N the course of the tug-boat gossip, it came out that outof every five of my former friends who had quitted the river,four had chosen farming as an occupation. Of course this was notbecause they were peculiarly gifted, agriculturally, and thusmore likely to succeed as farmers than in other industries:
the reason for their choice must be traced to some other source.
Doubtless they chose farming because that life is privateand secluded from irruptions of undesirable strangers--like the pilot-house hermitage. And doubtless they also choseit because on a thousand nights of black storm and dangerthey had noted the twinkling lights of solitary farm-houses,as the boat swung by, and pictured to themselves the serenityand security and coziness of such refuges at such times,and so had by-and-bye come to dream of that retired and peacefullife as the one desirable thing to long for, anticipate, earn, andat last enjoy.
But I did not learn that any of these pilot-farmers had astonished anybodywith their successes. Their farms do not support them: they supporttheir farms. The pilot-farmer disappears from the river annually,about the breaking of spring, and is seen no more till next frost.
Then he appears again, in damaged homespun, combs the hayseedout of his hair, and takes a pilot-house berth for the winter.
In this way he pays the debts which his farming has achieved duringthe agricultural season. So his river bondage is but half broken;he is still the river's slave the hardest half of the year.
One of these men bought a farm, but did not retire to it.
He knew a trick worth two of that. He did not propose to pauperizehis farm by applying his personal ignorance to working it.
No, he put the farm into the hands of an agriculturalexpert to be worked on shares--out of every three loadsof corn the expert to have two and the pilot the third.
But at the end of the season the pilot received no corn.
The expert explained that his share was not reached. The farmproduced only two loads.
Some of the pilots whom I had known had had adventures--the outcome fortunate, sometimes, but not in all cases.
Captain Montgomery, whom I had steered for when he was a pilot,commanded the Confederate fleet in the great battle before Memphis;when his vessel went down, he swam ashore, fought his way througha squad of soldiers, and made a gallant and narrow escape.
He was always a cool man; nothing could disturb his serenity.
Once when he was captain of the 'Crescent City,' I was bringingthe boat into port at New Orleans, and momently expecting ordersfrom the hurricane deck, but received none. I had stoppedthe wheels, and there my authority and responsibility ceased.
It was evening--dim twilight--the captain's hat was perched uponthe big bell, and I supposed the intellectual end of the captainwas in it, but such was not the case. The captain was very strict;therefore I knew better than to touch a bell without orders.
My duty was to hold the boat steadily on her calamitous course,and leave the consequences to take care of themselves--which I did.
So we went plowing past the sterns of steamboats and getting closerand closer--the crash was bound to come very soon--and still that hatnever budged; for alas, the captain was napping in the texas....
Things were becoming exceedingly nervous and uncomfortable.
It seemed to me that the captain was not going to appear in timeto see the entertainment. But he did. Just as we were walkinginto the stern of a steamboat, he stepped out on deck, and said,with heavenly serenity, 'Set her back on both'--which I did;but a trifle late, however, for the next moment we went smashing throughthat other boat's flimsy outer works with a most prodigious racket.
The captain never said a word to me about the matter afterwards,except to remark that I had done right, and that he hoped I would nothesitate to act in the same way again in like circumstances.
One of the pilots whom I had known when I was on the riverhad died a very honorable death. His boat caught fire,and he remained at the wheel until he got her safe to land.
Then he went out over the breast-board with his clothingin flames, and was the last person to get ashore.
He died from his injuries in the course of two or three hours,and his was the only life lost.
The history of Mississippi piloting affords six or seven instances of thissort of martyrdom, and half a hundred instances of escapes from a like fatewhich came within a second or two of being fatally too late; BUT THEREIS NO INSTANCE OF A PILOT DESERTING HIS POST TO SAVE HIS LIFE WHILE BYREMAINING AND SACRIFICING IT HE MIGHT SECURE OTHER LIVES FROM DESTRUCTION.
It is well worth while to set down this noble fact, and well worth while toput it in italics, too.
The 'cub' pilot is early admonished to despise all perilsconnected with a pilot's calling, and to prefer any sortof death to the deep dishonor of deserting his postwhile there is any possibility of his being useful in it.
