CHAPTER LXXIX.

I launched out as a lecturer, now, with great boldness. I had the field

all to myself, for public lectures were almost an unknown commodity in

the Pacific market. They are not so rare, now, I suppose. I took an old

personal friend along to play agent for me, and for two or three weeks we

roamed through Nevada and California and had a very cheerful time of it.

Two days before I lectured in Virginia City, two stagecoaches were robbed

within two miles of the town. The daring act was committed just at dawn,

by six masked men, who sprang up alongside the coaches, presented

revolvers at the heads of the drivers and passengers, and commanded a

general dismount. Everybody climbed down, and the robbers took their

watches and every cent they had. Then they took gunpowder and blew up

the express specie boxes and got their contents. The leader of the

robbers was a small, quick-spoken man, and the fame of his vigorous

manner and his intrepidity was in everybody's mouth when we arrived.

The night after instructing Virginia, I walked over the desolate "divide"

and down to Gold Hill, and lectured there. The lecture done, I stopped

to talk with a friend, and did not start back till eleven. The "divide"

was high, unoccupied ground, between the towns, the scene of twenty

midnight murders and a hundred robberies. As we climbed up and stepped

out on this eminence, the Gold Hill lights dropped out of sight at our

backs, and the night closed down gloomy and dismal. A sharp wind swept

the place, too, and chilled our perspiring bodies through.

"I tell you I don't like this place at night," said Mike the agent.

"Well, don't speak so loud," I said. "You needn't remind anybody that we

are here."

Just then a dim figure approached me from the direction of Virginia--a

man, evidently. He came straight at me, and I stepped aside to let him

pass; he stepped in the way and confronted me again. Then I saw that he

had a mask on and was holding something in my face--I heard a click-click

and recognized a revolver in dim outline. I pushed the barrel aside with

my hand and said:

"Don't!"

He ejaculated sharply:

"Your watch! Your money!"

I said:

"You can have them with pleasure--but take the pistol away from my face,

please. It makes me shiver."

"No remarks! Hand out your money!"

"Certainly--I--"

"Put up your hands! Don't you go for a weapon! Put 'em up! Higher!"

I held them above my head.

A pause. Then:

"Are you going to hand out your money or not?"

I dropped my hands to my pockets and said:

Certainly! I--"

"Put up your hands! Do you want your head blown off? Higher!"

I put them above my head again.

Another pause.

Are you going to hand out your money or not? Ah-ah--again? Put up your

hands! By George, you want the head shot off you awful bad!"

"Well, friend, I'm trying my best to please you. You tell me to give up

my money, and when I reach for it you tell me to put up my hands. If you

would only--. Oh, now--don't! All six of you at me! That other man

will get away while.--Now please take some of those revolvers out of my

face--do, if you please! Every time one of them clicks, my liver comes

up into my throat! If you have a mother--any of you--or if any of you

have ever had a mother--or a--grandmother--or a--"

"Cheese it! Will you give up your money, or have we got to--. There

--there--none of that! Put up your hands!"

"Gentlemen--I know you are gentlemen by your--"

"Silence! If you want to be facetious, young man, there are times and

places more fitting. This is a serious business."

"You prick the marrow of my opinion. The funerals I have attended in my

time were comedies compared to it. Now I think--"

"Curse your palaver! Your money!--your money!--your money! Hold!--put

up your hands!"

"Gentlemen, listen to reason. You see how I am situated--now don't put

those pistols so close--I smell the powder.

"You see how I am situated. If I had four hands--so that I could hold up

two and--"

"Throttle him! Gag him! Kill him!"

"Gentlemen, don't! Nobody's watching the other fellow. Why don't some

of you--. Ouch! Take it away, please!

"Gentlemen, you see that I've got to hold up my hands; and so I can't take

out my money--but if you'll be so kind as to take it out for me, I will

do as much for you some--"

"Search him Beauregard--and stop his jaw with a bullet, quick, if he wags

it again. Help Beauregard, Stonewall."

Then three of them, with the small, spry leader, adjourned to Mike and

fell to searching him. I was so excited that my lawless fancy tortured

me to ask my two men all manner of facetious questions about their rebel

brother-generals of the South, but, considering the order they had

received, it was but common prudence to keep still. When everything had

been taken from me,--watch, money, and a multitude of trifles of small

value,--I supposed I was free, and forthwith put my cold hands into my

empty pockets and began an inoffensive jig to warm my feet and stir up

some latent courage--but instantly all pistols were at my head, and the

order came again:

They stood Mike up alongside of me, with strict orders to keep his hands

above his head, too, and then the chief highwayman said:

"Beauregard, hide behind that boulder; Phil Sheridan, you hide behind

that other one; Stonewall Jackson, put yourself behind that sage-bush

there. Keep your pistols bearing on these fellows, and if they take down

their hands within ten minutes, or move a single peg, let them have it!"

Then three disappeared in the gloom toward the several ambushes, and the

other three disappeared down the road toward Virginia.

It was depressingly still, and miserably cold. Now this whole thing was

a practical joke, and the robbers were personal friends of ours in

disguise, and twenty more lay hidden within ten feet of us during the

whole operation, listening. Mike knew all this, and was in the joke, but

I suspected nothing of it. To me it was most uncomfortably genuine.

When we had stood there in the middle of the road five minutes, like a

couple of idiots, with our hands aloft, freezing to death by inches,

Mike's interest in the joke began to wane. He said:

"The time's up, now, aint it?"

"No, you keep still. Do you want to take any chances with these bloody

savages?"

Presently Mike said:

"Now the time's up, anyway. I'm freezing."

"Well freeze. Better freeze than carry your brains home in a basket.

Maybe the time is up, but how do we know?--got no watch to tell by.

I mean to give them good measure. I calculate to stand here fifteen

minutes or die. Don't you move."

So, without knowing it, I was making one joker very sick of his contract.

When we took our arms down at last, they were aching with cold and

fatigue, and when we went sneaking off, the dread I was in that the time

might not yet be up and that we would feel bullets in a moment, was not

sufficient to draw all my attention from the misery that racked my

stiffened body.

The joke of these highwayman friends of ours was mainly a joke upon

themselves; for they had waited for me on the cold hill-top two full

hours before I came, and there was very little fun in that; they were so

chilled that it took them a couple of weeks to get warm again. Moreover,

I never had a thought that they would kill me to get money which it was

so perfectly easy to get without any such folly, and so they did not

really frighten me bad enough to make their enjoyment worth the trouble

they had taken. I was only afraid that their weapons would go off

accidentally. Their very numbers inspired me with confidence that no

blood would be intentionally spilled. They were not smart; they ought to

have sent only one highwayman, with a double-barrelled shot gun, if they

desired to see the author of this volume climb a tree.

However, I suppose that in the long run I got the largest share of the

joke at last; and in a shape not foreseen by the highwaymen; for the

chilly exposure on the "divide" while I was in a perspiration gave me a

cold which developed itself into a troublesome disease and kept my hands

idle some three months, besides costing me quite a sum in doctor's bills.

Since then I play no practical jokes on people and generally lose my

temper when one is played upon me.

When I returned to San Francisco I projected a pleasure journey to Japan

and thence westward around the world; but a desire to see home again

changed my mind, and I took a berth in the steamship, bade good-bye to

the friendliest land and livest, heartiest community on our continent,

and came by the way of the Isthmus to New York--a trip that was not much

of a pic-nic excursion, for the cholera broke out among us on the passage

and we buried two or three bodies at sea every day. I found home a

dreary place after my long absence; for half the children I had known

were now wearing whiskers or waterfalls, and few of the grown people I

had been acquainted with remained at their hearthstones prosperous and

happy--some of them had wandered to other scenes, some were in jail, and

the rest had been hanged. These changes touched me deeply, and I went

away and joined the famous Quaker City European Excursion and carried my

tears to foreign lands.

Thus, after seven years of vicissitudes, ended a "pleasure trip" to the

silver mines of Nevada which had originally been intended to occupy only

three months. However, I usually miss my calculations further than that.

MORAL.

If the reader thinks he is done, now, and that this book has no moral to

it, he is in error. The moral of it is this: If you are of any account,

stay at home and make your way by faithful diligence; but if you are "no

account," go away from home, and then you will have to work, whether you

want to or not. Thus you become a blessing to your friends by ceasing to

be a nuisance to them--if the people you go among suffer by the

operation.

APPENDIX. A.

BRIEF SKETCH OF MORMON HISTORY.

Mormonism is only about forty years old, but its career has been full of

stir and adventure from the beginning, and is likely to remain so to the

end. Its adherents have been hunted and hounded from one end of the

country to the other, and the result is that for years they have hated

all "Gentiles" indiscriminately and with all their might. Joseph Smith,

the finder of the Book of Mormon and founder of the religion, was driven

from State to State with his mysterious copperplates and the miraculous

stones he read their inscriptions with. Finally he instituted his

"church" in Ohio and Brigham Young joined it. The neighbors began to

persecute, and apostasy commenced. Brigham held to the faith and worked

hard. He arrested desertion. He did more--he added converts in the

midst of the trouble. He rose in favor and importance with the brethren.

He was made one of the Twelve Apostles of the Church. He shortly fought

his way to a higher post and a more powerful--President of the Twelve.

The neighbors rose up and drove the Mormons out of Ohio, and they settled

in Missouri. Brigham went with them. The Missourians drove them out and

they retreated to Nauvoo, Illinois. They prospered there, and built a

temple which made some pretensions to architectural grace and achieved

some celebrity in a section of country where a brick court-house with a

tin dome and a cupola on it was contemplated with reverential awe.

But the Mormons were badgered and harried again by their neighbors.

All the proclamations Joseph Smith could issue denouncing polygamy and

repudiating it as utterly anti-Mormon were of no avail; the people of the

neighborhood, on both sides of the Mississippi, claimed that polygamy was

practised by the Mormons, and not only polygamy but a little of

everything that was bad. Brigham returned from a mission to England,

where he had established a Mormon newspaper, and he brought back with him

several hundred converts to his preaching. His influence among the

brethren augmented with every move he made. Finally Nauvoo was invaded

by the Missouri and Illinois Gentiles, and Joseph Smith killed. A Mormon

named Rigdon assumed the Presidency of the Mormon church and government,

in Smith's place, and even tried his hand at a prophecy or two. But a

greater than he was at hand. Brigham seized the advantage of the hour

and without other authority than superior brain and nerve and will,

hurled Rigdon from his high place and occupied it himself. He did more.

He launched an elaborate curse at Rigdon and his disciples; and he

pronounced Rigdon's "prophecies" emanations from the devil, and ended by

"handing the false prophet over to the buffetings of Satan for a thousand

years"--probably the longest term ever inflicted in Illinois. The people

recognized their master. They straightway elected Brigham Young

President, by a prodigious majority, and have never faltered in their

devotion to him from that day to this. Brigham had forecast--a quality

which no other prominent Mormon has probably ever possessed.

He recognized that it was better to move to the wilderness than be moved.

By his command the people gathered together their meagre effects, turned

their backs upon their homes, and their faces toward the wilderness, and

on a bitter night in February filed in sorrowful procession across the

frozen Mississippi, lighted on their way by the glare from their burning

temple, whose sacred furniture their own hands had fired! They camped,

several days afterward, on the western verge of Iowa, and poverty, want,

hunger, cold, sickness, grief and persecution did their work, and many

succumbed and died--martyrs, fair and true, whatever else they might have

been. Two years the remnant remained there, while Brigham and a small

party crossed the country and founded Great Salt Lake City, purposely

choosing a land which was outside the ownership and jurisdiction of the

hated American nation. Note that. This was in 1847. Brigham moved his

people there and got them settled just in time to see disaster fall

again. For the war closed and Mexico ceded Brigham's refuge to the

enemy--the United States! In 1849 the Mormons organized a "free and

independent" government and erected the "State of Deseret," with Brigham

Young as its head. But the very next year Congress deliberately snubbed

it and created the "Territory of Utah" out of the same accumulation of

mountains, sage-brush, alkali and general desolation,--but made Brigham

Governor of it. Then for years the enormous migration across the plains

to California poured through the land of the Mormons and yet the church

remained staunch and true to its lord and master. Neither hunger,

thirst, poverty, grief, hatred, contempt, nor persecution could drive the

Mormons from their faith or their allegiance; and even the thirst for

gold, which gleaned the flower of the youth and strength of many nations

was not able to entice them! That was the final test. An experiment

that could survive that was an experiment with some substance to it

somewhere.

Great Salt Lake City throve finely, and so did Utah. One of the last

things which Brigham Young had done before leaving Iowa, was to appear in

the pulpit dressed to personate the worshipped and lamented prophet

Smith, and confer the prophetic succession, with all its dignities,

emoluments and authorities, upon "President Brigham Young!" The people

accepted the pious fraud with the maddest enthusiasm, and Brigham's power

was sealed and secured for all time. Within five years afterward he

openly added polygamy to the tenets of the church by authority of a

"revelation" which he pretended had been received nine years before by

Joseph Smith, albeit Joseph is amply on record as denouncing polygamy to

the day of his death.

