CHAPTER VI

[Scene--The Roman Capitol Ten Years Later.]

“Dearest Mary, this is the most celebrated statue in the world. This is

the renowned 'Capitoline Venus' you've heard so much about. Here she is

with her little blemishes 'restored' (that is, patched) by the most noted

Roman artists--and the mere fact that they did the humble patching of so

noble a creation will make their names illustrious while the world

stands. How strange it seems--this place! The day before I last stood

here, ten happy years ago, I wasn't a rich man bless your soul, I hadn't

a cent. And yet I had a good deal to do with making Rome mistress of

this grandest work of ancient art the world contains.”

“The worshiped, the illustrious Capitoline Venus--and what a sum she is

valued at! Ten millions of francs!”

“Yes--now she is.”

“And oh, Georgy, how divinely beautiful she is!”

“Ah, yes but nothing to what she was before that blessed John Smith broke

her leg and battered her nose. Ingenious Smith!--gifted Smith!--noble

Smith! Author of all our bliss! Hark! Do you know what that wheeze

means? Mary, that cub has got the whooping-cough. Will you never learn

to take care of the children!”

THE END

The Capitoline Venus is still in the Capitol at Rome, and is still the

most charming and most illustrious work of ancient art the world can

boast of. But if ever it shall be your fortune to stand before it and go

into the customary ecstasies over it, don't permit this true and secret

history of its origin to mar your bliss--and when you read about a

gigantic Petrified man being dug up near Syracuse, in the State of New

York, or near any other place, keep your own counsel--and if the Barnum

that buried him there offers to sell to you at an enormous sum, don't you buy.

Send him to the Pope!

[NOTE.--The above sketch was written at the time the famous swindle of

the “Petrified Giant” was the sensation of the day in the United States]

SPEECH ON ACCIDENT INSURANCE

DELIVERED IN HARTFORD, AT A DINNER TO CORNELIUS WALFORD, OF LONDON

GENTLEMEN: I am glad, indeed, to assist in welcoming the distinguished

guest of this occasion to a city whose fame as an insurance center has

extended to all lands, and given us the name of being a quadruple band

of brothers working sweetly hand in hand--the Colt's Arms Company making the

destruction of our race easy and convenient, our life insurance citizens

paying for the victims when they pass away, Mr. Batterson perpetuating

their memory with his stately monuments, and our fire-insurance comrades

taking care of their hereafter. I am glad to assist in welcoming our

guest--first, because he is an Englishman, and I owe a heavy debt of

hospitality to certain of his fellow-countrymen; and secondly, because he

is in sympathy with insurance and has been the means of making many other

men cast their sympathies in the same direction.

Certainly there is no nobler field for human effort than the insurance

line of business--especially accident insurance. Ever since I have been

a director in an accident-insurance company I have felt that I am a

better man. Life has seemed more precious. Accidents have assumed a

kindlier aspect. Distressing special providences have lost half their

horror. I look upon a cripple now with affectionate interest--as an

advertisement. I do not seem to care for poetry any more. I do not care

for politics--even agriculture does not excite me. But to me now there

is a charm about a railway collision that is unspeakable.

There is nothing more beneficent than accident insurance. I have seen an

entire family lifted out of poverty and into affluence by the simple boon

of a broken leg. I have had people come to me on crutches, with tears in

their eyes, to bless this beneficent institution. In all my experience

of life, I have seen nothing so seraphic as the look that comes into a

freshly mutilated man's face when he feels in his vest pocket with his

remaining hand and finds his accident ticket all right. And I have seen

nothing so sad as the look that came into another splintered customer's

face when he found he couldn't collect on a wooden leg.

I will remark here, by way of advertisement, that that noble charity

which we have named the HARTFORD ACCIDENT INSURANCE COMPANY--[The

speaker is a director of the company named.]--is an institution which is

peculiarly to be depended upon. A man is bound to prosper who gives it

his custom.

No man can take out a policy in it and not get crippled before the year

is out. Now there was one indigent man who had been disappointed so

often with other companies that he had grown disheartened, his appetite

left him, he ceased to smile--life was but a weariness. Three weeks ago

I got him to insure with us, and now he is the brightest, happiest spirit

in this land--has a good steady income and a stylish suit of new bandages

every day, and travels around on a shutter.

I will say, in conclusion, that my share of the welcome to our guest is

none the less hearty because I talk so much nonsense, and I know that I

can say the same for the rest of the speakers.

JOHN CHINAMAN IN NEW YORK

As I passed along by one of those monster American tea stores in New

York, I found a Chinaman sitting before it acting in the capacity of a

sign. Everybody that passed by gave him a steady stare as long as their

heads would twist over their shoulders without dislocating their necks,

and a group had stopped to stare deliberately.

Is it not a shame that we, who prate so much about civilization and

humanity, are content to degrade a fellow-being to such an office as

this? Is it not time for reflection when we find ourselves willing to

see in such a being matter for frivolous curiosity instead of regret and

grave reflection? Here was a poor creature whom hard fortune had exiled

from his natural home beyond the seas, and whose troubles ought to have

touched these idle strangers that thronged about him; but did it?

Apparently not. Men calling themselves the superior race, the race of

culture and of gentle blood, scanned his quaint Chinese hat, with peaked

roof and ball on top, and his long queue dangling down his back; his

short silken blouse, curiously frogged and figured (and, like the rest of

his raiment, rusty, dilapidated, and awkwardly put on); his blue cotton,

tight-legged pants, tied close around the ankles; and his clumsy

blunt-toed shoes with thick cork soles; and having so scanned him from

head to foot, cracked some unseemly joke about his outlandish attire or

his melancholy face, and passed on. In my heart I pitied the friendless

Mongol. I wondered what was passing behind his sad face, and what

distant scene his vacant eye was dreaming of. Were his thoughts with his

heart, ten thousand miles away, beyond the billowy wastes of the Pacific?

among the ricefields and the plumy palms of China? under the shadows of

remembered mountain peaks, or in groves of bloomy shrubs and strange

forest trees unknown to climes like ours? And now and then, rippling

among his visions and his dreams, did he hear familiar laughter and

half-forgotten voices, and did he catch fitful glimpses of the friendly

faces of a bygone time? A cruel fate it is, I said, that is befallen

this bronzed wanderer. In order that the group of idlers might be

touched at least by the words of the poor fellow, since the appeal of his

pauper dress and his dreary exile was lost upon them, I touched him on

the shoulder and said:

“Cheer up--don't be downhearted. It is not America that treats you in

this way, it is merely one citizen, whose greed of gain has eaten the

humanity out of his heart. America has a broader hospitality for the

exiled and oppressed. America and Americans are always ready to help the

unfortunate. Money shall be raised--you shall go back to China--you shall

see your friends again. What wages do they pay you here?”

“Divil a cint but four dollars a week and find meself; but it's aisy,

barrin' the troublesome furrin clothes that's so expinsive.”

The exile remains at his post. The New York tea merchants who need

picturesque signs are not likely to run out of Chinamen.

HOW I EDITED AN AGRICULTURAL PAPER--[Written about 1870.]

I did not take temporary editorship of an agricultural paper without

misgivings. Neither would a landsman take command of a ship without

misgivings. But I was in circumstances that made the salary an object.

The regular editor of the paper was going off for a holiday, and I

accepted the terms he offered, and took his place.

The sensation of being at work again was luxurious, and I wrought all the

week with unflagging pleasure. We went to press, and I waited a day with

some solicitude to see whether my effort was going to attract any notice.

As I left the office, toward sundown, a group of men and boys at the foot

of the stairs dispersed with one impulse, and gave me passageway, and I

heard one or two of them say: “That's him!” I was naturally pleased by

this incident. The next morning I found a similar group at the foot of

the stairs, and scattering couples and individuals standing here and

there in the street and over the way, watching me with interest. The

group separated and fell back as I approached, and I heard a man say,

“Look at his eye!” I pretended not to observe the notice I was

attracting, but secretly I was pleased with it, and was purposing to

write an account of it to my aunt. I went up the short flight of stairs,

and heard cheery voices and a ringing laugh as I drew near the door,

which I opened, and caught a glimpse of two young rural-looking men,

whose faces blanched and lengthened when they saw me, and then they both

plunged through the window with a great crash. I was surprised.

In about half an hour an old gentleman, with a flowing beard and a fine

but rather austere face, entered, and sat down at my invitation. He

seemed to have something on his mind. He took off his hat and set it on

the floor, and got out of it a red silk handkerchief and a copy of our

paper.

