mary did her honest best to reform her husband, but the contract was too large. George went on drinking, and by and by he fell to misusing her and the little one sadly. A great many good people strove with George--they were always at it, in fact--but he calmly took such efforts as his due and their duty, and did not mend his ways. He added a vice, presently-- that of secret gambling. He got deeply in debt; he borrowed money on the firm's credit, as quietly as he could, and carried this system so far and so successfully that one morning the sheriff took possession of the establishment, and the two cousins found themselves penniless. Times were hard, now, and they grew worse. Edward moved his family into a garret, and walked the streets day and night, seeking work. He begged for it, but it was really not to be had. He was astonished to see how soon his face became unwelcome; he was astonished and hurt to see how quickly the ancient interest which people had had in him faded out and disappeared. Still, he must get work; so he swallowed his chagrin, and toiled on in search of it. At last he got a job of carrying bricks up a ladder in a hod, and was a grateful man in consequence; but after that nobody knew him or cared anything about him. He was not able to keep up his dues in the various moral organizations to which he belonged, and had to endure the sharp pain of seeing himself brought under the disgrace of suspension. But the faster Edward died out of public knowledge and interest, the faster George rose in them. He was found lying, ragged and drunk, in the gutter one morning. A member of the Ladies' Temperance Refuge fished him out, took him in hand, got up a subscription for him, kept him sober a whole week, then got a situation for him. An account of it was published. General attention was thus drawn to the poor fellow, and a great many people came forward, and helped him toward reform with their countenance and encouragement. He did not drink a drop for two months, and meantime was the pet of the good. Then he fell--in the gutter; and there was general sorrow and lamentation. But the noble sisterhood rescued him again. They cleaned him up, they fed him, they listened to the mournful music of his repentances, they got him his situation again. An account of this, also, was published, and the town was drowned in happy tears over the re-restoration of the poor beast and struggling victim of the fatal bowl. A grand temperance revival was got up, and after some rousing speeches had been made the chairman said, impressively: \"We are now about to call for signers; and I think there is a spectacle in store for you which not many in this house will be able to view with dry eyes.\" There was

an eloquent pause, and then George Benton, escorted by a red-sashed detachment of the Ladies of the Refuge, stepped forward upon the platform and signed the pledge. The air was rent with applause, and everybody cried for joy. Everybody wrung the hand of the new convert when the meeting was over; his salary was enlarged next day; he was the talk of the town, and its hero. An account of it was published. George Benton fell, regularly, every three months, but was faithfully rescued and wrought with, every time, and good situations were found for him. Finally, he was taken around the country lecturing, as a reformed drunkard, and he had great houses and did an immense amount of good. He was so popular at home, and so trusted--during his sober intervals--that he was enabled to use the name of a principal citizen, and get a large sum of money at the bank. A mighty pressure was brought to bear to save him from the consequences of his forgery, and it was partially successful--he was \"sent up\" for only two years. When, at the end of a year, the tireless efforts of the benevolent were crowned with success, and he emerged from the penitentiary with a pardon in his pocket, the Prisoner's Friend Society met him at the door with a situation and a comfortable salary, and all the other benevolent people came forward and gave him advice, encouragement, and help. Edward Mills had once applied to the Prisoner's Friend Society for a situation, when in dire need, but the question, \"Have you been a prisoner?\" made brief work of his case. While all these things were going on, Edward Mills had been quietly making head against adversity. He was still poor, but was in receipt of a steady and sufficient salary, as the respected and trusted cashier of a bank. George Benton never came near him, and was never heard to inquire about him. George got to indulging in long absences from the town; there were ill reports about him, but nothing definite. One winter's night some masked burglars forced their way into the bank, and found Edward Mills there alone. They commanded him to reveal the \"combination,\" so that they could get into the safe. He refused. They threatened his life. He said his employers trusted him, and he could not be traitor to that trust. He could die, if he must, but while he lived he would be faithful; he would not yield up the \"combination.\" The burglars killed him. The detectives hunted down the criminals; the chief one proved to be George Benton. A wide sympathy was felt for the widow and orphans of the dead man, and all the newspapers in the land begged that all the banks in the land would testify their appreciation of the fidelity and heroism of the murdered cashier by

coming forward with a generous contribution of money in aid of his family, now bereft of support. The result was a mass of solid cash amounting to upward of five hundred dollars--an average of nearly three-eighths of a cent for each bank of the Union. The cashier's own bank testified its gratitude by endeavoring to show (but humiliatingly failed in it) that the peerless servant's accounts were not square, and that he himself had knocked his brains out with a bludgeon to escape detection and punishment. George Benton was arraigned for trial. Then everybody seemed to forget the widow and orphans in their solicitude for poor George. Everything that money and influence could do was done to save him, but it all failed; he was sentenced to death. Straightway the Governor was besieged with petitions for commutation or pardon; they were brought by tearful young girls; by sorrowful old maids; by deputations of pathetic widows; by shoals of impressive orphans. But no, the Governor--for once--would not yield. Now George Benton experienced religion. The glad news flew all around. From that time forth his cell was always full of girls and women and fresh flowers; all the day long there was prayer, and hymn-singing, and thanksgivings, and homilies, and tears, with never an interruption, except an occasional five- minute intermission for refreshments. This sort of thing continued up the very gallows, and George Benton went proudly home, in the black cap, before a wailing audience of the sweetest and best that the region could produce. His grave had fresh flowers on it every day, for a while, and the head-stone bore these words, under a hand pointing aloft: \"He has fought the good fight.\" The brave cashier's head-stone has this inscription: \"Be pure, honest, sober, industrious, considerate, and you will never--\" Nobody knows who gave the order to leave it that way, but it was so given. The cashier's family are in stringent circumstances, now, it is said; but no matter; a lot of appreciative people, who were not willing that an act so brave and true as his should go unrewarded, have collected forty-two thousand dollars- -and built a Memorial Church with it. 1880