Now was Brigham become a second Andrew Johnson in the small beginning and

steady progress of his official grandeur. He had served successively as

a disciple in the ranks; home missionary; foreign missionary; editor and

publisher; Apostle; President of the Board of Apostles; President of all

Mormondom, civil and ecclesiastical; successor to the great Joseph by the

will of heaven; "prophet," "seer," "revelator." There was but one

dignity higher which he could aspire to, and he reached out modestly and

took that--he proclaimed himself a God!

He claims that he is to have a heaven of his own hereafter, and that he

will be its God, and his wives and children its goddesses, princes and

princesses. Into it all faithful Mormons will be admitted, with their

families, and will take rank and consequence according to the number of

their wives and children. If a disciple dies before he has had time to

accumulate enough wives and children to enable him to be respectable in

the next world any friend can marry a few wives and raise a few children

for him after he is dead, and they are duly credited to his account and

his heavenly status advanced accordingly.

Let it be borne in mind that the majority of the Mormons have always been

ignorant, simple, of an inferior order of intellect, unacquainted with

the world and its ways; and let it be borne in mind that the wives of

these Mormons are necessarily after the same pattern and their children

likely to be fit representatives of such a conjunction; and then let it

be remembered that for forty years these creatures have been driven,

driven, driven, relentlessly! and mobbed, beaten, and shot down; cursed,

despised, expatriated; banished to a remote desert, whither they

journeyed gaunt with famine and disease, disturbing the ancient solitudes

with their lamentations and marking the long way with graves of their

dead--and all because they were simply trying to live and worship God in

the way which they believed with all their hearts and souls to be the

true one. Let all these things be borne in mind, and then it will not be

hard to account for the deathless hatred which the Mormons bear our

people and our government.

That hatred has "fed fat its ancient grudge" ever since Mormon Utah

developed into a self-supporting realm and the church waxed rich and

strong. Brigham as Territorial Governor made it plain that Mormondom was

for the Mormons. The United States tried to rectify all that by

appointing territorial officers from New England and other anti-Mormon

localities, but Brigham prepared to make their entrance into his

dominions difficult. Three thousand United States troops had to go

across the plains and put these gentlemen in office. And after they were

in office they were as helpless as so many stone images. They made laws

which nobody minded and which could not be executed. The federal judges

opened court in a land filled with crime and violence and sat as holiday

spectacles for insolent crowds to gape at--for there was nothing to try,

nothing to do nothing on the dockets! And if a Gentile brought a suit,

the Mormon jury would do just as it pleased about bringing in a verdict,

and when the judgment of the court was rendered no Mormon cared for it

and no officer could execute it. Our Presidents shipped one cargo of

officials after another to Utah, but the result was always the same--they

sat in a blight for awhile they fairly feasted on scowls and insults day

by day, they saw every attempt to do their official duties find its

reward in darker and darker looks, and in secret threats and warnings of

a more and more dismal nature--and at last they either succumbed and

became despised tools and toys of the Mormons, or got scared and

discomforted beyond all endurance and left the Territory. If a brave

officer kept on courageously till his pluck was proven, some pliant

Buchanan or Pierce would remove him and appoint a stick in his place.

In 1857 General Harney came very near being appointed Governor of Utah.

And so it came very near being Harney governor and Cradlebaugh judge!

--two men who never had any idea of fear further than the sort of murky

comprehension of it which they were enabled to gather from the

dictionary. Simply (if for nothing else) for the variety they would have

made in a rather monotonous history of Federal servility and

helplessness, it is a pity they were not fated to hold office together in

Utah.

Up to the date of our visit to Utah, such had been the Territorial

record. The Territorial government established there had been a hopeless

failure, and Brigham Young was the only real power in the land. He was

an absolute monarch--a monarch who defied our President--a monarch who

laughed at our armies when they camped about his capital--a monarch who

received without emotion the news that the august Congress of the United

States had enacted a solemn law against polygamy, and then went forth

calmly and married twenty-five or thirty more wives.

B.

THE MOUNTAIN MEADOWS MASSACRE.

The persecutions which the Mormons suffered so long--and which they

consider they still suffer in not being allowed to govern themselves

--they have endeavored and are still endeavoring to repay. The now almost

forgotten "Mountain Meadows massacre" was their work. It was very famous

in its day. The whole United States rang with its horrors. A few items

will refresh the reader's memory. A great emigrant train from Missouri

and Arkansas passed through Salt Lake City and a few disaffected Mormons

joined it for the sake of the strong protection it afforded for their

escape. In that matter lay sufficient cause for hot retaliation by the

Mormon chiefs. Besides, these one hundred and forty-five or one hundred

and fifty unsuspecting emigrants being in part from Arkansas, where a

noted Mormon missionary had lately been killed, and in part from

Missouri, a State remembered with execrations as a bitter persecutor of

the saints when they were few and poor and friendless, here were

substantial additional grounds for lack of love for these wayfarers.

And finally, this train was rich, very rich in cattle, horses, mules and

other property--and how could the Mormons consistently keep up their

coveted resemblance to the Israelitish tribes and not seize the "spoil"

of an enemy when the Lord had so manifestly "delivered it into their

hand?"

Wherefore, according to Mrs. C. V. Waite's entertaining book, "The Mormon

Prophet," it transpired that--

"A 'revelation' from Brigham Young, as Great Grand Archee or God, was

dispatched to President J. C. Haight, Bishop Higbee and J. D. Lee

(adopted son of Brigham), commanding them to raise all the forces they

could muster and trust, follow those cursed Gentiles (so read the

revelation), attack them disguised as Indians, and with the arrows of the

Almighty make a clean sweep of them, and leave none to tell the tale; and

if they needed any assistance they were commanded to hire the Indians as

their allies, promising them a share of the booty. They were to be

neither slothful nor negligent in their duty, and to be punctual in

sending the teams back to him before winter set in, for this was the

mandate of Almighty God."

The command of the "revelation" was faithfully obeyed. A large party of

Mormons, painted and tricked out as Indians, overtook the train of

emigrant wagons some three hundred miles south of Salt Lake City, and

made an attack. But the emigrants threw up earthworks, made fortresses

of their wagons and defended themselves gallantly and successfully for

five days! Your Missouri or Arkansas gentleman is not much afraid of the

sort of scurvy apologies for "Indians" which the southern part of Utah

affords. He would stand up and fight five hundred of them.

At the end of the five days the Mormons tried military strategy. They

retired to the upper end of the "Meadows," resumed civilized apparel,

washed off their paint, and then, heavily armed, drove down in wagons to

the beleaguered emigrants, bearing a flag of truce! When the emigrants

saw white men coming they threw down their guns and welcomed them with

cheer after cheer! And, all unconscious of the poetry of it, no doubt,

they lifted a little child aloft, dressed in white, in answer to the flag

of truce!

The leaders of the timely white "deliverers" were President Haight and

Bishop John D. Lee, of the Mormon Church. Mr. Cradlebaugh, who served a

term as a Federal Judge in Utah and afterward was sent to Congress from

Nevada, tells in a speech delivered in Congress how these leaders next

proceeded:

"They professed to be on good terms with the Indians, and represented

them as being very mad. They also proposed to intercede and settle the

matter with the Indians. After several hours parley they, having

(apparently) visited the Indians, gave the ultimatum of the savages;

which was, that the emigrants should march out of their camp, leaving

everything behind them, even their guns. It was promised by the Mormon

bishops that they would bring a force and guard the emigrants back to the

settlements. The terms were agreed to, the emigrants being desirous of

saving the lives of their families. The Mormons retired, and

subsequently appeared with thirty or forty armed men. The emigrants were

marched out, the women and children in front and the men behind, the

Mormon guard being in the rear. When they had marched in this way about

a mile, at a given signal the slaughter commenced. The men were almost

all shot down at the first fire from the guard. Two only escaped, who

fled to the desert, and were followed one hundred and fifty miles before

they were overtaken and slaughtered. The women and children ran on, two

or three hundred yards further, when they were overtaken and with the aid

of the Indians they were slaughtered. Seventeen individuals only, of all

the emigrant party, were spared, and they were little children, the

eldest of them being only seven years old. Thus, on the 10th day of

September, 1857, was consummated one of the most cruel, cowardly and

bloody murders known in our history."

The number of persons butchered by the Mormons on this occasion was one

hundred and twenty.

With unheard-of temerity Judge Cradlebaugh opened his court and proceeded

to make Mormondom answer for the massacre. And what a spectacle it must

have been to see this grim veteran, solitary and alone in his pride and

his pluck, glowering down on his Mormon jury and Mormon auditory,

deriding them by turns, and by turns "breathing threatenings and

slaughter!"

An editorial in the Territorial Enterprise of that day says of him and of

the occasion:

"He spoke and acted with the fearlessness and resolution of a Jackson;

but the jury failed to indict, or even report on the charges, while

threats of violence were heard in every quarter, and an attack on the

U.S. troops intimated, if he persisted in his course.

"Finding that nothing could be done with the juries, they were discharged

with a scathing rebuke from the judge. And then, sitting as a committing

magistrate, he commenced his task alone. He examined witnesses, made

arrests in every quarter, and created a consternation in the camps of the

saints greater than any they had ever witnessed before, since Mormondom

was born. At last accounts terrified elders and bishops were decamping

to save their necks; and developments of the most starling character were

being made, implicating the highest Church dignitaries in the many

murders and robberies committed upon the Gentiles during the past eight

years."

Had Harney been Governor, Cradlebaugh would have been supported in his

work, and the absolute proofs adduced by him of Mormon guilt in this

massacre and in a number of previous murders, would have conferred

gratuitous coffins upon certain citizens, together with occasion to use

them. But Cumming was the Federal Governor, and he, under a curious

pretense of impartiality, sought to screen the Mormons from the demands

of justice. On one occasion he even went so far as to publish his

protest against the use of the U.S. troops in aid of Cradlebaugh's

proceedings.

Mrs. C. V. Waite closes her interesting detail of the great massacre with

the following remark and accompanying summary of the testimony--and the

summary is concise, accurate and reliable:

"For the benefit of those who may still be disposed to doubt the guilt of

Young and his Mormons in this transaction, the testimony is here collated

and circumstances given which go not merely to implicate but to fasten

conviction upon them by 'confirmations strong as proofs of Holy Writ:'

"1. The evidence of Mormons themselves, engaged in the affair, as shown

by the statements of Judge Cradlebaugh and Deputy U.S. Marshall Rodgers.

"2. The failure of Brigham Young to embody any account of it in his

Report as Superintendent of Indian Affairs. Also his failure to make any

allusion to it whatever from the pulpit, until several years after the

occurrence

"3. The flight to the mountains of men high in authority in the Mormon

Church and State, when this affair was brought to the ordeal of a

judicial investigation.

"4. The failure of the Deseret News, the Church organ, and the only

paper then published in the Territory, to notice the massacre until

several months afterward, and then only to deny that Mormons were engaged

in it.

"5. The testimony of the children saved from the massacre.

"6. The children and the property of the emigrants found in possession

of the Mormons, and that possession traced back to the very day after the

massacre.

"7. The statements of Indians in the neighborhood of the scene of the

massacre: these statements are shown, not only by Cradlebaugh and

Rodgers, but by a number of military officers, and by J. Forney, who was,

in 1859, Superintendent of Indian Affairs for the Territory. To all

these were such statements freely and frequently made by the Indians.

"8. The testimony of R. P. Campbell, Capt. 2d Dragoons, who was sent in

the Spring of 1859 to Santa Clara, to protect travelers on the road to

California and to inquire into Indian depredations."

C.

CONCERNING A FRIGHTFUL ASSASSINATION THAT WAS NEVER CONSUMMATED

If ever there was a harmless man, it is Conrad Wiegand, of Gold Hill,

Nevada. If ever there was a gentle spirit that thought itself unfired

gunpowder and latent ruin, it is Conrad Wiegand. If ever there was an

oyster that fancied itself a whale; or a jack-o'lantern, confined to a

swamp, that fancied itself a planet with a billion-mile orbit; or a

summer zephyr that deemed itself a hurricane, it is Conrad Wiegand.

Therefore, what wonder is it that when he says a thing, he thinks the

world listens; that when he does a thing the world stands still to look;

and that when he suffers, there is a convulsion of nature? When I met

Conrad, he was "Superintendent of the Gold Hill Assay Office"--and he was

not only its Superintendent, but its entire force. And he was a street

preacher, too, with a mongrel religion of his own invention, whereby he

expected to regenerate the universe. This was years ago. Here latterly

he has entered journalism; and his journalism is what it might be

expected to be: colossal to ear, but pigmy to the eye. It is extravagant

grandiloquence confined to a newspaper about the size of a double letter

sheet. He doubtless edits, sets the type, and prints his paper, all

alone; but he delights to speak of the concern as if it occupies a block

and employs a thousand men.

[Something less than two years ago, Conrad assailed several people

mercilessly in his little "People's Tribune," and got himself into

trouble. Straightway he airs the affair in the "Territorial Enterprise,"

in a communication over his own signature, and I propose to reproduce it

here, in all its native simplicity and more than human candor. Long as

it is, it is well worth reading, for it is the richest specimen of

journalistic literature the history of America can furnish, perhaps:]

From the Territorial Enterprise, Jan. 20, 1870.

