"Oh, it ain't that kind of duty. The kind I mean is a tax. Whenever you

strike a frontier--that's the border of a country, you know--you find a

custom-house there, and the gov'ment officers comes and rummages among

your things and charges a big tax, which they call a duty because it's

their duty to bust you if they can, and if you don't pay the duty they'll

hog your sand. They call it confiscating, but that don't deceive nobody,

it's just hogging, and that's all it is. Now if we try to carry this sand

home the way we're pointed now, we got to climb fences till we git

tired--just frontier after frontier--Egypt, Arabia, Hindostan, and so

on, and they'll all whack on a duty, and so you see, easy enough, we

CAN'T go THAT road."

"Why, Tom," I says, "we can sail right over their old frontiers; how are

THEY going to stop us?"

He looked sorrowful at me, and says, very grave:

"Huck Finn, do you think that would be honest?"

I hate them kind of interruptions. I never said nothing, and he went on:

"Well, we're shut off the other way, too. If we go back the way we've

come, there's the New York custom-house, and that is worse than all of

them others put together, on account of the kind of cargo we've got."

"Why?"

"Well, they can't raise Sahara sand in America, of course, and when they

can't raise a thing there, the duty is fourteen hundred thousand per

cent. on it if you try to fetch it in from where they do raise it."

"There ain't no sense in that, Tom Sawyer."

"Who said there WAS? What do you talk to me like that for, Huck Finn? You

wait till I say a thing's got sense in it before you go to accusing me of

saying it."

"All right, consider me crying about it, and sorry. Go on."

Jim says:

"Mars Tom, do dey jam dat duty onto everything we can't raise in America,

en don't make no 'stinction 'twix' anything?"

"Yes, that's what they do."

"Mars Tom, ain't de blessin' o' de Lord de mos' valuable thing dey is?"

"Yes, it is."

"Don't de preacher stan' up in de pulpit en call it down on de people?"

"Yes."

"Whah do it come from?"

"From heaven."

"Yassir! you's jes' right, 'deed you is, honey--it come from heaven, en

dat's a foreign country. NOW, den! do dey put a tax on dat blessin'?"

"No, they don't."

"Course dey don't; en so it stan' to reason dat you's mistaken, Mars Tom.

Dey wouldn't put de tax on po' truck like san', dat everybody ain't

'bleeged to have, en leave it off'n de bes' thing dey is, which nobody

can't git along widout."

Tom Sawyer was stumped; he see Jim had got him where he couldn't budge.

He tried to wiggle out by saying they had FORGOT to put on that tax, but

they'd be sure to remember about it, next session of Congress, and then

they'd put it on, but that was a poor lame come-off, and he knowed it. He

said there warn't nothing foreign that warn't taxed but just that one,

and so they couldn't be consistent without taxing it, and to be

consistent was the first law of politics. So he stuck to it that they'd

left it out unintentional and would be certain to do their best to fix it

before they got caught and laughed at.

But I didn't feel no more interest in such things, as long as we couldn't

git our sand through, and it made me low-spirited, and Jim the same. Tom

he tried to cheer us up by saying he would think up another speculation

for us that would be just as good as this one and better, but it didn't

do no good, we didn't believe there was any as big as this. It was mighty

hard; such a little while ago we was so rich, and could 'a' bought a

country and started a kingdom and been celebrated and happy, and now we

was so poor and ornery again, and had our sand left on our hands. The

sand was looking so lovely before, just like gold and di'monds, and the

feel of it was so soft and so silky and nice, but now I couldn't bear the

sight of it, it made me sick to look at it, and I knowed I wouldn't ever

feel comfortable again till we got shut of it, and I didn't have it there

no more to remind us of what we had been and what we had got degraded

down to. The others was feeling the same way about it that I was. I

knowed it, because they cheered up so, the minute I says le's throw this

truck overboard.

Well, it was going to be work, you know, and pretty solid work, too; so

Tom he divided it up according to fairness and strength. He said me and

him would clear out a fifth apiece of the sand, and Jim three-fifths. Jim

he didn't quite like that arrangement. He says:

"Course I's de stronges', en I's willin' to do a share accordin', but by

jings you's kinder pilin' it onto ole Jim, Mars Tom, hain't you?"

"Well, I didn't think so, Jim, but you try your hand at fixing it, and

let's see."

So Jim reckoned it wouldn't be no more than fair if me and Tom done a

TENTH apiece. Tom he turned his back to git room and be private, and then

he smole a smile that spread around and covered the whole Sahara to the

westward, back to the Atlantic edge of it where we come from. Then he

turned around again and said it was a good enough arrangement, and we was

satisfied if Jim was. Jim said he was.

So then Tom measured off our two-tenths in the bow and left the rest for

Jim, and it surprised Jim a good deal to see how much difference there

was and what a raging lot of sand his share come to, and said he was

powerful glad now that he had spoke up in time and got the first

arrangement altered, for he said that even the way it was now, there was

more sand than enjoyment in his end of the contract, he believed.

Then we laid into it. It was mighty hot work, and tough; so hot we had to

move up into cooler weather or we couldn't 'a' stood it. Me and Tom took

turn about, and one worked while t'other rested, but there warn't nobody

to spell poor old Jim, and he made all that part of Africa damp, he

sweated so. We couldn't work good, we was so full of laugh, and Jim he

kept fretting and wanting to know what tickled us so, and we had to keep

making up things to account for it, and they was pretty poor inventions,

but they done well enough, Jim didn't see through them. At last when we

got done we was 'most dead, but not with work but with laughing. By and

by Jim was 'most dead, too, but: it was with work; then we took turns and

spelled him, and he was as thankfull as he could be, and would set on the

gunnel and swab the sweat, and heave and pant, and say how good we was to

a poor old nigger, and he wouldn't ever forgit us. He was always the

gratefulest nigger I ever see, for any little thing you done for him. He

was only nigger outside; inside he was as white as you be.

CHAPTER XII. JIM STANDING SIEGE

THE next few meals was pretty sandy, but that don't make no difference

when you are hungry; and when you ain't it ain't no satisfaction to eat,

anyway, and so a little grit in the meat ain't no particular drawback, as

far as I can see.

Then we struck the east end of the Desert at last, sailing on a northeast

course. Away off on the edge of the sand, in a soft pinky light, we see

three little sharp roofs like tents, and Tom says:

"It's the pyramids of Egypt."

It made my heart fairly jump. You see, I had seen a many and a many a

picture of them, and heard tell about them a hundred times, and yet to

come on them all of a sudden, that way, and find they was REAL, 'stead of

imaginations, 'most knocked the breath out of me with surprise. It's a

curious thing, that the more you hear about a grand and big and bully

thing or person, the more it kind of dreamies out, as you may say, and

gets to be a big dim wavery figger made out of moonshine and nothing

solid to it. It's just so with George Washington, and the same with them

pyramids.

And moreover, besides, the thing they always said about them seemed to me

to be stretchers. There was a feller come to the Sunday-school once, and

had a picture of them, and made a speech, and said the biggest pyramid

covered thirteen acres, and was most five hundred foot high, just a steep

mountain, all built out of hunks of stone as big as a bureau, and laid up

in perfectly regular layers, like stair-steps. Thirteen acres, you see,

for just one building; it's a farm. If it hadn't been in Sunday-school, I

would 'a' judged it was a lie; and outside I was certain of it. And he

said there was a hole in the pyramid, and you could go in there with

candles, and go ever so far up a long slanting tunnel, and come to a

large room in the stomach of that stone mountain, and there you would

find a big stone chest with a king in it, four thousand years old. I said

to myself, then, if that ain't a lie I will eat that king if they will

fetch him, for even Methusalem warn't that old, and nobody claims it.

As we come a little nearer we see the yaller sand come to an end in a

long straight edge like a blanket, and on to it was joined, edge to edge,

a wide country of bright green, with a snaky stripe crooking through it,

and Tom said it was the Nile. It made my heart jump again, for the Nile

was another thing that wasn't real to me. Now I can tell you one thing

which is dead certain: if you will fool along over three thousand miles

of yaller sand, all glimmering with heat so that it makes your eyes water

to look at it, and you've been a considerable part of a week doing it,

the green country will look so like home and heaven to you that it will

make your eyes water AGAIN.

It was just so with me, and the same with Jim.

And when Jim got so he could believe it WAS the land of Egypt he was

looking at, he wouldn't enter it standing up, but got down on his knees

and took off his hat, because he said it wasn't fitten' for a humble poor

nigger to come any other way where such men had been as Moses and Joseph

and Pharaoh and the other prophets. He was a Presbyterian, and had a most

deep respect for Moses which was a Presbyterian, too, he said. He was all

stirred up, and says:

"Hit's de lan' of Egypt, de lan' of Egypt, en I's 'lowed to look at it

wid my own eyes! En dah's de river dat was turn' to blood, en I's looking

at de very same groun' whah de plagues was, en de lice, en de frogs, en

de locus', en de hail, en whah dey marked de door-pos', en de angel o' de

Lord come by in de darkness o' de night en slew de fust-born in all de

lan' o' Egypt. Ole Jim ain't worthy to see dis day!"

And then he just broke down and cried, he was so thankful. So between him

and Tom there was talk enough, Jim being excited because the land was so

full of history--Joseph and his brethren, Moses in the bulrushers, Jacob

coming down into Egypt to buy corn, the silver cup in the sack, and all

them interesting things; and Tom just as excited too, because the land

was so full of history that was in HIS line, about Noureddin, and

Bedreddin, and such like monstrous giants, that made Jim's wool rise, and

a raft of other Arabian Nights folks, which the half of them never done

the things they let on they done, I don't believe.

Then we struck a disappointment, for one of them early morning fogs

started up, and it warn't no use to sail over the top of it, because we

would go by Egypt, sure, so we judged it was best to set her by compass

straight for the place where the pyramids was gitting blurred and blotted

out, and then drop low and skin along pretty close to the ground and keep

a sharp lookout. Tom took the hellum, I stood by to let go the anchor,

and Jim he straddled the bow to dig through the fog with his eyes and

watch out for danger ahead. We went along a steady gait, but not very

fast, and the fog got solider and solider, so solid that Jim looked dim

and ragged and smoky through it. It was awful still, and we talked low

and was anxious. Now and then Jim would say:

"Highst her a p'int, Mars Tom, highst her!" and up she would skip, a foot

or two, and we would slide right over a flat-roofed mud cabin, with

people that had been asleep on it just beginning to turn out and gap and

stretch; and once when a feller was clear up on his hind legs so he could

gap and stretch better, we took him a blip in the back and knocked him

off. By and by, after about an hour, and everything dead still and we

a-straining our ears for sounds and holding our breath, the fog thinned a

little, very sudden, and Jim sung out in an awful scare:

"Oh, for de lan's sake, set her back, Mars Tom, here's de biggest giant

outen de 'Rabian Nights a-comin' for us!" and he went over backwards in

the boat.

Tom slammed on the back-action, and as we slowed to a standstill a man's

face as big as our house at home looked in over the gunnel, same as a

house looks out of its windows, and I laid down and died. I must 'a' been

clear dead and gone for as much as a minute or more; then I come to, and

Tom had hitched a boat-hook on to the lower lip of the giant and was

holding the balloon steady with it whilst he canted his head back and got

a good long look up at that awful face.

Jim was on his knees with his hands clasped, gazing up at the thing in a

begging way, and working his lips, but not getting anything out. I took

only just a glimpse, and was fading out again, but Tom says:

"He ain't alive, you fools; it's the Sphinx!"

I never see Tom look so little and like a fly; but that was because the

giant's head was so big and awful. Awful, yes, so it was, but not

dreadful any more, because you could see it was a noble face, and kind of

sad, and not thinking about you, but about other things and larger. It

was stone, reddish stone, and its nose and ears battered, and that give

it an abused look, and you felt sorrier for it for that.

We stood off a piece, and sailed around it and over it, and it was just

grand. It was a man's head, or maybe a woman's, on a tiger's body a

hundred and twenty-five foot long, and there was a dear little temple

between its front paws. All but the head used to be under the sand, for

hundreds of years, maybe thousands, but they had just lately dug the sand

away and found that little temple. It took a power of sand to bury that

cretur; most as much as it would to bury a steamboat, I reckon.

We landed Jim on top of the head, with an American flag to protect him,

it being a foreign land; then we sailed off to this and that and t'other

distance, to git what Tom called effects and perspectives and

proportions, and Jim he done the best he could, striking all the

different kinds of attitudes and positions he could study up, but

standing on his head and working his legs the way a frog does was the

best. The further we got away, the littler Jim got, and the grander the

Sphinx got, till at last it was only a clothespin on a dome, as you might

say. That's the way perspective brings out the correct proportions, Tom

said; he said Julus Cesar's niggers didn't know how big he was, they was

too close to him.

Then we sailed off further and further, till we couldn't see Jim at all

any more, and then that great figger was at its noblest, a-gazing out

over the Nile Valley so still and solemn and lonesome, and all the little

shabby huts and things that was scattered about it clean disappeared and

gone, and nothing around it now but a soft wide spread of yaller velvet,

which was the sand.

That was the right place to stop, and we done it. We set there a-looking

and a-thinking for a half an hour, nobody a-saying anything, for it made

us feel quiet and kind of solemn to remember it had been looking over

that valley just that same way, and thinking its awful thoughts all to

itself for thousands of years, and nobody can't find out what they are to

this day.