THE MAN WHO PUT UP AT GADSBY'S WHEN MY odd friend Riley and I were newspaper correspondents in Washington, in the winter of '67, we were coming down Pennsylvania Avenue one night, near midnight, in a driving storm of snow, when the flash of a street- lamp fell upon a man who was eagerly tearing along in the opposite direction. This man instantly stopped and exclaimed: \"This is lucky! You are Mr. Riley, ain't you?\" Riley was the most self-possessed and solemnly deliberate person in the republic. He stopped, looked his man over from head to foot, and finally said: \"I am Mr. Riley. Did you happen to be looking for me?\" \"That's just what I was doing,\" said the man, joyously, \"and it's the biggest luck in the world that I've found you. My name is Lykins. I'm one of the teachers of the high school--San Francisco. As soon as I heard the San Francisco postmastership was vacant, I made up my mind to get it--and here I am.\" \"Yes,\" said Riley, slowly, \"as you have remarked . . . Mr. Lykins . . . here you are. And have you got it?\" \"Well, not exactly got it, but the next thing to it. I've brought a petition, signed by the Superintendent of Public Instruction, and all the teachers, and by more than two hundred other people. Now I want you, if you'll be so good, to go around with me to the Pacific delegation, for I want to rush this thing through and get along home.\" \"If the matter is so pressing, you will prefer that we visit the delegation to- night,\" said Riley, in a voice which had nothing mocking in it--to an unaccustomed ear. \"Oh, to-night, by all means! I haven't got any time to fool around. I want their promise before I go to bed--I ain't the talking kind, I'm the doing kind!\" \"Yes . . . you've come to the right place for that. When did you arrive?\" \"Just an hour ago.\" \"When are you intending to leave?\" \"For New York to-morrow evening--for San Francisco next morning.\" \"Just so. . . . What are you going to do to-morrow?\" \"Do! Why, I've got to go to the President with the petition and the delegation, and get the appointment, haven't I?\" \"Yes . . . very true . . . that is correct. And then what?\" \"Executive session of the Senate at 2 P.M.--got to get the appointment confirmed--I reckon you'll grant that?\"

\"Yes . . . yes,\" said Riley, meditatively, \"you are right again. Then you take the train for New York in the evening, and the steamer for San Francisco next morning?\" \"That's it--that's the way I map it out!\" Riley considered a while, and then said: \"You couldn't stay . . . a day . . . well, say two days longer?\" \"Bless your soul, no! It's not my style. I ain't a man to go fooling around--I'm a man that does things, I tell you.\" The storm was raging, the thick snow blowing in gusts. Riley stood silent, apparently deep in a reverie, during a minute or more, then he looked up and said: \"Have you ever heard about that man who put up at Gadsby's, once? . . . But I see you haven't.\" He backed Mr. Lykins against an iron fence, buttonholed him, fastened him with his eye, like the Ancient Mariner, and proceeded to unfold his narrative as placidly and peacefully as if we were all stretched comfortably in a blossomy summer meadow instead of being persecuted by a wintry midnight tempest: \"I will tell you about that man. It was in Jackson's time. Gadsby's was the principal hotel, then. Well, this man arrived from Tennessee about nine o'clock, one morning, with a black coachman and a splendid four-horse carriage and an elegant dog, which he was evidently fond and proud of; he drove up before Gadsby's, and the clerk and the landlord and everybody rushed out to take charge of him, but he said, 'Never mind,' and jumped out and told the coachman to wait- -said he hadn't time to take anything to eat, he only had a little claim against the government to collect, would run across the way, to the Treasury, and fetch the money, and then get right along back to Tennessee, for he was in considerable of a hurry. \"Well, about eleven o'clock that night he came back and ordered a bed and told them to put the horses up--said he would collect the claim in the morning. This was in January, you understand--January, 1834--the 3d of January-- Wednesday. \"Well, on the 5th of February, he sold the fine carriage, and bought a cheap second-hand one--said it would answer just as well to take the money home in, and he didn't care for style. \"On the 11th of August he sold a pair of the fine horses--said he'd often thought a pair was better than four, to go over the rough mountain roads with where a body had to be careful about his driving--and there wasn't so much of

his claim but he could lug the money home with a pair easy enough. \"On the 13th of December he sold another horse--said two warn't necessary to drag that old light vehicle with--in fact, one could snatch it along faster than was absolutely necessary, now that it was good solid winter weather and the roads in splendid condition. \"On the 17th of February, 1835, he sold the old carriage and bought a cheap second-hand buggy--said a buggy was just the trick to skim along mushy, slushy early spring roads with, and he had always wanted to try a buggy on those mountain roads, anyway. \"On the 1st of August he sold the buggy and bought the remains of an old sulky--said he just wanted to see those green Tennesseans stare and gawk when they saw him come a-ripping along in a sulky--didn't believe they'd ever heard of a sulky in their lives. \"Well, on the 29th of August he sold his colored coachman--said he didn't need a coachman for a sulky--wouldn't be room enough for two in it anyway-- and, besides, it wasn't every day that Providence sent a man a fool who was willing to pay nine hundred dollars for such a third-rate negro as that--been wanting to get rid of the creature for years, but didn't like to throw him away. \"Eighteen months later--that is to say, on the 15th of February, 1837--he sold the sulky and bought a saddle--said horseback-riding was what the doctor had always recommended him to take, and dog'd if he wanted to risk his neck going over those mountain roads on wheels in the dead of winter, not if he knew himself. \"On the 9th of April he sold the saddle--said he wasn't going to risk his life with any perishable saddle-girth that ever was made, over a rainy, miry April road, while he could ride bareback and know and feel he was safe--always had despised to ride on a saddle, anyway. \"On the 24th of April he sold his horse--said 'I'm just fifty-seven today, hale and hearty--it would be a pretty howdy-do for me to be wasting such a trip as that and such weather as this, on a horse, when there ain't anything in the world so splendid as a tramp on foot through the fresh spring woods and over the cheery mountains, to a man that is a man--and I can make my dog carry my claim in a little bundle, anyway, when it's collected. So to-morrow I'll be up bright and early, make my little old collection, and mosey off to Tennessee, on my own hind legs, with a rousing good-by to Gadsby's.' \"On the 22d of June he sold his dog--said 'Dern a dog, anyway, where you're just starting off on a rattling bully pleasure tramp through the summer woods and