SEEMING PLOT FOR ASSASSINATION MISCARRIED.

TO THE EDITOR OF THE ENTERPRISE: Months ago, when Mr. Sutro incidentally

exposed mining management on the Comstock, and among others roused me to

protest against its continuance, in great kindness you warned me that any

attempt by publications, by public meetings and by legislative action,

aimed at the correction of chronic mining evils in Storey County, must

entail upon me (a) business ruin, (b) the burden of all its costs, (c)

personal violence, and if my purpose were persisted in, then (d)

assassination, and after all nothing would be effected.

YOUR PROPHECY FULFILLING.

In large part at least your prophecies have been fulfilled, for (a)

assaying, which was well attended to in the Gold Hill Assay Office (of

which I am superintendent), in consequence of my publications, has been

taken elsewhere, so the President of one of the companies assures me.

With no reason assigned, other work has been taken away. With but one or

two important exceptions, our assay business now consists simply of the

gleanings of the vicinity. (b) Though my own personal donations to the

People's Tribune Association have already exceeded $1,500, outside of our

own numbers we have received (in money) less than $300 as contributions

and subscriptions for the journal. (c) On Thursday last, on the main

street in Gold Hill, near noon, with neither warning nor cause assigned,

by a powerful blow I was felled to the ground, and while down I was

kicked by a man who it would seem had been led to believe that I had

spoken derogatorily of him. By whom he was so induced to believe I am as

yet unable to say. On Saturday last I was again assailed and beaten by a

man who first informed me why he did so, and who persisted in making his

assault even after the erroneous impression under which he also was at

first laboring had been clearly and repeatedly pointed out. This same

man, after failing through intimidation to elicit from me the names of

our editorial contributors, against giving which he knew me to be

pledged, beat himself weary upon me with a raw hide, I not resisting, and

then pantingly threatened me with permanent disfiguring mayhem, if ever

again I should introduce his name into print, and who but a few minutes

before his attack upon me assured me that the only reason I was

"permitted" to reach home alive on Wednesday evening last (at which time

the PEOPLE'S TRIBUNE was issued) was, that he deems me only half-witted,

and be it remembered the very next morning I was knocked down and kicked

by a man who seemed to be prepared for flight.

[He sees doom impending:]

WHEN WILL THE CIRCLE JOIN?

How long before the whole of your prophecy will be fulfilled I cannot

say, but under the shadow of so much fulfillment in so short a time, and

with such threats from a man who is one of the most prominent exponents

of the San Francisco mining-ring staring me and this whole community

defiantly in the face and pointing to a completion of your augury, do you

blame me for feeling that this communication is the last I shall ever

write for the Press, especially when a sense alike of personal

self-respect, of duty to this money-oppressed and fear-ridden community,

and of American fealty to the spirit of true Liberty all command me, and

each more loudly than love of life itself, to declare the name of that

prominent man to be JOHN B. WINTERS, President of the Yellow Jacket

Company, a political aspirant and a military General? The name of his

partially duped accomplice and abettor in this last marvelous assault, is

no other than PHILIP LYNCH, Editor and Proprietor of the Gold Hill News.

Despite the insult and wrong heaped upon me by John B. Winters, on

Saturday afternoon, only a glimpse of which I shall be able to afford

your readers, so much do I deplore clinching (by publicity) a serious

mistake of any one, man or woman, committed under natural and not

self-wrought passion, in view of his great apparent excitement at the

time and in view of the almost perfect privacy of the assault, I am far

from sure that I should not have given him space for repentance before

exposing him, were it not that he himself has so far exposed the matter

as to make it the common talk of the town that he has horsewhipped me.

That fact having been made public, all the facts in connection need to be

also, or silence on my part would seem more than singular, and with many

would be proof either that I was conscious of some unworthy aim in

publishing the article, or else that my "non-combatant" principles are

but a convenient cloak alike of physical and moral cowardice. I

therefore shall try to present a graphic but truthful picture of this

whole affair, but shall forbear all comments, presuming that the editors

of our own journal, if others do not, will speak freely and fittingly

upon this subject in our next number, whether I shall then be dead or

living, for my death will not stop, though it may suspend, the

publication of the PEOPLE'S TRIBUNE. [The "non-combatant" sticks to

principle, but takes along a friend or two of a conveniently different

stripe:]

THE TRAP SET.

On Saturday morning John B. Winters sent verbal word to the Gold Hill

Assay Office that he desired to see me at the Yellow Jacket office.

Though such a request struck me as decidedly cool in view of his own

recent discourtesies to me there alike as a publisher and as a

stockholder in the Yellow Jacket mine, and though it seemed to me more

like a summons than the courteous request by one gentleman to another for

a favor, hoping that some conference with Sharon looking to the

betterment of mining matters in Nevada might arise from it, I felt

strongly inclined to overlook what possibly was simply an oversight in

courtesy. But as then it had only been two days since I had been bruised

and beaten under a hasty and false apprehension of facts, my caution was

somewhat aroused. Moreover I remembered sensitively his contemptuousness

of manner to me at my last interview in his office. I therefore felt it

needful, if I went at all, to go accompanied by a friend whom he would

not dare to treat with incivility, and whose presence with me might

secure exemption from insult. Accordingly I asked a neighbor to

accompany me.

THE TRAP ALMOST DETECTED.

Although I was not then aware of this fact, it would seem that previous

to my request this same neighbor had heard Dr. Zabriskie state publicly

in a saloon, that Mr. Winters had told him he had decided either to kill

or to horsewhip me, but had not finally decided on which. My neighbor,

therefore, felt unwilling to go down with me until he had first called on

Mr. Winters alone. He therefore paid him a visit. From that interview

he assured me that he gathered the impression that he did not believe I

would have any difficulty with Mr. Winters, and that he (Winters) would

call on me at four o'clock in my own office.

MY OWN PRECAUTIONS.

As Sheriff Cummings was in Gold Hill that afternoon, and as I desired to

converse with him about the previous assault, I invited him to my office,

and he came. Although a half hour had passed beyond four o'clock, Mr.

Winters had not called, and we both of us began preparing to go home.

Just then, Philip Lynch, Publisher of the Gold Hill News, came in and

said, blandly and cheerily, as if bringing good news:

"Hello, John B. Winters wants to see you."

I replied, "Indeed! Why he sent me word that he would call on me here

this afternoon at four o'clock!"

"O, well, it don't do to be too ceremonious just now, he's in my office,

and that will do as well--come on in, Winters wants to consult with you

alone. He's got something to say to you."

Though slightly uneasy at this change of programme, yet believing that in

an editor's house I ought to be safe, and anyhow that I would be within

hail of the street, I hurriedly, and but partially whispered my dim

apprehensions to Mr. Cummings, and asked him if he would not keep near

enough to hear my voice in case I should call. He consented to do so

while waiting for some other parties, and to come in if he heard my voice

or thought I had need of protection.

On reaching the editorial part of the News office, which viewed from the

street is dark, I did not see Mr. Winters, and again my misgivings arose.

Had I paused long enough to consider the case, I should have invited

Sheriff Cummings in, but as Lynch went down stairs, he said: "This way,

Wiegand--it's best to be private," or some such remark.

[I do not desire to strain the reader's fancy, hurtfully, and yet it

would be a favor to me if he would try to fancy this lamb in battle, or

the duelling ground or at the head of a vigilance committee--M. T.:]

I followed, and without Mr. Cummings, and without arms, which I never do

or will carry, unless as a soldier in war, or unless I should yet come to

feel I must fight a duel, or to join and aid in the ranks of a necessary

Vigilance Committee. But by following I made a fatal mistake. Following

was entering a trap, and whatever animal suffers itself to be caught

should expect the common fate of a caged rat, as I fear events to come

will prove.

Traps commonly are not set for benevolence.

[His body-guard is shut out:]

THE TRAP INSIDE.

I followed Lynch down stairs. At their foot a door to the left opened

into a small room. From that room another door opened into yet another

room, and once entered I found myself inveigled into what many will ever

henceforth regard as a private subterranean Gold Hill den, admirably

adapted in proper hands to the purposes of murder, raw or disguised, for

from it, with both or even one door closed, when too late, I saw that I

could not be heard by Sheriff Cummings, and from it, BY VIOLENCE AND BY

FORCE, I was prevented from making a peaceable exit, when I thought I saw

the studious object of this "consultation" was no other than to compass

my killing, in the presence of Philip Lynch as a witness, as soon as by

insult a proverbially excitable man should be exasperated to the point of

assailing Mr. Winters, so that Mr. Lynch, by his conscience and by his

well known tenderness of heart toward the rich and potent would be

compelled to testify that he saw Gen. John B. Winters kill Conrad Wiegand

in "self-defence." But I am going too fast.

OUR HOST.

Mr. Lynch was present during the most of the time (say a little short of

an hour), but three times he left the room. His testimony, therefore,

would be available only as to the bulk of what transpired. On entering

this carpeted den I was invited to a seat near one corner of the room.

Mr. Lynch took a seat near the window. J. B. Winters sat (at first) near

the door, and began his remarks essentially as follows:

"I have come here to exact of you a retraction, in black and white, of

those damnably false charges which you have preferred against me in

that---infamous lying sheet of yours, and you must declare yourself their

author, that you published them knowing them to be false, and that your

motives were malicious."

"Hold, Mr. Winters. Your language is insulting and your demand an

enormity. I trust I was not invited here either to be insulted or

coerced. I supposed myself here by invitation of Mr. Lynch, at your

request."

"Nor did I come here to insult you. I have already told you that I am

here for a very different purpose."

"Yet your language has been offensive, and even now shows strong

excitement. If insult is repeated I shall either leave the room or call

in Sheriff Cummings, whom I just left standing and waiting for me outside

the door."

"No, you won't, sir. You may just as well understand it at once as not.

Here you are my man, and I'll tell you why! Months ago you put your

property out of your hands, boasting that you did so to escape losing it

on prosecution for libel."

"It is true that I did convert all my immovable property into personal

property, such as I could trust safely to others, and chiefly to escape

ruin through possible libel suits."

"Very good, sir. Having placed yourself beyond the pale of the law, may

God help your soul if you DON'T make precisely such a retraction as I

have demanded. I've got you now, and by--before you can get out of this

room you've got to both write and sign precisely the retraction I have

demanded, and before you go, anyhow--you---low-lived--lying---, I'll

teach you what personal responsibility is outside of the law; and, by--,

Sheriff Cummings and all the friends you've got in the world besides,

can't save you, you---, etc.! No, sir. I'm alone now, and I'm prepared

to be shot down just here and now rather than be villified by you as I

have been, and suffer you to escape me after publishing those charges,

not only here where I am known and universally respected, but where I am

not personally known and may be injured."

I confess this speech, with its terrible and but too plainly implied

threat of killing me if I did not sign the paper he demanded, terrified

me, especially as I saw he was working himself up to the highest possible

pitch of passion, and instinct told me that any reply other than one of

seeming concession to his demands would only be fuel to a raging fire,

so I replied:

"Well, if I've got to sign--," and then I paused some time. Resuming,

I said, "But, Mr. Winters, you are greatly excited. Besides, I see you

are laboring under a total misapprehension. It is your duty not to

inflame but to calm yourself. I am prepared to show you, if you will

only point out the article that you allude to, that you regard as

'charges' what no calm and logical mind has any right to regard as such.

Show me the charges, and I will try, at all events; and if it becomes

plain that no charges have been preferred, then plainly there can be

nothing to retract, and no one could rightly urge you to demand a

retraction. You should beware of making so serious a mistake, for

however honest a man may be, every one is liable to misapprehend.

Besides you assume that I am the author of some certain article which you

have not pointed out. It is hasty to do so."

He then pointed to some numbered paragraphs in a TRIBUNE article, headed

"What's the Matter with Yellow Jacket?" saying "That's what I refer to."

To gain time for general reflection and resolution, I took up the paper

and looked it over for awhile, he remaining silent, and as I hoped,

cooling. I then resumed saying, "As I supposed. I do not admit having

written that article, nor have you any right to assume so important a

point, and then base important action upon your assumption. You might

deeply regret it afterwards. In my published Address to the People, I

notified the world that no information as to the authorship of any

article would be given without the consent of the writer. I therefore

cannot honorably tell you who wrote that article, nor can you exact it."

"If you are not the author, then I do demand to know who is?"

"I must decline to say."

"Then, by--, I brand you as its author, and shall treat you accordingly."

"Passing that point, the most important misapprehension which I notice

is, that you regard them as 'charges' at all, when their context, both at

their beginning and end, show they are not. These words introduce them:

'Such an investigation [just before indicated], we think MIGHT result in

showing some of the following points.' Then follow eleven specifications,

and the succeeding paragraph shows that the suggested investigation

'might EXONERATE those who are generally believed guilty.' You see,

therefore, the context proves they are not preferred as charges, and this

you seem to have overlooked."