At last I took up the glass and see some little black things a-capering

around on that velvet carpet, and some more a-climbing up the cretur's

back, and then I see two or three wee puffs of white smoke, and told Tom

to look. He done it, and says:

"They're bugs. No--hold on; they--why, I believe they're men. Yes, it's

men--men and horses both. They're hauling a long ladder up onto the

Sphinx's back--now ain't that odd? And now they're trying to lean it up

a--there's some more puffs of smoke--it's guns! Huck, they're after Jim."

We clapped on the power, and went for them a-biling. We was there in no

time, and come a-whizzing down amongst them, and they broke and scattered

every which way, and some that was climbing the ladder after Jim let go

all holts and fell. We soared up and found him laying on top of the head

panting and most tuckered out, partly from howling for help and partly

from scare. He had been standing a siege a long time--a week, HE said,

but it warn't so, it only just seemed so to him because they was crowding

him so. They had shot at him, and rained the bullets all around him, but

he warn't hit, and when they found he wouldn't stand up and the bullets

couldn't git at him when he was laying down, they went for the ladder,

and then he knowed it was all up with him if we didn't come pretty quick.

Tom was very indignant, and asked him why he didn't show the flag and

command them to GIT, in the name of the United States. Jim said he done

it, but they never paid no attention. Tom said he would have this thing

looked into at Washington, and says:

"You'll see that they'll have to apologize for insulting the flag, and

pay an indemnity, too, on top of it even if they git off THAT easy."

Jim says:

"What's an indemnity, Mars Tom?"

"It's cash, that's what it is."

"Who gits it, Mars Tom?"

"Why, WE do."

"En who gits de apology?"

"The United States. Or, we can take whichever we please. We can take the

apology, if we want to, and let the gov'ment take the money."

"How much money will it be, Mars Tom?"

"Well, in an aggravated case like this one, it will be at least three

dollars apiece, and I don't know but more."

"Well, den, we'll take de money, Mars Tom, blame de 'pology. Hain't dat

yo' notion, too? En hain't it yourn, Huck?"

We talked it over a little and allowed that that was as good a way as

any, so we agreed to take the money. It was a new business to me, and I

asked Tom if countries always apologized when they had done wrong, and he

says:

"Yes; the little ones does."

We was sailing around examining the pyramids, you know, and now we soared

up and roosted on the flat top of the biggest one, and found it was just

like what the man said in the Sunday-school. It was like four pairs of

stairs that starts broad at the bottom and slants up and comes together

in a point at the top, only these stair-steps couldn't be clumb the way

you climb other stairs; no, for each step was as high as your chin, and

you have to be boosted up from behind. The two other pyramids warn't far

away, and the people moving about on the sand between looked like bugs

crawling, we was so high above them.

Tom he couldn't hold himself he was so worked up with gladness and

astonishment to be in such a celebrated place, and he just dripped

history from every pore, seemed to me. He said he couldn't scarcely

believe he was standing on the very identical spot the prince flew from

on the Bronze Horse. It was in the Arabian Night times, he said. Somebody

give the prince a bronze horse with a peg in its shoulder, and he could

git on him and fly through the air like a bird, and go all over the

world, and steer it by turning the peg, and fly high or low and land

wherever he wanted to.

When he got done telling it there was one of them uncomfortable silences

that comes, you know, when a person has been telling a whopper and you

feel sorry for him and wish you could think of some way to change the

subject and let him down easy, but git stuck and don't see no way, and

before you can pull your mind together and DO something, that silence has

got in and spread itself and done the business. I was embarrassed, Jim he

was embarrassed, and neither of us couldn't say a word. Well, Tom he

glowered at me a minute, and says:

"Come, out with it. What do you think?"

I says:

"Tom Sawyer, YOU don't believe that, yourself."

"What's the reason I don't? What's to hender me?"

"There's one thing to hender you: it couldn't happen, that's all."

"What's the reason it couldn't happen?"

"You tell me the reason it COULD happen."

"This balloon is a good enough reason it could happen, I should reckon."

"WHY is it?"

"WHY is it? I never saw such an idiot. Ain't this balloon and the bronze

horse the same thing under different names?"

"No, they're not. One is a balloon and the other's a horse. It's very

different. Next you'll be saying a house and a cow is the same thing."

"By Jackson, Huck's got him ag'in! Dey ain't no wigglin' outer dat!"

"Shut your head, Jim; you don't know what you're talking about. And Huck

don't. Look here, Huck, I'll make it plain to you, so you can understand.

You see, it ain't the mere FORM that's got anything to do with their

being similar or unsimilar, it's the PRINCIPLE involved; and the

principle is the same in both. Don't you see, now?"

I turned it over in my mind, and says:

"Tom, it ain't no use. Principles is all very well, but they don't git

around that one big fact, that the thing that a balloon can do ain't no

sort of proof of what a horse can do."

"Shucks, Huck, you don't get the idea at all. Now look here a

minute--it's perfectly plain. Don't we fly through the air?"

"Yes."

"Very well. Don't we fly high or fly low, just as we please?"

"Yes."

"Don't we steer whichever way we want to?"

"Yes."

"And don't we land when and where we please?"

"Yes."

"How do we move the balloon and steer it?"

"By touching the buttons."

"NOW I reckon the thing is clear to you at last. In the other case the

moving and steering was done by turning a peg. We touch a button, the

prince turned a peg. There ain't an atom of difference, you see. I knowed

I could git it through your head if I stuck to it long enough."

He felt so happy he begun to whistle. But me and Jim was silent, so he

broke off surprised, and says:

"Looky here, Huck Finn, don't you see it YET?"

I says:

"Tom Sawyer, I want to ask you some questions."

"Go ahead," he says, and I see Jim chirk up to listen.

"As I understand it, the whole thing is in the buttons and the peg--the

rest ain't of no consequence. A button is one shape, a peg is another

shape, but that ain't any matter?"

"No, that ain't any matter, as long as they've both got the same power."

"All right, then. What is the power that's in a candle and in a match?"

"It's the fire."

"It's the same in both, then?"

"Yes, just the same in both."

"All right. Suppose I set fire to a carpenter shop with a match, what

will happen to that carpenter shop?"

"She'll burn up."

"And suppose I set fire to this pyramid with a candle--will she burn up?"

"Of course she won't."

"All right. Now the fire's the same, both times. WHY does the shop burn,

and the pyramid don't?"

"Because the pyramid CAN'T burn."

"Aha! and A HORSE CAN'T FLY!"

"My lan', ef Huck ain't got him ag'in! Huck's landed him high en dry dis

time, I tell you! Hit's de smartes' trap I ever see a body walk inter--en

ef I--"

But Jim was so full of laugh he got to strangling and couldn't go on, and

Tom was that mad to see how neat I had floored him, and turned his own

argument ag'in him and knocked him all to rags and flinders with it, that

all he could manage to say was that whenever he heard me and Jim try to

argue it made him ashamed of the human race. I never said nothing; I was

feeling pretty well satisfied. When I have got the best of a person that

way, it ain't my way to go around crowing about it the way some people

does, for I consider that if I was in his place I wouldn't wish him to

crow over me. It's better to be generous, that's what I think.

CHAPTER XIII. GOING FOR TOM'S PIPE:

BY AND BY we left Jim to float around up there in the neighborhood of the

pyramids, and we clumb down to the hole where you go into the tunnel, and

went in with some Arabs and candles, and away in there in the middle of

the pyramid we found a room and a big stone box in it where they used to

keep that king, just as the man in the Sunday-school said; but he was

gone, now; somebody had got him. But I didn't take no interest in the

place, because there could be ghosts there, of course; not fresh ones,

but I don't like no kind.

So then we come out and got some little donkeys and rode a piece, and

then went in a boat another piece, and then more donkeys, and got to

Cairo; and all the way the road was as smooth and beautiful a road as

ever I see, and had tall date-pa'ms on both sides, and naked children

everywhere, and the men was as red as copper, and fine and strong and

handsome. And the city was a curiosity. Such narrow streets--why, they

were just lanes, and crowded with people with turbans, and women with

veils, and everybody rigged out in blazing bright clothes and all sorts

of colors, and you wondered how the camels and the people got by each

other in such narrow little cracks, but they done it--a perfect jam, you

see, and everybody noisy. The stores warn't big enough to turn around in,

but you didn't have to go in; the storekeeper sat tailor fashion on his

counter, smoking his snaky long pipe, and had his things where he could

reach them to sell, and he was just as good as in the street, for the

camel-loads brushed him as they went by.

Now and then a grand person flew by in a carriage with fancy dressed men

running and yelling in front of it and whacking anybody with a long rod

that didn't get out of the way. And by and by along comes the Sultan

riding horseback at the head of a procession, and fairly took your breath

away his clothes was so splendid; and everybody fell flat and laid on his

stomach while he went by. I forgot, but a feller helped me to remember.

He was one that had a rod and run in front.

There was churches, but they don't know enough to keep Sunday; they keep

Friday and break the Sabbath. You have to take off your shoes when you go

in. There was crowds of men and boys in the church, setting in groups on

the stone floor and making no end of noise--getting their lessons by

heart, Tom said, out of the Koran, which they think is a Bible, and

people that knows better knows enough to not let on. I never see such a

big church in my life before, and most awful high, it was; it made you

dizzy to look up; our village church at home ain't a circumstance to it;

if you was to put it in there, people would think it was a drygoods box.

What I wanted to see was a dervish, because I was interested in dervishes

on accounts of the one that played the trick on the camel-driver. So we

found a lot in a kind of a church, and they called themselves Whirling

Dervishes; and they did whirl, too. I never see anything like it. They

had tall sugar-loaf hats on, and linen petticoats; and they spun and spun

and spun, round and round like tops, and the petticoats stood out on a

slant, and it was the prettiest thing I ever see, and made me drunk to

look at it. They was all Moslems, Tom said, and when I asked him what a

Moslem was, he said it was a person that wasn't a Presbyterian. So there

is plenty of them in Missouri, though I didn't know it before.

We didn't see half there was to see in Cairo, because Tom was in such a

sweat to hunt out places that was celebrated in history. We had a most

tiresome time to find the granary where Joseph stored up the grain before

the famine, and when we found it it warn't worth much to look at, being

such an old tumble-down wreck; but Tom was satisfied, and made more fuss

over it than I would make if I stuck a nail in my foot. How he ever found

that place was too many for me. We passed as much as forty just like it

before we come to it, and any of them would 'a' done for me, but none but

just the right one would suit him; I never see anybody so particular as

Tom Sawyer. The minute he struck the right one he reconnized it as easy

as I would reconnize my other shirt if I had one, but how he done it he

couldn't any more tell than he could fly; he said so himself.

Then we hunted a long time for the house where the boy lived that learned

the cadi how to try the case of the old olives and the new ones, and said

it was out of the Arabian Nights, and he would tell me and Jim about it

when he got time. Well, we hunted and hunted till I was ready to drop,

and I wanted Tom to give it up and come next day and git somebody that

knowed the town and could talk Missourian and could go straight to the

place; but no, he wanted to find it himself, and nothing else would

answer. So on we went. Then at last the remarkablest thing happened I

ever see. The house was gone--gone hundreds of years ago--every last rag

of it gone but just one mud brick. Now a person wouldn't ever believe

that a backwoods Missouri boy that hadn't ever been in that town before

could go and hunt that place over and find that brick, but Tom Sawyer

done it. I know he done it, because I see him do it. I was right by his

very side at the time, and see him see the brick and see him reconnize

it. Well, I says to myself, how DOES he do it? Is it knowledge, or is it

instink?

Now there's the facts, just as they happened: let everybody explain it

their own way. I've ciphered over it a good deal, and it's my opinion

that some of it is knowledge but the main bulk of it is instink. The

reason is this: Tom put the brick in his pocket to give to a museum with

his name on it and the facts when he went home, and I slipped it out and

put another brick considerable like it in its place, and he didn't know

the difference--but there was a difference, you see. I think that settles

it--it's mostly instink, not knowledge. Instink tells him where the exact

PLACE is for the brick to be in, and so he reconnizes it by the place

it's in, not by the look of the brick. If it was knowledge, not instink,

he would know the brick again by the look of it the next time he seen

it--which he didn't. So it shows that for all the brag you hear about

knowledge being such a wonderful thing, instink is worth forty of it for

real unerringness. Jim says the same.

When we got back Jim dropped down and took us in, and there was a young

man there with a red skullcap and tassel on and a beautiful silk jacket

and baggy trousers with a shawl around his waist and pistols in it that

could talk English and wanted to hire to us as guide and take us to Mecca

and Medina and Central Africa and everywheres for a half a dollar a day

and his keep, and we hired him and left, and piled on the power, and by

the time we was through dinner we was over the place where the Israelites

crossed the Red Sea when Pharaoh tried to overtake them and was caught by

the waters. We stopped, then, and had a good look at the place, and it

done Jim good to see it. He said he could see it all, now, just the way

it happened; he could see the Israelites walking along between the walls

of water, and the Egyptians coming, from away off yonder, hurrying all

they could, and see them start in as the Israelites went out, and then

when they was all in, see the walls tumble together and drown the last

man of them. Then we piled on the power again and rushed away and

huvvered over Mount Sinai, and saw the place where Moses broke the tables

of stone, and where the children of Israel camped in the plain and

worshiped the golden calf, and it was all just as interesting as could

be, and the guide knowed every place as well as I knowed the village at

home.