And so effectively are these admonitions inculcated,that even young and but half-tried pilots can be depended uponto stick to the wheel, and die there when occasion requires.
In a Memphis graveyard is buried a young fellow who perishedat the wheel a great many years ago, in White River, to savethe lives of other men. He said to the captain that if the firewould give him time to reach a sand bar, some distance away,all could be saved, but that to land against the bluff bankof the river would be to insure the loss of many lives.
He reached the bar and grounded the boat in shallow water;but by that time the flames had closed around him,and in escaping through them he was fatally burned.
He had been urged to fly sooner, but had replied as becamea pilot to reply--'I will not go. If I go, nobody will be saved; if I stay,no one will be lost but me. I will stay.'
There were two hundred persons on board, and no life was lost but the pilot's.
There used to be a monument to this young fellow, in that Memphis graveyard.
While we tarried in Memphis on our down trip, I started out to look for it,but our time was so brief that I was obliged to turn back before myobject was accomplished.
The tug-boat gossip informed me that Dick Kennet was dead--blown up, near Memphis, and killed; that several others whomI had known had fallen in the war--one or two of them shotdown at the wheel; that another and very particular friend,whom I had steered many trips for, had stepped out of his housein New Orleans, one night years ago, to collect some moneyin a remote part of the city, and had never been seen again--was murdered and thrown into the river, it was thought; that BenThornburgh was dead long ago; also his wild 'cub' whom I usedto quarrel with, all through every daylight watch. A heedless,reckless creature he was, and always in hot water, always in mischief.
An Arkansas passenger brought an enormous bear aboard, one day,and chained him to a life-boat on the hurricane deck.
Thornburgh's 'cub' could not rest till he had gone there and unchainedthe bear, to 'see what he would do.' He was promptly gratified.
The bear chased him around and around the deck, for miles and miles,with two hundred eager faces grinning through the railingsfor audience, and finally snatched off the lad's coat-tailand went into the texas to chew it. The off-watch turnedout with alacrity, and left the bear in sole possession.
He presently grew lonesome, and started out for recreation.
He ranged the whole boat--visited every part of it, with anadvance guard of fleeing people in front of him and a voicelessvacancy behind him; and when his owner captured him at last,those two were the only visible beings anywhere; everybody elsewas in hiding, and the boat was a solitude.
I was told that one of my pilot friends fell dead at the wheel,from heart disease, in 1869. The captain was on the roof at the time.
He saw the boat breaking for the shore; shouted, and got no answer;ran up, and found the pilot lying dead on the floor.
Mr. Bixby had been blown up, in Madrid bend; was not injured,but the other pilot was lost.
George Ritchie had been blown up near Memphis--blown intothe river from the wheel, and disabled. The water wasvery cold; he clung to a cotton bale--mainly with his teeth--and floated until nearly exhausted, when he was rescuedby some deck hands who were on a piece of the wreck.
They tore open the bale and packed him in the cotton,and warmed the life back into him, and got him safe to Memphis.
He is one of Bixby's pilots on the 'Baton Rouge' now.
Into the life of a steamboat clerk, now dead, had dropped a bitof romance--somewhat grotesque romance, but romance nevertheless.
When I knew him he was a shiftless young spendthrift, boisterous,goodhearted, full of careless generosities, and pretty conspicuouslypromising to fool his possibilities away early, and come to nothing.
In a Western city lived a rich and childless old foreigner and his wife;and in their family was a comely young girl--sort of friend, sort of servant.
The young clerk of whom I have been speaking--whose name was notGeorge Johnson, but who shall be called George Johnson for the purposesof this narrative--got acquainted with this young girl, and they sinned;and the old foreigner found them out, and rebuked them. Being ashamed,they lied, and said they were married; that they had been privately married.
Then the old foreigner's hurt was healed, and he forgave and blessed them.
After that, they were able to continue their sin without concealment.
By-and-bye the foreigner's wife died; and presently he followed after her.
Friends of the family assembled to mourn; and among the mournerssat the two young sinners. The will was opened and solemnly read.