While making those comments, Mr. Winters frequently interrupted me in

such a way as to convince me that he was resolved not to consider

candidly the thoughts contained in my words. He insisted upon it that

they were charges, and "By--," he would make me take them back as

charges, and he referred the question to Philip Lynch, to whom I then

appealed as a literary man, as a logician, and as an editor, calling his

attention especially to the introductory paragraph just before quoted.

He replied, "if they are not charges, they certainly are insinuations,"

whereupon Mr. Winters renewed his demands for retraction precisely such

as he had before named, except that he would allow me to state who did

write the article if I did not myself, and this time shaking his fist in

my face with more cursings and epithets.

When he threatened me with his clenched fist, instinctively I tried to

rise from my chair, but Winters then forcibly thrust me down, as he did

every other time (at least seven or eight), when under similar imminent

danger of bruising by his fist (or for aught I could know worse than that

after the first stunning blow), which he could easily and safely to

himself have dealt me so long as he kept me down and stood over me.

This fact it was, which more than anything else, convinced me that by

plan and plot I was purposely made powerless in Mr. Winters' hands, and

that he did not mean to allow me that advantage of being afoot, which he

possessed. Moreover, I then became convinced, that Philip Lynch (and for

what reason I wondered) would do absolutely nothing to protect me in his

own house. I realized then the situation thoroughly. I had found it

equally vain to protest or argue, and I would make no unmanly appeal for

pity, still less apologize. Yet my life had been by the plainest

possible implication threatened. I was a weak man. I was unarmed. I

was helplessly down, and Winters was afoot and probably armed. Lynch was

the only "witness." The statements demanded, if given and not explained,

would utterly sink me in my own self-respect, in my family's eyes, and in

the eyes of the community. On the other hand, should I give the author's

name how could I ever expect that confidence of the People which I should

no longer deserve, and how much dearer to me and to my family was my life

than the life of the real author to his friends. Yet life seemed dear

and each minute that remained seemed precious if not solemn. I sincerely

trust that neither you nor any of your readers, and especially none with

families, may ever be placed in such seeming direct proximity to death

while obliged to decide the one question I was compelled to, viz.: What

should I do--I, a man of family, and not as Mr. Winters is, "alone."

[The reader is requested not to skip the following.--M. T.:]

STRATEGY AND MESMERISM.

To gain time for further reflection, and hoping that by a seeming

acquiescence I might regain my personal liberty, at least till I could

give an alarm, or take advantage of some momentary inadvertence of

Winters, and then without a cowardly flight escape, I resolved to write a

certain kind of retraction, but previously had inwardly decided:

First.--That I would studiously avoid every action which might be

construed into the drawing of a weapon, even by a self-infuriated man, no

matter what amount of insult might be heaped upon me, for it seemed to me

that this great excess of compound profanity, foulness and epithet must

be more than a mere indulgence, and therefore must have some object.

"Surely in vain the net is spread in the sight of any bird." Therefore,

as before without thought, I thereafter by intent kept my hands away from

my pockets, and generally in sight and spread upon my knees.

Second.--I resolved to make no motion with my arms or hands which could

possibly be construed into aggression.

Third.--I resolved completely to govern my outward manner and suppress

indignation. To do this, I must govern my spirit. To do that, by force

of imagination I was obliged like actors on the boards to resolve myself

into an unnatural mental state and see all things through the eyes of an

assumed character.

Fourth.--I resolved to try on Winters, silently, and unconsciously to

himself a mesmeric power which I possess over certain kinds of people,

and which at times I have found to work even in the dark over the lower

animals.

Does any one smile at these last counts? God save you from ever being

obliged to beat in a game of chess, whose stake is your life, you having

but four poor pawns and pieces and your adversary with his full force

unshorn. But if you are, provided you have any strength with breadth of

will, do not despair. Though mesmeric power may not save you, it may

help you; try it at all events. In this instance I was conscious of

power coming into me, and by a law of nature, I know Winters was

correspondingly weakened. If I could have gained more time I am sure he

would not even have struck me.

It takes time both to form such resolutions and to recite them. That

time, however, I gained while thinking of my retraction, which I first

wrote in pencil, altering it from time to time till I got it to suit me,

my aim being to make it look like a concession to demands, while in fact

it should tersely speak the truth into Mr. Winters' mind. When it was

finished, I copied it in ink, and if correctly copied from my first draft

it should read as follows. In copying I do not think I made any material

change.

COPY.

To Philip Lynch, Editor of the Gold Hill News: I learn that Gen. John B.

Winters believes the following (pasted on) clipping from the PEOPLE'S

TRIBUNE of January to contain distinct charges of mine against him

personally, and that as such he desires me to retract them unqualifiedly.

In compliance with his request, permit me to say that, although Mr.

Winters and I see this matter differently, in view of his strong feelings

in the premises, I hereby declare that I do not know those "charges" (if

such they are) to be true, and I hope that a critical examination would

altogether disprove them.

CONRAD WIEGAND.

Gold Hill, January 15, 1870.

I then read what I had written and handed it to Mr. Lynch, whereupon Mr.

Winters said:

"That's not satisfactory, and it won't do;" and then addressing himself

to Mr. Lynch, he further said: "How does it strike you?"

"Well, I confess I don't see that it retracts anything."

"Nor do I," said Winters; "in fact, I regard it as adding insult to

injury. Mr. Wiegand you've got to do better than that. You are not the

man who can pull wool over my eyes."

"That, sir, is the only retraction I can write."

"No it isn't, sir, and if you so much as say so again you do it at your

peril, for I'll thrash you to within an inch of your life, and, by--,

sir, I don't pledge myself to spare you even that inch either. I want

you to understand I have asked you for a very different paper, and that

paper you've got to sign."

"Mr. Winters, I assure you that I do not wish to irritate you, but, at

the same time, it is utterly impossible for me to write any other paper

than that which I have written. If you are resolved to compel me to sign

something, Philip Lynch's hand must write at your dictation, and if, when

written, I can sign it I will do so, but such a document as you say you

must have from me, I never can sign. I mean what I say."

"Well, sir, what's to be done must be done quickly, for I've been here

long enough already. I'll put the thing in another shape (and then

pointing to the paper); don't you know those charges to be false?"

"I do not."

"Do you know them to be true?"

"Of my own personal knowledge I do not."

"Why then did you print them?"

"Because rightly considered in their connection they are not charges, but

pertinent and useful suggestions in answer to the queries of a

correspondent who stated facts which are inexplicable."

"Don't you know that I know they are false?"

"If you do, the proper course is simply to deny them and court an

investigation."

"And do YOU claim the right to make ME come out and deny anything you may

choose to write and print?"

To that question I think I made no reply, and he then further said:

"Come, now, we've talked about the matter long enough. I want your final

answer--did you write that article or not?"

"I cannot in honor tell you who wrote it."

"Did you not see it before it was printed?"

"Most certainly, sir."

"And did you deem it a fit thing to publish?"

"Most assuredly, sir, or I would never have consented to its appearance.

Of its authorship I can say nothing whatever, but for its publication I

assume full, sole and personal responsibility."

"And do you then retract it or not?"

"Mr. Winters, if my refusal to sign such a paper as you have demanded

must entail upon me all that your language in this room fairly implies,

then I ask a few minutes for prayer."

"Prayer!---you, this is not your hour for prayer--your time to pray was

when you were writing those--lying charges. Will you sign or not?"

"You already have my answer."

"What! do you still refuse?"

"I do, sir."

"Take that, then," and to my amazement and inexpressible relief he drew

only a rawhide instead of what I expected--a bludgeon or pistol. With

it, as he spoke, he struck at my left ear downwards, as if to tear it

off, and afterwards on the side of the head. As he moved away to get a

better chance for a more effective shot, for the first time I gained a

chance under peril to rise, and I did so pitying him from the very bottom

of my soul, to think that one so naturally capable of true dignity, power

and nobility could, by the temptations of this State, and by unfortunate

associations and aspirations, be so deeply debased as to find in such

brutality anything which he could call satisfaction--but the great hope

for us all is in progress and growth, and John B. Winters, I trust, will

yet be able to comprehend my feelings.

He continued to beat me with all his great force, until absolutely weary,

exhausted and panting for breath. I still adhered to my purpose of

non-aggressive defence, and made no other use of my arms than to defend

my head and face from further disfigurement. The mere pain arising from

the blows he inflicted upon my person was of course transient, and my

clothing to some extent deadened its severity, as it now hides all

remaining traces.

When I supposed he was through, taking the butt end of his weapon and

shaking it in my face, he warned me, if I correctly understood him, of

more yet to come, and furthermore said, if ever I again dared introduce

his name to print, in either my own or any other public journal, he would

cut off my left ear (and I do not think he was jesting) and send me home

to my family a visibly mutilated man, to be a standing warning to all

low-lived puppies who seek to blackmail gentlemen and to injure their

good names. And when he did so operate, he informed me that his

implement would not be a whip but a knife.

When he had said this, unaccompanied by Mr. Lynch, as I remember it, he

left the room, for I sat down by Mr. Lynch, exclaiming: "The man is mad

--he is utterly mad--this step is his ruin--it is a mistake--it would be

ungenerous in me, despite of all the ill usage I have here received, to

expose him, at least until he has had an opportunity to reflect upon the

matter. I shall be in no haste."

"Winters is very mad just now," replied Mr. Lynch, "but when he is

himself he is one of the finest men I ever met. In fact, he told me the

reason he did not meet you upstairs was to spare you the humiliation of a

beating in the sight of others."

I submit that that unguarded remark of Philip Lynch convicts him of

having been privy in advance to Mr. Winters' intentions whatever they may

have been, or at least to his meaning to make an assault upon me, but I

leave to others to determine how much censure an editor deserves for

inveigling a weak, non-combatant man, also a publisher, to a pen of his

own to be horsewhipped, if no worse, for the simple printing of what is

verbally in the mouth of nine out of ten men, and women too, upon the

street.

While writing this account two theories have occurred to me as possibly

true respecting this most remarkable assault:

First--The aim may have been simply to extort from me such admissions as

in the hands of money and influence would have sent me to the

Penitentiary for libel. This, however, seems unlikely, because any

statements elicited by fear or force could not be evidence in law or

could be so explained as to have no force. The statements wanted so

badly must have been desired for some other purpose.

Second--The other theory has so dark and wilfully murderous a look that I

shrink from writing it, yet as in all probability my death at the

earliest practicable moment has already been decreed, I feel I should do

all I can before my hour arrives, at least to show others how to break up

that aristocratic rule and combination which has robbed all Nevada of

true freedom, if not of manhood itself. Although I do not prefer this

hypothesis as a "charge," I feel that as an American citizen I still have

a right both to think and to speak my thoughts even in the land of Sharon

and Winters, and as much so respecting the theory of a brutal assault

(especially when I have been its subject) as respecting any other

apparent enormity. I give the matter simply as a suggestion which may

explain to the proper authorities and to the people whom they should

represent, a well ascertained but notwithstanding a darkly mysterious

fact. The scheme of the assault may have been:

First--To terrify me by making me conscious of my own helplessness after

making actual though not legal threats against my life.

Second--To imply that I could save my life only by writing or signing

certain specific statements which if not subsequently explained would

eternally have branded me as infamous and would have consigned my family

to shame and want, and to the dreadful compassion and patronage of the

rich.

Third--To blow my brains out the moment I had signed, thereby preventing

me from making any subsequent explanation such as could remove the

infamy.

Fourth--Philip Lynch to be compelled to testify that I was killed by John

B. Winters in self-defence, for the conviction of Winters would bring

him in as an accomplice. If that was the programme in John B. Winters'

mind nothing saved my life but my persistent refusal to sign, when that

refusal seemed clearly to me to be the choice of death.

The remarkable assertion made to me by Mr. Winters, that pity only spared

my life on Wednesday evening last, almost compels me to believe that at

first he could not have intended me to leave that room alive; and why I

was allowed to, unless through mesmeric or some other invisible

influence, I cannot divine. The more I reflect upon this matter, the

more probable as true does this horrible interpretation become.

The narration of these things I might have spared both to Mr. Winters and

to the public had he himself observed silence, but as he has both

verbally spoken and suffered a thoroughly garbled statement of facts to

appear in the Gold Hill News I feel it due to myself no less than to this

community, and to the entire independent press of America and Great

Britain, to give a true account of what even the Gold Hill News has

pronounced a disgraceful affair, and which it deeply regrets because of

some alleged telegraphic mistake in the account of it. [Who received the

erroneous telegrams?]

Though he may not deem it prudent to take my life just now, the

publication of this article I feel sure must compel Gen. Winters (with

his peculiar views about his right to exemption from criticism by me) to

resolve on my violent death, though it may take years to compass it.

Notwithstanding I bear him no ill will; and if W. C. Ralston and William

Sharon, and other members of the San Francisco mining and milling Ring

feel that he above all other men in this State and California is the most

fitting man to supervise and control Yellow Jacket matters, until I am

able to vote more than half their stock I presume he will be retained to

grace his present post.

Meantime, I cordially invite all who know of any sort of important

villainy which only can be cured by exposure (and who would expose it if

they felt sure they would not be betrayed under bullying threats), to

communicate with the PEOPLE'S TRIBUNE; for until I am murdered, so long

as I can raise the means to publish, I propose to continue my efforts at

least to revive the liberties of the State, to curb oppression, and to

benefit man's world and God's earth.