But we had an accident, now, and it fetched all the plans to a

standstill. Tom's old ornery corn-cob pipe had got so old and swelled and

warped that she couldn't hold together any longer, notwithstanding the

strings and bandages, but caved in and went to pieces. Tom he didn't know

WHAT to do. The professor's pipe wouldn't answer; it warn't anything but

a mershum, and a person that's got used to a cob pipe knows it lays a

long ways over all the other pipes in this world, and you can't git him

to smoke any other. He wouldn't take mine, I couldn't persuade him. So

there he was.

He thought it over, and said we must scour around and see if we could

roust out one in Egypt or Arabia or around in some of these countries,

but the guide said no, it warn't no use, they didn't have them. So Tom

was pretty glum for a little while, then he chirked up and said he'd got

the idea and knowed what to do. He says:

"I've got another corn-cob pipe, and it's a prime one, too, and nearly

new. It's laying on the rafter that's right over the kitchen stove at

home in the village. Jim, you and the guide will go and get it, and me

and Huck will camp here on Mount Sinai till you come back."

"But, Mars Tom, we couldn't ever find de village. I could find de pipe,

'case I knows de kitchen, but my lan', we can't ever find de village, nur

Sent Louis, nur none o' dem places. We don't know de way, Mars Tom."

That was a fact, and it stumped Tom for a minute. Then he said:

"Looky here, it can be done, sure; and I'll tell you how. You set your

compass and sail west as straight as a dart, till you find the United

States. It ain't any trouble, because it's the first land you'll strike

the other side of the Atlantic. If it's daytime when you strike it, bulge

right on, straight west from the upper part of the Florida coast, and in

an hour and three quarters you'll hit the mouth of the Mississippi--at

the speed that I'm going to send you. You'll be so high up in the air

that the earth will be curved considerable--sorter like a washbowl turned

upside down--and you'll see a raft of rivers crawling around every which

way, long before you get there, and you can pick out the Mississippi

without any trouble. Then you can follow the river north nearly, an hour

and three quarters, till you see the Ohio come in; then you want to look

sharp, because you're getting near. Away up to your left you'll see

another thread coming in--that's the Missouri and is a little above St.

Louis. You'll come down low then, so as you can examine the villages as

you spin along. You'll pass about twenty-five in the next fifteen

minutes, and you'll recognize ours when you see it--and if you don't, you

can yell down and ask."

"Ef it's dat easy, Mars Tom, I reckon we kin do it--yassir, I knows we

kin."

The guide was sure of it, too, and thought that he could learn to stand

his watch in a little while.

"Jim can learn you the whole thing in a half an hour," Tom said. "This

balloon's as easy to manage as a canoe."

Tom got out the chart and marked out the course and measured it, and

says:

"To go back west is the shortest way, you see. It's only about seven

thousand miles. If you went east, and so on around, it's over twice as

far." Then he says to the guide, "I want you both to watch the tell-tale

all through the watches, and whenever it don't mark three hundred miles

an hour, you go higher or drop lower till you find a storm-current that's

going your way. There's a hundred miles an hour in this old thing without

any wind to help. There's two-hundred-mile gales to be found, any time

you want to hunt for them."

"We'll hunt for them, sir."

"See that you do. Sometimes you may have to go up a couple of miles, and

it'll be p'ison cold, but most of the time you'll find your storm a good

deal lower. If you can only strike a cyclone--that's the ticket for you!

You'll see by the professor's books that they travel west in these

latitudes; and they travel low, too."

Then he ciphered on the time, and says--

"Seven thousand miles, three hundred miles an hour--you can make the trip

in a day--twenty-four hours. This is Thursday; you'll be back here

Saturday afternoon. Come, now, hustle out some blankets and food and

books and things for me and Huck, and you can start right along. There

ain't no occasion to fool around--I want a smoke, and the quicker you

fetch that pipe the better."

All hands jumped for the things, and in eight minutes our things was out

and the balloon was ready for America. So we shook hands good-bye, and

Tom gave his last orders:

"It's 10 minutes to 2 P.M. now, Mount Sinai time. In 24 hours you'll be

home, and it'll be 6 to-morrow morning, village time. When you strike the

village, land a little back of the top of the hill, in the woods, out of

sight; then you rush down, Jim, and shove these letters in the

post-office, and if you see anybody stirring, pull your slouch down over

your face so they won't know you. Then you go and slip in the back way to

the kitchen and git the pipe, and lay this piece of paper on the kitchen

table, and put something on it to hold it, and then slide out and git

away, and don't let Aunt Polly catch a sight of you, nor nobody else.

Then you jump for the balloon and shove for Mount Sinai three hundred

miles an hour. You won't have lost more than an hour. You'll start back

at 7 or 8 A.M., village time, and be here in 24 hours, arriving at 2 or 3

P.M., Mount Sinai time."

Tom he read the piece of paper to us. He had wrote on it:

"THURSDAY AFTERNOON. Tom Sawyer the Erro-nort

sends his love to Aunt Polly from Mount Sinai

where the Ark was, and so does Huck Finn, and she

will get it to-morrow morning half-past six." *

[* This misplacing of the Ark is probably Huck's error, not

Tom's.--M.T.]

"That'll make her eyes bulge out and the tears come," he says. Then he

says:

"Stand by! One--two--three--away you go!"

And away she DID go! Why, she seemed to whiz out of sight in a second.

Then we found a most comfortable cave that looked out over the whole big

plain, and there we camped to wait for the pipe.

The balloon come hack all right, and brung the pipe; but Aunt Polly had

catched Jim when he was getting it, and anybody can guess what happened:

she sent for Tom. So Jim he says:

"Mars Tom, she's out on de porch wid her eye sot on de sky a-layin' for

you, en she say she ain't gwyne to budge from dah tell she gits hold of

you. Dey's gwyne to be trouble, Mars Tom, 'deed dey is."

So then we shoved for home, and not feeling very gay, neither.

END.

End of Project Gutenberg's Tom Sawyer Abroad, by Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens)

THE TRAGEDY OF PUDD'NHEAD WILSON

by Mark Twain

A WHISPER TO THE READER

There is no character, howsoever good and fine, but it can be destroyed

by ridicule, howsoever poor and witless. Observe the ass, for instance:

his character is about perfect, he is the choicest spirit among all the

humbler animals, yet see what ridicule has brought him to. Instead of

feeling complimented when we are called an ass, we are left in doubt.

--Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar

A person who is ignorant of legal matters is always liable to make

mistakes when he tries to photograph a court scene with his pen; and so I

was not willing to let the law chapters in this book go to press without

first subjecting them to rigid and exhausting revision and correction by

a trained barrister--if that is what they are called. These chapters are

right, now, in every detail, for they were rewritten under the immediate

eye of William Hicks, who studied law part of a while in southwest

Missouri thirty-five years ago and then came over here to Florence for

his health and is still helping for exercise and board in Macaroni

Vermicelli's horse-feed shed, which is up the back alley as you turn

around the corner out of the Piazza del Duomo just beyond the house where

that stone that Dante used to sit on six hundred years ago is let into

the wall when he let on to be watching them build Giotto's campanile and

yet always got tired looking as Beatrice passed along on her way to get a

chunk of chestnut cake to defend herself with in case of a Ghibelline

outbreak before she got to school, at the same old stand where they sell

the same old cake to this day and it is just as light and good as it was

then, too, and this is not flattery, far from it. He was a little rusty

on his law, but he rubbed up for this book, and those two or three legal

chapters are right and straight, now. He told me so himself.

Given under my hand this second day of January, 1893, at the Villa

Viviani, village of Settignano, three miles back of Florence, on the

hills--the same certainly affording the most charming view to be found

on this planet, and with it the most dreamlike and enchanting sunsets to

be found in any planet or even in any solar system--and given, too, in

the swell room of the house, with the busts of Cerretani senators and

other grandees of this line looking approvingly down upon me, as they

used to look down upon Dante, and mutely asking me to adopt them into my

family, which I do with pleasure, for my remotest ancestors are but

spring chickens compared with these robed and stately antiques, and it

will be a great and satisfying lift for me, that six hundred years will.

Mark Twain.

CHAPTER 1

Pudd'nhead Wins His Name

Tell the truth or trump--but get the trick.

--Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar

The scene of this chronicle is the town of Dawson's Landing, on the

Missouri side of the Mississippi, half a day's journey, per steamboat,

below St. Louis.

In 1830 it was a snug collection of modest one- and two- story frame

dwellings, whose whitewashed exteriors were almost concealed from sight

by climbing tangles of rose vines, honeysuckles, and morning glories.

Each of these pretty homes had a garden in front fenced with white

palings and opulently stocked with hollyhocks, marigolds, touch-me-nots,

prince's-feathers, and other old-fashioned flowers; while on the

windowsills of the houses stood wooden boxes containing moss rose plants

and terra-cotta pots in which grew a breed of geranium whose spread of

intensely red blossoms accented the prevailing pink tint of the rose-clad

house-front like an explosion of flame. When there was room on the ledge

outside of the pots and boxes for a cat, the cat was there--in sunny

weather--stretched at full length, asleep and blissful, with her furry

belly to the sun and a paw curved over her nose. Then that house was

complete, and its contentment and peace were made manifest to the world

by this symbol, whose testimony is infallible. A home without a cat--and

a well-fed, well-petted, and properly revered cat--may be a perfect

home, perhaps, but how can it prove title?

All along the streets, on both sides, at the outer edge of the brick

sidewalks, stood locust trees with trunks protected by wooden boxing, and

these furnished shade for summer and a sweet fragrancer in spring, when

the clusters of buds came forth. The main street, one block back from

the river, and running parallel with it, was the sole business street.

It was six blocks long, and in each block two or three brick stores,

three stories high, towered above interjected bunches of little frame

shops. Swinging signs creaked in the wind the street's whole length.

The candy-striped pole, which indicates nobility proud and ancient along

the palace-bordered canals of Venice, indicated merely the humble

barbershop along the main street of Dawson's Landing. On a chief corner

stood a lofty unpainted pole wreathed from top to bottom with tin pots

and pans and cups, the chief tinmonger's noisy notice to the world (when

the wind blew) that his shop was on hand for business at that corner.

The hamlet's front was washed by the clear waters of the great river; its

body stretched itself rearward up a gentle incline; its most rearward

border fringed itself out and scattered its houses about its base line of

the hills; the hills rose high, enclosing the town in a half-moon curve,

clothed with forests from foot to summit.

Steamboats passed up and down every hour or so. Those belonging to the

little Cairo line and the little Memphis line always stopped; the big

Orleans liners stopped for hails only, or to land passengers or freight;

and this was the case also with the great flotilla of "transients."

These latter came out of a dozen rivers--the Illinois, the Missouri, the

Upper Mississippi, the Ohio, the Monongahela, the Tennessee, the Red

River, the White River, and so on--and were bound every whither and

stocked with every imaginable comfort or necessity, which the

Mississippi's communities could want, from the frosty Falls of St.

Anthony down through nine climates to torrid New Orleans.

Dawson's Landing was a slaveholding town, with a rich, slave-worked grain

and pork country back of it. The town was sleepy and comfortable and

contented. It was fifty years old, and was growing slowly--very slowly,

in fact, but still it was growing.

The chief citizen was York Leicester Driscoll, about forty years old,

judge of the county court. He was very proud of his old Virginian

ancestry, and in his hospitalities and his rather formal and stately

manners, he kept up its traditions. He was fine and just and generous.

To be a gentleman--a gentleman without stain or blemish--was his only

religion, and to it he was always faithful. He was respected, esteemed,

and beloved by all of the community. He was well off, and was gradually

adding to his store. He and his wife were very nearly happy, but not

quite, for they had no children. The longing for the treasure of a child

had grown stronger and stronger as the years slipped away, but the

blessing never came--and was never to come.

With this pair lived the judge's widowed sister, Mrs. Rachel Pratt, and

she also was childless--childless, and sorrowful for that reason, and not

to be comforted. The women were good and commonplace people, and did

their duty, and had their reward in clear consciences and the community's

approbation. They were Presbyterians, the judge was a freethinker.

Pembroke Howard, lawyer and bachelor, aged almost forty, was another old

Virginian grandee with proved descent from the First Families. He was a

fine, majestic creature, a gentleman according to the nicest requirements

of the Virginia rule, a devoted Presbyterian, an authority on the "code",

and a man always courteously ready to stand up before you in the field if

any act or word of his had seemed doubtful or suspicious to you, and

explain it with any weapon you might prefer from bradawls to artillery.

He was very popular with the people, and was the judge's dearest friend.

Then there was Colonel Cecil Burleigh Essex, another F.F.V. of formidable

caliber--however, with him we have no concern.

Percy Northumberland Driscoll, brother to the judge, and younger than he

by five years, was a married man, and had had children around his

hearthstone; but they were attacked in detail by measles, croup, and

scarlet fever, and this had given the doctor a chance with his effective

antediluvian methods; so the cradles were empty. He was a prosperous

man, with a good head for speculations, and his fortune was growing. On

the first of February, 1830, two boy babes were born in his house; one to

him, one to one of his slave girls, Roxana by name. Roxana was twenty

years old. She was up and around the same day, with her hands full, for

she was tending both babes.

Mrs. Percy Driscoll died within the week. Roxy remained in charge of the

children. She had her own way, for Mr. Driscoll soon absorbed himself in

his speculations and left her to her own devices.