It bequeathed every penny of that old man's great wealth to MRS.
GEORGE JOHNSON!
And there was no such person. The young sinners fled forth then,and did a very foolish thing: married themselves before anobscure Justice of the Peace, and got him to antedate the thing.
That did no sort of good. The distant relatives flocked in and exposedthe fraudful date with extreme suddenness and surprising ease,and carried off the fortune, leaving the Johnsons very legitimately,and legally, and irrevocably chained together in honorable marriage,but with not so much as a penny to bless themselves withal.
Such are the actual facts; and not all novels have for a base sotelling a situation.
WE had some talk about Captain Isaiah Sellers, now many years dead.
He was a fine man, a high-minded man, and greatly respected both ashore and onthe river. He was very tall, well built, and handsome; and in his old age--as I remember him--his hair was as black as an Indian's, and his eyeand hand were as strong and steady and his nerve and judgment as firmand clear as anybody's, young or old, among the fraternity of pilots.
He was the patriarch of the craft; he had been a keelboat pilot before the dayof steamboats; and a steamboat pilot before any other steamboat pilot,still surviving at the time I speak of, had ever turned a wheel.
Consequently his brethren held him in the sort of awe in which illustrioussurvivors of a bygone age are always held by their associates.
He knew how he was regarded, and perhaps this fact added some trifleof stiffening to his natural dignity, which had been sufficiently stiffin its original state.
He left a diary behind him; but apparently it did not date backto his first steamboat trip, which was said to be 1811, the yearthe first steamboat disturbed the waters of the Mississippi.
At the time of his death a correspondent of the 'St. Louis Republican'
culled the following items from the diary--'In February, 1825, he shipped on board the steamer "Rambler," at Florence,Ala., and made during that year three trips to New Orleans and back--this on the "Gen. Carrol," between Nashville and New Orleans. It was duringhis stay on this boat that Captain Sellers introduced the tap of the bellas a signal to heave the lead, previous to which time it was the customfor the pilot to speak to the men below when soundings were wanted.
The proximity of the forecastle to the pilot-house, no doubt, rendered thisan easy matter; but how different on one of our palaces of the present day.
'In 1827 we find him on board the "President," a boat of twohundred and eighty-five tons burden, and plying between Smithlandand New Orleans. Thence he joined the "Jubilee" in 1828,and on this boat he did his first piloting in the St. Louis trade;his first watch extending from Herculaneum to St. Genevieve.
On May 26, 1836, he completed and left Pittsburgh in chargeof the steamer "Prairie," a boat of four hundred tons, and thefirst steamer with a STATE-ROOM CABIN ever seen at St. Louis.
In 1857 he introduced the signal for meeting boats, and which has,with some slight change, been the universal custom of this day;in fact, is rendered obligatory by act of Congress.
'As general items of river history, we quote the following marginalnotes from his general log--'In March, 1825, Gen. Lafayette left New Orleans for St. Louison the low-pressure steamer "Natchez."'In January, 1828, twenty-one steamers left the New Orleans wharfto celebrate the occasion of Gen. Jackson's visit to that city.
'In 1830 the "North American" made the run from New Orleansto Memphis in six days--best time on record to that date.
It has since been made in two days and ten hours.
'In 1831 the Red River cut-off formed.
'In 1832 steamer "Hudson" made the run from White Riverto Helena, a distance of seventy-five miles, in twelve hours.
This was the source of much talk and speculation amongparties directly interested.
'In 1839 Great Horseshoe cut-off formed.
'Up to the present time, a term of thirty-five years, we ascertain,by reference to the diary, he has made four hundred and sixty roundtrips to New Orleans, which gives a distance of one million one hundredand four thousand miles, or an average of eighty-six miles a day.'
Whenever Captain Sellers approached a body of gossiping pilots,a chill fell there, and talking ceased. For this reason:
whenever six pilots were gathered together, there would alwaysbe one or two newly fledged ones in the lot, and the elderones would be always 'showing off' before these poor fellows;making them sorrowfully feel how callow they were, how recenttheir nobility, and how humble their degree, by talkinglargely and vaporously of old-time experiences on the river;always making it a point to date everything back as far as they could,so as to make the new men feel their newness to the sharpestdegree possible, and envy the old stagers in the like degree.