hills--perfect nuisance--chases the squirrels, barks at everything, goes a-capering and splattering around in the fords--man can't get any chance to reflect and enjoy nature--and I'd a blamed sight ruther carry the claim myself, it's a mighty sight safer; a dog's mighty uncertain in a financial way--always noticed it--well, good- by boys--last call--I'm off for Tennessee with a good leg and a gay heart, early in the morning.'\" There was a pause and a silence--except the noise of the wind and the pelting snow. Mr. Lykins said, impatiently: \"Well?\" Riley said: \"Well--that was thirty years ago.\" \"Very well, very well--what of it?\" \"I'm great friends with that old patriarch. He comes every evening to tell me good-by. I saw him an hour ago--he's off for Tennessee early to-morrow morning--as usual; said he calculated to get his claim through and be off before night-owls like me have turned out of bed. The tears were in his eyes, he was so glad he was going to see his old Tennessee and his friends once more.\" Another silent pause. The stranger broke it: \"Is that all?\" \"That is all.\" \"Well, for the time of night, and the kind of night, it seems to me the story was full long enough. But what's it all for?\" \"Oh, nothing in particular.\" \"Well, where's the point of it?\" \"Oh, there isn't any particular point to it. Only, if you are not in too much of a hurry to rush off to San Francisco with that post-office appointment, Mr. Lykins, I'd advice you to 'put up at Gadsby's' for a spell, and take it easy. Good- by. God bless you!\" So saying, Riley blandly turned on his heel and left the astonished schoolteacher standing there, a musing and motionless snow image shining in the broad glow of the street-lamp. He never got that post-office. From A TRAMP ABROAD, 1880

MRS. MCWILLIAMS AND THE LIGHTNING WELL, SIR--continued Mr. McWilliams, for this was not the beginning of his talk--the fear of lightning is one of the most distressing infirmities a human being can be afflicted with. It is mostly confined to women; but now and then you find it in a little dog, and sometimes in a man. It is a particularly distressing infirmity, for the reason that it takes the sand out of a person to an extent which no other fear can, and it can't be reasoned with, and neither can it be shamed out of a person. A woman who could face the very devil himself--or a mouse--loses her grip and goes all to pieces in front of a flash of lightning. Her fright is something pitiful to see. Well, as I was telling you, I woke up, with that smothered and unlocatable cry of \"Mortimer! Mortimer!\" wailing in my ears; and as soon as I could scrape my faculties together I reached over in the dark and then said: \"Evangeline, is that you calling? What is the matter? Where are you?\" \"Shut up in the boot-closet. You ought to be ashamed to lie there and sleep so, and such an awful storm going on.\" \"Why, how can one be ashamed when he is asleep? It is unreasonable; a man can't be ashamed when he is asleep, Evangeline.\" \"You never try, Mortimer--you know very well you never try.\" I caught the sound of muffled sobs. That sound smote dead the sharp speech that was on my lips, and I changed it to-- \"I'm sorry, dear--I'm truly sorry. I never meant to act so. Come back and--\" \"MORTIMER!\" \"Heavens! what is the matter, my love?\" \"Do you mean to say you are in that bed yet?\" \"Why, of course.\" \"Come out of it instantly. I should think you would take some little care of your life, for my sake and the children's, if you will not for your own.\" \"But, my love--\" \"Don't talk to me, Mortimer. You know there is no place so dangerous as a bed in such a thunderstorm as this--all the books say that; yet there you would lie, and deliberately throw away your life--for goodness knows what, unless for the sake of arguing, and arguing, and--\" \"But, confound it, Evangeline, I'm not in the bed now. I'm--\" [Sentence interrupted by a sudden glare of lightning, followed by a terrified

little scream from Mrs. McWilliams and a tremendous blast of thunder.] \"There! You see the result. Oh, Mortimer, how can you be so profligate as to swear at such a time as this?\" \"I didn't swear. And that wasn't a result of it, anyway. It would have come, just the same, if I hadn't said a word; and you know very well, Evangeline--at least, you ought to know--that when the atmosphere is charged with electricity--\" \"Oh, yes; now argue it, and argue it, and argue it!--I don't see how you can act so, when you know there is not a lightning-rod on the place, and your poor wife and children are absolutely at the mercy of Providence. What are you doing?--lighting a match at such a time as this! Are you stark mad?\" \"Hang it, woman, where's the harm? The place is as dark as the inside of an infidel, and--\" \"Put it out! put it out instantly! Are you determined to sacrifice us all? You know there is nothing attracts lightning like a light. [Fzt!--crash! boom--boloom- boom-boom!] Oh, just hear it! Now you see what you've done!\" \"No, I don't see what I've done. A match may attract lightning, for all I know, but it don't cause lightning--I'll go odds on that. And it didn't attract it worth a cent this time; for if that shot was leveled at my match, it was blessed poor marksmanship--about an average of none out of a possible million, I should say. Why, at Dollymount such marksmanship as that--\" \"For shame, Mortimer! Here we are standing right in the very presence of death, and yet in so solemn a moment you are capable of using such language as that. If you have no desire to--Mortimer!\" \"Well?\" \"Did you say your prayers to-night?\" \"I--I--meant to, but I got to trying to cipher out how much twelve times thirteen is, and--\" [Fzt!--boom-berroom-boom! bumble-umble bang-SMASH!] \"Oh, we are lost, beyond all help! How could you neglect such a thing at such a time as this?\" \"But it wasn't 'such a time as this.' There wasn't a cloud in the sky. How could I know there was going to be all this rumpus and pow-wow about a little slip like that? And I don't think it's just fair for you to make so much out of it, anyway, seeing it happens so seldom; I haven't missed before since I brought on that earthquake, four years ago.\" \"MORTIMER! How you talk! Have you forgotten the yellow-fever?\" \"My dear, you are always throwing up the yellow-fever to me, and I think it