In that same month of February, Dawson's Landing gained a new citizen.

This was Mr. David Wilson, a young fellow of Scotch parentage. He had

wandered to this remote region from his birthplace in the interior of the

State of New York, to seek his fortune. He was twenty-five years old,

college bred, and had finished a post-college course in an Eastern law

school a couple of years before.

He was a homely, freckled, sandy-haired young fellow, with an intelligent

blue eye that had frankness and comradeship in it and a covert twinkle of

a pleasant sort. But for an unfortunate remark of his, he would no doubt

have entered at once upon a successful career at Dawson's Landing. But he

made his fatal remark the first day he spent in the village, and it

"gaged" him. He had just made the acquaintance of a group of citizens

when an invisible dog began to yelp and snarl and howl and make himself

very comprehensively disagreeable, whereupon young Wilson said, much as

one who is thinking aloud:

"I wish I owned half of that dog."

"Why?" somebody asked.

"Because I would kill my half."

The group searched his face with curiosity, with anxiety even, but found

no light there, no expression that they could read. They fell away from

him as from something uncanny, and went into privacy to discuss him. One

said:

"'Pears to be a fool."

"'Pears?" said another. "_Is,_ I reckon you better say."

"Said he wished he owned _half_ of the dog, the idiot," said a third.

"What did he reckon would become of the other half if he killed his half?

Do you reckon he thought it would live?"

"Why, he must have thought it, unless he IS the downrightest fool in the

world; because if he hadn't thought it, he would have wanted to own the

whole dog, knowing that if he killed his half and the other half died, he

would be responsible for that half just the same as if he had killed that

half instead of his own. Don't it look that way to you, gents?"

"Yes, it does. If he owned one half of the general dog, it would be so;

if he owned one end of the dog and another person owned the other end, it

would be so, just the same; particularly in the first case, because if

you kill one half of a general dog, there ain't any man that can tell

whose half it was; but if he owned one end of the dog, maybe he could

kill his end of it and--"

"No, he couldn't either; he couldn't and not be responsible if the other

end died, which it would. In my opinion that man ain't in his right

mind."

"In my opinion he hain't _got_ any mind."

No. 3 said: "Well, he's a lummox, anyway."

"That's what he is;" said No. 4. "He's a labrick--just a Simon-pure

labrick, if there was one."

"Yes, sir, he's a dam fool. That's the way I put him up," said No. 5.

"Anybody can think different that wants to, but those are my sentiments."

"I'm with you, gentlemen," said No. 6. "Perfect jackass--yes, and it

ain't going too far to say he is a pudd'nhead. If he ain't a pudd'nhead,

I ain't no judge, that's all."

Mr. Wilson stood elected. The incident was told all over the town, and

gravely discussed by everybody. Within a week he had lost his first

name; Pudd'nhead took its place. In time he came to be liked, and well

liked too; but by that time the nickname had got well stuck on, and it

stayed. That first day's verdict made him a fool, and he was not able to

get it set aside, or even modified. The nickname soon ceased to carry

any harsh or unfriendly feeling with it, but it held its place, and was

to continue to hold its place for twenty long years.

CHAPTER 2

Driscoll Spares His Slaves

Adam was but human--this explains it all. He did not want the apple for

the apple's sake, he wanted it only because it was forbidden. The mistake

was in not forbidding the serpent; then he would have eaten the serpent.

--Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar

Pudd'nhead Wilson had a trifle of money when he arrived, and he bought a

small house on the extreme western verge of the town. Between it and

Judge Driscoll's house there was only a grassy yard, with a paling fence

dividing the properties in the middle. He hired a small office down in

the town and hung out a tin sign with these words on it:

D A V I D W I L S O N

ATTORNEY AND COUNSELOR-AT-LAW

SURVEYING, CONVEYANCING, ETC.

But his deadly remark had ruined his chance--at least in the law. No

clients came. He took down his sign, after a while, and put it up on his

own house with the law features knocked out of it. It offered his

services now in the humble capacities of land surveyor and expert

accountant. Now and then he got a job of surveying to do, and now and

then a merchant got him to straighten out his books. With Scotch patience

and pluck he resolved to live down his reputation and work his way into

the legal field yet. Poor fellow, he could foresee that it was going to

take him such a weary long time to do it.

He had a rich abundance of idle time, but it never hung heavy on his

hands, for he interested himself in every new thing that was born into

the universe of ideas, and studied it, and experimented upon it at his

house. One of his pet fads was palmistry. To another one he gave no

name, neither would he explain to anybody what its purpose was, but

merely said it was an amusement. In fact, he had found that his fads

added to his reputation as a pudd'nhead; there, he was growing chary of

being too communicative about them. The fad without a name was one which

dealt with people's finger marks. He carried in his coat pocket a

shallow box with grooves in it, and in the grooves strips of glass five

inches long and three inches wide. Along the lower edge of each strip

was pasted a slip of white paper. He asked people to pass their hands

through their hair (thus collecting upon them a thin coating of the

natural oil) and then making a thumb-mark on a glass strip, following it

with the mark of the ball of each finger in succession. Under this row

of faint grease prints he would write a record on the strip of white

paper--thus:

JOHN SMITH, right hand--

and add the day of the month and the year, then take Smith's left hand on

another glass strip, and add name and date and the words "left hand." The

strips were now returned to the grooved box, and took their place among

what Wilson called his "records."

He often studied his records, examining and poring over them with

absorbing interest until far into the night; but what he found there--if

he found anything--he revealed to no one. Sometimes he copied on paper

the involved and delicate pattern left by the ball of the finger, and

then vastly enlarged it with a pantograph so that he could examine its

web of curving lines with ease and convenience.

One sweltering afternoon--it was the first day of July, 1830--he was at

work over a set of tangled account books in his workroom, which looked

westward over a stretch of vacant lots, when a conversation outside

disturbed him. It was carried on in yells, which showed that the people

engaged in it were not close together.

"Say, Roxy, how does yo' baby come on?" This from the distant voice.

"Fust-rate. How does _you_ come on, Jasper?" This yell was from close

by.

"Oh, I's middlin'; hain't got noth'n' to complain of, I's gwine to come

a-court'n you bimeby, Roxy."

"_You_ is, you black mud cat! Yah--yah--yah! I got somep'n' better to

do den 'sociat'n' wid niggers as black as you is. Is ole Miss Cooper's

Nancy done give you de mitten?" Roxy followed this sally with another

discharge of carefree laughter.

"You's jealous, Roxy, dat's what's de matter wid you, you

hussy--yah--yah--yah! Dat's de time I got you!"

"Oh, yes, _you_ got me, hain't you. 'Clah to goodness if dat conceit o'

yo'n strikes in, Jasper, it gwine to kill you sho'. If you b'longed to

me, I'd sell you down de river 'fo' you git too fur gone. Fust time I

runs acrost yo' marster, I's gwine to tell him so."

This idle and aimless jabber went on and on, both parties enjoying the

friendly duel and each well satisfied with his own share of the wit

exchanged--for wit they considered it.

Wilson stepped to the window to observe the combatants; he could not work

while their chatter continued. Over in the vacant lots was Jasper,

young, coal black, and of magnificent build, sitting on a wheelbarrow in

the pelting sun--at work, supposably, whereas he was in fact only

preparing for it by taking an hour's rest before beginning. In front of

Wilson's porch stood Roxy, with a local handmade baby wagon, in which sat

her two charges--one at each end and facing each other. From Roxy's

manner of speech, a stranger would have expected her to be black, but she

was not. Only one sixteenth of her was black, and that sixteenth did not

show. She was of majestic form and stature, her attitudes were imposing

and statuesque, and her gestures and movements distinguished by a noble

and stately grace. Her complexion was very fair, with the rosy glow of

vigorous health in her cheeks, her face was full of character and

expression, her eyes were brown and liquid, and she had a heavy suit of

fine soft hair which was also brown, but the fact was not apparent

because her head was bound about with a checkered handkerchief and the

hair was concealed under it. Her face was shapely, intelligent, and

comely--even beautiful. She had an easy, independent carriage--when she

was among her own caste--and a high and "sassy" way, withal; but of

course she was meek and humble enough where white people were.

To all intents and purposes Roxy was as white as anybody, but the one

sixteenth of her which was black outvoted the other fifteen parts and

made her a Negro. She was a slave, and salable as such. Her child was

thirty-one parts white, and he, too, was a slave, and by a fiction of law

and custom a Negro. He had blue eyes and flaxen curls like his white

comrade, but even the father of the white child was able to tell the

children apart--little as he had commerce with them--by their clothes;

for the white babe wore ruffled soft muslin and a coral necklace, while

the other wore merely a coarse tow-linen shirt which barely reached to

its knees, and no jewelry.

The white child's name was Thomas a Becket Driscoll, the other's name was

Valet de Chambre: no surname--slaves hadn't the privilege. Roxana had

heard that phrase somewhere, the fine sound of it had pleased her ear,

and as she had supposed it was a name, she loaded it on to her darling.

It soon got shorted to "Chambers," of course.

Wilson knew Roxy by sight, and when the duel of wits begun to play out,

he stepped outside to gather in a record or two. Jasper went to work

energetically, at once, perceiving that his leisure was observed. Wilson

inspected the children and asked:

"How old are they, Roxy?"

"Bofe de same age, sir--five months. Bawn de fust o' Feb'uary."

"They're handsome little chaps. One's just as handsome as the other,

too."

A delighted smile exposed the girl's white teeth, and she said:

"Bless yo' soul, Misto Wilson, it's pow'ful nice o' you to say dat,

'ca'se one of 'em ain't on'y a nigger. Mighty prime little nigger, _I_

al'ays says, but dat's 'ca'se it's mine, o' course."

"How do you tell them apart, Roxy, when they haven't any clothes on?"

Roxy laughed a laugh proportioned to her size, and said:

"Oh, _I_ kin tell 'em 'part, Misto Wilson, but I bet Marse Percy

couldn't, not to save his life."

Wilson chatted along for awhile, and presently got Roxy's fingerprints

for his collection--right hand and left--on a couple of his glass strips;

then labeled and dated them, and took the "records" of both children, and

labeled and dated them also.

Two months later, on the third of September, he took this trio of finger

marks again. He liked to have a "series," two or three "takings" at

intervals during the period of childhood, these to be followed at

intervals of several years.

The next day--that is to say, on the fourth of September--something

occurred which profoundly impressed Roxana. Mr. Driscoll missed another

small sum of money--which is a way of saying that this was not a new

thing, but had happened before. In truth, it had happened three times

before. Driscoll's patience was exhausted. He was a fairly humane man

toward slaves and other animals; he was an exceedingly humane man toward

the erring of his own race. Theft he could not abide, and plainly there

was a thief in his house. Necessarily the thief must be one of his

Negros. Sharp measures must be taken. He called his servants before him.

There were three of these, besides Roxy: a man, a woman, and a boy

twelve years old. They were not related. Mr. Driscoll said:

"You have all been warned before. It has done no good. This time I will

teach you a lesson. I will sell the thief. Which of you is the guilty

one?"

They all shuddered at the threat, for here they had a good home, and a

new one was likely to be a change for the worse. The denial was general.

None had stolen anything--not money, anyway--a little sugar, or cake, or

honey, or something like that, that "Marse Percy wouldn't mind or miss"

but not money--never a cent of money. They were eloquent in their

protestations, but Mr. Driscoll was not moved by them. He answered each

in turn with a stern "Name the thief!"

The truth was, all were guilty but Roxana; she suspected that the others

were guilty, but she did not know them to be so. She was horrified to

think how near she had come to being guilty herself; she had been saved

in the nick of time by a revival in the colored Methodist Church, a

fortnight before, at which time and place she "got religion." The very

next day after that gracious experience, while her change of style was

fresh upon her and she was vain of her purified condition, her master

left a couple dollars unprotected on his desk, and she happened upon that

temptation when she was polishing around with a dustrag. She looked at

the money awhile with a steady rising resentment, then she burst out

with:

"Dad blame dat revival, I wisht it had 'a' be'n put off till tomorrow!"

Then she covered the tempter with a book, and another member of the

kitchen cabinet got it. She made this sacrifice as a matter of religious

etiquette; as a thing necessary just now, but by no means to be wrested

into a precedent; no, a week or two would limber up her piety, then she

would be rational again, and the next two dollars that got left out in

the cold would find a comforter--and she could name the comforter.

Was she bad? Was she worse than the general run of her race? No. They

had an unfair show in the battle of life, and they held it no sin to take

military advantage of the enemy--in a small way; in a small way, but not

in a large one. They would smouch provisions from the pantry whenever

they got a chance; or a brass thimble, or a cake of wax, or an emery bag,

or a paper of needles, or a silver spoon, or a dollar bill, or small

articles of clothing, or any other property of light value; and so far

were they from considering such reprisals sinful, that they would go to

church and shout and pray the loudest and sincerest with their plunder in

their pockets. A farm smokehouse had to be kept heavily padlocked, or

even the colored deacon himself could not resist a ham when Providence

showed him in a dream, or otherwise, where such a thing hung lonesome,

and longed for someone to love. But with a hundred hanging before him,

the deacon would not take two--that is, on the same night. On frosty

nights the humane Negro prowler would warm the end of the plank and put

it up under the cold claws of chickens roosting in a tree; a drowsy hen

would step on to the comfortable board, softly clucking her gratitude,

and the prowler would dump her into his bag, and later into his stomach,

perfectly sure that in taking this trifle from the man who daily robbed

him of an inestimable treasure--his liberty--he was not committing any

sin that God would remember against him in the Last Great Day.