He put the paper on his lap, and while he polished his spectacles with

his handkerchief he said, “Are you the new editor?”

I said I was.

“Have you ever edited an agricultural paper before?”

“No,” I said; “this is my first attempt.”

“Very likely. Have you had any experience in agriculture practically?”

“No; I believe I have not.”

“Some instinct told me so,” said the old gentleman, putting on his

spectacles, and looking over them at me with asperity, while he folded

his paper into a convenient shape. “I wish to read you what must have

made me have that instinct. It was this editorial. Listen, and see if

it was you that wrote it:

“'Turnips should never be pulled, it injures them. It is much

better to send a boy up and let him shake the tree.'

“Now, what do you think of that?--for I really suppose you wrote it?”

“Think of it? Why, I think it is good. I think it is sense. I have no

doubt that every year millions and millions of bushels of turnips are

spoiled in this township alone by being pulled in a half-ripe condition,

when, if they had sent a boy up to shake the tree--”

“Shake your grandmother! Turnips don't grow on trees!”

“Oh, they don't, don't they? Well, who said they did? The language was

intended to be figurative, wholly figurative. Anybody that knows

anything will know that I meant that the boy should shake the vine.”

Then this old person got up and tore his paper all into small shreds, and

stamped on them, and broke several things with his cane, and said I did

not know as much as a cow; and then went out and banged the door after

him, and, in short, acted in such a way that I fancied he was displeased

about something. But not knowing what the trouble was, I could not be

any help to him.

Pretty soon after this a long, cadaverous creature, with lanky locks

hanging down to his shoulders, and a week's stubble bristling from the

hills and valleys of his face, darted within the door, and halted,

motionless, with finger on lip, and head and body bent in listening

attitude. No sound was heard.

Still he listened. No sound. Then he turned the key in the door, and

came elaborately tiptoeing toward me till he was within long reaching

distance of me, when he stopped and, after scanning my face with intense

interest for a while, drew a folded copy of our paper from his bosom, and

said:

“There, you wrote that. Read it to me--quick! Relieve me. I suffer.”

I read as follows; and as the sentences fell from my lips I could see the

relief come, I could see the drawn muscles relax, and the anxiety go out

of the face, and rest and peace steal over the features like the merciful

moonlight over a desolate landscape:

The guano is a fine bird, but great care is necessary in rearing it.

It should not be imported earlier than June or later than September.

In the winter it should be kept in a warm place, where it can hatch

out its young.

It is evident that we are to have a backward season for grain.

Therefore it will be well for the farmer to begin setting out his

corn-stalks and planting his buckwheat cakes in July instead of

August.

Concerning the pumpkin. This berry is a favorite with the natives

of the interior of New England, who prefer it to the gooseberry for

the making of fruit-cake, and who likewise give it the preference

over the raspberry for feeding cows, as being more filling and fully

as satisfying. The pumpkin is the only esculent of the orange

family that will thrive in the North, except the gourd and one or

two varieties of the squash. But the custom of planting it in the

front yard with the shrubbery is fast going out of vogue, for it is

now generally conceded that, the pumpkin as a shade tree is a

failure.

Now, as the warm weather approaches, and the ganders begin to

spawn--

The excited listener sprang toward me to shake hands, and said:

“There, there--that will do. I know I am all right now, because you have

read it just as I did, word, for word. But, stranger, when I first read

it this morning, I said to myself, I never, never believed it before,

notwithstanding my friends kept me under watch so strict, but now I

believe I am crazy; and with that I fetched a howl that you might have

heard two miles, and started out to kill somebody--because, you know,

I knew it would come to that sooner or later, and so I might as well

begin. I read one of them paragraphs over again, so as to be certain,

and then I burned my house down and started. I have crippled several

people, and have got one fellow up a tree, where I can get him if I want

him. But I thought I would call in here as I passed along and make the

thing perfectly certain; and now it is certain, and I tell you it is

lucky for the chap that is in the tree. I should have killed him sure,

as I went back. Good-by, sir, good-by; you have taken a great load off

my mind. My reason has stood the strain of one of your agricultural

articles, and I know that nothing can ever unseat it now. Good-by, sir.”

I felt a little uncomfortable about the cripplings and arsons this person

had been entertaining himself with, for I could not help feeling remotely

accessory to them. But these thoughts were quickly banished, for the

regular editor walked in! [I thought to myself, Now if you had gone to

Egypt as I recommended you to, I might have had a chance to get my hand

in; but you wouldn't do it, and here you are. I sort of expected you.]

The editor was looking sad and perplexed and dejected.

He surveyed the wreck which that old rioter and those two young farmers

had made, and then said “This is a sad business--a very sad business.

There is the mucilage-bottle broken, and six panes of glass, and a

spittoon, and two candlesticks. But that is not the worst. The

reputation of the paper is injured--and permanently, I fear. True, there

never was such a call for the paper before, and it never sold such a

large edition or soared to such celebrity--but does one want to be famous

for lunacy, and prosper upon the infirmities of his mind? My friend, as

I am an honest man, the street out here is full of people, and others are

roosting on the fences, waiting to get a glimpse of you, because they

think you are crazy. And well they might after reading your editorials.

They are a disgrace to journalism. Why, what put it into your head that

you could edit a paper of this nature? You do not seem to know the first

rudiments of agriculture. You speak of a furrow and a harrow as being

the same thing; you talk of the moulting season for cows; and you

recommend the domestication of the pole-cat on account of its playfulness

and its excellence as a ratter! Your remark that clams will lie quiet if

music be played to them was superfluous--entirely superfluous. Nothing

disturbs clams. Clams always lie quiet. Clams care nothing whatever

about music. Ah, heavens and earth, friend! if you had made the

acquiring of ignorance the study of your life, you could not have

graduated with higher honor than you could to-day. I never saw anything

like it. Your observation that the horse-chestnut as an article of

commerce is steadily gaining in favor is simply calculated to destroy

this journal. I want you to throw up your situation and go. I want no

more holiday--I could not enjoy it if I had it. Certainly not with you

in my chair. I would always stand in dread of what you might be going to

recommend next. It makes me lose all patience every time I think of your

discussing oyster-beds under the head of 'Landscape Gardening.' I want

you to go. Nothing on earth could persuade me to take another holiday.

Oh! why didn't you tell me you didn't know anything about agriculture?”

“Tell you, you corn-stalk, you cabbage, you son of a cauliflower? It's

the first time I ever heard such an unfeeling remark. I tell you I have

been in the editorial business going on fourteen years, and it is the

first time I ever heard of a man's having to know anything in order to

edit a newspaper. You turnip! Who write the dramatic critiques for the

second-rate papers? Why, a parcel of promoted shoemakers and apprentice

apothecaries, who know just as much about good acting as I do about good

farming and no more. Who review the books? People who never wrote one.

Who do up the heavy leaders on finance? Parties who have had the largest

opportunities for knowing nothing about it. Who criticize the Indian

campaigns? Gentlemen who do not know a war-whoop from a wigwam, and who

never have had to run a foot-race with a tomahawk, or pluck arrows out of

the several members of their families to build the evening camp-fire

with. Who write the temperance appeals, and clamor about the flowing bowl?

Folks who will never draw another sober breath till they do it in

the grave. Who edit the agricultural papers, you--yam? Men, as a

general thing, who fail in the poetry line, yellow-colored novel line,

sensation, drama line, city-editor line, and finally fall back on

agriculture as a temporary reprieve from the poorhouse. You try to tell

me anything about the newspaper business! Sir, I have been through it

from Alpha to Omaha, and I tell you that the less a man knows the bigger

the noise he makes and the higher the salary he commands. Heaven knows

if I had but been ignorant instead of cultivated, and impudent instead of

diffident, I could have made a name for myself in this cold, selfish

world. I take my leave, sir. Since I have been treated as you have

treated me, I am perfectly willing to go. But I have done my duty. I

have fulfilled my contract as far as I was permitted to do it. I said I

could make your paper of interest to all classes--and I have. I said I

could run your circulation up to twenty thousand copies, and if I had had

two more weeks I'd have done it. And I'd have given you the best class

of readers that ever an agricultural paper had--not a farmer in it, nor a

solitary individual who could tell a watermelon-tree from a peach-vine to

save his life. You are the loser by this rupture, not me, Pie-plant.

Adios.”

I then left.