And how these complacent baldheads WOULD swell, and brag, and lie,and date back--ten, fifteen, twenty years,--and how they did enjoythe effect produced upon the marveling and envying youngsters!
And perhaps just at this happy stage of the proceedings,the stately figure of Captain Isaiah Sellers, that real and onlygenuine Son of Antiquity, would drift solemnly into the midst.
Imagine the size of the silence that would result on the instant.
And imagine the feelings of those bald-heads, and the exultationof their recent audience when the ancient captain would beginto drop casual and indifferent remarks of a reminiscent nature--about islands that had disappeared, and cutoffs that had been made,a generation before the oldest bald-head in the company had ever sethis foot in a pilot-house!
Many and many a time did this ancient mariner appear on the scenein the above fashion, and spread disaster and humiliation around him.
If one might believe the pilots, he always dated his islands back tothe misty dawn of river history; and he never used the same island twice;and never did he employ an island that still existed, or give onea name which anybody present was old enough to have heard of before.
If you might believe the pilots, he was always conscientiously particularabout little details; never spoke of 'the State of Mississippi,'
for instance--no, he would say, 'When the State of Mississippi waswhere Arkansas now is," and would never speak of Louisiana or Missouriin a general way, and leave an incorrect impression on your mind--no, he would say, 'When Louisiana was up the river farther,' or 'WhenMissouri was on the Illinois side.'
The old gentleman was not of literary turn or capacity, but he used to jotdown brief paragraphs of plain practical information about the river,and sign them 'MARK TWAIN,' and give them to the 'New Orleans Picayune.'
They related to the stage and condition of the river, and wereaccurate and valuable; and thus far, they contained no poison.
But in speaking of the stage of the river to-day, at a given point,the captain was pretty apt to drop in a little remark about thisbeing the first time he had seen the water so high or so low atthat particular point for forty-nine years; and now and then he wouldmention Island So-and-so, and follow it, in parentheses, with somesuch observation as 'disappeared in 1807, if I remember rightly.'
In these antique interjections lay poison and bitterness forthe other old pilots, and they used to chaff the 'Mark Twain'
paragraphs with unsparing mockery.
It so chanced that one of these paragraphsof it, in the captain's own hand, has been sent to me from New Orleans.
It reads as follows--VICKSBURG May 4, 1859.
'My opinion for the benefit of the citizens of New Orleans:
The water is higher this far up than it has been since 8.
My opinion is that the water will be feet deep in Canal streetbefore the first of next June. Mrs. Turner's plantation atthe head of Big Black Island is all under water, and it has notbeen since 1815.
'I. Sellers.']>
became the text for my first newspaper article. I burlesquedit broadly, very broadly, stringing my fantastics out to the extentof eight hundred or a thousand words. I was a 'cub' at the time.
I showed my performance to some pilots, and they eagerly rushed it intoprint in the 'New Orleans True Delta.' It was a great pity; for it didnobody any worthy service, and it sent a pang deep into a good man's heart.
There was no malice in my rubbish; but it laughed at the captain.
It laughed at a man to whom such a thing was new and strange and dreadful.
I did not know then, though I do now, that there is no suffering comparablewith that which a private person feels when he is for the first timepilloried in print.
Captain Sellers did me the honor to profoundly detest me from that day forth.
When I say he did me the honor, I am not using empty words.
It was a very real honor to be in the thoughts of so great a man asCaptain Sellers, and I had wit enough to appreciate it and be proud of it.
It was distinction to be loved by such a man; but it was a much greaterdistinction to be hated by him, because he loved scores of people;but he didn't sit up nights to hate anybody but me.
He never printed another paragraph while he lived, and he never againsigned 'Mark Twain' to anything. At the time that the telegraphbrought the news of his death, I was on the Pacific coast.