"Name the thief!"

For the fourth time Mr. Driscoll had said it, and always in the same hard

tone. And now he added these words of awful import:

"I give you one minute." He took out his watch. "If at the end of that

time, you have not confessed, I will not only sell all four of you,

BUT--I will sell you DOWN THE RIVER!"

It was equivalent to condemning them to hell! No Missouri Negro doubted

this. Roxy reeled in her tracks, and the color vanished out of her face;

the others dropped to their knees as if they had been shot; tears gushed

from their eyes, their supplicating hands went up, and three answers came

in the one instant.

"I done it!"

"I done it!"

"I done it!--have mercy, marster--Lord have mercy on us po' niggers!"

"Very good," said the master, putting up his watch, "I will sell you

_here_ though you don't deserve it. You ought to be sold down the

river."

The culprits flung themselves prone, in an ecstasy of gratitude, and

kissed his feet, declaring that they would never forget his goodness and

never cease to pray for him as long as they lived. They were sincere, for

like a god he had stretched forth his mighty hand and closed the gates of

hell against them. He knew, himself, that he had done a noble and

gracious thing, and was privately well pleased with his magnanimity; and

that night he set the incident down in his diary, so that his son might

read it in after years, and be thereby moved to deeds of gentleness and

humanity himself.

CHAPTER 3

Roxy Plays a Shrewd Trick

Whoever has lived long enough to find out what life is, knows how deep a

debt of gratitude we owe to Adam, the first great benefactor of our race.

He brought death into the world.

--Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar

Percy Driscoll slept well the night he saved his house minions from

going down the river, but no wink of sleep visited Roxy's eyes. A

profound terror had taken possession of her. Her child could grow up and

be sold down the river! The thought crazed her with horror. If she dozed

and lost herself for a moment, the next moment she was on her feet flying

to her child's cradle to see if it was still there. Then she would gather

it to her heart and pour out her love upon it in a frenzy of kisses,

moaning, crying, and saying, "Dey sha'n't, oh, dey _sha'nt'!'_--yo' po'

mammy will kill you fust!"

Once, when she was tucking him back in its cradle again, the other child

nestled in its sleep and attracted her attention. She went and stood

over it a long time communing with herself.

"What has my po' baby done, dat he couldn't have yo' luck? He hain't done

nuth'n. God was good to you; why warn't he good to him? Dey can't sell

_you_ down de river. I hates yo' pappy; he hain't got no heart--for

niggers, he hain't, anyways. I hates him, en I could kill him!" She

paused awhile, thinking; then she burst into wild sobbings again, and

turned away, saying, "Oh, I got to kill my chile, dey ain't no yuther

way--killin' _him_ wouldn't save de chile fum goin' down de river. Oh, I

got to do it, yo' po' mammy's got to kill you to save you, honey." She

gathered her baby to her bosom now, and began to smother it with

caresses. "Mammy's got to kill you--how _kin_ I do it! But yo' mammy

ain't gwine to desert you--no, no, _dah_, don't cry--she gwine _wid_

you, she gwine to kill herself too. Come along, honey, come along wid

mammy; we gwine to jump in de river, den troubles o' dis worl' is all

over--dey don't sell po' niggers down the river over _yonder_."

She stared toward the door, crooning to the child and hushing it; midway

she stopped, suddenly. She had caught sight of her new Sunday gown--a

cheap curtain-calico thing, a conflagration of gaudy colors and fantastic

figures. She surveyed it wistfully, longingly.

"Hain't ever wore it yet," she said, "en it's just lovely." Then she

nodded her head in response to a pleasant idea, and added, "No, I ain't

gwine to be fished out, wid everybody lookin' at me, in dis mis'able ole

linsey-woolsey."

She put down the child and made the change. She looked in the glass and

was astonished at her beauty. She resolved to make her death toilet

perfect. She took off her handkerchief turban and dressed her glossy

wealth of hair "like white folks"; she added some odds and ends of rather

lurid ribbon and a spray of atrocious artificial flowers; finally she

threw over her shoulders a fluffy thing called a "cloud" in that day,

which was of a blazing red complexion. Then she was ready for the tomb.

She gathered up her baby once more; but when her eye fell upon its

miserably short little gray tow-linen shirt and noted the contrast

between its pauper shabbiness and her own volcanic eruption of infernal

splendors, her mother-heart was touched, and she was ashamed.

"No, dolling mammy ain't gwine to treat you so. De angels is gwine to

'mire you jist as much as dey does yo' mammy. Ain't gwine to have 'em

putt'n dey han's up 'fo' dey eyes en sayin' to David and Goliah en dem

yuther prophets, 'Dat chile is dress' to indelicate fo' dis place.'"

By this time she had stripped off the shirt. Now she clothed the naked

little creature in one of Thomas `a Becket's snowy, long baby gowns, with

its bright blue bows and dainty flummery of ruffles.

"Dah--now you's fixed." She propped the child in a chair and stood off

to inspect it. Straightway her eyes begun to widen with astonishment and

admiration, and she clapped her hands and cried out, "Why, it do beat

all! I _never_ knowed you was so lovely. Marse Tommy ain't a bit

puttier--not a single bit."

She stepped over and glanced at the other infant; she flung a glance

back at her own; then one more at the heir of the house. Now a strange

light dawned in her eyes, and in a moment she was lost in thought. She

seemed in a trance; when she came out of it, she muttered, "When I 'uz

a-washin' 'em in de tub, yistiddy, he own pappy asked me which of 'em was

his'n."

She began to move around like one in a dream. She undressed Thomas `a

Becket, stripping him of everything, and put the tow-linen shirt on him.

She put his coral necklace on her own child's neck. Then she placed the

children side by side, and after earnest inspection she muttered:

"Now who would b'lieve clo'es could do de like o' dat? Dog my cats if it

ain't all _I_ kin do to tell t' other fum which, let alone his pappy."

She put her cub in Tommy's elegant cradle and said:

"You's young Marse _Tom_ fum dis out, en I got to practice and git used

to 'memberin' to call you dat, honey, or I's gwine to make a mistake

sometime en git us bofe into trouble. Dah--now you lay still en don't

fret no mo', Marse Tom. Oh, thank de lord in heaven, you's saved, you's

saved! Dey ain't no man kin ever sell mammy's po' little honey down de

river now!"

She put the heir of the house in her own child's unpainted pine cradle,

and said, contemplating its slumbering form uneasily:

"I's sorry for you, honey; I's sorry, God knows I is--but what _kin_ I

do, what _could_ I do? Yo' pappy would sell him to somebody, sometime,

en den he'd go down de river, sho', en I couldn't, couldn't, _couldn't_

stan' it."

She flung herself on her bed and began to think and toss, toss and think.

By and by she sat suddenly upright, for a comforting thought had flown

through her worried mind--

"'T ain't no sin--_white_ folks has done it! It ain't no sin, glory to

goodness it ain't no sin! _Dey's_ done it--yes, en dey was de biggest

quality in de whole bilin', too--_kings!"_

She began to muse; she was trying to gather out of her memory the dim

particulars of some tale she had heard some time or other. At last she

said--

"Now I's got it; now I 'member. It was dat ole nigger preacher dat tole

it, de time he come over here fum Illinois en preached in de nigger

church. He said dey ain't nobody kin save his own self--can't do it by

faith, can't do it by works, can't do it no way at all. Free grace is de

_on'y_ way, en dat don't come fum nobody but jis' de Lord; en _he_ kin

give it to anybody He please, saint or sinner--_he_ don't kyer. He do

jis' as He's a mineter. He s'lect out anybody dat suit Him, en put

another one in his place, and make de fust one happy forever en leave t'

other one to burn wid Satan. De preacher said it was jist like dey done

in Englan' one time, long time ago. De queen she lef' her baby layin'

aroun' one day, en went out callin'; an one 'o de niggers roun'bout de

place dat was 'mos' white, she come in en see de chile layin' aroun', en

tuck en put her own chile's clo's on de queen's chile, en put de queen's

chile's clo'es on her own chile, en den lef' her own chile layin' aroun',

en tuck en toted de queen's chile home to de nigger quarter, en nobody

ever foun' it out, en her chile was de king bimeby, en sole de queen's

chile down de river one time when dey had to settle up de estate. Dah,

now--de preacher said it his own self, en it ain't no sin, 'ca'se white

folks done it. DEY done it--yes, DEY done it; en not on'y jis' common

white folks nuther, but de biggest quality dey is in de whole bilin'.

_Oh_, I's _so_ glad I 'member 'bout dat!"

She got lighthearted and happy, and went to the cradles, and spent what

was left of the night "practicing." She would give her own child a light

pat and say humbly, "Lay still, Marse Tom," then give the real Tom a pat

and say with severity, "Lay _still_, Chambers! Does you want me to take

somep'n _to_ you?"

As she progressed with her practice, she was surprised to see how

steadily and surely the awe which had kept her tongue reverent and her

manner humble toward her young master was transferring itself to her

speech and manner toward the usurper, and how similarly handy she was

becoming in transferring her motherly curtness of speech and

peremptoriness of manner to the unlucky heir of the ancient house of

Driscoll.

She took occasional rests from practicing, and absorbed herself in

calculating her chances.

"Dey'll sell dese niggers today fo' stealin' de money, den dey'll buy

some mo' dat don't now de chillen--so _dat's_ all right. When I takes de

chillen out to git de air, de minute I's roun' de corner I's gwine to

gaum dey mouths all roun' wid jam, den dey can't _nobody_ notice dey's

changed. Yes, I gwine ter do dat till I's safe, if it's a year.

"Dey ain't but one man dat I's afeard of, en dat's dat Pudd'nhead Wilson.

Dey calls him a pudd'nhead, en says he's a fool. My lan, dat man ain't

no mo' fool den I is! He's de smartes' man in dis town, lessn' it's

Jedge Driscoll or maybe Pem Howard. Blame dat man, he worries me wid dem

ornery glasses o' his'n; _I_ b'lieve he's a witch. But nemmine, I's gwine

to happen aroun' dah one o' dese days en let on dat I reckon he wants to

print a chillen's fingers ag'in; en if HE don't notice dey's changed, I

bound dey ain't nobody gwine to notice it, en den I's safe, sho'. But I

reckon I'll tote along a hoss-shoe to keep off de witch work."

The new Negros gave Roxy no trouble, of course. The master gave her

none, for one of his speculations was in jeopardy, and his mind was so

occupied that he hardly saw the children when he looked at them, and all

Roxy had to do was to get them both into a gale of laughter when he came

about; then their faces were mainly cavities exposing gums, and he was

gone again before the spasm passed and the little creatures resumed a

human aspect.

Within a few days the fate of the speculation became so dubious that Mr.

Percy went away with his brother, the judge, to see what could be done

with it. It was a land speculation as usual, and it had gotten

complicated with a lawsuit. The men were gone seven weeks. Before they

got back, Roxy had paid her visit to Wilson, and was satisfied. Wilson

took the fingerprints, labeled them with the names and with the date

--October the first--put them carefully away, and continued his chat with

Roxy, who seemed very anxious that he should admire the great advance in

flesh and beauty which the babes had made since he took their

fingerprints a month before. He complimented their improvement to her

contentment; and as they were without any disguise of jam or other stain,

she trembled all the while and was miserably frightened lest at any

moment he--

But he didn't. He discovered nothing; and she went home jubilant, and

dropped all concern about the matter permanently out of her mind.

CHAPTER 4

The Ways of the Changelings

Adam and Eve had many advantages, but the principal one was, that they

escaped teething.

--Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar

There is this trouble about special providences--namely, there is so

often a doubt as to which party was intended to be the beneficiary. In

the case of the children, the bears, and the prophet, the bears got more

real satisfaction out of the episode than the prophet did, because they

got the children.

--Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar

This history must henceforth accommodate itself to the change which

Roxana has consummated, and call the real heir "Chambers" and the

usurping little slave, "Thomas `a Becket"--shortening this latter name to

"Tom," for daily use, as the people about him did.

"Tom" was a bad baby, from the very beginning of his usurpation. He would

cry for nothing; he would burst into storms of devilish temper without

notice, and let go scream after scream and squall after squall, then

climax the thing with "holding his breath"--that frightful specialty of

the teething nursling, in the throes of which the creature exhausts its

lungs, then is convulsed with noiseless squirmings and twistings and

kickings in the effort to get its breath, while the lips turn blue and

the mouth stands wide and rigid, offering for inspection one wee tooth

set in the lower rim of a hoop of red gums; and when the appalling

stillness has endured until one is sure the lost breath will never

return, a nurse comes flying, and dashes water in the child's face,

and--presto! the lungs fill, and instantly discharge a shriek, or a yell,

or a howl which bursts the listening ear and surprises the owner of it

into saying words which would not go well with a halo if he had one. The

baby Tom would claw anybody who came within reach of his nails, and pound

anybody he could reach with his rattle. He would scream for water until

he got it, and then throw cup and all on the floor and scream for more.

He was indulged in all his caprices, howsoever troublesome and

exasperating they might be; he was allowed to eat anything he wanted,

particularly things that would give him the stomach-ache.