THE PETRIFIED MAN

Now, to show how really hard it is to foist a moral or a truth upon an

unsuspecting public through a burlesque without entirely and absurdly

missing one's mark, I will here set down two experiences of my own in

this thing. In the fall of 1862, in Nevada and California, the people

got to running wild about extraordinary petrifactions and other natural

marvels. One could scarcely pick up a paper without finding in it one or

two glorified discoveries of this kind. The mania was becoming a little

ridiculous. I was a brand-new local editor in Virginia City, and I felt

called upon to destroy this growing evil; we all have our benignant,

fatherly moods at one time or another, I suppose. I chose to kill the

petrifaction mania with a delicate, a very delicate satire. But maybe it

was altogether too delicate, for nobody ever perceived the satire part of

it at all. I put my scheme in the shape of the discovery of a remarkably

petrified man.

I had had a temporary falling out with Mr.----, the new coroner and

justice of the peace of Humboldt, and thought I might as well touch him

up a little at the same time and make him ridiculous, and thus combine

pleasure with business. So I told, in patient, belief-compelling detail,

all about the finding of a petrified-man at Gravelly Ford (exactly a

hundred and twenty miles, over a breakneck mountain trail from where

---- lived); how all the savants of the immediate neighborhood had been to

examine it (it was notorious that there was not a living creature within

fifty miles of there, except a few starving Indians, some crippled

grasshoppers, and four or five buzzards out of meat and too feeble to get

away); how those savants all pronounced the petrified man to have been in

a state of complete petrifaction for over ten generations; and then, with

a seriousness that I ought to have been ashamed to assume, I stated that

as soon as Mr.----heard the news he summoned a jury, mounted his mule,

and posted off, with noble reverence for official duty, on that awful

five days' journey, through alkali, sage brush, peril of body, and

imminent starvation, to hold an inquest on this man that had been dead

and turned to everlasting stone for more than three hundred years!

And then, my hand being “in,” so to speak, I went on, with the same

unflinching gravity, to state that the jury returned a verdict that

deceased came to his death from protracted exposure. This only moved me

to higher flights of imagination, and I said that the jury, with that

charity so characteristic of pioneers, then dug a grave, and were about

to give the petrified man Christian burial, when they found that for ages

a limestone sediment had been trickling down the face of the stone

against which he was sitting, and this stuff had run under him and

cemented him fast to the “bed-rock”; that the jury (they were all

silver-miners) canvassed the difficulty a moment, and then got out their

powder and fuse, and proceeded to drill a hole under him, in order to

blast him from his position, when Mr.----, “with that delicacy so

characteristic of him, forbade them, observing that it would be little

less than sacrilege to do such a thing.”

From beginning to end the “Petrified Man” squib was a string of roaring

absurdities, albeit they were told with an unfair pretense of truth that

even imposed upon me to some extent, and I was in some danger of

believing in my own fraud. But I really had no desire to deceive

anybody, and no expectation of doing it. I depended on the way the

petrified man was sitting to explain to the public that he was a swindle.

Yet I purposely mixed that up with other things, hoping to make it

obscure--and I did. I would describe the position of one foot, and then

say his right thumb was against the side of his nose; then talk about his

other foot, and presently come back and say the fingers of his right hand

were spread apart; then talk about the back of his head a little, and

return and say the left thumb was hooked into the right little finger;

then ramble off about something else, and by and by drift back again and

remark that the fingers of the left hand were spread like those of the

right. But I was too ingenious. I mixed it up rather too much; and so

all that description of the attitude, as a key to the humbuggery of the

article, was entirely lost, for nobody but me ever discovered and

comprehended the peculiar and suggestive position of the petrified man's

hands.

As a satire on the petrifaction mania, or anything else, my Petrified Man

was a disheartening failure; for everybody received him in innocent good

faith, and I was stunned to see the creature I had begotten to pull down

the wonder-business with, and bring derision upon it, calmly exalted to

the grand chief place in the list of the genuine marvels our Nevada had

produced. I was so disappointed at the curious miscarriage of my scheme,

that at first I was angry, and did not like to think about it; but by and

by, when the exchanges began to come in with the Petrified Man copied and

guilelessly glorified, I began to feel a soothing secret satisfaction;

and as my gentleman's field of travels broadened, and by the exchanges I

saw that he steadily and implacably penetrated territory after territory,

state after state, and land after land, till he swept the great globe and

culminated in sublime and unimpeached legitimacy in the august London

Lancet, my cup was full, and I said I was glad I had done it. I think

that for about eleven months, as nearly as I can remember, Mr.----'s

daily mail-bag continued to be swollen by the addition of half a bushel

of newspapers hailing from many climes with the Petrified Man in them,

marked around with a prominent belt of ink. I sent them to him. I did

it for spite, not for fun.

He used to shovel them into his back yard and curse. And every day

during all those months the miners, his constituents (for miners never

quit joking a person when they get started), would call on him and ask if

he could tell them where they could get hold of a paper with the

Petrified Man in it. He could have accommodated a continent with them.

I hated ---- in those days, and these things pacified me and pleased me.

I could not have gotten more real comfort out of him without killing him.

MY BLOODY MASSACRE

The other burlesque I have referred to was my fine satire upon the

financial expedients of “cooking dividends,” a thing which became

shamefully frequent on the Pacific coast for a while. Once more, in my

self-complacent simplicity I felt that the time had arrived for me to

rise up and be a reformer. I put this reformatory satire in the shape

of a fearful “Massacre at Empire City.” The San Francisco papers were

making a great outcry about the iniquity of the Daney Silver-Mining

Company, whose directors had declared a “cooked” or false dividend, for

the purpose of increasing the value of their stock, so that they could

sell out at a comfortable figure, and then scramble from under the

tumbling concern. And while abusing the Daney, those papers did not

forget to urge the public to get rid of all their silver stocks and

invest in sound and safe San Francisco stocks, such as the Spring Valley

Water Company, etc. But right at this unfortunate juncture, behold the

Spring Valley cooked a dividend too! And so, under the insidious mask of

an invented “bloody massacre,” I stole upon the public unawares with my

scathing satire upon the dividend-cooking system. In about half a column

of imaginary human carnage I told how a citizen had murdered his wife

and nine children, and then committed suicide. And I said slyly, at the

bottom, that the sudden madness of which this melancholy massacre was the

result had been brought about by his having allowed himself to be

persuaded by the California papers to sell his sound and lucrative Nevada

silver stocks, and buy into Spring Valley just in time to get cooked

along with that company's fancy dividend, and sink every cent he had in

the world.

Ah, it was a deep, deep satire, and most ingeniously contrived. But I

made the horrible details so carefully and conscientiously interesting

that the public devoured them greedily, and wholly overlooked the

following distinctly stated facts, to wit: The murderer was perfectly

well known to every creature in the land as a bachelor, and consequently

he could not murder his wife and nine children; he murdered them “in his

splendid dressed-stone mansion just in the edge of the great pine forest

between Empire City and Dutch Nick's,” when even the very pickled oysters

that came on our tables knew that there was not a “dressed-stone mansion”

in all Nevada Territory; also that, so far from there being a “great pine

forest between Empire City and Dutch Nick's,” there wasn't a solitary

tree within fifteen miles of either place; and, finally, it was patent

and notorious that Empire City and Dutch Nick's were one and the same

place, and contained only six houses anyhow, and consequently there could

be no forest between them; and on top of all these absurdities I stated

that this diabolical murderer, after inflicting a wound upon himself that

the reader ought to have seen would kill an elephant in the twinkling of

an eye, jumped on his horse and rode four miles, waving his wife's

reeking scalp in the air, and thus performing entered Carson City with

tremendous éclat, and dropped dead in front of the chief saloon, the envy

and admiration of all beholders.

Well, in all my life I never saw anything like the sensation that little

satire created. It was the talk of the town, it was the talk of the

territory. Most of the citizens dropped gently into it at breakfast, and

they never finished their meal. There was something about those minutely

faithful details that was a sufficing substitute for food. Few people

that were able to read took food that morning. Dan and I (Dan was my

reportorial associate) took our seats on either side of our customary

table in the “Eagle Restaurant,” and, as I unfolded the shred they used

to call a napkin in that establishment, I saw at the next table two

stalwart innocents with that sort of vegetable dandruff sprinkled about

their clothing which was the sign and evidence that they were in from the

Truckee with a load of hay. The one facing me had the morning paper

folded to a long, narrow strip, and I knew, without any telling, that

that strip represented the column that contained my pleasant financial

satire. From the way he was excitedly mumbling, I saw that the heedless

son of a hay-mow was skipping with all his might, in order to get to the

bloody details as quickly as possible; and so he was missing the

guide-boards I had set up to warn him that the whole thing was a fraud.