CONRAD WIEGAND.

[It does seem a pity that the Sheriff was shut out, since the good sense

of a general of militia and of a prominent editor failed to teach them

that the merited castigation of this weak, half-witted child was a thing

that ought to have been done in the street, where the poor thing could

have a chance to run. When a journalist maligns a citizen, or attacks

his good name on hearsay evidence, he deserves to be thrashed for it,

even if he is a "non-combatant" weakling; but a generous adversary would

at least allow such a lamb the use of his legs at such a time.--M. T.]

End of Project Gutenberg's Roughing It, by Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens)

THE GILDED AGE

A Tale of Today

by Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner

1873

PREFACE.

This book was not written for private circulation among friends; it was

not written to cheer and instruct a diseased relative of the author's;

it was not thrown off during intervals of wearing labor to amuse an idle

hour. It was not written for any of these reasons, and therefore it is

submitted without the usual apologies.

It will be seen that it deals with an entirely ideal state of society;

and the chief embarrassment of the writers in this realm of the

imagination has been the want of illustrative examples. In a State where

there is no fever of speculation, no inflamed desire for sudden wealth,

where the poor are all simple-minded and contented, and the rich are all

honest and generous, where society is in a condition of primitive purity

and politics is the occupation of only the capable and the patriotic,

there are necessarily no materials for such a history as we have

constructed out of an ideal commonwealth.

No apology is needed for following the learned custom of placing

attractive scraps of literature at the heads of our chapters. It has

been truly observed by Wagner that such headings, with their vague

suggestions of the matter which is to follow them, pleasantly inflame the

reader's interest without wholly satisfying his curiosity, and we will

hope that it may be found to be so in the present case.

Our quotations are set in a vast number of tongues; this is done for the

reason that very few foreign nations among whom the book will circulate

can read in any language but their own; whereas we do not write for a

particular class or sect or nation, but to take in the whole world.

We do not object to criticism; and we do not expect that the critic will

read the book before writing a notice of it: We do not even expect the

reviewer of the book will say that he has not read it. No, we have no

anticipations of anything unusual in this age of criticism. But if the

Jupiter, Who passes his opinion on the novel, ever happens to peruse it

in some weary moment of his subsequent life, we hope that he will not be

the victim of a remorse bitter but too late.

One word more. This is--what it pretends to be a joint production, in

the conception of the story, the exposition of the characters, and in its

literal composition. There is scarcely a chapter that does not bear the

marks of the two writers of the book. S. L. C.

C. D. W.

[Etext Editor's Note: The following chapters were written by Mark Twain:

1-11, 24, 25, 27, 28, 30, 32-34, 36, 37, 42, 43, 45, 51-53, 57, 59-62;

and portions of 35, 49, and 56. See Twain's letter to Dr. John Brown

Feb. 28, 1874 D.W.]

CHAPTER I.

June 18--. Squire Hawkins sat upon the pyramid of large blocks, called

the "stile," in front of his house, contemplating the morning.

The locality was Obedstown, East Tennessee. You would not know that

Obedstown stood on the top of a mountain, for there was nothing about the

landscape to indicate it--but it did: a mountain that stretched abroad

over whole counties, and rose very gradually. The district was called

the "Knobs of East Tennessee," and had a reputation like Nazareth, as far

as turning out any good thing was concerned.

The Squire's house was a double log cabin, in a state of decay; two or

three gaunt hounds lay asleep about the threshold, and lifted their heads

sadly whenever Mrs. Hawkins or the children stepped in and out over their

bodies. Rubbish was scattered about the grassless yard; a bench stood

near the door with a tin wash basin on it and a pail of water and a

gourd; a cat had begun to drink from the pail, but the exertion was

overtaxing her energies, and she had stopped to rest. There was an

ash-hopper by the fence, and an iron pot, for soft-soap-boiling, near it.

This dwelling constituted one-fifteenth of Obedstown; the other fourteen

houses were scattered about among the tall pine trees and among the

corn-fields in such a way that a man might stand in the midst of the city

and not know but that he was in the country if he only depended on his

eyes for information.

"Squire" Hawkins got his title from being postmaster of Obedstown--not

that the title properly belonged to the office, but because in those

regions the chief citizens always must have titles of some sort, and so

the usual courtesy had been extended to Hawkins. The mail was monthly,

and sometimes amounted to as much as three or four letters at a single

delivery. Even a rush like this did not fill up the postmaster's whole

month, though, and therefore he "kept store" in the intervals.

The Squire was contemplating the morning. It was balmy and tranquil,

the vagrant breezes were laden with the odor of flowers, the murmur of

bees was in the air, there was everywhere that suggestion of repose that

summer woodlands bring to the senses, and the vague, pleasurable

melancholy that such a time and such surroundings inspire.

Presently the United States mail arrived, on horseback. There was but

one letter, and it was for the postmaster. The long-legged youth who

carried the mail tarried an hour to talk, for there was no hurry; and in

a little while the male population of the village had assembled to help.

As a general thing, they were dressed in homespun "jeans," blue or

yellow--here were no other varieties of it; all wore one suspender and

sometimes two--yarn ones knitted at home,--some wore vests, but few wore

coats. Such coats and vests as did appear, however, were rather

picturesque than otherwise, for they were made of tolerably fanciful

patterns of calico--a fashion which prevails thereto this day among those

of the community who have tastes above the common level and are able to

afford style. Every individual arrived with his hands in his pockets;

a hand came out occasionally for a purpose, but it always went back again

after service; and if it was the head that was served, just the cant that

the dilapidated straw hat got by being uplifted and rooted under, was

retained until the next call altered the inclination; many' hats were

present, but none were erect and no two were canted just alike. We are

speaking impartially of men, youths and boys. And we are also speaking

of these three estates when we say that every individual was either

chewing natural leaf tobacco prepared on his own premises, or smoking the

same in a corn-cob pipe. Few of the men wore whiskers; none wore

moustaches; some had a thick jungle of hair under the chin and hiding the

throat--the only pattern recognized there as being the correct thing in

whiskers; but no part of any individual's face had seen a razor for a

week.

These neighbors stood a few moments looking at the mail carrier

reflectively while he talked; but fatigue soon began to show itself,

and one after another they climbed up and occupied the top rail of the

fence, hump-shouldered and grave, like a company of buzzards assembled

for supper and listening for the death-rattle. Old Damrell said:

"Tha hain't no news 'bout the jedge, hit ain't likely?"

"Cain't tell for sartin; some thinks he's gwyne to be 'long toreckly,

and some thinks 'e hain't. Russ Mosely he tote ole Hanks he mought git

to Obeds tomorrer or nex' day he reckoned."

"Well, I wisht I knowed. I got a 'prime sow and pigs in the, cote-house,

and I hain't got no place for to put 'em. If the jedge is a gwyne to

hold cote, I got to roust 'em out, I reckon. But tomorrer'll do, I

'spect."

The speaker bunched his thick lips together like the stem-end of a tomato

and shot a bumble-bee dead that had lit on a weed seven feet away.

One after another the several chewers expressed a charge of tobacco juice

and delivered it at the deceased with steady, aim and faultless accuracy.

"What's a stirrin', down 'bout the Forks?" continued Old Damrell.

"Well, I dunno, skasely. Ole, Drake Higgins he's ben down to Shelby las'

week. Tuck his crap down; couldn't git shet o' the most uv it; hit

wasn't no time for to sell, he say, so he 'fotch it back agin, 'lowin' to

wait tell fall. Talks 'bout goin' to Mozouri--lots uv 'ems talkin'

that-away down thar, Ole Higgins say. Cain't make a livin' here no mo',

sich times as these. Si Higgins he's ben over to Kaintuck n' married a

high-toned gal thar, outen the fust families, an' he's come back to the

Forks with jist a hell's-mint o' whoop-jamboree notions, folks says.

He's tuck an' fixed up the ole house like they does in Kaintuck, he say,

an' tha's ben folks come cler from Turpentine for to see it. He's tuck

an gawmed it all over on the inside with plarsterin'."

"What's plasterin'?"

"I dono. Hit's what he calls it. 'Ole Mam Higgins, she tole me.

She say she wasn't gwyne to hang out in no sich a dern hole like a hog.

Says it's mud, or some sich kind o' nastiness that sticks on n' covers up

everything. Plarsterin', Si calls it."

This marvel was discussed at considerable length; and almost with

animation. But presently there was a dog-fight over in the neighborhood

of the blacksmith shop, and the visitors slid off their perch like so

many turtles and strode to the battle-field with an interest bordering on

eagerness. The Squire remained, and read his letter. Then he sighed,

and sat long in meditation. At intervals he said:

"Missouri. Missouri. Well, well, well, everything is so uncertain."

At last he said:

"I believe I'll do it.--A man will just rot, here. My house my yard,

everything around me, in fact, shows' that I am becoming one of these

cattle--and I used to be thrifty in other times."

He was not more than thirty-five, but he had a worn look that made him

seem older. He left the stile, entered that part of his house which was

the store, traded a quart of thick molasses for a coonskin and a cake of

beeswax, to an old dame in linsey-woolsey, put his letter away, an went

into the kitchen. His wife was there, constructing some dried apple

pies; a slovenly urchin of ten was dreaming over a rude weather-vane of

his own contriving; his small sister, close upon four years of age, was

sopping corn-bread in some gravy left in the bottom of a frying-pan and

trying hard not to sop over a finger-mark that divided the pan through

the middle--for the other side belonged to the brother, whose musings

made him forget his stomach for the moment; a negro woman was busy

cooking, at a vast fire-place. Shiftlessness and poverty reigned in the

place.

"Nancy, I've made up my mind. The world is done with me, and perhaps I

ought to be done with it. But no matter--I can wait. I am going to

Missouri. I won't stay in this dead country and decay with it. I've had

it on my mind sometime. I'm going to sell out here for whatever I can

get, and buy a wagon and team and put you and the children in it and

start."

"Anywhere that suits you, suits me, Si. And the children can't be any

worse off in Missouri than, they are here, I reckon."

Motioning his wife to a private conference in their own room, Hawkins

said: "No, they'll be better off. I've looked out for them, Nancy," and

his face lighted. "Do you see these papers? Well, they are evidence

that I have taken up Seventy-five Thousand Acres of Land in this county

--think what an enormous fortune it will be some day! Why, Nancy, enormous

don't express it--the word's too tame! I tell your Nancy----"

"For goodness sake, Si----"

"Wait, Nancy, wait--let me finish--I've been secretly bailing and fuming

with this grand inspiration for weeks, and I must talk or I'll burst!

I haven't whispered to a soul--not a word--have had my countenance under

lock and key, for fear it might drop something that would tell even these

animals here how to discern the gold mine that's glaring under their

noses. Now all that is necessary to hold this land and keep it in the

family is to pay the trifling taxes on it yearly--five or ten dollars

--the whole tract would not sell for over a third of a cent an acre now,

but some day people wild be glad to get it for twenty dollars, fifty

dollars, a hundred dollars an acre! What should you say to" [here he

dropped his voice to a whisper and looked anxiously around to see that

there were no eavesdroppers,] "a thousand dollars an acre!

"Well you may open your eyes and stare! But it's so. You and I may not

see the day, but they'll see it. Mind I tell you; they'll see it.

Nancy, you've heard of steamboats, and maybe you believed in them--of

course you did. You've heard these cattle here scoff at them and call

them lies and humbugs,--but they're not lies and humbugs, they're a

reality and they're going to be a more wonderful thing some day than they

are now. They're going to make a revolution in this world's affairs that

will make men dizzy to contemplate. I've been watching--I've been

watching while some people slept, and I know what's coming.

"Even you and I will see the day that steamboats will come up that little

Turkey river to within twenty miles of this land of ours--and in high

water they'll come right to it! And this is not all, Nancy--it isn't

even half! There's a bigger wonder--the railroad! These worms here have

never even heard of it--and when they do they'll not believe in it.

But it's another fact. Coaches that fly over the ground twenty miles an

hour--heavens and earth, think of that, Nancy! Twenty miles an hour.

It makes a main's brain whirl. Some day, when you and I are in our

graves, there'll be a railroad stretching hundreds of miles--all the way

down from the cities of the Northern States to New Orleans--and its got

to run within thirty miles of this land--may be even touch a corner of

it. Well; do you know, they've quit burning wood in some places in the

Eastern States? And what do you suppose they burn? Coal!" [He bent over

and whispered again:] "There's world--worlds of it on this land! You

know that black stuff that crops out of the bank of the branch?--well,

that's it. You've taken it for rocks; so has every body here; and

they've built little dams and such things with it. One man was going to

build a chimney out of it. Nancy I expect I turned as white as a sheet!

Why, it might have caught fire and told everything. I showed him it was

too crumbly. Then he was going to build it of copper ore--splendid

yellow forty-per-cent. ore! There's fortunes upon fortunes of copper ore

on our land! It scared me to death, the idea of this fool starting a

smelting furnace in his house without knowing it, and getting his dull

eyes opened. And then he was going to build it of iron ore! There's

mountains of iron ore here, Nancy--whole mountains of it. I wouldn't

take any chances. I just stuck by him--I haunted him--I never let him

alone till he built it of mud and sticks like all the rest of the

chimneys in this dismal country. Pine forests, wheat land, corn land,

iron, copper, coal-wait till the railroads come, and the steamboats!