When he got to be old enough to begin to toddle about and say broken

words and get an idea of what his hands were for, he was a more

consummate pest than ever. Roxy got no rest while he was awake. He would

call for anything and everything he saw, simply saying, "Awnt it!" (want

it), which was a command. When it was brought, he said in a frenzy, and

motioning it away with his hands, "Don't awnt it! don't awnt it!" and the

moment it was gone he set up frantic yells of "Awnt it! awnt it!" and

Roxy had to give wings to her heels to get that thing back to him again

before he could get time to carry out his intention of going into

convulsions about it.

What he preferred above all other things was the tongs. This was because

his "father" had forbidden him to have them lest he break windows and

furniture with them. The moment Roxy's back was turned he would toddle

to the presence of the tongs and say, "Like it!" and cock his eye to one

side or see if Roxy was observed; then, "Awnt it!" and cock his eye

again; then, "Hab it!" with another furtive glace; and finally, "Take

it!"--and the prize was his. The next moment the heavy implement was

raised aloft; the next, there was a crash and a squall, and the cat was

off on three legs to meet an engagement; Roxy would arrive just as the

lamp or a window went to irremediable smash.

Tom got all the petting, Chambers got none. Tom got all the delicacies,

Chambers got mush and milk, and clabber without sugar. In consequence

Tom was a sickly child and Chambers wasn't. Tom was "fractious," as Roxy

called it, and overbearing; Chambers was meek and docile.

With all her splendid common sense and practical everyday ability, Roxy

was a doting fool of a mother. She was this toward her child--and she

was also more than this: by the fiction created by herself, he was

become her master; the necessity of recognizing this relation outwardly

and of perfecting herself in the forms required to express the

recognition, had moved her to such diligence and faithfulness in

practicing these forms that this exercise soon concreted itself into

habit; it became automatic and unconscious; then a natural result

followed: deceptions intended solely for others gradually grew

practically into self-deceptions as well; the mock reverence became real

reverence, the mock homage real homage; the little counterfeit rift of

separation between imitation-slave and imitation-master widened and

widened, and became an abyss, and a very real one--and on one side of it

stood Roxy, the dupe of her own deceptions, and on the other stood her

child, no longer a usurper to her, but her accepted and recognized

master. He was her darling, her master, and her deity all in one, and in

her worship of him she forgot who she was and what he had been.

In babyhood Tom cuffed and banged and scratched Chambers unrebuked, and

Chambers early learned that between meekly bearing it and resenting it,

the advantage all lay with the former policy. The few times that his

persecutions had moved him beyond control and made him fight back had

cost him very dear at headquarters; not at the hands of Roxy, for if she

ever went beyond scolding him sharply for "forgett'n' who his young

marster was," she at least never extended her punishment beyond a box on

the ear. No, Percy Driscoll was the person. He told Chambers that under

no provocation whatever was he privileged to lift his hand against his

little master. Chambers overstepped the line three times, and got three

such convincing canings from the man who was his father and didn't know

it, that he took Tom's cruelties in all humility after that, and made no

more experiments.

Outside the house the two boys were together all through their boyhood.

Chambers was strong beyond his years, and a good fighter; strong because

he was coarsely fed and hard worked about the house, and a good fighter

because Tom furnished him plenty of practice--on white boys whom he

hated and was afraid of. Chambers was his constant bodyguard, to and

from school; he was present on the playground at recess to protect his

charge. He fought himself into such a formidable reputation, by and by,

that Tom could have changed clothes with him, and "ridden in peace," like

Sir Kay in Launcelot's armor.

He was good at games of skill, too. Tom staked him with marbles to play

"keeps" with, and then took all the winnings away from him. In the winter

season Chambers was on hand, in Tom's worn-out clothes, with "holy" red

mittens, and "holy" shoes, and pants "holy" at the knees and seat, to

drag a sled up the hill for Tom, warmly clad, to ride down on; but he

never got a ride himself. He built snowmen and snow fortifications under

Tom's directions. He was Tom's patient target when Tom wanted to do some

snowballing, but the target couldn't fire back. Chambers carried Tom's

skates to the river and strapped them on him, then trotted around after

him on the ice, so as to be on hand when he wanted; but he wasn't ever

asked to try the skates himself.

In summer the pet pastime of the boys of Dawson's Landing was to steal

apples, peaches, and melons from the farmer's fruit wagons--mainly on

account of the risk they ran of getting their heads laid open with the

butt of the farmer's whip. Tom was a distinguished adept at these

thefts--by proxy. Chambers did his stealing, and got the peach stones,

apple cores, and melon rinds for his share.

Tom always made Chambers go in swimming with him, and stay by him as a

protection. When Tom had had enough, he would slip out and tie knots in

Chamber's shirt, dip the knots in the water and make them hard to undo,

then dress himself and sit by and laugh while the naked shiverer tugged

at the stubborn knots with his teeth.

Tom did his humble comrade these various ill turns partly out of native

viciousness, and partly because he hated him for his superiorities of

physique and pluck, and for his manifold cleverness. Tom couldn't dive,

for it gave him splitting headaches. Chambers could dive without

inconvenience, and was fond of doing it. He excited so much admiration,

one day, among a crowd of white boys, by throwing back somersaults from

the stern of a canoe, that it wearied Tom's spirit, and at last he shoved

the canoe underneath Chambers while he was in the air--so he came down on

his head in the canoe bottom; and while he lay unconscious, several of

Tom's ancient adversaries saw that their long-desired opportunity was

come, and they gave the false heir such a drubbing that with Chamber's

best help he was hardly able to drag himself home afterward.

When the boys was fifteen and upward, Tom was "showing off" in the river

one day, when he was taken with a cramp, and shouted for help. It was a

common trick with the boys--particularly if a stranger was present--to

pretend a cramp and howl for help; then when the stranger came tearing

hand over hand to the rescue, the howler would go on struggling and

howling till he was close at hand, then replace the howl with a sarcastic

smile and swim blandly away, while the town boys assailed the dupe with a

volley of jeers and laughter. Tom had never tried this joke as yet, but

was supposed to be trying it now, so the boys held warily back; but

Chambers believed his master was in earnest; therefore, he swam out, and

arrived in time, unfortunately, and saved his life.

This was the last feather. Tom had managed to endure everything else,

but to have to remain publicly and permanently under such an obligation

as this to a nigger, and to this nigger of all niggers--this was too

much. He heaped insults upon Chambers for "pretending" to think he was in

earnest in calling for help, and said that anybody but a blockheaded

nigger would have known he was funning and left him alone.

Tom's enemies were in strong force here, so they came out with their

opinions quite freely. The laughed at him, and called him coward, liar,

sneak, and other sorts of pet names, and told him they meant to call

Chambers by a new name after this, and make it common in the town--"Tom

Driscoll's nigger pappy,"--to signify that he had had a second birth into

this life, and that Chambers was the author of his new being. Tom grew

frantic under these taunts, and shouted:

"Knock their heads off, Chambers! Knock their heads off! What do you

stand there with your hands in your pockets for?"

Chambers expostulated, and said, "But, Marse Tom, dey's too many of

'em--dey's--"

"Do you hear me?"

"Please, Marse Tom, don't make me! Dey's so many of 'em dat--"

Tom sprang at him and drove his pocketknife into him two or three times

before the boys could snatch him away and give the wounded lad a chance

to escape. He was considerably hurt, but not seriously. If the blade had

been a little longer, his career would have ended there.

Tom had long ago taught Roxy "her place." It had been many a day now

since she had ventured a caress or a fondling epithet in his quarter.

Such things, from a "nigger," were repulsive to him, and she had been

warned to keep her distance and remember who she was. She saw her

darling gradually cease from being her son, she saw THAT detail perish

utterly; all that was left was master--master, pure and simple, and it

was not a gentle mastership, either. She saw herself sink from the

sublime height of motherhood to the somber depths of unmodified slavery,

the abyss of separation between her and her boy was complete. She was

merely his chattel now, his convenience, his dog, his cringing and

helpless slave, the humble and unresisting victim of his capricious

temper and vicious nature.

Sometimes she could not go to sleep, even when worn out with fatigue,

because her rage boiled so high over the day's experiences with her boy.

She would mumble and mutter to herself:

"He struck me en I warn't no way to blame--struck me in de face, right

before folks. En he's al'ays callin' me nigger wench, en hussy, en all

dem mean names, when I's doin' de very bes' I kin. Oh, Lord, I done so

much for him--I lif' him away up to what he is--en dis is what I git for

it."

Sometimes when some outrage of peculiar offensiveness stung her to the

heart, she would plan schemes of vengeance and revel in the fancied

spectacle of his exposure to the world as an imposter and a slave; but in

the midst of these joys fear would strike her; she had made him too

strong; she could prove nothing, and--heavens, she might get sold down

the river for her pains! So her schemes always went for nothing, and she

laid them aside in impotent rage against the fates, and against herself

for playing the fool on that fatal September day in not providing herself

with a witness for use in the day when such a thing might be needed for

the appeasing of her vengeance-hungry heart.

And yet the moment Tom happened to be good to her, and kind--and this

occurred every now and then--all her sore places were healed, and she was

happy; happy and proud, for this was her son, her nigger son, lording it

among the whites and securely avenging their crimes against her race.

There were two grand funerals in Dawson's Landing that fall--the fall of

1845. One was that of Colonel Cecil Burleigh Essex, the other that of

Percy Driscoll.

On his deathbed Driscoll set Roxy free and delivered his idolized

ostensible son solemnly into the keeping of his brother, the judge, and

his wife. Those childless people were glad to get him. Childless people

are not difficult to please.

Judge Driscoll had gone privately to his brother, a month before, and

bought Chambers. He had heard that Tom had been trying to get his father

to sell the boy down the river, and he wanted to prevent the scandal--for

public sentiment did not approve of that way of treating family servants

for light cause or for no cause.

Percy Driscoll had worn himself out in trying to save his great

speculative landed estate, and had died without succeeding. He was hardly

in his grave before the boom collapsed and left his envied young devil of

an heir a pauper. But that was nothing; his uncle told him he should be

his heir and have all his fortune when he died; so Tom was comforted.

Roxy had no home now; so she resolved to go around and say good-by to her

friends and then clear out and see the world--that is to say, she would

go chambermaiding on a steamboat, the darling ambition of her race and

sex.

Her last call was on the black giant, Jasper. She found him chopping

Pudd'nhead Wilson's winter provision of wood.

Wilson was chatting with him when Roxy arrived. He asked her how she

could bear to go off chambermaiding and leave her boys; and chaffingly

offered to copy off a series of their fingerprints, reaching up to their

twelfth year, for her to remember them by; but she sobered in a moment,

wondering if he suspected anything; then she said she believed she didn't

want them. Wilson said to himself, "The drop of black blood in her is

superstitious; she thinks there's some devilry, some witch business about

my glass mystery somewhere; she used to come here with an old horseshoe

in her hand; it could have been an accident, but I doubt it."

CHAPTER 5

The Twins Thrill Dawson's Landing

Training is everything. The peach was once a bitter almond; cauliflower

is nothing but cabbage with a college education.

--Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar

Remark of Dr. Baldwin's, concerning upstarts: We don't care to eat

toadstools that think they are truffles.

--Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar

Mrs. York Driscoll enjoyed two years of bliss with that prize,

Tom--bliss that was troubled a little at times, it is true, but bliss

nevertheless; then she died, and her husband and his childless sister,

Mrs. Pratt, continued this bliss-business at the old stand. Tom was

petted and indulged and spoiled to his entire content--or nearly that.

This went on till he was nineteen, then he was sent to Yale. He went

handsomely equipped with "conditions," but otherwise he was not an object

of distinction there. He remained at Yale two years, and then threw up

the struggle. He came home with his manners a good deal improved; he had

lost his surliness and brusqueness, and was rather pleasantly soft and

smooth, now; he was furtively, and sometimes openly, ironical of speech,

and given to gently touching people on the raw, but he did it with a

good-natured semiconscious air that carried it off safely, and kept him

from getting into trouble. He was as indolent as ever and showed no very

strenuous desire to hunt up an occupation. People argued from this that

he preferred to be supported by his uncle until his uncle's shoes should

become vacant. He brought back one or two new habits with him, one of

which he rather openly practiced--tippling--but concealed another, which

was gambling. It would not do to gamble where his uncle could hear of

it; he knew that quite well.

Tom's Eastern polish was not popular among the young people. They could

have endured it, perhaps, if Tom had stopped there; but he wore gloves,

and that they couldn't stand, and wouldn't; so he was mainly without

society. He brought home with him a suit of clothes of such exquisite

style and cut in fashion--Eastern fashion, city fashion--that it filled

everybody with anguish and was regarded as a peculiarly wanton affront.

He enjoyed the feeling which he was exciting, and paraded the town serene

and happy all day; but the young fellows set a tailor to work that night,

and when Tom started out on his parade next morning, he found the old

deformed Negro bell ringer straddling along in his wake tricked out in a

flamboyant curtain-calico exaggeration of his finery, and imitating his

fancy Eastern graces as well as he could.

Tom surrendered, and after that clothed himself in the local fashion. But

the dull country town was tiresome to him, since his acquaintanceship

with livelier regions, and it grew daily more and more so. He began to

make little trips to St. Louis for refreshment. There he found

companionship to suit him, and pleasures to his taste, along with more

freedom, in some particulars, than he could have at home. So, during the

next two years, his visits to the city grew in frequency and his

tarryings there grew steadily longer in duration.