Presently his eyes spread wide open, just as his jaws swung asunder to

take in a potato approaching it on a fork; the potato halted, the face

lit up redly, and the whole man was on fire with excitement. Then he

broke into a disjointed checking off of the particulars--his potato

cooling in mid-air meantime, and his mouth making a reach for it

occasionally, but always bringing up suddenly against a new and still

more direful performance of my hero. At last he looked his stunned and

rigid comrade impressively in the face, and said, with an expression of

concentrated awe:

“Jim, he b'iled his baby, and he took the old 'oman's skelp. Cuss'd if I

want any breakfast!”

And he laid his lingering potato reverently down, and he and his friend

departed from the restaurant empty but satisfied.

He NEVER GOT DOWN to where the satire part of it began. Nobody ever did.

They found the thrilling particulars sufficient. To drop in with a poor

little moral at the fag-end of such a gorgeous massacre was like

following the expiring sun with a candle and hope to attract the world's

attention to it.

The idea that anybody could ever take my massacre for a genuine

occurrence never once suggested itself to me, hedged about as it was by

all those telltale absurdities and impossibilities concerning the “great

pine forest,” the “dressed-stone mansion,” etc. But I found out then,

and never have forgotten since, that we never read the dull explanatory

surroundings of marvelously exciting things when we have no occasion to

suppose that some irresponsible scribbler is trying to defraud us; we

skip all that, and hasten to revel in the blood-curdling particulars and

be happy.

THE UNDERTAKER'S CHAT

“Now that corpse,” said the undertaker, patting the folded hands of

deceased approvingly, “was a brick--every way you took him he was a brick.

He was so real accommodating, and so modest-like and simple in his last

moments. Friends wanted metallic burial-case--nothing else would do.

I couldn't get it. There warn't going to be time--anybody could see

that.

“Corpse said never mind, shake him up some kind of a box he could stretch

out in comfortable, he warn't particular 'bout the general style of it.

Said he went more on room than style, anyway in a last final container.

“Friends wanted a silver door-plate on the coffin, signifying who he was

and wher' he was from. Now you know a fellow couldn't roust out such a

gaily thing as that in a little country-town like this. What did corpse

say?

“Corpse said, whitewash his old canoe and dob his address and general

destination onto it with a blacking-brush and a stencil-plate, 'long with

a verse from some likely hymn or other, and p'int him for the tomb, and

mark him C. O. D., and just let him flicker. He warn't distressed any

more than you be--on the contrary, just as ca(,)'m and collected as a

hearse-horse; said he judged that wher' he was going to a body would find

it considerable better to attract attention by a picturesque moral

character than a natty burial-case with a swell door-plate on it.

“Splendid man, he was. I'd druther do for a corpse like that 'n any I've

tackled in seven year. There's some satisfaction in buryin' a man like

that. You feel that what you're doing is appreciated. Lord bless you,

so's he got planted before he sp'iled, he was perfectly satisfied; said

his relations meant well, perfectly well, but all them preparations was

bound to delay the thing more or less, and he didn't wish to be kept

layin' around. You never see such a clear head as what he had--and so

ca'm and so cool. Jist a hunk of brains--that is what he was.

Perfectly awful. It was a ripping distance from one end of that man's

head to t'other. Often and over again he's had brain-fever a-raging in

one place, and the rest of the pile didn't know anything about it--didn't

affect it any more than an Injun Insurrection in Arizona affects the

Atlantic States.

“Well, the relations they wanted a big funeral, but corpse said he was

down on flummery--didn't want any procession--fill the hearse full of

mourners, and get out a stern line and tow him behind. He was the most

down on style of any remains I ever struck. A beautiful, simpleminded

creature--it was what he was, you can depend on that. He was just set on

having things the way he wanted them, and he took a solid comfort in

laying his little plans. He had me measure him and take a whole raft of

directions; then he had the minister stand up behind a long box with a

table--cloth over it, to represent the coffin, and read his funeral

sermon, saying 'Angcore, angcore!' at the good places, and making him

scratch out every bit of brag about him, and all the hifalutin; and then

he made them trot out the choir, so's he could help them pick out the

tunes for the occasion, and he got them to sing 'Pop Goes the Weasel,'

because he'd always liked that tune when he was downhearted, and solemn

music made him sad; and when they sung that with tears in their eyes

(because they all loved him), and his relations grieving around, he just

laid there as happy as a bug, and trying to beat time and showing all

over how much he enjoyed it; and presently he got worked up and excited,

and tried to join in, for, mind you, he was pretty proud of his abilities

in the singing line; but the first time he opened his mouth and was just

going to spread himself his breath took a walk.

“I never see a man snuffed out so sudden. Ah, it was a great loss--a

powerful loss to this poor little one-horse town. Well, well, well, I

hain't got time to be palavering along here--got to nail on the lid and

mosey along with him; and if you'll just give me a lift we'll skeet him

into the hearse and meander along. Relations bound to have it so--don't

pay no attention to dying injunctions, minute a corpse's gone; but, if I

had my way, if I didn't respect his last wishes and tow him behind the

hearse I'll be cuss'd. I consider that whatever a corpse wants done for

his comfort is little enough matter, and a man hain't got no right to

deceive him or take advantage of him; and whatever a corpse trusts me to

do I'm a-going to do, you know, even if it's to stuff him and paint him

yaller and keep him for a keepsake--you hear me!”

He cracked his whip and went lumbering away with his ancient ruin of a

hearse, and I continued my walk with a valuable lesson learned--that a

healthy and wholesome is not necessarily impossible to any

occupation. The lesson is likely to be lasting, for it will take many

months to obliterate the memory of the remarks and circumstances that

impressed it.

CONCERNING CHAMBERMAIDS

Against all chambermaids, of whatsoever age or nationality, I launch the

curse of bachelordom! Because:

They always put the pillows at the opposite end of the bed from the

gas-burner, so that while you read and smoke before sleeping (as is the

ancient and honored custom of bachelors), you have to hold your book

aloft, in an uncomfortable position, to keep the light from dazzling your

eyes.

When they find the pillows removed to the other end of the bed in the

morning, they receive not the suggestion in a friendly spirit; but,

glorying in their absolute sovereignty, and unpitying your helplessness,

they make the bed just as it was originally, and gloat in secret over the

pang their tyranny will cause you.

Always after that, when they find you have transposed the pillows, they

undo your work, and thus defy and seek to embitter the life that God has

given you.

If they cannot get the light in an inconvenient position any other way,

they move the bed.

If you pull your trunk out six inches from the wall, so that the lid will

stay up when you open it, they always shove that trunk back again. They

do it on purpose.

If you want the spittoon in a certain spot, where it will be handy, they

don't, and so they move it.

They always put your other boots into inaccessible places. They chiefly

enjoy depositing them as far under the bed as the wall will permit. It

is because this compels you to get down in an undignified attitude and

make wild sweeps for them in the dark with the bootjack, and swear.

They always put the matchbox in some other place. They hunt up a new

place for it every day, and put up a bottle, or other perishable glass

thing, where the box stood before. This is to cause you to break that

glass thing, groping in the dark, and get yourself into trouble.

They are for ever and ever moving the furniture. When you come in in the

night you can calculate on finding the bureau where the wardrobe was in

the morning. And when you go out in the morning, if you leave the

slop-bucket by the door and rocking-chair by the window, when you come in

at midnight or thereabout, you will fall over that rocking-chair, and you

will proceed toward the window and sit down in that slop-tub. This will

disgust you. They like that.

No matter where you put anything, they are not going to let it stay

there. They will take it and move it the first chance they get. It is

their nature. And, besides, it gives them pleasure to be mean and

contrary this way. They would die if they couldn't be villains.

They always save up all the old scraps of printed rubbish you throw on

the floor, and stack them up carefully on the table, and start the fire

with your valuable manuscripts. If there is any one particular old scrap

that you are more down on than any other, and which you are gradually

wearing your life out trying to get rid of, you may take all the pains

you possibly can in that direction, but it won't be of any use, because

they will always fetch that old scrap back and put it in the same old

place again every time. It does them good.

And they use up more hair-oil than any six men. If charged with

purloining the same, they lie about it. What do they care about a

hereafter? Absolutely nothing.