We'll never see the day, Nancy--never in the world---never, never, never,

child. We've got to drag along, drag along, and eat crusts in toil and

poverty, all hopeless and forlorn--but they'll ride in coaches, Nancy!

They'll live like the princes of the earth; they'll be courted and

worshiped; their names will be known from ocean to ocean! Ah,

well-a-day! Will they ever come back here, on the railroad and the

steamboat, and say, 'This one little spot shall not be touched--this

hovel shall be sacred--for here our father and our mother suffered for

us, thought for us, laid the foundations of our future as solid as the

hills!'"

"You are a great, good, noble soul, Si Hawkins, and I am an honored woman

to be the wife of such a man"--and the tears stood in her eyes when she

said it. "We will go to Missouri. You are out of your place, here,

among these groping dumb creatures. We will find a higher place, where

you can walk with your own kind, and be understood when you speak--not

stared at as if you were talking some foreign tongue. I would go

anywhere, anywhere in the wide world with you I would rather my body

would starve and die than your mind should hunger and wither away in this

lonely land."

"Spoken like yourself, my child! But we'll not starve, Nancy. Far from

it. I have a letter from Beriah Sellers--just came this day. A letter

that--I'll read you a line from it!"

He flew out of the room. A shadow blurred the sunlight in Nancy's face

--there was uneasiness in it, and disappointment. A procession of

disturbing thoughts began to troop through her mind. Saying nothing

aloud, she sat with her hands in her lap; now and then she clasped them,

then unclasped them, then tapped the ends of the fingers together;

sighed, nodded, smiled--occasionally paused, shook her head. This

pantomime was the elocutionary expression of an unspoken soliloquy which

had something of this shape:

"I was afraid of it--was afraid of it. Trying to make our fortune in

Virginia, Beriah Sellers nearly ruined us and we had to settle in

Kentucky and start over again. Trying to make our fortune in Kentucky he

crippled us again and we had to move here. Trying to make our fortune

here, he brought us clear down to the ground, nearly. He's an honest

soul, and means the very best in the world, but I'm afraid, I'm afraid

he's too flighty. He has splendid ideas, and he'll divide his chances

with his friends with a free hand, the good generous soul, but something

does seem to always interfere and spoil everything. I never did think he

was right well balanced. But I don't blame my husband, for I do think

that when that man gets his head full of a new notion, he can out-talk a

machine. He'll make anybody believe in that notion that'll listen to him

ten minutes--why I do believe he would make a deaf and dumb man believe

in it and get beside himself, if you only set him where he could see his

eyes tally and watch his hands explain. What a head he has got! When he

got up that idea there in Virginia of buying up whole loads of negroes in

Delaware and Virginia and Tennessee, very quiet, having papers drawn to

have them delivered at a place in Alabama and take them and pay for them,

away yonder at a certain time, and then in the meantime get a law made

stopping everybody from selling negroes to the south after a certain day

--it was somehow that way--mercy how the man would have made money!

Negroes would have gone up to four prices. But after he'd spent money

and worked hard, and traveled hard, and had heaps of negroes all

contracted for, and everything going along just right, he couldn't get

the laws passed and down the whole thing tumbled. And there in Kentucky,

when he raked up that old numskull that had been inventing away at a

perpetual motion machine for twenty-two years, and Beriah Sellers saw at

a glance where just one more little cog-wheel would settle the business,

why I could see it as plain as day when he came in wild at midnight and

hammered us out of bed and told the whole thing in a whisper with the

doors bolted and the candle in an empty barrel. Oceans of money in it

--anybody could see that. But it did cost a deal to buy the old numskull

out--and then when they put the new cog wheel in they'd overlooked

something somewhere and it wasn't any use--the troublesome thing wouldn't

go. That notion he got up here did look as handy as anything in the

world; and how him and Si did sit up nights working at it with the

curtains down and me watching to see if any neighbors were about. The

man did honestly believe there was a fortune in that black gummy oil that

stews out of the bank Si says is coal; and he refined it himself till it

was like water, nearly, and it did burn, there's no two ways about that;

and I reckon he'd have been all right in Cincinnati with his lamp that he

got made, that time he got a house full of rich speculators to see him

exhibit only in the middle of his speech it let go and almost blew the

heads off the whole crowd. I haven't got over grieving for the money

that cost yet. I am sorry enough Beriah Sellers is in Missouri, now, but

I was glad when he went. I wonder what his letter says. But of course

it's cheerful; he's never down-hearted--never had any trouble in his

life--didn't know it if he had. It's always sunrise with that man, and

fine and blazing, at that--never gets noon; though--leaves off and rises

again. Nobody can help liking the creature, he means so well--but I do

dread to come across him again; he's bound to set us all crazy, of

coarse. Well, there goes old widow Hopkins--it always takes her a week

to buy a spool of thread and trade a hank of yarn. Maybe Si can come

with the letter, now."

And he did:

"Widow Hopkins kept me--I haven't any patience with such tedious people.

Now listen, Nancy--just listen at this:

"'Come right along to Missouri! Don't wait and worry about a good

price but sell out for whatever you can get, and come along, or you

might be too late. Throw away your traps, if necessary, and come

empty-handed. You'll never regret it. It's the grandest country

--the loveliest land--the purest atmosphere--I can't describe it; no

pen can do it justice. And it's filling up, every day--people

coming from everywhere. I've got the biggest scheme on earth--and

I'll take you in; I'll take in every friend I've got that's ever

stood by me, for there's enough for all, and to spare. Mum's the

word--don't whisper--keep yourself to yourself. You'll see! Come!

--rush!--hurry!--don't wait for anything!'

"It's the same old boy, Nancy, jest the same old boy--ain't he?"

"Yes, I think there's a little of the old sound about his voice yet.

I suppose you--you'll still go, Si?"

"Go! Well, I should think so, Nancy. It's all a chance, of course, and,

chances haven't been kind to us, I'll admit--but whatever comes, old

wife, they're provided for. Thank God for that!"

"Amen," came low and earnestly.

And with an activity and a suddenness that bewildered Obedstown and

almost took its breath away, the Hawkinses hurried through with their

arrangements in four short months and flitted out into the great

mysterious blank that lay beyond the Knobs of Tennessee.

CHAPTER II.

Toward the close of the third day's journey the wayfarers were just

beginning to think of camping, when they came upon a log cabin in the

woods. Hawkins drew rein and entered the yard. A boy about ten years

old was sitting in the cabin door with his face bowed in his hands.

Hawkins approached, expecting his footfall to attract attention, but it

did not. He halted a moment, and then said:

"Come, come, little chap, you mustn't be going to sleep before sundown"

With a tired expression the small face came up out of the hands,--a face

down which tears were flowing.

"Ah, I'm sorry I spoke so, my boy. Tell me--is anything the matter?"

The boy signified with a scarcely perceptible gesture that the trouble

was in the, house, and made room for Hawkins to pass. Then he put his

face in his hands again and rocked himself about as one suffering a grief

that is too deep to find help in moan or groan or outcry. Hawkins

stepped within. It was a poverty stricken place. Six or eight

middle-aged country people of both sexes were grouped about an object in

the middle of the room; they were noiselessly busy and they talked in

whispers when they spoke. Hawkins uncovered and approached. A coffin

stood upon two backless chairs. These neighbors had just finished

disposing the body of a woman in it--a woman with a careworn, gentle face

that had more the look of sleep about it than of death. An old lady

motioned, toward the door and said to Hawkins in a whisper:

"His mother, po' thing. Died of the fever, last night. Tha warn't no

sich thing as saving of her. But it's better for her--better for her.

Husband and the other two children died in the spring, and she hain't

ever hilt up her head sence. She jest went around broken-hearted like,

and never took no intrust in anything but Clay--that's the boy thar.

She jest worshiped Clay--and Clay he worshiped her. They didn't 'pear to

live at all, only when they was together, looking at each other, loving

one another. She's ben sick three weeks; and if you believe me that

child has worked, and kep' the run of the med'cin, and the times of

giving it, and sot up nights and nussed her, and tried to keep up her

sperits, the same as a grown-up person. And last night when she kep' a

sinking and sinking, and turned away her head and didn't know him no mo',

it was fitten to make a body's heart break to see him climb onto the bed

and lay his cheek agin hern and call her so pitiful and she not answer.

But bymeby she roused up, like, and looked around wild, and then she see

him, and she made a great cry and snatched him to her breast and hilt him

close and kissed him over and over agin; but it took the last po'

strength she had, and so her eyelids begin to close down, and her arms

sort o' drooped away and then we see she was gone, po' creetur. And

Clay, he--Oh, the po' motherless thing--I cain't talk abort it--I cain't

bear to talk about it."

Clay had disappeared from the door; but he came in, now, and the

neighbors reverently fell apart and made way for him. He leaned upon the

open coffin and let his tears course silently. Then he put out his small

hand and smoothed the hair and stroked the dead face lovingly. After a

bit he brought his other hand up from behind him and laid three or four

fresh wild flowers upon the breast, bent over and kissed the unresponsive

lips time and time again, and then turned away and went out of the house

without looking at any of the company. The old lady said to Hawkins:

"She always loved that kind o' flowers. He fetched 'em for her every

morning, and she always kissed him. They was from away north somers--she

kep' school when she fust come. Goodness knows what's to become o' that

po' boy. No father, no mother, no kin folks of no kind. Nobody to go

to, nobody that k'yers for him--and all of us is so put to it for to get

along and families so large."

Hawkins understood. All, eyes were turned inquiringly upon him. He

said:

"Friends, I am not very well provided for, myself, but still I would not

turn my back on a homeless orphan. If he will go with me I will give him

a home, and loving regard--I will do for him as I would have another do

for a child of my own in misfortune."

One after another the people stepped forward and wrung the stranger's

hand with cordial good will, and their eyes looked all that their hands

could not express or their lips speak.

"Said like a true man," said one.

"You was a stranger to me a minute ago, but you ain't now," said another.

"It's bread cast upon the waters--it'll return after many days," said the

old lady whom we have heard speak before.

"You got to camp in my house as long as you hang out here," said one.

"If tha hain't room for you and yourn my tribe'll turn out and camp in

the hay loft."

A few minutes afterward, while the preparations for the funeral were

being concluded, Mr. Hawkins arrived at his wagon leading his little waif

by the hand, and told his wife all that had happened, and asked her if he

had done right in giving to her and to himself this new care? She said:

"If you've done wrong, Si Hawkins, it's a wrong that will shine brighter

at the judgment day than the rights that many' a man has done before you.

And there isn't any compliment you can pay me equal to doing a thing like

this and finishing it up, just taking it for granted that I'll be willing

to it. Willing? Come to me; you poor motherless boy, and let me take

your grief and help you carry it."

When the child awoke in the morning, it was as if from a troubled dream.

But slowly the confusion in his mind took form, and he remembered his

great loss; the beloved form in the coffin; his talk with a generous

stranger who offered him a home; the funeral, where the stranger's wife

held him by the hand at the grave, and cried with him and comforted him;

and he remembered how this, new mother tucked him in his bed in the

neighboring farm house, and coaxed him to talk about his troubles, and

then heard him say his prayers and kissed him good night, and left him

with the soreness in his heart almost healed and his bruised spirit at

rest.

And now the new mother came again, and helped him to dress, and combed

his hair, and drew his mind away by degrees from the dismal yesterday,

by telling him about the wonderful journey he was going to take and the

strange things he was going to see. And after breakfast they two went

alone to the grave, and his heart went out to his new friend and his

untaught eloquence poured the praises of his buried idol into her ears

without let or hindrance. Together they planted roses by the headboard

and strewed wild flowers upon the grave; and then together they went

away, hand in hand, and left the dead to the long sleep that heals all

heart-aches and ends all sorrows.

CHAPTER III.

Whatever the lagging dragging journey may have been to the rest of the

emigrants, it was a wonder and delight to the children, a world of

enchantment; and they believed it to be peopled with the mysterious

dwarfs and giants and goblins that figured in the tales the negro slaves

were in the habit of telling them nightly by the shuddering light of the

kitchen fire.

At the end of nearly a week of travel, the party went into camp near a

shabby village which was caving, house by house, into the hungry

Mississippi. The river astonished the children beyond measure. Its

mile-breadth of water seemed an ocean to them, in the shadowy twilight,

and the vague riband of trees on the further shore, the verge of a

continent which surely none but they had ever seen before.

"Uncle Dan'l"(colored,) aged 40; his wife, "aunt Jinny," aged 30, "Young

Miss" Emily Hawkins, "Young Mars" Washington Hawkins and "Young Mars"

Clay, the new member of the family, ranged themselves on a log, after

supper, and contemplated the marvelous river and discussed it. The moon

rose and sailed aloft through a maze of shredded cloud-wreaths; the

sombre river just perceptibly brightened under the veiled light; a deep

silence pervaded the air and was emphasized, at intervals, rather than

broken, by the hooting of an owl, the baying of a dog, or the muffled

crash of a raving bank in the distance.