is perfectly unreasonable. You can't even send a telegraphic message as far as Memphis without relays, so how is a little devotional slip of mine going to carry so far? I'll stand the earthquake, because it was in the neighborhood; but I'll be hanged if I'm going to be responsible for every blamed--\" [Fzt!--BOOM beroom-boom! boom.--BANG!] \"Oh, dear, dear, dear! I know it struck something, Mortimer. We never shall see the light of another day; and if it will do you any good to remember, when we are gone, that your dreadful language--Mortimer!\" \"WELL! What now?\" \"Your voice sounds as if-- Mortimer, are you actually standing in front of that open fireplace?\" \"That is the very crime I am committing.\" \"Get away from it this moment! You do seem determined to bring destruction on us all. Don't you know that there is no better conductor for lightning than an open chimney? Now where have you got to?\" \"I'm here by the window.\" \"Oh, for pity's sake! have you lost your mind? Clear out from there, this moment! The very children in arms know it is fatal to stand near a window in a thunderstorm. Dear, dear, I know I shall never see the light of another day! Mortimer!\" \"Yes.\" \"What is that rustling?\" \"It's me.\" \"What are you doing?\" \"Trying to find the upper end of my pantaloons.\" \"Quick! throw those things away! I do believe you would deliberately put on those clothes at such a time as this; yet you know perfectly well that all authorities agree that woolen stuffs attract lightning. Oh, dear, dear, it isn't sufficient that one's life must be in peril from natural causes, but you must do everything you can possibly think of to augment the danger. Oh, don't sing! What can you be thinking of?\" \"Now where's the harm in it?\" \"Mortimer, if I have told you once, I have told you a hundred times, that singing causes vibrations in the atmosphere which interrupt the flow of the electric fluid, and-- What on earth are you opening that door for?\" \"Goodness gracious, woman, is there any harm in that?\" \"Harm? There's death in it. Anybody that has given this subject any attention

knows that to create a draught is to invite the lightning. You haven't half shut it; shut it tight--and do hurry, or we are all destroyed. Oh, it is an awful thing to be shut up with a lunatic at such a time as this. Mortimer, what are you doing?\" \"Nothing. Just turning on the water. This room is smothering hot and close. I want to bathe my face and hands.\" \"You have certainly parted with the remnant of your mind! Where lightning strikes any other substance once, it strikes water fifty times. Do turn it off. Oh, dear, I am sure that nothing in this world can save us. It does seem to me that-- Mortimer, what was that?\" \"It was a da--it was a picture. Knocked it down.\" \"Then you are close to the wall! I never heard of such imprudence! Don't you know that there's no better conductor for lightning than a wall? Come away from there! And you came as near as anything to swearing, too. Oh, how can you be so desperately wicked, and your family in such peril? Mortimer, did you order a feather bed, as I asked you to do?\" \"No. Forgot it.\" \"Forgot it! It may cost you your life. If you had a feather bed now, and could spread it in the middle of the room and lie on it, you would be perfectly safe. Come in here--come quick, before you have a chance to commit any more frantic indiscretions.\" I tried, but the little closet would not hold us both with the door shut, unless we could be content to smother. I gasped awhile, then forced my way out. My wife called out: \"Mortimer, something must be done for your preservation. Give me that German book that is on the end of the mantelpiece, and a candle; but don't light it; give me a match; I will light it in here. That book has some directions in it.\" I got the book--at cost of a vase and some other brittle things; and the madam shut herself up with her candle. I had a moment's peace; then she called out: \"Mortimer, what was that?\" \"Nothing but the cat.\" \"The cat! Oh, destruction! Catch her, and shut her up in the washstand. Do be quick, love; cats are full of electricity. I just know my hair will turn white with this night's awful perils.\" I heard the muffled sobbings again. But for that, I should not have moved hand or foot in such a wild enterprise in the dark. However, I went at my task--over chairs, and against all sorts of obstructions, all of them hard ones, too, and most of them with sharp edges--and at last I got