If you leave the key in the door for convenience' sake, they will carry

it down to the office and give it to the clerk. They do this under the

vile pretense of trying to protect your property from thieves; but

actually they do it because they want to make you tramp back down-stairs

after it when you come home tired, or put you to the trouble of sending a

waiter for it, which waiter will expect you to pay him something. In

which case I suppose the degraded creatures divide.

They keep always trying to make your bed before you get up, thus

destroying your rest and inflicting agony upon you; but after you get up,

they don't come any more till next day.

They do all the mean things they can think of, and they do them just out

of pure cussedness, and nothing else.

Chambermaids are dead to every human instinct.

If I can get a bill through the legislature abolishing chambermaids, I

mean to do it.

AURELIA'S UNFORTUNATE YOUNG MAN--[Written about 1865.]

The facts in the following case came to me by letter from a young lady

who lives in the beautiful city of San José; she is perfectly unknown to

me, and simply signs herself “Aurelia Maria,” which may possibly be a

fictitious name. But no matter, the poor girl is almost heartbroken by

the misfortunes she has undergone, and so confused by the conflicting

counsels of misguided friends and insidious enemies that she does not

know what course to pursue in order to extricate herself from the web of

difficulties in which she seems almost hopelessly involved. In this

dilemma she turns to me for help, and supplicates for my guidance and

instruction with a moving eloquence that would touch the heart of a

statue. Hear her sad story:

She says that when she was sixteen years old she met and loved, with all

the devotion of a passionate nature, a young man from New Jersey, named

Williamson Breckinridge Caruthers, who was some six years her senior.

They were engaged, with the free consent of their friends and relatives,

and for a time it seemed as if their career was destined to be

characterized by an immunity from sorrow beyond the usual lot of

humanity. But at last the tide of fortune turned; young Caruthers became

infected with smallpox of the most virulent type, and when he recovered

from his illness his face was pitted like a waffle-mold, and his

comeliness gone forever. Aurelia thought to break off the engagement at

first, but pity for her unfortunate lover caused her to postpone the

marriage-day for a season, and give him another trial.

The very day before the wedding was to have taken place, Breckinridge,

while absorbed in watching the flight of a balloon, walked into a well

and fractured one of his legs, and it had to be taken off above the knee.

Again Aurelia was moved to break the engagement, but again love

triumphed, and she set the day forward and gave him another chance to

reform.

And again misfortune overtook the unhappy youth. He lost one arm by the

premature discharge of a Fourth of July cannon, and within three months

he got the other pulled out by a carding-machine. Aurelia's heart was

almost crushed by these latter calamities. She could not but be deeply

grieved to see her lover passing from her by piecemeal, feeling, as she

did, that he could not last forever under this disastrous process of

reduction, yet knowing of no way to stop its dreadful career, and in her

tearful despair she almost regretted, like brokers who hold on and lose,

that she had not taken him at first, before he had suffered such an

alarming depreciation. Still, her brave soul bore her up, and she

resolved to bear with her friend's unnatural disposition yet a little

longer.

Again the wedding-day approached, and again disappointment overshadowed

it; Caruthers fell ill with the erysipelas, and lost the use of one of

his eyes entirely. The friends and relatives of the bride, considering

that she had already put up with more than could reasonably be expected

of her, now came forward and insisted that the match should be broken

off; but after wavering awhile, Aurelia, with a generous spirit which did

her credit, said she had reflected calmly upon the matter, and could not

discover that Breckinridge was to blame.

So she extended the time once more, and he broke his other leg.

It was a sad day for the poor girl when she saw the surgeons reverently

bearing away the sack whose uses she had learned by previous experience,

and her heart told her the bitter truth that some more of her lover was

gone. She felt that the field of her affections was growing more and

more circumscribed every day, but once more she frowned down her

relatives and renewed her betrothal.

Shortly before the time set for the nuptials another disaster occurred.

There was but one man scalped by the Owens River Indians last year. That

man was Williamson Breckinridge Caruthers of New Jersey. He was hurrying

home with happiness in his heart, when he lost his hair forever, and in

that hour of bitterness he almost cursed the mistaken mercy that had

spared his head.

At last Aurelia is in serious perplexity as to what she ought to do. She

still loves her Breckinridge, she writes, with truly womanly feeling--she

still loves what is left of him--but her parents are bitterly opposed to

the match, because he has no property and is disabled from working, and

she has not sufficient means to support both comfortably. “Now, what

should she do?” she asked with painful and anxious solicitude.

It is a delicate question; it is one which involves the lifelong

happiness of a woman, and that of nearly two-thirds of a man, and I feel

that it would be assuming too great a responsibility to do more than make

a mere suggestion in the case. How would it do to build to him? If

Aurelia can afford the expense, let her furnish her mutilated lover with

wooden arms and wooden legs, and a glass eye and a wig, and give him

another show; give him ninety days, without grace, and if he does not

break his neck in the mean time, marry him and take the chances. It does

not seem to me that there is much risk, anyway, Aurelia, because if he

sticks to his singular propensity for damaging himself every time he sees

a good opportunity, his next experiment is bound to finish him, and then

you are safe, married or single. If married, the wooden legs and such

other valuables as he may possess revert to the widow, and you see you

sustain no actual loss save the cherished fragment of a noble but most

unfortunate husband, who honestly strove to do right, but whose

extraordinary instincts were against him. Try it, Maria. I have thought

the matter over carefully and well, and it is the only chance I see for

you. It would have been a happy conceit on the part of Caruthers if he

had started with his neck and broken that first; but since he has seen

fit to choose a different policy and string himself out as long as

possible, I do not think we ought to upbraid him for it if he has enjoyed

it. We must do the best we can under the circumstances, and try not to

feel exasperated at him.

“AFTER” JENKINS

A grand affair of a ball--the Pioneers'--came off at the Occidental some

time ago. The following notes of the costumes worn by the belles of the

occasion may not be uninteresting to the general reader, and Jenkins may

get an idea therefrom:

Mrs. W. M. was attired in an elegant pâté de foie gras, made expressly

for her, and was greatly admired. Miss S. had her hair done up. She was

the center of attraction for the gentlemen and the envy of all the ladies.

Mrs. G. W. was tastefully dressed in a 'tout ensemble,' and was greeted with

deafening applause wherever she went. Mrs. C. N. was superbly arrayed in white

kid gloves. Her modest and engaging manner accorded well with the

unpretending simplicity of her costume and caused her to be regarded with

absorbing interest by every one.

The charming Miss M. M. B. appeared in a thrilling waterfall, whose

exceeding grace and volume compelled the homage of pioneers and emigrants

alike. How beautiful she was!

The queenly Mrs. L. R. was attractively attired in her new and beautiful

false teeth, and the 'bon jour' effect they naturally produced was

heightened by her enchanting and well-sustained smile.

Miss R. P., with that repugnance to ostentation in dress which is so

peculiar to her, was attired in a simple white lace collar, fastened with

a neat pearl-button solitaire. The fine contrast between the sparkling

vivacity of her natural optic, and the steadfast attentiveness of her

placid glass eye, was the subject of general and enthusiastic remark.

Miss C. L. B. had her fine nose elegantly enameled, and the easy grace

with which she blew it from time to time marked her as a cultivated and

accomplished woman of the world; its exquisitely modulated tone excited

the admiration of all who had the happiness to hear it.

ABOUT BARBERS

All things change except barbers, the ways of barbers, and the

surroundings of barbers. These never change. What one experiences in a

barber's shop the first time he enters one is what he always experiences

in barbers' shops afterward till the end of his days. I got shaved this

morning as usual. A man approached the door from Jones Street as I

approached it from Main--a thing that always happens. I hurried up, but

it was of no use; he entered the door one little step ahead of me, and I

followed in on his heels and saw him take the only vacant chair, the one

presided over by the best barber. It always happens so. I sat down,

hoping that I might fall heir to the chair belonging to the better of the

remaining two barbers, for he had already begun combing his man's hair,

while his comrade was not yet quite done rubbing up and oiling his

customer's locks. I watched the probabilities with strong interest.

When I saw that No. 2 was gaining on No. 1 my interest grew to

solicitude. When No. 1 stopped a moment to make change on a bath ticket

for a new-comer, and lost ground in the race, my solicitude rose to

anxiety. When No. 1 caught up again, and both he and his comrade were

pulling the towels away and brushing the powder from their customers'

cheeks, and it was about an even thing which one would say “Next!” first,

my very breath stood still with the suspense. But when at the

culminating moment No. 1 stopped to pass a comb a couple of times through

his customer's eyebrows, I saw that he had lost the race by a single

instant, and I rose indignant and quitted the shop, to keep from falling

into the hands of No. 2; for I have none of that enviable firmness that

enables a man to look calmly into the eyes of a waiting barber and tell

him he will wait for his fellow-barber's chair.

