|IT seemed to me I was getting into the habit of incarceration. I passed
from jail to jail. It was becoming monotonous.
But this was a creditable jail, built in the fervour of the Reformation,
with a considerable veranda in front facing on Main Street. In the
fervour of the Reformation it had been, as you might say, a centre of
interest in Zionville. So many citizens got enclosed there during that
period for one reason or another connected with their not understanding
the tendency of events, that this jail always had a peculiar social
standing. It was not like the jails of other communities. It bore no
necessary social stigma. If a citizen was deposited there, it made all
the difference, and depended on the amount of repentance his case was
supposed to call for, whether he was put in a front or a rear cell.
Because in a front-windowed cell he could see Main Street, and maybe
talk with friends in the street, or join in the conversation on the
veranda. In this way the Judge and the condemned of the preceding
afternoon might often be arguing in the evening through a barred window
about politics or religion. Hence it always made a man vexed and low in
mind to be put in a rear cell, where he couldn't see Main Street.
Doctor Ulswater and I were put in a cell over the veranda, and through
the barred window we could see the length of Main Street, which ran from
the railway station, at one end of the town, to nothing in particular,
as yet, at the other end. Main Street now runs from the railway to the
cemetery, but at that time it ran off into generalities.
Main Street at that moment was full of a crowd which acted as if it all
belonged to one family. I could see Louisa standing on a dry-goods box
and talking confidentially to the family. There was a general session of
Zionville on Main Street. I judged we were the subject of conversation,
along with Hannah Atkins. William C. Jones and two other statesmen were
walking around arm in arm. The whole place was buzzing like a beehive.
Then I noticed that Dr. Ulswater was not saying anything. He was looking
over my shoulder through the bars silently, and all anger was gone from
his face.
“Kit,” he said, mildly, “this is a town of great interest to
archaeology.”
I thought it over, and said:
“Seems to me it'd be of more interest to Mrs. Ulswater's orphan asylum.
It's too fresh. It's the most youthful-minded place I ever saw. I don't
see any archaeology in it.”
“Precisely,” he said. “The youthfulness of Zionville struck me too, and
that not so much because of her crude appearance as because of her
buoyancy. I said to myself, 'Clearly we are home again. This is no Latin
mob of Portate, no explosion of firecrackers, no furious inefficiency.
This is gunpowder in a gun. Here is the organising instinct, the jocular
humour, together with the deadly arrival. We are in the States.' But yet
I was not satisfied with that, and those considerations are not what's
hoisting me now. Cast your eyes back over the late events. Look from
this window on that people in their market place, their forum, their
agora. Recollect how Zionville got herself together. What unity? What
esprit de corps? You recognise it? Ha! No! It's Greek, sir, Greek! It's
the civic clan, the municipal State. So looked the Athenians, so they
acted in their market place. We have arrived not only in the States, but
in Zionville. Now, what is Zionville? A piece of antiquity! Archaeology
in flesh and blood! Pompeii be hanged. This is better than Pompeii. This
is a reversion, an atavism!”
I said: “You'd better not deal out suspicious sounding names like those
within hearing of Zionville. She's high-bred and nervous. If you mean
she's a town with a character, I agree. She has more character than a
bucking bronco.”
“Mysterious and extraordinary town,” he muttered. “Ha! You're right.
'Character' is the word. Personality! Personality fascinates me. I
haven't the article myself. I'm a nebulous gas. Hence I thirst for, I
cling to, personality. Most mysterious, most interesting town!”
“I don't deny the interest, doctor,” I said, “but it seems to me it's
sort of concentrated around the question whether or not that crowd is
going to take a notion to lynch us. It looks like a crowd that takes
notions. Would an Athenian populace be likely to act that way?”
“Precisely,” he cried with enthusiasm. “Look at Socrates!”
It seemed to me Zionville had some game going on, but I didn't make out
what the game was. It seemed to me a lynching would be little short of
frivolous. But then the Athenians had acted frivolous about Socrates.