kitty cooped up in the commode, at an expense of over four hundred dollars in broken furniture and shins. Then these muffled words came from the closet: \"It says the safest thing is to stand on a chair in the middle of the room, Mortimer; and the legs of the chair must be insulated with non-conductors. That is, you must set the legs of the chair in glass tumblers. [Fzt!--boom--bang!-- smash!] Oh, hear that! Do hurry, Mortimer, before you are struck.\" I managed to find and secure the tumblers. I got the last four--broke all the rest. I insulated the chair legs, and called for further instructions. \"Mortimer, it says, 'Wahrend eines Gewitters entferne man Metalle, wie z. B., Ringe, Uhren, Schlussel, etc., von sich und halte sich auch nicht an solchen Stellen auf, wo viele Metalle bei einander liegen, oder mit andern Korpern verbunden sind, wie an Herden, Oefen, Eisengittern u. dgl.' What does that mean, Mortimer? Does it mean that you must keep metals about you, or keep them away from you?\" \"Well, I hardly know. It appears to be a little mixed. All German advice is more or less mixed. However, I think that that sentence is mostly in the dative case, with a little genitive and accusative sifted in, here and there, for luck; so I reckon it means that you must keep some metals about you.\" \"Yes, that must be it. It stands to reason that it is. They are in the nature of lightning-rods, you know. Put on your fireman's helmet, Mortimer; that is mostly metal.\" I got it, and put it on--a very heavy and clumsy and uncomfortable thing on a hot night in a close room. Even my night-dress seemed to be more clothing than I strictly needed. \"Mortimer, I think your middle ought to be protected. Won't you buckle on your militia saber, please?\" I complied. \"Now, Mortimer, you ought to have some way to protect your feet. Do please put on your spurs.\" I did it--in silence--and kept my temper as well as I could. \"Mortimer, it says, 'Das Gewitter lauten ist sehr gefahrlich, weil die Glocke selbst, sowie der durch das Lauten veranlasste Luftzug und die Hohe des Thurmes den Blitz anziehen konnten.' Mortimer, does that mean that it is dangerous not to ring the church bells during a thunderstorm?\" \"Yes, it seems to mean that--if that is the past participle of the nominative case singular, and I reckon it is. Yes, I think it means that on account of the height of the church tower and the absence of Luftzug it would be very

dangerous (sehr gefahrlich) not to ring the bells in time of a storm; and, moreover, don't you see, the very wording--\" \"Never mind that, Mortimer; don't waste the precious time in talk. Get the large dinner-bell; it is right there in the hall. Quick, Mortimer, dear; we are almost safe. Oh, dear, I do believe we are going to be saved, at last!\" Our little summer establishment stands on top of a high range of hills, overlooking a valley. Several farm-houses are in our neighborhood--the nearest some three or four hundred yards away. When I, mounted on the chair, had been clanging that dreadful bell a matter of seven or eight minutes, our shutters were suddenly torn open from without, and a brilliant bull's-eye lantern was thrust in at the window, followed by a hoarse inquiry: \"What in the nation is the matter here?\" The window was full of men's heads, and the heads were full of eyes that started wildly at my night-dress and my war-like accoutrements. I dropped the bell, skipped down from the chair in confusion, and said: \"There is nothing the matter, friends--only a little discomfort on account of the thunderstorm. I was trying to keep off the lightning.\" \"Thunderstorm? Lightning? Why, Mr. McWilliams, have you lost your mind? It is a beautiful starlight night; there has been no storm.\" I looked out, and I was so astonished I could hardly speak for a while. Then I said: \"I do not understand this. We distinctly saw the glow of the flashes through the curtains and shutters, and heard the thunder.\" One after another of those people lay down on the ground to laugh--and two of them died. One of the survivors remarked: \"Pity you didn't think to open your blinds and look over to the top of the high hill yonder. What you heard was cannon; what you saw was the flash. You see, the telegraph brought some news, just at midnight; Garfield's nominated--and that's what's the matter!\" Yes, Mr. Twain, as I was saying in the beginning (said Mr. McWilliams), the rules for preserving people against lightning are so excellent and so innumerable that the most incomprehensible thing in the world to me is how anybody ever manages to get struck. So saying, he gathered up his satchel and umbrella, and departed; for the train had reached his town.

1880

WHAT STUMPED THE BLUEJAYS ANIMALS TALK to each other, of course. There can be no question about that; but I suppose there are very few people who can understand them. I never knew but one man who could. I knew he could, however, because he told me so himself. He was a middle-aged, simple-hearted miner who had lived in a lonely corner of California, among the woods and mountains, a good many years, and had studied the ways of his only neighbors, the beasts and the birds, until he believed he could accurately translate any remark which they made. This was Jim Baker. According to Jim Baker, some animals have only a limited education, and use only very simple words, and scarcely ever a comparison or a flowery figure; whereas, certain other animals have a large vocabulary, a fine command of language and a ready and fluent delivery; consequently these latter talk a great deal; they like it; they are conscious of their talent, and they enjoy \"showing off.\" Baker said, that after long and careful observation, he had come to the conclusion that the bluejays were the best talkers he had found among birds and beasts. Said he: There's more to a bluejay than any other creature. He has got more moods, and more different kinds of feelings than other creatures; and, mind you, whatever a bluejay feels, he can put into language. And no more commonplace language, either, but rattling, out-and-out book-talk--and bristling with metaphor, too--just bristling! And as for command of language--why you never see a bluejay get stuck for a word. No man ever did. They just boil out of him! And another thing: I've noticed a good deal, and there's no bird, or cow, or anything that uses as good grammar as a bluejay. You may say a cat uses good grammar. Well, a cat does--but you let a cat get excited once; you let a cat get to pulling fur with another cat on a shed, nights, and you'll hear grammar that will give you the lockjaw. Ignorant people think it's the noise which fighting cats make that is so aggravating, but it ain't so; it's the sickening grammar they use. Now I've never heard a jay use bad grammar but very seldom; and when they do, they are as ashamed as a human; they shut right down and leave. You may call a jay a bird. Well, so he is, in a measure--because he's got feathers on him, and don't belong to no church, perhaps; but otherwise he is just as much a human as you be. And I'll tell you for why. A jay's gifts, and instincts,