I was a fresh new journalist, and needed a nom de guerre;so I confiscated the ancient mariner's discarded one,and have done my best to make it remain what it was in his hands--a sign and symbol and warrant that whatever is found in itscompany may be gambled on as being the petrified truth; how Ihave succeeded, it would not be modest in me to say.
The captain had an honorable pride in his professionand an abiding love for it. He ordered his monumentbefore he died, and kept it near him until he did die.
It stands over his grave now, in Bellefontaine cemetery, St. Louis.
It is his image, in marble, standing on duty at the pilot wheel;and worthy to stand and confront criticism, for it represents a manwho in life would have stayed there till he burned to a cinder,if duty required it.
The finest thing we saw on our whole Mississippi trip, we saw as we approachedNew Orleans in the steam-tug. This was the curving frontage of the crescentcity lit up with the white glare of five miles of electric lights.
It was a wonderful sight, and very beautiful.
WE left for St. Louis in the 'City of Baton Rouge,' on a delightfullyhot day, but with the main purpose of my visit but lamely accomplished.
I had hoped to hunt up and talk with a hundred steamboatmen,but got so pleasantly involved in the social life of the town that Igot nothing more than mere five-minute talks with a couple of dozenof the craft.
I was on the bench of the pilot-house when we backed out and'straightened up' for the start--the boat pausing for a 'good ready,'
in the old-fashioned way, and the black smoke piling out of the chimneysequally in the old-fashioned way. Then we began to gather momentum,and presently were fairly under way and booming along.
It was all as natural and familiar--and so were the shoreward sights--as if there had been no break in my river life. There was a 'cub,'
and I judged that he would take the wheel now; and he did.
Captain Bixby stepped into the pilot-house. Presently the cubclosed up on the rank of steamships. He made me nervous,for he allowed too much water to show between our boat and the ships.
I knew quite well what was going to happen, because I could dateback in my own life and inspect the record. The captain looked on,during a silent half-minute, then took the wheel himself,and crowded the boat in, till she went scraping along withina band-breadth of the ships. It was exactly the favor which he haddone me, about a quarter of a century before, in that same spot,the first time I ever steamed out of the port of New Orleans.
It was a very great and sincere pleasure to me to see the thing repeated--with somebody else as victim.
We made Natchez (three hundred miles) in twenty-two hours and a half--much the swiftest passage I have ever made over that piece of water.
The next morning I came on with the four o'clock watch, and saw Ritchiesuccessfully run half a dozen crossings in a fog, using for hisguidance the marked chart devised and patented by Bixby and himself.
This sufficiently evidenced the great value of the chart.
By and by, when the fog began to clear off, I noticed that the reflectionof a tree in the smooth water of an overflowed bank, six hundredyards away, was stronger and blacker than the ghostly tree itself.
The faint spectral trees, dimly glimpsed through the shredding fog,were very pretty things to see.
We had a heavy thunder-storm at Natchez, another at Vicksburg,and still another about fifty miles below Memphis. They hadan old-fashioned energy which had long been unfamiliar to me.
This third storm was accompanied by a raging wind. We tied up to the bankwhen we saw the tempest coming, and everybody left the pilot-house but me.
The wind bent the young trees down, exposing the pale undersideof the leaves; and gust after gust followed, in quick succession,thrashing the branches violently up and down, and to this side and that,and creating swift waves of alternating green and white accordingto the side of the leaf that was exposed, and these waves racedafter each other as do their kind over a wind-tossed field of oats.
No color that was visible anywhere was quite natural--all tintswere charged with a leaden tinge from the solid cloud-bank overhead.
The river was leaden; all distances the same; and even the far-reachingranks of combing white-caps were dully shaded by the dark,rich atmosphere through which their swarming legions marched.
The thunder-peals were constant and deafening; explosion followed explosionwith but inconsequential intervals between, and the reports grew steadilysharper and higher-keyed, and more trying to the ear; the lightningwas as diligent as the thunder, and produced effects which enchantedthe eye and sent electric ecstasies of mixed delight and apprehensionshivering along every nerve in the body in unintermittent procession.