He was getting into deep waters. He was taking chances, privately, which

might get him into trouble some day--in fact, _did_.

Judge Driscoll had retired from the bench and from all business

activities in 1850, and had now been comfortably idle three years. He was

president of the Freethinkers' Society, and Pudd'nhead Wilson was the

other member. The society's weekly discussions were now the old lawyer's

main interest in life. Pudd'nhead was still toiling in obscurity at the

bottom of the ladder, under the blight of that unlucky remark which he

had let fall twenty-three years before about the dog.

Judge Driscoll was his friend, and claimed that he had a mind above the

average, but that was regarded as one of the judge's whims, and it failed

to modify the public opinion. Or rather, that was one of the reason why

it failed, but there was another and better one. If the judge had stopped

with bare assertion, it would have had a good deal of effect; but he made

the mistake of trying to prove his position. For some years Wilson had

been privately at work on a whimsical almanac, for his amusement--a

calendar, with a little dab of ostensible philosophy, usually in ironical

form, appended to each date; and the judge thought that these quips and

fancies of Wilson's were neatly turned and cute; so he carried a handful

of them around one day, and read them to some of the chief citizens. But

irony was not for those people; their mental vision was not focused for

it. They read those playful trifles in the solidest terms, and decided

without hesitancy that if there had ever been any doubt that Dave Wilson

was a pudd'nhead--which there hadn't--this revelation removed that doubt

for good and all. That is just the way in this world; an enemy can partly

ruin a man, but it takes a good-natured injudicious friend to complete

the thing and make it perfect. After this the judge felt tenderer than

ever toward Wilson, and surer than ever that his calendar had merit.

Judge Driscoll could be a freethinker and still hold his place in society

because he was the person of most consequence to the community, and

therefore could venture to go his own way and follow out his own notions.

The other member of his pet organization was allowed the like liberty

because he was a cipher in the estimation of the public, and nobody

attached any importance to what he thought or did. He was liked, he was

welcome enough all around, but he simply didn't count for anything.

The Widow Cooper--affectionately called "Aunt Patsy" by everybody--lived

in a snug and comely cottage with her daughter Rowena, who was nineteen,

romantic, amiable, and very pretty, but otherwise of no consequence.

Rowena had a couple of young brothers--also of no consequence.

The widow had a large spare room, which she let to a lodger, with board,

when she could find one, but this room had been empty for a year now, to

her sorrow. Her income was only sufficient for the family support, and

she needed the lodging money for trifling luxuries. But now, at last, on

a flaming June day, she found herself happy; her tedious wait was ended;

her year-worn advertisement had been answered; and not by a village

applicant, no, no!--this letter was from away off yonder in the dim great

world to the North; it was from St. Louis. She sat on her porch gazing

out with unseeing eyes upon the shining reaches of the mighty

Mississippi, her thoughts steeped in her good fortune. Indeed it was

specially good fortune, for she was to have two lodgers instead of one.

She had read the letter to the family, and Rowena had danced away to see

to the cleaning and airing of the room by the slave woman, Nancy, and the

boys had rushed abroad in the town to spread the great news, for it was a

matter of public interest, and the public would wonder and not be pleased

if not informed. Presently Rowena returned, all ablush with joyous

excitement, and begged for a rereading of the letter. It was framed thus:

HONORED MADAM: My brother and I have seen your advertisement, by chance,

and beg leave to take the room you offer. We are twenty-four years of

age and twins. We are Italians by birth, but have lived long in the

various countries of Europe, and several years in the United States. Our

names are Luigi and Angelo Capello. You desire but one guest; but, dear

madam, if you will allow us to pay for two, we will not incommode you.

We shall be down Thursday.

"Italians! How romantic! Just think, Ma--there's never been one in this

town, and everybody will be dying to see them, and they're all OURS!

Think of that!"

"Yes, I reckon they'll make a grand stir."

"Oh, indeed they will. The whole town will be on its head!

Think--they've been in Europe and everywhere! There's never been a

traveler in this town before, Ma, I shouldn't wonder if they've seen

kings!"

"Well, a body can't tell, but they'll make stir enough, without that."

"Yes, that's of course. Luigi--Angelo. They're lovely names; and so

grand and foreign--not like Jones and Robinson and such. Thursday they

are coming, and this is only Tuesday; it's a cruel long time to wait.

Here comes Judge Driscoll in at the gate. He's heard about it. I'll go

and open the door."

The judge was full of congratulations and curiosity. The letter was read

and discussed. Soon Justice Robinson arrived with more congratulations,

and there was a new reading and a new discussion. This was the beginning.

Neighbor after neighbor, of both sexes, followed, and the procession

drifted in and out all day and evening and all Wednesday and Thursday.

The letter was read and reread until it was nearly worn out; everybody

admired its courtly and gracious tone, and smooth and practiced style,

everybody was sympathetic and excited, and the Coopers were steeped in

happiness all the while.

The boats were very uncertain in low water in these primitive times. This

time the Thursday boat had not arrived at ten at night--so the people

had waited at the landing all day for nothing; they were driven to their

homes by a heavy storm without having had a view of the illustrious

foreigners.

Eleven o'clock came; and the Cooper house was the only one in the town

that still had lights burning. The rain and thunder were booming yet,

and the anxious family were still waiting, still hoping. At last there

was a knock at the door, and the family jumped to open it. Two Negro men

entered, each carrying a trunk, and proceeded upstairs toward the guest

room. Then entered the twins--the handsomest, the best dressed, the most

distinguished-looking pair of young fellows the West had ever seen. One

was a little fairer than the other, but otherwise they were exact

duplicates.

CHAPTER 6

Swimming in Glory

Let us endeavor so to live that when we come to die even the undertaker

will be sorry.

--Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar

Habit is habit, and not to be flung out of the window by any man, but

coaxed downstairs a step at a time.

--Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar

At breakfast in the morning, the twins' charm of manner and easy and

polished bearing made speedy conquest of the family's good graces. All

constraint and formality quickly disappeared, and the friendliest feeling

succeeded. Aunt Patsy called them by their Christian names almost from

the beginning. She was full of the keenest curiosity about them, and

showed it; they responded by talking about themselves, which pleased her

greatly. It presently appeared that in their early youth they had known

poverty and hardship. As the talk wandered along, the old lady watched

for the right place to drop in a question or two concerning that matter,

and when she found it, she said to the blond twin, who was now doing the

biographies in his turn while the brunette one rested:

"If it ain't asking what I ought not to ask, Mr. Angelo, how did you come

to be so friendless and in such trouble when you were little? Do you mind

telling? But don't, if you do."

"Oh, we don't mind it at all, madam; in our case it was merely

misfortune, and nobody's fault. Our parents were well to do, there in

Italy, and we were their only child. We were of the old Florentine

nobility"--Rowena's heart gave a great bound, her nostrils expanded, and

a fine light played in her eyes--"and when the war broke out, my father

was on the losing side and had to fly for his life. His estates were

confiscated, his personal property seized, and there we were, in Germany,

strangers, friendless, and in fact paupers. My brother and I were ten

years old, and well educated for that age, very studious, very fond of

our books, and well grounded in the German, French, Spanish, and English

languages. Also, we were marvelous musical prodigies--if you will allow

me to say it, it being only the truth.

"Our father survived his misfortunes only a month, our mother soon

followed him, and we were alone in the world. Our parents could have

made themselves comfortable by exhibiting us as a show, and they had many

and large offers; but the thought revolted their pride, and they said

they would starve and die first. But what they wouldn't consent to do,

we had to do without the formality of consent. We were seized for the

debts occasioned by their illness and their funerals, and placed among

the attractions of a cheap museum in Berlin to earn the liquidation

money. It took us two years to get out of that slavery. We traveled all

about Germany, receiving no wages, and not even our keep. We had to be

exhibited for nothing, and beg our bread.

"Well, madam, the rest is not of much consequence. When we escaped from

that slavery at twelve years of age, we were in some respects men.

Experience had taught us some valuable things; among others, how to take

care of ourselves, how to avoid and defeat sharks and sharpers, and how

to conduct our own business for our own profit and without other people's

help. We traveled everywhere--years and years--picking up smatterings

of strange tongues, familiarizing ourselves with strange sights and

strange customs, accumulating an education of a wide and varied and

curious sort. It was a pleasant life. We went to Venice--to London,

Paris, Russia, India, China, Japan--"

At this point Nancy, the slave woman, thrust her head in at the door and

exclaimed:

"Ole Missus, de house is plum' jam full o' people, en dey's jes

a-spi'lin' to see de gen'lemen!" She indicated the twins with a nod of

her head, and tucked it back out of sight again.

It was a proud occasion for the widow, and she promised herself high

satisfaction in showing off her fine foreign birds before her neighbors

and friends--simple folk who had hardly ever seen a foreigner of any

kind, and never one of any distinction or style. Yet her feeling was

moderate indeed when contrasted with Rowena's. Rowena was in the clouds,

she walked on air; this was to be the greatest day, the most romantic

episode in the colorless history of that dull country town. She was to

be familiarly near the source of its glory and feel the full flood of it

pour over her and about her; the other girls could only gaze and envy,

not partake.

The widow was ready, Rowena was ready, so also were the foreigners.

The party moved along the hall, the twins in advance, and entered the

open parlor door, whence issued a low hum of conversation. The twins took

a position near the door, the widow stood at Luigi's side, Rowena stood

beside Angelo, and the march-past and the introductions began. The widow

was all smiles and contentment. She received the procession and passed

it on to Rowena.

"Good mornin', Sister Cooper"--handshake.

"Good morning, Brother Higgins--Count Luigi Capello, Mr. Higgins"

--handshake, followed by a devouring stare and "I'm glad to see ye,"

on the part of Higgins, and a courteous inclination of the head and a

pleasant "Most happy!" on the part of Count Luigi.

"Good mornin', Roweny"--handshake.

"Good morning, Mr. Higgins--present you to Count Angelo Capello."

Handshake, admiring stare, "Glad to see ye"--courteous nod, smily "Most

happy!" and Higgins passes on.

None of these visitors was at ease, but, being honest people, they didn't

pretend to be. None of them had ever seen a person bearing a title of

nobility before, and none had been expecting to see one now, consequently

the title came upon them as a kind of pile-driving surprise and caught

them unprepared. A few tried to rise to the emergency, and got out an

awkward "My lord," or "Your lordship," or something of that sort, but the

great majority were overwhelmed by the unaccustomed word and its dim and

awful associations with gilded courts and stately ceremony and anointed

kingship, so they only fumbled through the handshake and passed on,

speechless. Now and then, as happens at all receptions everywhere, a

more than ordinary friendly soul blocked the procession and kept it

waiting while he inquired how the brothers liked the village, and how

long they were going to stay, and if their family was well, and dragged

in the weather, and hoped it would get cooler soon, and all that sort of

thing, so as to be able to say, when he got home, "I had quite a long

talk with them"; but nobody did or said anything of a regrettable kind,

and so the great affair went through to the end in a creditable and

satisfactory fashion.

General conversation followed, and the twins drifted about from group to

group, talking easily and fluently and winning approval, compelling

admiration and achieving favor from all. The widow followed their

conquering march with a proud eye, and every now and then Rowena said to

herself with deep satisfaction, "And to think they are ours--all ours!"

There were no idle moments for mother or daughter. Eager inquiries

concerning the twins were pouring into their enchanted ears all the time;

each was the constant center of a group of breathless listeners; each

recognized that she knew now for the first time the real meaning of that

great word Glory, and perceived the stupendous value of it, and

understood why men in all ages had been willing to throw away meaner

happiness, treasure, life itself, to get a taste of its sublime and

supreme joy. Napoleon and all his kind stood accounted for--and

justified.

When Rowena had at last done all her duty by the people in the parlor,

she went upstairs to satisfy the longings of an overflow meeting there,

for the parlor was not big enough to hold all the comers. Again she was

besieged by eager questioners, and again she swam in sunset seas of

glory. When the forenoon was nearly gone, she recognized with a pang

that this most splendid episode of her life was almost over, that nothing

could prolong it, that nothing quite its equal could ever fall to her

fortune again. But never mind, it was sufficient unto itself, the grand

occasion had moved on an ascending scale from the start, and was a noble

and memorable success. If the twins could but do some crowning act now

to climax it, something usual, something startling, something to

concentrate upon themselves the company's loftiest admiration, something

in the nature of an electric surprise--

Here a prodigious slam-banging broke out below, and everybody rushed down

to see. It was the twins, knocking out a classic four-handed piece on

the piano in great style. Rowena was satisfied--satisfied down to the

bottom of her heart.

The young strangers were kept long at the piano. The villagers were

astonished and enchanted with the magnificence of their performance, and

could not bear to have them stop. All the music that they had ever heard

before seemed spiritless prentice-work and barren of grace and charm when

compared with these intoxicating floods of melodious sound. They realized

that for once in their lives they were hearing masters.

CHAPTER 7

The Unknown Nymph

One of the most striking differences between a cat and a lie is that a

cat has only nine lives.

--Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar

The company broke up reluctantly, and drifted toward their several

homes, chatting with vivacity and all agreeing that it would be many a

long day before Dawson's Landing would see the equal of this one again.