and feelings, and interests, cover the whole ground. A jay hasn't got any more principle than a Congressman. A jay will lie, a jay will steal, a jay will deceive, a jay will betray; and four times out of five, a jay will go back on his solemnest promise. The sacredness of an obligation is a thing which you can't cram into no bluejay's head. Now, on top of all this, there's another thing; a jay can out-swear any gentleman in the mines. You think a cat can swear. Well, a cat can; but you give a bluejay a subject that calls for his reserve-powers, and where is your cat? Don't talk to me--I know too much about this thing. And there's yet another thing; in the one little particular of scolding--just good, clean, out-and-out scolding--a bluejay can lay over anything, human or divine. Yes, sir, a jay is everything that a man is. A jay can cry, a jay can laugh, a jay can feel shame, a jay can reason and plan and discuss, a jay likes gossip and scandal, a jay has got a sense of humor, a jay knows when he is an ass just as well as you do--maybe better. If a jay ain't human, he better take in his sign, that's all. Now I'm going to tell you a perfectly true fact about some bluejays. When I first begun to understand jay language correctly, there was a little incident happened here. Seven years ago, the last man in this region but me moved away. There stands his house--been empty ever since; a log house, with a plank roof--just one big room, and no more; no ceiling--nothing between the rafters and the floor. Well, one Sunday morning I was sitting out here in front of my cabin, with my cat, taking the sun, and looking at the blue hills, and listening to the leaves rustling so lonely in the trees, and thinking of the home away yonder in the states, that I hadn't heard from in thirteen years, when a bluejay lit on that house, with an acorn in his mouth, and says, \"Hello, I reckon I've struck something.\" When he spoke, the acorn dropped out of his mouth and rolled down the roof, of course, but he didn't care; his mind was all on the thing he had struck. It was a knot-hole in the roof. He cocked his head to one side, shut one eye and put the other one to the hole, like a possum looking down a jug; then he glanced up with his bright eyes, gave a wink or two with his wings--which signifies gratification, you understand--and says, \"It looks like a hole, it's located like a hole--blamed if I don't believe it is a hole!\" Then he cocked his head down and took another look; he glances up perfectly joyful, this time; winks his wings and his tail both, and says, \"Oh, no, this ain't no fat thing, I reckon! If I ain't in luck!--why it's a perfectly elegant hole!\" So he flew down and got that acorn, and fetched it up and dropped it in, and was just tilting his head back, with the heavenliest smile on his face, when all of a sudden he was paralyzed into a listening attitude and that smile faded

gradually out of his countenance like breath off'n a razor, and the queerest look of surprise took its place. Then he says, \"Why, I didn't hear it fall!\" He cocked his eye at the hole again, and took a long look; raised up and shook his head; stepped around to the other side of the hole and took another look from that side; shook his head again. He studied a while, then he just went into the details-- walked round and round the hole and spied into it from every point of the compass. No use. Now he took a thinking attitude on the comb of the roof and scratched the back of his head with his right foot a minute, and finally says, \"Well, it's too many for me, that's certain; must be a mighty long hole; however, I ain't got no time to fool around here, I got to 'tend to business; I reckon it's all right--chance it, anyway.\" So he flew off and fetched another acorn and dropped it in, and tried to flirt his eye to the hole quick enough to see what become of it, but he was too late. He held his eye there as much as a minute; then he raised up and sighed, and says, \"Confound it, I don't seem to understand this thing, no way; however, I'll tackle her again.\" He fetched another acorn, and done his level best to see what become of it, but he couldn't. He says, \"Well, I never struck no such hole as this before; I'm of the opinion it's a totally new kind of a hole.\" Then he begun to get mad. He held in for a spell, walking up and down the comb of the roof and shaking his head and muttering to himself; but his feelings got the upper hand of him, presently, and he broke loose and cussed himself black in the face. I never see a bird take on so about a little thing. When he got through he walks to the hole and looks in again for half a minute; then he says, \"Well, you're a long hole, and a deep hole, and a mighty singular hole altogether--but I've started in to fill you, and I'm d--d if I don't fill you, if it takes a hundred years!\" And with that, away he went. You never see a bird work so since you was born. He laid into his work like a nigger, and the way he hove acorns into that hole for about two hours and a half was one of the most exciting and astonishing spectacles I ever struck. He never stopped to take a look any more--he just hove 'em in and went for more. Well, at last he could hardly flop his wings, he was so tuckered out. He comes a-drooping down, once more, sweating like an icepitcher, drops his acorn in and says, \"Now I guess I've got the bulge on you by this time!\" So he bent down for a look. If you'll believe me, when his head come up again he was just pale with rage. He says, \"I've shoveled acorns enough in there to keep the family thirty years, and if I can see a sign of one of 'em I wish I may land in a museum with a belly full of sawdust in two minutes!\" He just had strength enough to crawl up on to the comb and lean his back

agin the chimbly, and then he collected his impressions and begun to free his mind. I see in a second that what I had mistook for profanity in the mines was only just the rudiments, as you may say. Another jay was going by, and heard him doing his devotions, and stops to inquire what was up. The sufferer told him the whole circumstance, and says, \"Now yonder's the hole, and if you don't believe me, go and look for yourself.\" So this fellow went and looked, and comes back and says; \"How many did you say you put in there?\" \"Not any less than two tons,\" says the sufferer. The other jay went and looked again. He couldn't seem to make it out, so he raised a yell, and three more jays come. They all examined the hole, they all made the sufferer tell it over again, then they all discussed it, and got off as many leather-headed opinions about it as an average crowd of humans could have done. They called in more jays; then more and more, till pretty soon this whole region 'peared to have blue flush about it. There must have been five thousand of them; and such another jawing and disputing and ripping and cussing, you never heard. Every jay in the whole lot put his eye to the hole and delivered a more chuckle-headed opinion about the mystery than the jay that went there before him. They examined the house all over, too. The door was standing half open, and at last one old jay happened to go and light on it and look in. Of course, that knocked the mystery galley-west in a second. There lay the acorns, scattered all over the floor. He flopped his wings and raised a whoop. \"Come here!\" he says, \"Come here, everybody; hang'd if this fool hasn't been trying to fill up a house with acorns!\" They all came a-swooping down like a blue cloud, and as each fellow lit on the door and took a glance, the whole absurdity of the contract that that first jay had tackled hit him home and he fell over backward suffocating with laughter, and the next jay took his place and done the same. Well, sir, they roosted around here on the housetop and the trees for an hour, and guffawed over that thing like human beings. It ain't any use to tell me a bluejay hasn't got a sense of humor, because I know better. And memory, too. They brought jays here from all over the United States to look down that hole, every summer for three years. Other birds, too. And they could all see the point, except an owl that come from Nova Scotia to visit the Yo Semite, and he took this thing in on his way back. He said he couldn't see anything funny in it. But then he was a good deal disappointed about Yo Semite, too. From A TRAMP ABROAD, 1880