I stayed out fifteen minutes, and then went back, hoping for better luck.

Of course all the chairs were occupied now, and four men sat waiting,

silent, unsociable, distraught, and looking bored, as men always do who

are waiting their turn in a barber's shop. I sat down in one of the

iron-armed compartments of an old sofa, and put in the time for a while

reading the framed advertisements of all sorts of quack nostrums for

dyeing and coloring the hair. Then I read the greasy names on the

private bayrum bottles; read the names and noted the numbers on the

private shaving-cups in the pigeonholes; studied the stained and damaged

cheap prints on the walls, of battles, early Presidents, and voluptuous

recumbent sultanas, and the tiresome and everlasting young girl putting

her grandfather's spectacles on; execrated in my heart the cheerful

canary and the distracting parrot that few barbers' shops are without.

Finally, I searched out the least dilapidated of last year's illustrated

papers that littered the foul center-table, and conned their

unjustifiable misrepresentations of old forgotten events.

At last my turn came. A voice said “Next!” and I surrendered to--No. 2,

of course. It always happens so. I said meekly that I was in a hurry,

and it affected him as strongly as if he had never heard it. He shoved

up my head, and put a napkin under it. He plowed his fingers into my

collar and fixed a towel there. He explored my hair with his claws and

suggested that it needed trimming. I said I did not want it trimmed. He

explored again and said it was pretty long for the present style--better

have a little taken off; it needed it behind especially. I said I had

had it cut only a week before. He yearned over it reflectively a moment,

and then asked with a disparaging manner, who cut it? I came back at him

promptly with a “You did!” I had him there. Then he fell to stirring up

his lather and regarding himself in the glass, stopping now and then to

get close and examine his chin critically or inspect a pimple. Then he

lathered one side of my face thoroughly, and was about to lather the

other, when a dog-fight attracted his attention, and he ran to the window

and stayed and saw it out, losing two shillings on the result in bets

with the other barbers, a thing which gave me great satisfaction. He

finished lathering, and then began to rub in the suds with his hand.

He now began to sharpen his razor on an old suspender, and was delayed a

good deal on account of a controversy about a cheap masquerade ball he

had figured at the night before, in red cambric and bogus ermine, as some

kind of a king. He was so gratified with being chaffed about some damsel

whom he had smitten with his charms that he used every means to continue

the controversy by pretending to be annoyed at the chaffings of his

fellows. This matter begot more surveyings of himself in the glass, and

he put down his razor and brushed his hair with elaborate care,

plastering an inverted arch of it down on his forehead, accomplishing an

accurate “part” behind, and brushing the two wings forward over his ears

with nice exactness. In the mean time the lather was drying on my face,

and apparently eating into my vitals.

Now he began to shave, digging his fingers into my countenance to stretch

the skin and bundling and tumbling my head this way and that as

convenience in shaving demanded. As long as he was on the tough sides of

my face I did not suffer; but when he began to rake, and rip, and tug at

my chin, the tears came. He now made a handle of my nose, to assist him

shaving the corners of my upper lip, and it was by this bit of

circumstantial evidence that I discovered that a part of his duties in

the shop was to clean the kerosene-lamps. I had often wondered in an

indolent way whether the barbers did that, or whether it was the boss.

About this time I was amusing myself trying to guess where he would be

most likely to cut me this time, but he got ahead of me, and sliced me on

the end of the chin before I had got my mind made up. He immediately

sharpened his razor--he might have done it before. I do not like a close

shave, and would not let him go over me a second time. I tried to get

him to put up his razor, dreading that he would make for the side of my

chin, my pet tender spot, a place which a razor cannot touch twice

without making trouble; but he said he only wanted to just smooth off one

little roughness, and in the same moment he slipped his razor along the

forbidden ground, and the dreaded pimple-signs of a close shave rose up

smarting and answered to the call. Now he soaked his towel in bay rum,

and slapped it all over my face nastily; slapped it over as if a human

being ever yet washed his face in that way. Then he dried it by slapping

with the dry part of the towel, as if a human being ever dried his face

in such a fashion; but a barber seldom rubs you like a Christian. Next

he poked bay rum into the cut place with his towel, then choked the

wound with powdered starch, then soaked it with bay rum again, and would

have gone on soaking and powdering it forevermore, no doubt, if I had not

rebelled and begged off. He powdered my whole face now, straightened me

up, and began to plow my hair thoughtfully with his hands. Then he

suggested a shampoo, and said my hair needed it badly, very badly.

I observed that I shampooed it myself very thoroughly in the bath

yesterday. I “had him” again. He next recommended some of “Smith's Hair

Glorifier,” and offered to sell me a bottle. I declined. He praised the

new perfume, “Jones's Delight of the Toilet,” and proposed to sell me

some of that. I declined again. He tendered me a tooth-wash atrocity of

his own invention, and when I declined offered to trade knives with me.

He returned to business after the miscarriage of this last enterprise,

sprinkled me all over, legs and all, greased my hair in defiance of my

protest against it, rubbed and scrubbed a good deal of it out by the

roots, and combed and brushed the rest, parting it behind, and plastering

the eternal inverted arch of hair down on my forehead, and then, while

combing my scant eyebrows and defiling them with pomade, strung out an

account of the achievements of a six-ounce black-and-tan terrier of his

till I heard the whistles blow for noon, and knew I was five minutes too

late for the train. Then he snatched away the towel, brushed it lightly

about my face, passed his comb through my eyebrows once more, and gaily

sang out “Next!”

This barber fell down and died of apoplexy two hours later. I am waiting

over a day for my revenge--I am going to attend his funeral.

“PARTY CRIES” IN IRELAND

Belfast is a peculiarly religious community. This may be said of the

whole of the North of Ireland. About one-half of the people are

Protestants and the other half Catholics. Each party does all it can to

make its own doctrines popular and draw the affections of the irreligious

toward them. One hears constantly of the most touching instances of this

zeal. A week ago a vast concourse of Catholics assembled at Armagh to

dedicate a new Cathedral; and when they started home again the roadways

were lined with groups of meek and lowly Protestants who stoned them till

all the region round about was marked with blood. I thought that only

Catholics argued in that way, but it seems to be a mistake.

Every man in the community is a missionary and carries a brick to

admonish the erring with. The law has tried to break this up, but not

with perfect success. It has decreed that irritating “party cries” shall

not be indulged in, and that persons uttering them shall be fined forty

shillings and costs. And so, in the police court reports every day, one

sees these fines recorded. Last week a girl of twelve years old was

fined the usual forty shillings and costs for proclaiming in the public

streets that she was “a Protestant.” The usual cry is, “To hell with the

Pope!” or “To hell with the Protestants!” according to the utterer's

system of salvation.

One of Belfast's local jokes was very good. It referred to the uniform

and inevitable fine of forty shillings and costs for uttering a party

cry--and it is no economical fine for a poor man, either, by the way.

They say that a policeman found a drunken man lying on the ground, up a

dark alley, entertaining himself with shouting, “To hell with!” “To hell

with!” The officer smelt a fine--informers get half.

“What's that you say?”

“To hell with!”

“To hell with who? To hell with what?”

“Ah, bedad, ye can finish it yourself--it's too expinsive for me!”

I think the seditious disposition, restrained by the economical instinct,

is finely put in that.

THE FACTS CONCERNING THE RECENT RESIGNATION [Written about 1867]

WASHINGTON, December, 1867.

I have resigned. The government appears to go on much the same, but

there is a spoke out of its wheel, nevertheless. I was clerk of the

Senate Committee on Conchology, and I have thrown up the position.

I could see the plainest disposition on the part of the other members of

the government to debar me from having any voice in the counsels of the

nation, and so I could no longer hold office and retain my self-respect.

If I were to detail all the outrages that were heaped upon me during the

six days that I was connected with the government in an official

capacity, the narrative would fill a volume. They appointed me clerk of

that Committee on Conchology and then allowed me no amanuensis to play

billiards with. I would have borne that, lonesome as it was, if I had

met with that courtesy from the other members of the Cabinet which was my

due. But I did not. Whenever I observed that the head of a department

was pursuing a wrong course, I laid down everything and went and tried to

set him right, as it was my duty to do; and I never was thanked for it in

a single instance. I went, with the best intentions in the world, to the

Secretary of the Navy, and said:

“Sir, I cannot see that Admiral Farragut is doing anything but

skirmishing around there in Europe, having a sort of picnic. Now, that

may be all very well, but it does not exhibit itself to me in that light.