The rain poured down in amazing volume; the ear-splitting thunder-pealsbroke nearer and nearer; the wind increased in fury and began to wrenchoff boughs and tree-tops and send them sailing away through space;the pilot-house fell to rocking and straining and cracking and surging,and I went down in the hold to see what time it was.
People boast a good deal about Alpine thunderstorms;but the storms which I have had the luck to see in the Alps were notthe equals of some which I have seen in the Mississippi Valley.
I may not have seen the Alps do their best, of course,and if they can beat the Mississippi, I don't wish to.
On this up trip I saw a little towhead (infant island) half amile long, which had been formed during the past nineteen years.
Since there was so much time to spare that nineteen yearsof it could be devoted to the construction of a mere towhead,where was the use, originally, in rushing this whole globe throughin six days? It is likely that if more time had been taken,in the first place, the world would have been made right, and thisceaseless improving and repairing would not be necessary now.
But if you hurry a world or a house, you are nearly sure to findout by and by that you have left out a towhead, or a broom-closet,or some other little convenience, here and there, which hasgot to be supplied, no matter how much expense and vexationit may cost.
We had a succession of black nights, going up the river, and it was observablethat whenever we landed, and suddenly inundated the trees with the intensesunburst of the electric light, a certain curious effect was always produced:
hundreds of birds flocked instantly out from the masses of shininggreen foliage, and went careering hither and thither through the white rays,and often a song-bird tuned up and fell to singing. We judged thatthey mistook this superb artificial day for the genuine article.
We had a delightful trip in that thoroughly well-ordered steamer,and regretted that it was accomplished so speedily. By means of diligenceand activity, we managed to hunt out nearly all the old friends.
One was missing, however; he went to his reward, whatever it was,two years ago. But I found out all about him. His case helped meto realize how lasting can be the effect of a very trifling occurrence.
When he was an apprentice-blacksmith in our village, and I a schoolboy,a couple of young Englishmen came to the town and sojourned a while;and one day they got themselves up in cheap royal finery and didthe Richard III swordfight with maniac energy and prodigious powwow,in the presence of the village boys. This blacksmith cub was there,and the histrionic poison entered his bones. This vast, lumbering, ignorant,dull-witted lout was stage-struck, and irrecoverably. He disappeared,and presently turned up in St. Louis. I ran across him there, by and by.
He was standing musing on a street corner, with his left hand on his hip,the thumb of his right supporting his chin, face bowed and frowning,slouch hat pulled down over his forehead--imagining himself to be Othelloor some such character, and imagining that the passing crowd marked histragic bearing and were awestruck.
I joined him, and tried to get him down out of the clouds,but did not succeed. However, he casually informed me, presently,that he was a member of the Walnut Street theater company--and he tried to say it with indifference, but the indifferencewas thin, and a mighty exultation showed through it.
He said he was cast for a part in Julius Caesar, for that night,and if I should come I would see him. IF I should come!
I said I wouldn't miss it if I were dead.
I went away stupefied with astonishment, and saying to myself,'How strange it is! WE always thought this fellow a fool;yet the moment he comes to a great city, where intelligenceand appreciation abound, the talent concealed in this shabbynapkin is at once discovered, and promptly welcomed and honored.'
But I came away from the theater that night disappointed and offended;for I had had no glimpse of my hero, and his name was not in the bills.
I met him on the street the next morning, and before I could speak, he asked--'Did you see me?'
'No, you weren't there.'
He looked surprised and disappointed. He said--'Yes, I was. Indeed I was. I was a Roman soldier.'
'Which one?'
'Why didn't you see them Roman soldiers that stood back there in a rank,and sometimes marched in procession around the stage?'
'Do you mean the Roman army?--those six sandaled roustaboutsin nightshirts, with tin shields and helmets, that marched aroundtreading on each other's heels, in charge of a spider-leggedconsumptive dressed like themselves? '
'That's it! that's it! I was one of them Roman soldiers.
I was the next to the last one. A half a year ago I used to alwaysbe the last one; but I've been promoted.'