The little company assembled on the log were all children (at least in

simplicity and broad and comprehensive ignorance,) and the remarks they

made about the river were in keeping with the character; and so awed were

they by the grandeur and the solemnity of the scene before then, and by

their belief that the air was filled with invisible spirits and that the

faint zephyrs were caused by their passing wings, that all their talk

took to itself a tinge of the supernatural, and their voices were subdued

to a low and reverent tone. Suddenly Uncle Dan'l exclaimed:

"Chil'en, dah's sum fin a comin!"

All crowded close together and every heart beat faster.

Uncle Dan'l pointed down the river with his bony finger.

A deep coughing sound troubled the stillness, way toward a wooded cape

that jetted into the stream a mile distant. All in an instant a fierce

eye of fire shot out froth behind the cape and sent a long brilliant

pathway quivering athwart the dusky water. The coughing grew louder and

louder, the glaring eye grew larger and still larger, glared wilder and

still wilder. A huge shape developed itself out of the gloom, and from

its tall duplicate horns dense volumes of smoke, starred and spangled

with sparks, poured out and went tumbling away into the farther darkness.

Nearer and nearer the thing came, till its long sides began to glow with

spots of light which mirrored themselves in the river and attended the

monster like a torchlight procession.

"What is it! Oh, what is it, Uncle Dan'l!"

With deep solemnity the answer came:

"It's de Almighty! Git down on yo' knees!"

It was not necessary to say it twice. They were all kneeling, in a

moment. And then while the mysterious coughing rose stronger and

stronger and the threatening glare reached farther and wider, the negro's

voice lifted up its supplications:

"O Lord', we's ben mighty wicked, an' we knows dat we 'zerve to go to de

bad place, but good Lord, deah Lord, we ain't ready yit, we ain't ready

--let dese po' chilen hab one mo' chance, jes' one mo' chance. Take de ole

niggah if you's, got to hab somebody.--Good Lord, good deah Lord, we

don't know whah you's a gwyne to, we don't know who you's got yo' eye on,

but we knows by de way you's a comin', we knows by de way you's a tiltin'

along in yo' charyot o' fiah dat some po' sinner's a gwyne to ketch it.

But good Lord, dose chilen don't b'long heah, dey's f'm Obedstown whah

dey don't know nuffin, an' you knows, yo' own sef, dat dey ain't

'sponsible. An' deah Lord, good Lord, it ain't like yo' mercy, it ain't

like yo' pity, it ain't like yo' long-sufferin' lovin' kindness for to

take dis kind o' 'vantage o' sick little chil'en as dose is when dey's so

many ornery grown folks chuck full o' cussedness dat wants roastin' down

dah. Oh, Lord, spah de little chil'en, don't tar de little chil'en away

f'm dey frens, jes' let 'em off jes' dis once, and take it out'n de ole

niggah. HEAH I IS, LORD, HEAH I IS! De ole niggah's ready, Lord,

de ole----"

The flaming and churning steamer was right abreast the party, and not

twenty steps away. The awful thunder of a mud-valve suddenly burst

forth, drowning the prayer, and as suddenly Uncle Dan'l snatched a child

under each arm and scoured into the woods with the rest of the pack at

his heels. And then, ashamed of himself, he halted in the deep darkness

and shouted, (but rather feebly:)

"Heah I is, Lord, heah I is!"

There was a moment of throbbing suspense, and then, to the surprise and

the comfort of the party, it was plain that the august presence had gone

by, for its dreadful noises were receding. Uncle Dan'l headed a cautious

reconnaissance in the direction of the log. Sure enough "the Lord" was

just turning a point a short distance up the river, and while they looked

the lights winked out and the coughing diminished by degrees and

presently ceased altogether.

"H'wsh! Well now dey's some folks says dey ain't no 'ficiency in prah.

Dis Chile would like to know whah we'd a ben now if it warn't fo' dat

prah? Dat's it. Dat's it!"

"Uncle Dan'l, do you reckon it was the prayer that saved us?" said Clay.

"Does I reckon? Don't I know it! Whah was yo' eyes? Warn't de Lord

jes' a cumin' chow! chow! CHOW! an' a goin' on turrible--an' do de

Lord carry on dat way 'dout dey's sumfin don't suit him? An' warn't he a

lookin' right at dis gang heah, an' warn't he jes' a reachin' for 'em?

An' d'you spec' he gwyne to let 'em off 'dout somebody ast him to do it?

No indeedy!"

"Do you reckon he saw, us, Uncle Dan'l?

"De law sakes, Chile, didn't I see him a lookin' at us?".

"Did you feel scared, Uncle Dan'l?"

"No sah! When a man is 'gaged in prah, he ain't fraid o' nuffin--dey

can't nuffin tetch him."

"Well what did you run for?"

"Well, I--I--mars Clay, when a man is under de influence ob de sperit,

he do-no, what he's 'bout--no sah; dat man do-no what he's 'bout. You

mout take an' tah de head off'n dat man an' he wouldn't scasely fine it

out. Date's de Hebrew chil'en dat went frough de fiah; dey was burnt

considable--ob coase dey was; but dey didn't know nuffin 'bout it--heal

right up agin; if dey'd ben gals dey'd missed dey long haah, (hair,)

maybe, but dey wouldn't felt de burn."

"I don't know but what they were girls. I think they were."

"Now mars Clay, you knows bettern dat. Sometimes a body can't tell

whedder you's a sayin' what you means or whedder you's a sayin' what you

don't mean, 'case you says 'em bofe de same way."

"But how should I know whether they were boys or girls?"

"Goodness sakes, mars Clay, don't de Good Book say? 'Sides, don't it

call 'em de HE-brew chil'en? If dey was gals wouldn't dey be de SHE-brew

chil'en? Some people dat kin read don't 'pear to take no notice when dey

do read."

"Well, Uncle Dan'l, I think that-----My! here comes another one up the

river! There can't be two!"

"We gone dis time--we done gone dis time, sho'! Dey ain't two, mars

Clay--days de same one. De Lord kin 'pear eberywhah in a second.

Goodness, how do fiah and de smoke do belch up! Dat mean business,

honey. He comin' now like he fo'got sumfin. Come 'long, chil'en, time

you's gwyne to roos'. Go 'long wid you--ole Uncle Daniel gwyne out in de

woods to rastle in prah--de ole nigger gwyne to do what he kin to sabe

you agin"

He did go to the woods and pray; but he went so far that he doubted,

himself, if the Lord heard him when He went by.

CHAPTER IV.

--Seventhly, Before his Voyage, He should make his peace with God,

satisfie his Creditors if he be in debt; Pray earnestly to God to prosper

him in his Voyage, and to keep him from danger, and, if he be 'sui juris'

he should make his last will, and wisely order all his affairs, since

many that go far abroad, return not home. (This good and Christian

Counsel is given by Martinus Zeilerus in his Apodemical Canons before his

Itinerary of Spain and Portugal.)

Early in the morning Squire Hawkins took passage in a small steamboat,

with his family and his two slaves, and presently the bell rang, the

stage-plank; was hauled in, and the vessel proceeded up the river.

The children and the slaves were not much more at ease after finding out

that this monster was a creature of human contrivance than they were the

night before when they thought it the Lord of heaven and earth. They

started, in fright, every time the gauge-cocks sent out an angry hiss,

and they quaked from head to foot when the mud-valves thundered. The

shivering of the boat under the beating of the wheels was sheer misery to

them.

But of course familiarity with these things soon took away their terrors,

and then the voyage at once became a glorious adventure, a royal progress

through the very heart and home of romance, a realization of their

rosiest wonder-dreams. They sat by the hour in the shade of the pilot

house on the hurricane deck and looked out over the curving expanses of

the river sparkling in the sunlight. Sometimes the boat fought the

mid-stream current, with a verdant world on either hand, and remote from

both; sometimes she closed in under a point, where the dead water and the

helping eddies were, and shaved the bank so closely that the decks were

swept by the jungle of over-hanging willows and littered with a spoil of

leaves; departing from these "points" she regularly crossed the river

every five miles, avoiding the "bight" of the great binds and thus

escaping the strong current; sometimes she went out and skirted a high

"bluff" sand-bar in the middle of the stream, and occasionally followed

it up a little too far and touched upon the shoal water at its head--and

then the intelligent craft refused to run herself aground, but "smelt"

the bar, and straightway the foamy streak that streamed away from her

bows vanished, a great foamless wave rolled forward and passed her under

way, and in this instant she leaned far over on her side, shied from the

bar and fled square away from the danger like a frightened thing--and the

pilot was lucky if he managed to "straighten her up" before she drove her

nose into the opposite bank; sometimes she approached a solid wall of

tall trees as if she meant to break through it, but all of a sudden a

little crack would open just enough to admit her, and away she would go

plowing through the "chute" with just barely room enough between the

island on one side and the main land on the other; in this sluggish water

she seemed to go like a racehorse; now and then small log cabins appeared

in little clearings, with the never-failing frowsy women and girls in

soiled and faded linsey-woolsey leaning in the doors or against woodpiles

and rail fences, gazing sleepily at the passing show; sometimes she found

shoal water, going out at the head of those "chutes" or crossing the

river, and then a deck-hand stood on the bow and hove the lead, while the

boat slowed down and moved cautiously; sometimes she stopped a moment at

a landing and took on some freight or a passenger while a crowd of

slouchy white men and negroes stood on the bank and looked sleepily on

with their hands in their pantaloons pockets,--of course--for they never

took them out except to stretch, and when they did this they squirmed

about and reached their fists up into the air and lifted themselves on

tip-toe in an ecstasy of enjoyment.

When the sun went down it turned all the broad river to a national banner

laid in gleaming bars of gold and purple and crimson; and in time these

glories faded out in the twilight and left the fairy archipelagoes

reflecting their fringing foliage in the steely mirror of the stream.

At night the boat forged on through the deep solitudes of the river,

hardly ever discovering a light to testify to a human presence--mile

after mile and league after league the vast bends were guarded by

unbroken walls of forest that had never been disturbed by the voice or

the foot-fall of man or felt the edge of his sacrilegious axe.

An hour after supper the moon came up, and Clay and Washington ascended

to the hurricane deck to revel again in their new realm of enchantment.

They ran races up and down the deck; climbed about the bell; made friends

with the passenger-dogs chained under the lifeboat; tried to make friends

with a passenger-bear fastened to the verge-staff but were not

encouraged; "skinned the cat" on the hog-chains; in a word, exhausted the

amusement-possibilities of the deck. Then they looked wistfully up at

the pilot house, and finally, little by little, Clay ventured up there,

followed diffidently by Washington. The pilot turned presently to "get

his stern-marks," saw the lads and invited them in. Now their happiness

was complete. This cosy little house, built entirely of glass and

commanding a marvelous prospect in every direction was a magician's

throne to them and their enjoyment of the place was simply boundless.

They sat them down on a high bench and looked miles ahead and saw the

wooded capes fold back and reveal the bends beyond; and they looked miles

to the rear and saw the silvery highway diminish its breadth by degrees

and close itself together in the distance. Presently the pilot said:

"By George, yonder comes the Amaranth!"

A spark appeared, close to the water, several miles down the river. The

pilot took his glass and looked at it steadily for a moment, and said,

chiefly to himself:

"It can't be the Blue Wing. She couldn't pick us up this way. It's the

Amaranth, sure!"

He bent over a speaking tube and said:

"Who's on watch down there?"

A hollow, unhuman voice rumbled up through the tube in answer:

"I am. Second engineer."

"Good! You want to stir your stumps, now, Harry--the Amaranth's just

turned the point--and she's just a--humping herself, too!"

The pilot took hold of a rope that stretched out forward, jerked it

twice, and two mellow strokes of the big bell responded. A voice out on

the deck shouted:

"Stand by, down there, with that labboard lead!"

"No, I don't want the lead," said the pilot, "I want you. Roust out the

old man--tell him the Amaranth's coming. And go and call Jim--tell him."

"Aye-aye, sir!"

The "old man" was the captain--he is always called so, on steamboats and

ships; "Jim" was the other pilot. Within two minutes both of these men

were flying up the pilothouse stairway, three steps at a jump. Jim was

in his shirt sleeves,--with his coat and vest on his arm. He said:

"I was just turning in. Where's the glass"

He took it and looked:

"Don't appear to be any night-hawk on the jack-staff--it's the Amaranth,

dead sure!"

The captain took a good long look, and only said:

"Damnation!"

George Davis, the pilot on watch, shouted to the night-watchman on deck:

"How's she loaded?"

"Two inches by the head, sir."

"'T ain't enough!"

The captain shouted, now:

"Call the mate. Tell him to call all hands and get a lot of that sugar

forrard--put her ten inches by the head. Lively, now!"

"Aye-aye, sir."

A riot of shouting and trampling floated up from below, presently, and

the uneasy steering of the boat soon showed that she was getting "down by

the head."

The three men in the pilot house began to talk in short, sharp sentences,

low and earnestly. As their excitement rose, their voices went down.

