'SUCH was Ritter's narrative,' said I to my two friends. There was a
profound and impressive silence, which lasted a considerable time; then
both men broke into a fusillade of exciting and admiring ejaculations
over the strange incidents of the tale; and this, along with a rattling
fire of questions, was kept up until all hands were about out of breath.
Then my friends began to cool down, and draw off, under shelter of
occasional volleys, into silence and abysmal reverie. For ten minutes
now, there was stillness. Then Rogers said dreamily--
'Ten thousand dollars.'
Adding, after a considerable pause--
'Ten thousand. It is a heap of money.'
Presently the poet inquired--
'Are you going to send it to him right away?'
'Yes,' I said. 'It is a queer question.'
No reply. After a little, Rogers asked, hesitatingly:
'ALL of it?--That is--I mean--'
'Certainly, all of it.'
I was going to say more, but stopped--was stopped by a train of thought
which started up in me. Thompson spoke, but my mind was absent, and I
did not catch what he said. But I heard Rogers answer--
'Yes, it seems so to me. It ought to be quite sufficient; for I don't
see that he has done anything.'
Presently the poet said--
'When you come to look at it, it is more than sufficient. Just look at
it--five thousand dollars! Why, he couldn't spend it in a lifetime! And
it would injure him, too; perhaps ruin him--you want to look at that. In
a little while he would throw his last away, shut up his shop, maybe
take to drinking, maltreat his motherless children, drift into other
evil courses, go steadily from bad to worse--'
'Yes, that's it,' interrupted Rogers, fervently, 'I've seen it a hundred
times--yes, more than a hundred. You put money into the hands of a man
like that, if you want to destroy him, that's all; just put money into
his hands, it's all you've got to do; and if it don't pull him down, and
take all the usefulness out of him, and all the self-respect and
everything, then I don't know human nature--ain't that so, Thompson?
And even if we were to give him a THIRD of it; why, in less than six
months--'
'Less than six WEEKS, you'd better say!' said I, warming up and breaking
in. 'Unless he had that three thousand dollars in safe hands where he
couldn't touch it, he would no more last you six weeks than--'
'Of COURSE he wouldn't,' said Thompson; 'I've edited books for that kind
of people; and the moment they get their hands on the royalty--maybe
it's three thousand, maybe it's two thousand--'
'What business has that shoemaker with two thousand dollars, I should
like to know?' broke in Rogers, earnestly. 'A man perhaps perfectly
contented now, there in Mannheim, surrounded by his own class, eating
his bread with the appetite which laborious industry alone can give,
enjoying his humble life, honest, upright, pure in heart; and BLEST!--
yes, I say blest! blest above all the myriads that go in silk attire and
walk the empty artificial round of social folly--but just you put that
temptation before him once! just you lay fifteen hundred dollars before
a man like that, and say--'
'Fifteen hundred devils!' cried I, 'FIVE hundred would rot his
principles, paralyze his industry, drag him to the rumshop, thence to
the gutter, thence to the almshouse, thence to ----'
'WHY put upon ourselves this crime, gentlemen?' interrupted the poet
earnestly and appealingly. 'He is happy where he is, and AS he is.
Every sentiment of honor, every sentiment of charity, every sentiment of
high and sacred benevolence warns us, beseeches us, commands us to leave
him undisturbed. That is real friendship, that is true friendship. We
could follow other courses that would be more showy; but none that would
be so truly kind and wise, depend upon it.'
After some further talk, it became evident that each of us, down in his
heart, felt some misgivings over this settlement of the matter. It was
manifest that we all felt that we ought to send the poor shoemaker
SOMETHING. There was long and thoughtful discussion of this point; and
we finally decided to send him a chromo.
Well, now that everything seemed to be arranged satisfactorily to
everybody concerned, a new trouble broke out: it transpired that these
two men were expecting to share equally in the money with me. That was
not my idea. I said that if they got half of it between them they might
consider themselves lucky. Rogers said--
'Who would have had ANY if it hadn't been for me? I flung out the first
hint--but for that it would all have gone to the shoemaker.'
Thompson said that he was thinking of the thing himself at the very
moment that Rogers had originally spoken.
I retorted that the idea would have occurred to me plenty soon enough,
and without anybody's help. I was slow about thinking, maybe, but I was
sure.
This matter warmed up into a quarrel; then into a fight; and each man
got pretty badly battered. As soon as I had got myself mended up after
a fashion, I ascended to the hurricane deck in a pretty sour humor. I
found Captain McCord there, and said, as pleasantly as my humor would
permit--
'I have come to say good-bye, captain. I wish to go ashore at
Napoleon.'
'Go ashore where?'
'Napoleon.'
The captain laughed; but seeing that I was not in a jovial mood, stopped
that and said--
'But are you serious?'
'Serious? I certainly am.'
The captain glanced up at the pilot-house and said--
'He wants to get off at Napoleon!'
'Napoleon ?'
'That's what he says.'
'Great Caesar's ghost!'
Uncle Mumford approached along the deck. The captain said--
'Uncle, here's a friend of yours wants to get off at Napoleon!'
'Well, by ---?'
I said--
'Come, what is all this about? Can't a man go ashore at Napoleon if he
wants to?'
'Why, hang it, don't you know? There ISN'T any Napoleon any more.
Hasn't been for years and years. The Arkansas River burst through it,
tore it all to rags, and emptied it into the Mississippi!'
'Carried the WHOLE town away?-banks, churches, jails, newspaper-offices,
court-house, theater, fire department, livery stable EVERYTHING ?'
'Everything. just a fifteen-minute job.' or such a matter. Didn't
leave hide nor hair, shred nor shingle of it, except the fag-end of a
shanty and one brick chimney. This boat is paddling along right now,
where the dead-center of that town used to be; yonder is the brick
chimney-all that's left of Napoleon. These dense woods on the right used
to be a mile back of the town. Take a look behind you--up-stream--now
you begin to recognize this country, don't you?'
'Yes, I do recognize it now. It is the most wonderful thing I ever
heard of; by a long shot the most wonderful--and unexpected.'
Mr. Thompson and Mr. Rogers had arrived, meantime, with satchels and
umbrellas, and had silently listened to the captain's news. Thompson put
a half-dollar in my hand and said softly--
'For my share of the chromo.'
Rogers followed suit.
Yes, it was an astonishing thing to see the Mississippi rolling between
unpeopled shores and straight over the spot where I used to see a good
big self-complacent town twenty years ago. Town that was county-seat of
a great and important county; town with a big United States marine
hospital; town of innumerable fights--an inquest every day; town where I
had used to know the prettiest girl, and the most accomplished in the
whole Mississippi Valley; town where we were handed the first printed
news of the 'Pennsylvania's' mournful disaster a quarter of a century
ago; a town no more--swallowed up, vanished, gone to feed the fishes;
nothing left but a fragment of a shanty and a crumbling brick chimney!