If there is no fighting for him to do, let him come home. There is no

use in a man having a whole fleet for a pleasure excursion. It is too

expensive. Mind, I do not object to pleasure excursions for the naval

officers--pleasure excursions that are in reason--pleasure excursions

that are economical. Now, they might go down the Mississippi

on a raft--”

You ought to have heard him storm! One would have supposed I had

committed a crime of some kind. But I didn't mind. I said it was cheap,

and full of republican simplicity, and perfectly safe. I said that, for

a tranquil pleasure excursion, there was nothing equal to a raft.

Then the Secretary of the Navy asked me who I was; and when I told him I

was connected with the government, he wanted to know in what capacity. I

said that, without remarking upon the singularity of such a question,

coming, as it did, from a member of that same government, I would inform

him that I was clerk of the Senate Committee on Conchology. Then there

was a fine storm! He finished by ordering me to leave the premises, and

give my attention strictly to my own business in future. My first

impulse was to get him removed. However, that would harm others besides

himself, and do me no real good, and so I let him stay.

I went next to the Secretary of War, who was not inclined to see me at

all until he learned that I was connected with the government. If I had

not been on important business, I suppose I could not have got in.

I asked him for alight (he was smoking at the time), and then I told him

I had no fault to find with his defending the parole stipulations of

General Lee and his comrades in arms, but that I could not approve of his

method of fighting the Indians on the Plains. I said he fought too

scattering. He ought to get the Indians more together--get them together

in some convenient place, where he could have provisions enough for both

parties, and then have a general massacre. I said there was nothing so

convincing to an Indian as a general massacre. If he could not approve

of the massacre, I said the next surest thing for an Indian was soap and

education. Soap and education are not as sudden as a massacre, but they

are more deadly in the long run; because a half-massacred Indian may

recover, but if you educate him and wash him, it is bound to finish him

some time or other. It undermines his constitution; it strikes at the

foundation of his being. “Sir,” I said, “the time has come when

blood-curdling cruelty has become necessary. Inflict soap and a

spelling-book on every Indian that ravages the Plains, and let them die!”

The Secretary of War asked me if I was a member of the Cabinet, and I

said I was. He inquired what position I held, and I said I was clerk of

the Senate Committee on Conchology. I was then ordered under arrest for

contempt of court, and restrained of my liberty for the best part of the

day.

I almost resolved to be silent thenceforward, and let the Government get

along the best way it could. But duty called, and I obeyed. I called on

the Secretary of the Treasury. He said:

“What will you have?”

The question threw me off my guard. I said, “Rum punch.”

He said: “If you have got any business here, sir, state it--and in as few

words as possible.”

I then said that I was sorry he had seen fit to change the subject so

abruptly, because such conduct was very offensive to me; but under the

circumstances I would overlook the matter and come to the point. I now

went into an earnest expostulation with him upon the extravagant length

of his report. I said it was expensive, unnecessary, and awkwardly

constructed; there were no descriptive passages in it, no poetry, no

sentiment--no heroes, no plot, no pictures--not even wood-cuts. Nobody

would read it, that was a clear case. I urged him not to ruin his

reputation by getting out a thing like that. If he ever hoped to succeed

in literature he must throw more variety into his writings. He must

beware of dry detail. I said that the main popularity of the almanac was

derived from its poetry and conundrums, and that a few conundrums

distributed around through his Treasury report would help the sale of it

more than all the internal revenue he could put into it. I said these

things in the kindest spirit, and yet the Secretary of the Treasury fell

into a violent passion. He even said I was an ass. He abused me in the

most vindictive manner, and said that if I came there again meddling with

his business he would throw me out of the window. I said I would take my

hat and go, if I could not be treated with the respect due to my office,

and I did go. It was just like a new author. They always think they

know more than anybody else when they are getting out their first book.

Nobody can tell them anything.

During the whole time that I was connected with the government it seemed

as if I could not do anything in an official capacity without getting

myself into trouble. And yet I did nothing, attempted nothing, but what

I conceived to be for the good of my country. The sting of my wrongs may

have driven me to unjust and harmful conclusions, but it surely seemed to

me that the Secretary of State, the Secretary of War, the Secretary of

the Treasury, and others of my confreres had conspired from the very

beginning to drive me from the Administration. I never attended but one

Cabinet meeting while I was connected with the government. That was

sufficient for me. The servant at the White House door did not seem

disposed to make way for me until I asked if the other members of the

Cabinet had arrived. He said they had, and I entered. They were all

there; but nobody offered me a seat. They stared at me as if I had been

an intruder. The President said:

“Well, sir, who are you?”

I handed him my card, and he read: “The HON. MARK TWAIN, Clerk of the

Senate Committee on Conchology.” Then he looked at me from head to foot,

as if he had never heard of me before. The Secretary of the Treasury

said:

“This is the meddlesome ass that came to recommend me to put poetry and

conundrums in my report, as if it were an almanac.”

The Secretary of War said: “It is the same visionary that came to me

yesterday with a scheme to educate a portion of the Indians to death,

and massacre the balance.”

The Secretary of the Navy said: “I recognize this youth as the person who

has been interfering with my business time and again during the week. He

is distressed about Admiral Farragut's using a whole fleet for a pleasure

excursion, as he terms it. His proposition about some insane pleasure

excursion on a raft is too absurd to repeat.”

I said: “Gentlemen, I perceive here a disposition to throw discredit

upon every act of my official career; I perceive, also, a disposition to

debar me from all voice in the counsels of the nation. No notice

whatever was sent to me to-day. It was only by the merest chance that I

learned that there was going to be a Cabinet meeting. But let these

things pass. All I wish to know is, is this a Cabinet meeting or is it

not?”

The President said it was.

“Then,” I said, “let us proceed to business at once, and not fritter away

valuable time in unbecoming fault-findings with each other's official

conduct.”

The Secretary of State now spoke up, in his benignant way, and said,

“Young man, you are laboring under a mistake. The clerks of the

Congressional committees are not members of the Cabinet. Neither are the

doorkeepers of the Capitol, strange as it may seem. Therefore, much as

we could desire your more than human wisdom in our deliberations, we

cannot lawfully avail ourselves of it. The counsels of the nation must

proceed without you; if disaster follows, as follow full well it may, be

it balm to your sorrowing spirit that by deed and voice you did what in

you lay to avert it. You have my blessing. Farewell.”

These gentle words soothed my troubled breast, and I went away. But the

servants of a nation can know no peace. I had hardly reached my den in

the Capitol, and disposed my feet on the table like a representative,

when one of the Senators on the Conchological Committee came in in a

passion and said:

“Where have you been all day?”

I observed that, if that was anybody's affair but my own, I had been to a

Cabinet meeting.

“To a Cabinet meeting? I would like to know what business you had at a

Cabinet meeting?”

I said I went there to consult--allowing for the sake of argument that he

was in any wise concerned in the matter. He grew insolent then, and

ended by saying he had wanted me for three days past to copy a report on

bomb-shells, egg-shells, clamshells, and I don't know what all, connected

with conchology, and nobody had been able to find me.

This was too much. This was the feather that broke the clerical camel's

back. I said, “Sir, do you suppose that I am going to work for six

dollars a day? If that is the idea, let me recommend the Senate

Committee on Conchology to hire somebody else. I am the slave of no

faction! Take back your degrading commission. Give me liberty, or give

me death!”

From that hour I was no longer connected with the government. Snubbed by

the department, snubbed by the Cabinet, snubbed at last by the chairman

of a committee I was endeavoring to adorn, I yielded to persecution, cast

far from me the perils and seductions of my great office, and forsook my

bleeding country in the hour of her peril.

But I had done the state some service, and I sent in my bill:

The United States of America in account with

the Hon. Clerk of the Senate Committee on Conchology, Dr.

To consultation with Secretary of War ............ $50

To consultation with Secretary of Navy ........... $50

To consultation with Secretary of the Treasury ... $50

Cabinet consultation ...................No charge.