Well, they told me that that poor fellow remained a Roman soldier to the last--a matter of thirty-four years. Sometimes they cast him for a 'speaking part,'
but not an elaborate one. He could be trusted to go and say, 'My lord,the carriage waits,' but if they ventured to add a sentence or two to this,his memory felt the strain and he was likely to miss fire. Yet, poor devil,he had been patiently studying the part of Hamlet for more than thirty years,and he lived and died in the belief that some day he would be invitedto play it!
And this is what came of that fleeting visit of those youngEnglishmen to our village such ages and ages ago! What noblehorseshoes this man might have made, but for those Englishmen;and what an inadequate Roman soldier he DID make!
A day or two after we reached St. Louis, I was walking along FourthStreet when a grizzly-headed man gave a sort of start as he passed me,then stopped, came back, inspected me narrowly, with a clouding brow,and finally said with deep asperity--'Look here, HAVE YOU GOT THAT DRINK YET?'
A maniac, I judged, at first. But all in a flash I recognized him.
I made an effort to blush that strained every muscle in me,and answered as sweetly and winningly as ever I knew how--'Been a little slow, but am just this minute closing in on the placewhere they keep it. Come in and help.'
He softened, and said make it a bottle of champagne and he was agreeable.
He said he had seen my name in the papers, and had put all his affairsaside and turned out, resolved to find me or die; and make me answerthat question satisfactorily, or kill me; though the most of his lateasperity had been rather counterfeit than otherwise.
This meeting brought back to me the St. Louis riots of aboutthirty years ago. I spent a week there, at that time,in a boarding-house, and had this young fellow for a neighboracross the hall. We saw some of the fightings and killings;and by and by we went one night to an armory where twohundred young men had met, upon call, to be armed and goforth against the rioters, under command of a military man.
We drilled till about ten o'clock at night; then news camethat the mob were in great force in the lower end of the town,and were sweeping everything before them. Our column moved at once.
It was a very hot night, and my musket was very heavy.
We marched and marched; and the nearer we approached the seatof war, the hotter I grew and the thirstier I got. I was behindmy friend; so, finally, I asked him to hold my musket while Idropped out and got a drink. Then I branched off and went home.
I was not feeling any solicitude about him of course,because I knew he was so well armed, now, that he could takecare of himself without any trouble. If I had had any doubtsabout that, I would have borrowed another musket for him.
I left the city pretty early the next morning, and if thisgrizzled man had not happened to encounter my name in the papersthe other day in St. Louis, and felt moved to seek me out,I should have carried to my grave a heart-torturing uncertaintyas to whether he ever got out of the riots all right or not.
I ought to have inquired, thirty years ago; I know that.
And I would have inquired, if I had had the muskets; but, in thecircumstances, he seemed better fixed to conduct the investigationsthan I was.
One Monday, near the time of our visit to St. Louis,the 'Globe-Democrat' came out with a couple of pages of Sundaystatistics, whereby it appeared that 119,448 St. Louis peopleattended the morning and evening church services the day before,and 23,102 children attended Sunday-school. Thus 142,550 persons,out of the city's total of 400,000 population, respected the dayreligious-wise. I found these statistics, in a condensed form,in a telegram of the Associated Press, and preserved them.
They made it apparent that St. Louis was in a higher stateof grace than she could have claimed to be in my time.
But now that I canvass the figures narrowly, I suspectthat the telegraph mutilated them. It cannot be that thereare more than 150,000 Catholics in the town; the other 250,000must be classified as Protestants. Out of these 250,000,according to this questionable telegram, only 26,362 attendedchurch and Sunday-school, while out of the 150,000 Catholics,116,188 went to church and Sunday-school.
ALL at once the thought came into my mind, 'I have not soughtout Mr. Brown.'
Upon that text I desire to depart from the direct line of my subject,and make a little excursion. I wish to reveal a secret which I havecarried with me nine years, and which has become burdensome.
Upon a certain occasion, nine years ago, I had said, with strong feeling,'If ever I see St. Louis again, I will seek out Mr. Brown, the greatgrain merchant, and ask of him the privilege of shaking him by the hand.'
The occasion and the circumstances were as follows.