The twins had accepted several invitations while the reception was in

progress, and had also volunteered to play some duets at an amateur

entertainment for the benefit of a local charity. Society was eager to

receive them to its bosom. Judge Driscoll had the good fortune to secure

them for an immediate drive, and to be the first to display them in

public. They entered his buggy with him and were paraded down the main

street, everybody flocking to the windows and sidewalks to see.

The judge showed the strangers the new graveyard, and the jail, and where

the richest man lived, and the Freemasons' hall, and the Methodist

church, and the Presbyterian church, and where the Baptist church was

going to be when they got some money to build it with, and showed them

the town hall and the slaughterhouse, and got out of the independent fire

company in uniform and had them put out an imaginary fire; then he let

them inspect the muskets of the militia company, and poured out an

exhaustless stream of enthusiasm over all these splendors, and seemed

very well satisfied with the responses he got, for the twins admired his

admiration, and paid him back the best they could, though they could have

done better if some fifteen or sixteen hundred thousand previous

experiences of this sort in various countries had not already rubbed off

a considerable part of the novelty in it.

The judge laid himself out hospitality to make them have a good time, and

if there was a defect anywhere, it was not his fault. He told them a good

many humorous anecdotes, and always forgot the nub, but they were always

able to furnish it, for these yarns were of a pretty early vintage, and

they had had many a rejuvenating pull at them before. And he told them

all about his several dignities, and how he had held this and that and

the other place of honor or profit, and had once been to the legislature,

and was now president of the Society of Freethinkers. He said the

society had been in existence four years, and already had two members,

and was firmly established. He would call for the brothers in the

evening, if they would like to attend a meeting of it.

Accordingly he called for them, and on the way he told them all about

Pudd'nhead Wilson, in order that they might get a favorable impression of

him in advance and be prepared to like him. This scheme succeeded--the

favorable impression was achieved. Later it was confirmed and solidified

when Wilson proposed that out of courtesy to the strangers the usual

topics be put aside and the hour be devoted to conversation upon ordinary

subjects and the cultivation of friendly relations and good-fellowship--a

proposition which was put to vote and carried.

The hour passed quickly away in lively talk, and when it was ended, the

lonesome and neglected Wilson was richer by two friends than he had been

when it began. He invited the twins to look in at his lodgings

presently, after disposing of an intervening engagement, and they

accepted with pleasure.

Toward the middle of the evening, they found themselves on the road to

his house. Pudd'nhead was at home waiting for them and putting in his

time puzzling over a thing which had come under his notice that morning.

The matter was this: He happened to be up very early--at dawn, in fact;

and he crossed the hall, which divided his cottage through the center,

and entered a room to get something there. The window of the room had no

curtains, for that side of the house had long been unoccupied, and

through this window he caught sight of something which surprised and

interested him. It was a young woman--a young woman where properly no

young woman belonged; for she was in Judge Driscoll's house, and in the

bedroom over the judge's private study or sitting room. This was young

Tom Driscoll's bedroom. He and the judge, the judge's widowed sister Mrs.

Pratt, and three Negro servants were the only people who belonged in the

house. Who, then, might this young lady be? The two houses were

separated by an ordinary yard, with a low fence running back through its

middle from the street in front to the lane in the rear. The distance

was not great, and Wilson was able to see the girl very well, the window

shades of the room she was in being up, and the window also. The girl had

on a neat and trim summer dress, patterned in broad stripes of pink and

white, and her bonnet was equipped with a pink veil. She was practicing

steps, gaits and attitudes, apparently; she was doing the thing

gracefully, and was very much absorbed in her work. Who could she be, and

how came she to be in young Tom Driscoll's room?

Wilson had quickly chosen a position from which he could watch the girl

without running much risk of being seen by her, and he remained there

hoping she would raise her veil and betray her face. But she

disappointed him. After a matter of twenty minutes she disappeared and

although he stayed at his post half an hour longer, she came no more.

Toward noon he dropped in at the judge's and talked with Mrs. Pratt about

the great event of the day, the levee of the distinguished foreigners at

Aunt Patsy Cooper's. He asked after her nephew Tom, and she said he was

on his way home and that she was expecting him to arrive a little before

night, and added that she and the judge were gratified to gather from his

letters that he was conducting himself very nicely and creditably--at

which Wilson winked to himself privately. Wilson did not ask if there was

a newcomer in the house, but he asked questions that would have brought

light-throwing answers as to that matter if Mrs. Pratt had had any light

to throw; so he went away satisfied that he knew of things that were

going on in her house of which she herself was not aware.

He was now awaiting for the twins, and still puzzling over the problem of

who that girl might be, and how she happened to be in that young fellow's

room at daybreak in the morning.

CHAPTER 8

Marse Tom Tramples His Chance

The holy passion of Friendship is of so sweet and steady and loyal and

enduring a nature that it will last through a whole lifetime, if not

asked to lend money.

--Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar

Consider well the proportions of things. It is better to be a young June

bug than an old bird of paradise.

--Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar

It is necessary now to hunt up Roxy.

At the time she was set free and went away chambermaiding, she was

thirty-five. She got a berth as second chambermaid on a Cincinnati boat

in the New Orleans trade, the _Grand Mogul_. A couple of trips made her

wonted and easygoing at the work, and infatuated her with the stir and

adventure and independence of steamboat life. Then she was promoted and

become head chambermaid. She was a favorite with the officers, and

exceedingly proud of their joking and friendly way with her.

During eight years she served three parts of the year on that boat, and

the winters on a Vicksburg packet. But now for two months, she had had

rheumatism in her arms, and was obliged to let the washtub alone. So she

resigned. But she was well fixed--rich, as she would have described it;

for she had lived a steady life, and had banked four dollars every month

in New Orleans as a provision for her old age. She said in the start

that she had "put shoes on one bar'footed nigger to tromple on her with,"

and that one mistake like that was enough; she would be independent of

the human race thenceforth forevermore if hard work and economy could

accomplish it. When the boat touched the levee at New Orleans she bade

good-by to her comrades on the _Grand Mogul_ and moved her kit ashore.

But she was back in a hour. The bank had gone to smash and carried her

four hundred dollars with it. She was a pauper and homeless. Also

disabled bodily, at least for the present. The officers were full of

sympathy for her in her trouble, and made up a little purse for her. She

resolved to go to her birthplace; she had friends there among the Negros,

and the unfortunate always help the unfortunate, she was well aware of

that; those lowly comrades of her youth would not let her starve.

She took the little local packet at Cairo, and now she was on the

homestretch. Time had worn away her bitterness against her son, and she

was able to think of him with serenity. She put the vile side of him out

of her mind, and dwelt only on recollections of his occasional acts of

kindness to her. She gilded and otherwise decorated these, and made them

very pleasant to contemplate. She began to long to see him. She would go

and fawn upon him slavelike--for this would have to be her attitude, of

course--and maybe she would find that time had modified him, and that he

would be glad to see his long-forgotten old nurse and treat her gently.

That would be lovely; that would make her forget her woes and her

poverty.

Her poverty! That thought inspired her to add another castle to her

dream: maybe he would give her a trifle now and then--maybe a dollar,

once a month, say; any little thing like that would help, oh, ever so

much.

By the time she reached Dawson's Landing, she was her old self again; her

blues were gone, she was in high feather. She would get along, surely;

there were many kitchens where the servants would share their meals with

her, and also steal sugar and apples and other dainties for her to carry

home--or give her a chance to pilfer them herself, which would answer

just as well. And there was the church. She was a more rabid and devoted

Methodist than ever, and her piety was no sham, but was strong and

sincere. Yes, with plenty of creature comforts and her old place in the

amen corner in her possession again, she would be perfectly happy and at

peace thenceforward to the end.

She went to Judge Driscoll's kitchen first of all. She was received

there in great form and with vast enthusiasm. Her wonderful travels, and

the strange countries she had seen, and the adventures she had had, made

her a marvel and a heroine of romance. The Negros hung enchanted upon a

great story of her experiences, interrupting her all along with eager

questions, with laughter, exclamations of delight, and expressions of

applause; and she was obliged to confess to herself that if there was

anything better in this world than steamboating, it was the glory to be

got by telling about it. The audience loaded her stomach with their

dinners, and then stole the pantry bare to load up her basket.

Tom was in St. Louis. The servants said he had spent the best part of

his time there during the previous two years. Roxy came every day, and

had many talks about the family and its affairs. Once she asked why Tom

was away so much. The ostensible "Chambers" said:

"De fac' is, ole marster kin git along better when young marster's away

den he kin when he's in de town; yes, en he love him better, too; so he

gives him fifty dollahs a month--"

"No, is dat so? Chambers, you's a-jokin', ain't you?"

"'Clah to goodness I ain't, Mammy; Marse Tom tole me so his own self. But

nemmine, 'tain't enough."

"My lan', what de reason 'tain't enough?"

"Well, I's gwine to tell you, if you gimme a chanst, Mammy. De reason it

ain't enough is 'ca'se Marse Tom gambles."

Roxy threw up her hands in astonishment, and Chambers went on:

"Ole marster found it out, 'ca'se he had to pay two hundred dollahs for

Marse Tom's gamblin' debts, en dat's true, Mammy, jes as dead certain as

you's bawn."

"Two--hund'd dollahs! Why, what is you talkin' 'bout?

Two--hund'd--dollahs. Sakes alive, it's 'mos' enough to buy a tol'able

good secondhand nigger wid. En you ain't lyin', honey? You wouldn't lie

to you' old Mammy?"

"It's God's own truth, jes as I tell you--two hund'd dollahs--I wisht I

may never stir outen my tracks if it ain't so. En, oh, my lan', ole Marse

was jes a-hoppin'! He was b'ilin' mad, I tell you! He tuck 'n'

dissenhurrit him."

"Disen_whiched_ him?"

"Dissenhurrit him."

"What's dat? What do you mean?"

"Means he bu'sted de will."

"Bu's--ted de will! He wouldn't _ever_ treat him so! Take it back, you

mis'able imitation nigger dat I bore in sorrow en tribbilation."

Roxy's pet castle--an occasional dollar from Tom's pocket--was tumbling

to ruin before her eyes. She could not abide such a disaster as that;

she couldn't endure the thought of it. Her remark amused Chambers.

"Yah-yah-yah! Jes listen to dat! If I's imitation, what is you? Bofe of

us is imitation _white_--dat's what we is--en pow'ful good imitation,

too. Yah-yah-yah! We don't 'mount to noth'n as imitation _niggers_; en

as for--"

"Shet up yo' foolin', 'fo' I knock you side de head, en tell me 'bout de

will. Tell me 'tain't bu'sted--do, honey, en I'll never forgit you."

"Well, _'tain't_--'ca'se dey's a new one made, en Marse Tom's all right

ag'in. But what is you in sich a sweat 'bout it for, Mammy? 'Tain't

none o' your business I don't reckon."

"'Tain't none o' my business? Whose business is it den, I'd like to

know? Wuz I his mother tell he was fifteen years old, or wusn't I?--you

answer me dat. En you speck I could see him turned out po' and ornery on

de worl' en never care noth'n' 'bout it? I reckon if you'd ever be'n a

mother yo'self, Valet de Chambers, you wouldn't talk sich foolishness as

dat."

"Well, den, ole Marse forgive him en fixed up de will ag'in--do dat

satisfy you?"

Yes, she was satisfied now, and quite happy and sentimental over it. She

kept coming daily, and at last she was told that Tom had come home. She

began to tremble with emotion, and straightway sent to beg him to let his

"po' ole nigger Mammy have jes one sight of him en die for joy."

Tom was stretched at his lazy ease on a sofa when Chambers brought the

petition. Time had not modified his ancient detestation of the humble

drudge and protector of his boyhood; it was still bitter and

uncompromising. He sat up and bent a severe gaze upon the face of the

young fellow whose name he was unconsciously using and whose family

rights he was enjoying. He maintained the gaze until the victim of it

had become satisfactorily pallid with terror, then he said:

"What does the old rip want with me?"

The petition was meekly repeated.

"Who gave you permission to come and disturb me with the social

attentions of niggers?"

Tom had risen. The other young man was trembling now, visibly. He saw

what was coming, and bent his head sideways, and put up his left arm to

shield it. Tom rained cuffs upon the head and its shield, saying no

word: the victim received each blow with a beseeching, "Please, Marse

Tom!--oh, please, Marse Tom!" Seven blows--then Tom said, "Face the

door--march!" He followed behind with one, two, three solid kicks. The

last one helped the pure-white slave over the door-sill, and he limped

away mopping his eyes with his old, ragged sleeve. Tom shouted after

him, "Send her in!"

Then he flung himself panting on the sofa again, and rasped out the

remark, "He arrived just at the right moment; I was full to the brim with

bitter thinkings, and nobody to take it out of. How refreshing it was!

I feel better."

Tom's mother entered now, closing the door behind her, and approached her

son with all the wheedling and supplication servilities that fear and

interest can impart to the words and attitudes of the born slave. She

stopped a yard from her boy and made two or three admiring exclamations

over his manly stature and general handsomeness, and Tom put an arm under

his head and hoisted a leg over the sofa back in order to look properly

indifferent.

"My lan', how you is growed, honey! 'Clah to goodness, I wouldn't

a-knowed you, Marse Tom! 'Deed I wouldn't! Look at me good; does you

'member old Roxy? Does you know yo' old nigger mammy, honey? Well now, I

kin lay down en die in peace, 'ca'se I'se seed--"

"Cut it short, Goddamn it, cut it short! What is it you want?"