Zionville was surely an unexpected place. But the crowd in Main Street
didn't act like an angry crowd. It acted interested.
At this moment the door of our cell opened and Louisa and William C.
Jones walked in. They sat down on a bench without speaking, and there
they sat and seemed to be embarrassed, and William C. Jones' left eye
was searching sideways for the cosine of x, and he began to question:
--Whether coming in a spirit of conciliation or to speak last words of
warning or entreaty; and if so--
And there he stopped, as if he couldn't quite get his gait.
“Maybe you're ambassadors,” I said, “ambassadors from Zionville.”
“The very word, sir,” said Louisa, looking pleased. “Ambassadors from
Zionville.” And William C. Jones began again to indicate his doubts:
--Whether a certain document received by Magistrates was intended to
further public interests, or private ends, or mixed in motive; and if
so, whether Dr. Ulswater's account of deceased party in question might
be accepted by Magistrates and apologies tendered, according to attitude
he (Dr. Uls-water) might hereafter assume; and if so, whether he
(Dr. Ulswater) would rather the deceased party in question should
be confiscated as incidental to judicial proceedings whose results,
although likely to be fatal to him (Dr. Ulswater) and his accomplice,
Zionville could no more than vainly regret, public interest being of
first importance; and if so, whether Dr. Ulswater would consent
to deliver over Mrs. Atkins peaceably, for a consideration, to the
necessities of Zionville, and thereby win an honourable place in her
(Zionville's) history; and if so, whether he would state his mind on
that point without incommoding the subject with the conquest of Peru, or
the natural history of South America, and thereby would accommodate the
Magistrates; and if so, or whether it would be necessary to return to
the Court house in order to hasten proceedings to the end that he (Dr.
Ulswater) and his accomplice might be hung before the shades of evening
softly descended, in the interests of justice and the destinies of
Zionville; and if so, whether he would accept or decline the said
proposition,--
“Doctor,” said Louisa, sliding in like syrup. “Allow me to state briefly
a few pertinent facts. Zionville is a moral town. It's the moralest town
you ever saw. But, sir, we see the necessity of getting this atmospheric
morality embodied in substantial institutions. We have already a high
school with an Eastern college graduate at the head. We have three
churches provided with clergymen, not one of whom dares show himself on
the street without a choke collar. And, sir, we have a cemetery; that
is, so far as a fence around it, and an excellent grave, well excavated,
goes toward providing such an institution; which, however, public
opinion is unanimous it don't go far enough. For there was once a time
in Zionville when there'd have been no particular difficulty on this
point, but those days are passed. In those days, when anybody was
dead,--as might happen perhaps by perforation, and airiness in vital
parts,--and if he was worth while, we used to ship him to Sacramento to
get a ceremony ready made; and if he wasn't worth while, we didn't
take much notice where he was planted; and therefore there wasn't any
cemetery that anybody could find if he wanted one. Such were our customs
and traditions in those days. But Zionville reformed. She took up with
sackcloth. She sat down to mourn, and she rose up reformed. 'Morals,'
she says, 'shall be my watchword. Morals,' she says, 'that's me.'
Sir, since then there ain't anybody died in Zionville whatsoever, none
whatever at all. But sometime ago there was a man named Jim Tweedy, who
got indented with a chimney falling on him, to that extent he looked
not only dead but disreputable, and you couldn't have told him from any
other miscellaneous débris. And one of our esteemed citizens, named Pete
Chapel, he got officious and jubilant, and went off by himself, and
dug a sepulchre on some land that belonged to him out the end of Main
Street. But was Jim Tweedy dead? Doctor, he was not! But he played off
he was for forty-eight hours, and then he came to, and looks around the
corners of himself, and says, 'Blamed if I ain't all triangles!' but he
wouldn't have a thing to do with that location Pete Chapel had fixed
up for him particular. He rejected it with indignation. Indeed, he was
perhaps not justly to be blamed, though he's never had the standing in
the community he had before, on account of our feeling he was a man
that couldn't be relied on when public interest was concerned, besides
looking discreditable on account of indentations in his surface; nor it
couldn't be denied that Pete Chapel's position was uneasy too, seeing it
was allowed as up to him to provide something for the situation. So he
put up Tweedy's grave for a raffle, and it fetched a good price, over
the value of the land about it, on account of public spirit in the
town. After that it changed hands considerable, the price fluctuating
according to rumours of indispositions, or strangers in town looking
warlike. It went up and down till it got to be a sort of thermometer of
Zionville's condition of depression, or confidence in its destiny.