As fast as one of them put down the spy-glass another took it up--but

always with a studied air of calmness. Each time the verdict was:

"She's a gaining!"

The captain spoke through the tube:

"What steam are You carrying?"

"A hundred and forty-two, sir! But she's getting hotter and hotter all

the time."

The boat was straining and groaning and quivering like a monster in pain.

Both pilots were at work now, one on each side of the wheel, with their

coats and vests off, their bosoms and collars wide open and the

perspiration flowing down heir faces. They were holding the boat so

close to the shore that the willows swept the guards almost from stem to

stern.

"Stand by!" whispered George.

"All ready!" said Jim, under his breath.

"Let her come!"

The boat sprang away, from the bank like a deer, and darted in a long

diagonal toward the other shore. She closed in again and thrashed her

fierce way along the willows as before. The captain put down the glass:

"Lord how she walks up on us! I do hate to be beat!"

"Jim," said George, looking straight ahead, watching the slightest yawing

of the boat and promptly meeting it with the wheel, "how'll it do to try

Murderer's Chute?"

"Well, it's--it's taking chances. How was the cottonwood stump on the

false point below Boardman's Island this morning?"

"Water just touching the roots."

"Well it's pretty close work. That gives six feet scant in the head of

Murderer's Chute. We can just barely rub through if we hit it exactly

right. But it's worth trying. She don't dare tackle it!"--meaning the

Amaranth.

In another instant the Boreas plunged into what seemed a crooked creek,

and the Amaranth's approaching lights were shut out in a moment. Not a

whisper was uttered, now, but the three men stared ahead into the shadows

and two of them spun the wheel back and forth with anxious watchfulness

while the steamer tore along. The chute seemed to come to an end every

fifty yards, but always opened out in time. Now the head of it was at

hand. George tapped the big bell three times, two leadsmen sprang to

their posts, and in a moment their weird cries rose on the night air and

were caught up and repeated by two men on the upper deck:

"No-o bottom!"

"De-e-p four!"

"Half three!"

"Quarter three!"

"Mark under wa-a-ter three!"

"Half twain!"

"Quarter twain!-----"

Davis pulled a couple of ropes--there was a jingling of small bells far

below, the boat's speed slackened, and the pent steam began to whistle

and the gauge-cocks to scream:

"By the mark twain!"

"Quar--ter--her--er--less twain!"

"Eight and a half!"

"Eight feet!"

"Seven-ana-half!"

Another jingling of little bells and the wheels ceased turning

altogether. The whistling of the steam was something frightful now--it

almost drowned all other noises.

"Stand by to meet her!"

George had the wheel hard down and was standing on a spoke.

"All ready!"

The, boat hesitated seemed to hold her breath, as did the captain and

pilots--and then she began to fall away to starboard and every eye

lighted:

"Now then!--meet her! meet her! Snatch her!"

The wheel flew to port so fast that the spokes blended into a spider-web

--the swing of the boat subsided--she steadied herself----

"Seven feet!"

"Sev--six and a half!"

"Six feet! Six f----"

Bang! She hit the bottom! George shouted through the tube:

"Spread her wide open! Whale it at her!"

Pow-wow-chow! The escape-pipes belched snowy pillars of steam aloft, the

boat ground and surged and trembled--and slid over into----

"M-a-r-k twain!"

"Quarter-her----"

"Tap! tap! tap!" (to signify "Lay in the leads")

And away she went, flying up the willow shore, with the whole silver sea

of the Mississippi stretching abroad on every hand.

No Amaranth in sight!

"Ha-ha, boys, we took a couple of tricks that time!" said the captain.

And just at that moment a red glare appeared in the head of the chute and

the Amaranth came springing after them!

"Well, I swear!"

"Jim, what is the meaning of that?"

"I'll tell you what's the meaning of it. That hail we had at Napoleon

was Wash Hastings, wanting to come to Cairo--and we didn't stop. He's in

that pilot house, now, showing those mud turtles how to hunt for easy

water."

"That's it! I thought it wasn't any slouch that was running that middle

bar in Hog-eye Bend. If it's Wash Hastings--well, what he don't know

about the river ain't worth knowing--a regular gold-leaf, kid-glove,

diamond breastpin pilot Wash Hastings is. We won't take any tricks off

of him, old man!"

"I wish I'd a stopped for him, that's all."

The Amaranth was within three hundred yards of the Boreas, and still

gaining. The "old man" spoke through the tube:

"What is she-carrying now?"

"A hundred and sixty-five, sir!"

"How's your wood?"

"Pine all out-cypress half gone-eating up cotton-wood like pie!"

"Break into that rosin on the main deck-pile it in, the boat can pay for

it!"

Soon the boat was plunging and quivering and screaming more madly than

ever. But the Amaranth's head was almost abreast the Boreas's stern:

"How's your steam, now, Harry?"

"Hundred and eighty-two, sir!"

"Break up the casks of bacon in the forrard hold! Pile it in! Levy on

that turpentine in the fantail-drench every stick of wood with it!"

The boat was a moving earthquake by this time:

"How is she now?"

"A hundred and ninety-six and still a-swelling!--water, below the middle

gauge-cocks!--carrying every pound she can stand!--nigger roosting on the

safety-valve!"

"Good! How's your draft?"

"Bully! Every time a nigger heaves a stick of wood into the furnace he

goes out the chimney, with it!"

The Amaranth drew steadily up till her jack-staff breasted the Boreas's

wheel-house--climbed along inch by inch till her chimneys breasted it

--crept along, further and further, till the boats were wheel to wheel

--and then they, closed up with a heavy jolt and locked together tight

and fast in the middle of the big river under the flooding moonlight! A

roar and a hurrah went up from the crowded decks of both steamers--all

hands rushed to the guards to look and shout and gesticulate--the weight

careened the vessels over toward each other--officers flew hither and

thither cursing and storming, trying to drive the people amidships--both

captains were leaning over their railings shaking their fists, swearing

and threatening--black volumes of smoke rolled up and canopied the

scene,--delivering a rain of sparks upon the vessels--two pistol shots

rang out, and both captains dodged unhurt and the packed masses of

passengers surged back and fell apart while the shrieks of women and

children soared above the intolerable din----

And then there was a booming roar, a thundering crash, and the riddled

Amaranth dropped loose from her hold and drifted helplessly away!

Instantly the fire-doors of the Boreas were thrown open and the men began

dashing buckets of water into the furnaces--for it would have been death

and destruction to stop the engines with such a head of steam on.

As soon as possible the Boreas dropped down to the floating wreck and

took off the dead, the wounded and the unhurt--at least all that could be

got at, for the whole forward half of the boat was a shapeless ruin, with

the great chimneys lying crossed on top of it, and underneath were a

dozen victims imprisoned alive and wailing for help. While men with axes

worked with might and main to free these poor fellows, the Boreas's boats

went about, picking up stragglers from the river.

And now a new horror presented itself. The wreck took fire from the

dismantled furnaces! Never did men work with a heartier will than did

those stalwart braves with the axes. But it was of no use. The fire ate

its way steadily, despising the bucket brigade that fought it. It

scorched the clothes, it singed the hair of the axemen--it drove them

back, foot by foot-inch by inch--they wavered, struck a final blow in the

teeth of the enemy, and surrendered. And as they fell back they heard

prisoned voices saying:

"Don't leave us! Don't desert us! Don't, don't do it!"

And one poor fellow said:

"I am Henry Worley, striker of the Amaranth! My mother lives in St.

Louis. Tell her a lie for a poor devil's sake, please. Say I was killed

in an instant and never knew what hurt me--though God knows I've neither

scratch nor bruise this moment! It's hard to burn up in a coop like this

with the whole wide world so near. Good-bye boys--we've all got to come

to it at last, anyway!"

The Boreas stood away out of danger, and the ruined steamer went drifting

down the stream an island of wreathing and climbing flame that vomited

clouds of smoke from time to time, and glared more fiercely and sent its

luminous tongues higher and higher after each emission. A shriek at

intervals told of a captive that had met his doom. The wreck lodged upon

a sandbar, and when the Boreas turned the next point on her upward

journey it was still burning with scarcely abated fury.

When the boys came down into the main saloon of the Boreas, they saw a

pitiful sight and heard a world of pitiful sounds. Eleven poor creatures

lay dead and forty more lay moaning, or pleading or screaming, while a

score of Good Samaritans moved among them doing what they could to

relieve their sufferings; bathing their chinless faces and bodies with

linseed oil and lime water and covering the places with bulging masses of

raw cotton that gave to every face and form a dreadful and unhuman

aspect.

A little wee French midshipman of fourteen lay fearfully injured, but

never uttered a sound till a physician of Memphis was about to dress his

hurts. Then he said:

"Can I get well? You need not be afraid to tell me."

"No--I--I am afraid you can not."

"Then do not waste your time with me--help those that can get well."

"But----"

"Help those that can get well! It is, not for me to be a girl. I carry

the blood of eleven generations of soldiers in my veins!"

The physician--himself a man who had seen service in the navy in his

time--touched his hat to this little hero, and passed on.

The head engineer of the Amaranth, a grand specimen of physical manhood,

struggled to his feet a ghastly spectacle and strode toward his brother,

the second engineer, who was unhurt. He said:

"You were on watch. You were boss. You would not listen to me when I

begged you to reduce your steam. Take that!--take it to my wife and tell

her it comes from me by the hand of my murderer! Take it--and take my

curse with it to blister your heart a hundred years--and may you live so

long!"

And he tore a ring from his finger, stripping flesh and skin with it,

threw it down and fell dead!

But these things must not be dwelt upon. The Boreas landed her dreadful

cargo at the next large town and delivered it over to a multitude of

eager hands and warm southern hearts--a cargo amounting by this time to

39 wounded persons and 22 dead bodies. And with these she delivered a

list of 96 missing persons that had drowned or otherwise perished at the

scene of the disaster.

A jury of inquest was impaneled, and after due deliberation and inquiry

they returned the inevitable American verdict which has been so familiar

to our ears all the days of our lives--"NOBODY TO BLAME."

**[The incidents of the explosion are not invented. They happened just

as they are told.--The Authors.]

CHAPTER V.

Il veut faire secher de la neige au four et la vendre pour du sel blanc.

When the Boreas backed away from the land to continue her voyage up the

river, the Hawkinses were richer by twenty-four hours of experience in

the contemplation of human suffering and in learning through honest hard

work how to relieve it. And they were richer in another way also.

In the early turmoil an hour after the explosion, a little black-eyed

girl of five years, frightened and crying bitterly, was struggling

through the throng in the Boreas' saloon calling her mother and father,

but no one answered. Something in the face of Mr. Hawkins attracted her

and she came and looked up at him; was satisfied, and took refuge with

him. He petted her, listened to her troubles, and said he would find her

friends for her. Then he put her in a state-room with his children and

told them to be kind to her (the adults of his party were all busy with

the wounded) and straightway began his search.

It was fruitless. But all day he and his wife made inquiries, and hoped

against hope. All that they could learn was that the child and her

parents came on board at New Orleans, where they had just arrived in a

vessel from Cuba; that they looked like people from the Atlantic States;

that the family name was Van Brunt and the child's name Laura. This was

all. The parents had not been seen since the explosion. The child's

manners were those of a little lady, and her clothes were daintier and

finer than any Mrs. Hawkins had ever seen before.

As the hours dragged on the child lost heart, and cried so piteously for

her mother that it seemed to the Hawkinses that the moanings and the

wailings of the mutilated men and women in the saloon did not so strain

at their heart-strings as the sufferings of this little desolate

creature. They tried hard to comfort her; and in trying, learned to love

her; they could not help it, seeing how she clung, to them and put her

arms about their necks and found-no solace but in their kind eyes and

comforting words: There was a question in both their hearts--a question

that rose up and asserted itself with more and more pertinacity as the

hours wore on--but both hesitated to give it voice--both kept silence

--and--waited. But a time came at last when the matter would bear delay

no longer. The boat had landed, and the dead and the wounded were being

conveyed to the shore. The tired child was asleep in the arms of Mrs.

Hawkins. Mr. Hawkins came into their presence and stood without

speaking. His eyes met his wife's; then both looked at the child--and as

they looked it stirred in its sleep and nestled closer; an expression of

contentment and peace settled upon its face that touched the

mother-heart; and when the eyes of husband and wife met again, the

question was asked and answered.

When the Boreas had journeyed some four hundred miles from the time the

Hawkinses joined her, a long rank of steamboats was sighted, packed side

by side at a wharf like sardines, in a box, and above and beyond them

rose the domes and steeples and general architectural confusion of a

city--a city with an imposing umbrella of black smoke spread over it.

This was St. Louis. The children of the Hawkins family were playing

about the hurricane deck, and the father and mother were sitting in the

lee of the pilot house essaying to keep order and not greatly grieved

that they were not succeeding.

"They're worth all the trouble they are, Nancy."

"Yes, and more, Si."

"I believe you! You wouldn't sell one of them at a good round figure?"

"Not for all the money in the bank, Si."

"My own sentiments every time. It is true we are not rich--but still you

are not sorry---you haven't any misgivings about the additions?"

"No. God will provide"