A CURIOUS EXPERIENCE THIS IS the story which the Major told me, as nearly as I can recall it: In the winter of 1862-63 I was commandant of Fort Trumbull, at New London, Conn. Maybe our life there was not so brisk as life at \"the front\"; still it was brisk enough, in its way--one's brains didn't cake together there for lack of something to keep them stirring. For one thing, all the Northern atmosphere at that time was thick with mysterious rumors--rumors to the effect that rebel spies were flitting everywhere, and getting ready to blow up our Northern forts, burn our hotels, send infected clothing into our towns, and all that sort of thing. You remember it. All this had a tendency to keep us awake, and knock the traditional dullness out of garrison life. Besides, ours was a recruiting station--which is the same as saying we hadn't any time to waste in dozing, or dreaming, or fooling around. Why, with all our watchfulness, fifty per cent. of a day's recruits would leak out of our hands and give us the slip the same night. The bounties were so prodigious that a recruit could pay a sentinel three or four hundred dollars to let him escape, and still have enough of his bounty-money left to constitute a fortune for a poor man. Yes, as I said before, our life was not drowsy. Well, one day I was in my quarters alone, doing some writing, when a pale and ragged lad of fourteen or fifteen entered, made a neat bow, and said: \"I believe recruits are received here?\" \"Yes.\" \"Will you please enlist me, sir?\" \"Dear me, no! You are too young, my boy, and too small.\" A disappointed look came into his face, and quickly deepened into an expression of despondency. He turned slowly away, as if to go; hesitated, then faced me again, and said, in a tone that went to my heart: \"I have no home, and not a friend in the world. If you could only enlist me!\" But of course the thing was out of the question, and I said so as gently as I could. Then I told him to sit down by the stove and warm himself, and added: \"You shall have something to eat, presently. You are hungry?\" He did not answer; he did not need to; the gratitude in his big, soft eyes was more eloquent than any words could have been. He sat down by the stove, and I went on writing. Occasionally I took a furtive glance at him. I noticed that his

clothes and shoes, although soiled and damaged, were of good style and material. This fact was suggestive. To it I added the facts that his voice was low and musical; his eyes deep and melancholy; his carriage and address gentlemanly; evidently the poor chap was in trouble. As a result, I was interested. However, I became absorbed in my work by and by, and forgot all about the boy. I don't know how long this lasted; but at length I happened to look up. The boy's back was toward me, but his face was turned in such a way that I could see one of his cheeks--and down that cheek a rill of noiseless tears was flowing. \"God bless my soul!\" I said to myself; \"I forgot the poor rat was starving.\" Then I made amends for my brutality by saying to him, \"Come along, my lad; you shall dine with me; I am alone to-day.\" He gave me another of those grateful looks, and happy light broke in his face. At the table he stood with his hand on his chair-back until I was seated, then seated himself. I took up my knife and fork and--well, I simply held them, and kept still; for the boy had inclined his head and was saying a silent grace. A thousand hallowed memories of home and my childhood poured in upon me, and I sighed to think how far I had drifted from religion and its balm for hurt minds, its comfort and solace and support. As our meal progressed I observed that young Wicklow--Robert Wicklow was his full name--knew what to do with his napkin; and--well, in a word, I observed that he was a boy of good breeding; never mind the details. He had a simple frankness, too, which won upon me. We talked mainly about himself, and I had no difficulty in getting his history out of him. When he spoke of his having been born and reared in Louisiana, I warmed to him decidedly, for I had spent some time down there. I knew all the \"coast\" region of the Mississippi, and loved it, and had not been long enough away from it for my interest in it to begin to pale. The very names that fell from his lips sounded good to me--so good that I steered the talk in directions that would bring them out: Baton Rouge, Plaquemine, Donaldsonville, Sixty-mile Point, Bonnet-Carre, the Stock Landing, Carrollton, the Steamship Landing, the Steamboat Landing, New Orleans, Tchoupitoulas Street, the Esplanade, the Rue des Bons Enfants, the St. Charles Hotel, the Tivoli Circle, the Shell Road, Lake Pontchartrain; and it was particularly delightful to me to hear once more of the R. E. Lee, the Natchez, the Eclipse, the General Quitman, the Duncan F. Kenner, and other old familiar steamboats. It was almost as good as being back there, these names so vividly reproduced in my mind the look of the things they stood for. Briefly, this was