At last it fell into the hands of William C. Jones, here present, who
donated it to Zionville, and Zionville put a fence around the property
and denominated the same a Cemetery. Such and so far is the history of
this institution. But, sir, we feel that our Cemetery has not as yet
attained its proper standing in our community by formally entering upon
its career of public usefulness. Our morality forbids the thought of too
direct action to that end. It has been suggested that time would remedy
this want. True. But meanwhile Zionville sees its progress stayed,
its development halted. Now, sir, Zionville discerns in Mrs. Atkins
an extraordinary fitness for this purpose. William C. Jones and I
have consulted. We discern a rare opportunity, a crisis in Zionville's
history. We have consulted with our fellow citizens, and they have
took to the idea like a nigger to a watermelon. Our determination is
inflexible. A monument has been ordered from Sacramento. The ceremonies
are arranged whereby to plant Mrs. Atkins, whereby to inaugurate our
Cemetery conformable to the spirit of our citizens. The San Francisco
press has been notified to send representatives. All is prepared. Name
your price, sir. It's yours. Name your conditions. They're granted. The
antecedents of Mrs. Atkins are the most essential elements in her
value, and we hope to see them, in your own eloquent language, indelibly
engraven on the monument.”
“Why, bless my soul!” said Dr. Ulswater. “What good would a Peruvian
mummy do you? Why don't you bury a buffalo and call it a bishop? What's
the idea?”
“Fame,” said Louisa.
“Fame? fame? But look here! Mummies belong in museums!”
“Very good,” said Louisa. “Ain't a cemetery a museum? Alas, sir! a
collection of various mortality?”
“Dear, dear! You'll be the death of me.”
“Whether it shall be possible,” began William C. Jones, “to avoid
compassing your decease through obstinacy and public interests, being
the object of this interview; and if so----”
“Your honour,” said Dr. Ulswater with a grand gesture. Nobody could
beat him for elegance when he was in trim--“Your honour,” he said,
interrupting W. C. and addressing Louisa, “I beg the privilege of
donating Hannah Atkins to Zionville, and to the service of her fame.
To the interests of archaeology Zionville is more than a legion of
mummies.”
Louisa ran to the window, thrust his hat through the bars and waved it,
and we heard Zionville break forth in one simultaneous pean.
But when Dr. Ulswater and I came out of the jail and joined the
rejoicing, when--as the subject and centre of rejoicing--we came down
opposite Babbitt's Hotel, there we saw, on the veranda of it, Sadler
six feet two, and engaged in sinister meditation against a green pillar.
Then I knew he had written the Letter to the Magistrates.
He came down from the veranda to join the rejoicing, and when I claimed
to see into his insidious villainy, he looked depressed; but Dr.
Ulswater was surprised and delighted.
“By hookey!” he said,--For since his marriage to Mrs. Ulswater he had
come to swear always by innocuous things, and he was hard put to it
sometimes for satisfaction; hence sometimes his objurgations were
familiar, and sometimes recondite.--“By hookey!” he said, “Sadler, I
knew there was something Zionville reminded me of. It was you!”
“I belonged to her,” said Sadler, sadly, walking along with us--“before
she reformed. She wollered in her nakedness then, and we both found
out that sin was monotonous. Since then we've each took a shy at the
spiritual life and found it was sportier'n the other. But still I
don't know if her Sunday School clothes will fit me. But, doctor,” he
concluded, “if it suits you and Mrs. Ulswater to sojourn and abide here,
I'll try on them clothes.”