To mileage to and from Jerusalem, via Egypt,

Algiers, Gibraltar, and Cadiz,

14,000 miles, at 20c. a mile ............. $2,800

To salary as Clerk of Senate Committee

on Conchology, six days, at $6 per day ........... $36

Total .......................... $2,986

--[Territorial delegates charge mileage both ways, although they never go

back when they get here once. Why my mileage is denied me is more than I

can understand.]

Not an item of this bill has been paid, except that trifle of thirty-six

dollars for clerkship salary. The Secretary of the Treasury, pursuing me

to the last, drew his pen through all the other items, and simply marked

in the margin “Not allowed.” So, the dread alternative is embraced at

last. Repudiation has begun! The nation is lost.

I am done with official life for the present. Let those clerks who are

willing to be imposed on remain. I know numbers of them in the

departments who are never informed when there is to be a Cabinet meeting,

whose advice is never asked about war, or finance, or commerce, by the

heads of the nation, any more than if they were not connected with the

government, and who actually stay in their offices day after day and

work! They know their importance to the nation, and they unconsciously

show it in their bearing, and the way they order their sustenance at the

restaurant--but they work. I know one who has to paste all sorts of

little scraps from the newspapers into a scrapbook--sometimes as many as

eight or ten scraps a day. He doesn't do it well, but he does it as well

as he can. It is very fatiguing. It is exhausting to the intellect.

Yet he only gets eighteen hundred dollars a year. With a brain like his,

that young man could amass thousands and thousands of dollars in some

other pursuit, if he chose to do it. But no--his heart is with his

country, and he will serve her as long as she has got a scrapbook left.

And I know clerks that don't know how to write very well, but such

knowledge as they possess they nobly lay at the feet of their country,

and toil on and suffer for twenty-five hundred dollars a year. What they

write has to be written over again by other clerks sometimes; but when a

man has done his best for his country, should his country complain? Then

there are clerks that have no clerkships, and are waiting, and waiting,

and waiting for a vacancy--waiting patiently for a chance to help their

country out--and while they are waiting, they only get barely two

thousand dollars a year for it. It is sad--it is very, very sad. When a

member of Congress has a friend who is gifted, but has no employment

wherein his great powers may be brought to bear, he confers him upon his

country, and gives him a clerkship in a department. And there that man

has to slave his life out, fighting documents for the benefit of a nation

that never thinks of him, never sympathizes with him--and all for two

thousand or three thousand dollars a year. When I shall have completed

my list of all the clerks in the several departments, with my statement

of what they have to do, and what they get for it, you will see that

there are not half enough clerks, and that what there are do not get half

enough pay.

HISTORY REPEATS ITSELF

The following I find in a Sandwich Island paper which some friend has

sent me from that tranquil far-off retreat. The coincidence between my

own experience and that here set down by the late Mr. Benton is so

remarkable that I cannot forbear publishing and commenting upon the

paragraph. The Sandwich Island paper says:

How touching is this tribute of the late Hon. T. H. Benton to his

mother's influence:--'My mother asked me never to use tobacco; I have

never touched it from that time to the present day. She asked me not to

gamble, and I have never gambled. I cannot tell who is losing in games

that are being played. She admonished me, too, against liquor-drinking,

and whatever capacity for endurance I have at present, and whatever

usefulness I may have attained through life, I attribute to having

complied with her pious and correct wishes. When I was seven years of

age she asked me not to drink, and then I made a resolution of total

abstinence; and that I have adhered to it through all time I owe to my

mother.'

I never saw anything so curious. It is almost an exact epitome of my own

moral career--after simply substituting a grandmother for a mother. How

well I remember my grandmother's asking me not to use tobacco, good old

soul! She said, “You're at it again, are you, you whelp? Now don't ever

let me catch you chewing tobacco before breakfast again, or I lay I'll

blacksnake you within an inch of your life!” I have never touched it at

that hour of the morning from that time to the present day.

She asked me not to gamble. She whispered and said, “Put up those wicked

cards this minute!--two pair and a jack, you numskull, and the other

fellow's got a flush!”

I never have gambled from that day to this--never once--without a “cold

deck” in my pocket. I cannot even tell who is going to lose in games

that are being played unless I deal myself.

When I was two years of age she asked me not to drink, and then I made a

resolution of total abstinence. That I have adhered to it and enjoyed

the beneficent effects of it through all time, I owe to my grandmother.

I have never drunk a drop from that day to this of any kind of water.

HONORED AS A CURIOSITY

If you get into conversation with a stranger in Honolulu, and experience

that natural desire to know what sort of ground you are treading on by

finding out what manner of man your stranger is, strike out boldly and

address him as “Captain.” Watch him narrowly, and if you see by his

countenance that you are on the wrong track, ask him where he preaches.

It is a safe bet that he is either a missionary or captain of a whaler.

I became personally acquainted with seventy-two captains and ninety-six

missionaries. The captains and ministers form one-half of the

population; the third fourth is composed of common Kanakas and mercantile

foreigners and their families; and the final fourth is made up of high

officers of the Hawaiian Government. And there are just about cats

enough for three apiece all around.

A solemn stranger met me in the suburbs one day, and said:

“Good morning, your reverence. Preach in the stone church yonder, no

doubt!”

“No, I don't. I'm not a preacher.”

“Really, I beg your pardon, captain. I trust you had a good season. How

much oil--”

“Oil! Why, what do you take me for? I'm not a whaler.”

“Oh! I beg a thousand pardons, your Excellency. Major-General in the

household troops, no doubt? Minister of the Interior, likely? Secretary

of War? First Gentleman of the Bedchamber? Commissioner of the Royal--”

“Stuff, man! I'm not connected in any way with the government.”

“Bless my life! Then who the mischief are you? what the mischief are

you? and how the mischief did you get here? and where in thunder did you

come from?”

“I'm only a private personage--an unassuming stranger--lately arrived

from America.”

“No! Not a missionary! not a whaler! not a member of his Majesty's

government! not even a Secretary of the Navy! Ah! Heaven! it is too

blissful to be true, alas! I do but dream. And yet that noble, honest

countenance--those oblique, ingenuous eyes--that massive head, incapable

of--of anything; your hand; give me your hand, bright waif. Excuse these

tears. For sixteen weary years I have yearned for a moment like this,

and--”

Here his feelings were too much for him, and he swooned away. I pitied

this poor creature from the bottom of my heart. I was deeply moved.

I shed a few tears on him, and kissed him for his mother. I then took

what small change he had, and “shoved.”

FIRST INTERVIEW WITH ARTEMUS WARD--[Written about 1870.]

I had never seen him before. He brought letters of introduction from

mutual friends in San Francisco, and by invitation I breakfasted with

him. It was almost religion, there in the silver-mines, to precede such

a meal with whisky cocktails. Artemus, with the true cosmopolitan

instinct, always deferred to the customs of the country he was in, and so

he ordered three of those abominations. Hingston was present. I said I

would rather not drink a whisky cocktail. I said it would go right to my

head, and confuse me so that I would be in a helpless tangle in ten

minutes. I did not want to act like a lunatic before strangers. But

Artemus gently insisted, and I drank the treasonable mixture under

protest, and felt all the time that I was doing a thing I might be sorry

for. In a minute or two I began to imagine that my ideas were clouded.

I waited in great anxiety for the conversation to open, with a sort of

vague hope that my understanding would prove clear, after all, and my

misgivings groundless.

Artemus dropped an unimportant remark or two, and then assumed a look of

superhuman earnestness, and made the following astounding speech. He

said:

“Now there is one thing I ought to ask you about before I forget it. You

have been here in Silver land--here in Nevada--two or three years, and,

of course, your position on the daily press has made it necessary for you

to go down in the mines and examine them carefully in detail, and

therefore you know all about the silver-mining business. Now what I want

to get at is--is, well, the way the deposits of ore are made, you know.

For instance. Now, as I understand it, the vein which contains the

silver is sandwiched in between casings of granite, and runs along the

ground, and sticks up like a curb stone. Well, take a vein forty feet

thick, for example, or eighty, for that matter, or even a hundred--say

you go down on it with a shaft, straight down, you know, or with what you

call 'incline' maybe you go down five hundred feet, or maybe you don't go

down but two hundred--anyway, you go down, and all the time this vein

grows narrower, when the casings come nearer or approach each other, you

may say--that is, when they do approach, which, of course, they do not

always do, particularly in cases where the nature of the formation is

such that they stand apart wider than they otherwise would, and which

geology has failed to account for, although everything in that science

goes to prove that, all things being equal, it would if it did not, or

would not certainly if it did, and then, of course, they are. Do not you