little Wicklow's history: When the war broke out, he and his invalid aunt and his father were living near Baton Rouge, on a great and rich plantation which had been in the family for fifty years. The father was a Union man. He was persecuted in all sorts of ways, but clung to his principles. At last one night masked men burned his mansion down, and the family had to fly for their lives. They were hunted from place to place, and learned all there was to know about poverty, hunger, and distress. The invalid aunt found relief at last: misery and exposure killed her; she died in an open field, like a tramp, the rain beating upon her and the thunder booming overhead. Not long afterward the father was captured by an armed band; and while the son begged and pleaded the victim was strung up before his face. [At this point a baleful light shone in the youth's eyes and he said with the manner of one who talks to himself: \"If I cannot be enlisted, no matter--I shall find a way--I shall find a way.\"] As soon as the father was pronounced dead, the son was told that if he was not out of that region within twenty-four hours it would go hard with him. That night he crept to the riverside and hid himself near a plantation landing. By and by the Duncan F. Kenner stopped there, and he swam out and concealed himself in the yawl that was dragging at her stern. Before day-light the boat reached the Stock Landing and he slipped ashore. He walked the three miles which lay between that point and the house of an uncle of his in Good-Children Street, in New Orleans, and then his troubles were over for the time being. But this uncle was a Union man, too, and before very long he concluded that he had better leave the South. So he and young Wicklow slipped out of the country on board a sailing-vessel, and in due time reached New York. They put up at the Astor House. Young Wicklow had a good time of it for a while, strolling up and down Broadway, and observing the strange Northern sights; but in the end a change came--and not for the better. The uncle had been cheerful at first, but now he began to look troubled and despondent; moreover, he became moody and irritable; talked of money giving out, and no way to get more--\"not enough left for one, let alone two.\" Then, one morning, he was missing--did not come to breakfast. The boy inquired at the office, and was told that the uncle had paid his bill the night before and gone away--to Boston, the clerk believed, but was not certain. The lad was alone and friendless. He did not know what to do, but concluded he had better try to follow and find his uncle. He went down to the steamboat landing: learned that the trifle of money in his pocket would not carry him to Boston; however, it would carry him to New London; so he took passage for that

port, resolving to trust to Providence to furnish him means to travel the rest of the way. He had now been wandering about the streets of New London three days and nights, getting a bite and a nap here and there for charity's sake. But he had given up at last; courage and hope were both gone. If he could enlist, nobody could be more thankful; if he could not get in as a soldier, couldn't he be a drummer-boy? Ah, he would work so hard to please, and would be so grateful! Well, there's the history of young Wicklow, just as he told it to me, barring details. I said: \"My boy, you are among friends now--don't you be troubled any more.\" How his eyes glistened! I called in Sergeant John Rayburn--he was from Hartford; lives in Hartford yet; maybe you know him--and said, \"Rayburn, quarter this boy with the musicians. I am going to enroll him as a drummer-boy, and I want you to look after him and see that he is well treated.\" Well, of course, intercourse between the commandant of the post and the drummer-boy came to an end now; but the poor little friendless chap lay heavy on my heart just the same. I kept on the lookout, hoping to see him brighten up and begin to be cheery and gay; but no, the days went by, and there was no change. He associated with nobody; he was always absent-minded, always thinking; his face was always sad. One morning Rayburn asked leave to speak to me privately. Said he: \"I hope I don't offend, sir; but the truth is, the musicians are in such a sweat it seems as if somebody's got to speak.\" \"Why, what is the trouble?\" \"It's the Wicklow boy, sir. The musicians are down on him to an extent you can't imagine.\" \"Well, go on, go on. What has he been doing?\" \"Prayin', sir.\" \"Praying!\" \"Yes, sir; the musicians haven't any peace in their life for that boy's prayin'. First thing in the mornin' he's at it; noons he's at it; and nights--well, nights he just lays into 'em like all possessed! Sleep? Bless you, they can't sleep: he's got the floor, as the sayin' is, and then when he once gets his supplication-mill agoin' there just simply ain't any let-up to him. He starts in with the band-master, and he prays for him; next he takes the head bugler, and he prays for him; next the bass drum, and he scoops him in; and so on, right straight through the band, givin' them all a show, and takin' that amount of interest in it which would make you think he thought he warn't but a little while for this world, and believed he

couldn't be happy in heaven without he had a brass-band along, and wanted to pick 'em out for himself, so he could depend on 'em to do up the national tunes in a style suitin' to the place. Well, sir, heavin' boots at him don't have no effect; it's dark in there; and, besides, he don't pray fair, anyway, but kneels down behind the big drum; so it don't make no difference if they rain boots at him, he don't give a dern--warbles right along, same as if it was applause. They sing out, 'Oh, dry up!' 'Give us a rest!' 'Shoot him!' 'Oh, take a walk!' and all sorts of such things. But what of it? It don't faze him. He don't mind it.\" After a pause: \"Kind of a good little fool, too; gits up in the mornin' and carts all that stock of boots back, and sorts 'em out and sets each man's pair where they belong. And they've been throwed at him so much now that he knows every boot in the band--can sort 'em out with his eyes shut.\" After another pause, which I forebore to interrupt: \"But the roughest thing about it is that when he's done prayin'--when he ever does get done--he pipes up and begins to sing. Well, you know what a honey kind of a voice he's got when he talks; you know how it would persuade a cast- iron dog to come down off of a door-step and lick his hand. Now if you'll take my word for it, sir, it ain't a circumstance to his singin'! Flute music is harsh to that boy's singin'. Oh, he just gurgles it out so soft and sweet and low, there in the dark, that it makes you think you are in heaven.\" \"What is there 'rough' about that?\" \"Ah, that's just it, sir. You hear him sing 'Just as I am--poor, wretched, blind'-- just you hear him sing that once, and see if you don't melt all up and the water come into your eyes! I don't care what he sings, it goes plum straight home to you--it goes deep down to where you live--and it fetches you every time! Just you hear him sing 'Child of sin and sorrow, filled with dismay, Wait not till to-morrow, yield thee to-day; 'Grieve not that love Which, from above'-- and so on. It makes a body feel like the wickedest, ungratefulest brute that