A friend of mine, a clergyman, came one evening and said--'I have a most remarkable letter here, which I want to read to you,if I can do it without breaking down. I must preface it withsome explanations, however. The letter is written by an ex-thiefand ex-vagabond of the lowest origin and basest rearing, a manall stained with crime and steeped in ignorance; but, thank God,with a mine of pure gold hidden away in him, as you shall see.
His letter is written to a burglar named Williams, who is servinga nine-year term in a certain State prison, for burglary.
Williams was a particularly daring burglar, and pliedthat trade during a number of years; but he was caughtat last and jailed, to await trial in a town where he hadbroken into a house at night, pistol in hand, and forcedthe owner to hand over to him $8,000 in government bonds.
Williams was not a common sort of person, by any means; he wasa graduate of Harvard College, and came of good New England stock.
His father was a clergyman. While lying in jail, his healthbegan to fail, and he was threatened with consumption.
This fact, together with the opportunity for reflection affordedby solitary confinement, had its effect--its natural effect.
He fell into serious thought; his early training asserted itself withpower, and wrought with strong influence upon his mind and heart.
He put his old life behind him, and became an earnest Christian.
Some ladies in the town heard of this, visited him,and by their encouraging words supported him in his goodresolutions and strengthened him to continue in his new life.
The trial ended in his conviction and sentence to the Stateprison for the term of nine years, as I have before said.
In the prison he became acquainted with the poor wretchreferred to in the beginning of my talk, Jack Hunt,the writer of the letter which I am going to read.
You will see that the acquaintanceship bore fruit for Hunt.
When Hunt's time was out, he wandered to St. Louis;and from that place he wrote his letter to Williams.
The letter got no further than the office of the prison warden,of course; prisoners are not often allowed to receive lettersfrom outside. The prison authorities read this letter,but did not destroy it. They had not the heart to do it.
They read it to several persons, and eventually it fellinto the hands of those ladies of whom I spoke a while ago.
The other day I came across an old friend of mine--a clergyman--who had seen this letter, and was full of it.
The mere remembrance of it so moved him that he couldnot talk of it without his voice breaking. He promisedto get a copy of it for me; and here it is--an exact copy,with all the imperfections of the original preserved.
It has many slang expressions in it--thieves' argot--but theirmeaning has been interlined, in parentheses, by the prisonauthorities'--St. Louis, June 9th 1872.
Mr. W---- friend Charlie if i may call you so: i no you are surprisedto get a letter from me, but i hope you won't be mad at my writing to you.
i want to tell you my thanks for the way you talked to me when i wasin prison--it has led me to try and be a better man; i guess you thoughti did not cair for what you said, & at the first go off I didn't, but inoed you was a man who had don big work with good men & want no sucker,nor want gasing & all the boys knod it.
I used to think at nite what you said, & for it i nocked off swearing monthsbefore my time was up, for i saw it want no good, nohow--the day my timewas up you told me if i would shake the cross (QUIT STEALING) & live onthe square for months, it would be the best job i ever done in my life.
The state agent give me a ticket to here, & on the car i thought more ofwhat you said to me, but didn't make up my mind. When we got to Chicagoon the cars from there to here, I pulled off an old woman's leather;(ROBBED HER OF HER POCKETBOOK) i hadn't no more than got it off when iwished i hadn't done it, for awhile before that i made up my mindto be a square bloke, for months on your word, but forgot it when i sawthe leather was a grip (EASY TO GET)--but i kept clos to her & when shegot out of the cars at a way place i said, marm have you lost anything.
& she tumbled (DISCOVERED) her leather was off (GONE)--is this it says i,giving it to her--well if you aint honest, says she, but i hadn't gotcheak enough to stand that sort of talk, so i left her in a hurry.
When i got here i had $1 and 25 cents left & i didn't get no work for 3days as i aint strong enough for roust about on a steam bote (FOR ADECK HAND)--The afternoon of the 3rd day I spent my last 10 cts for moons(LARGE, ROUND SEA-BISCUIT) & cheese & i felt pretty rough & was thinkingi would have to go on the dipe (PICKING POCKETS) again, when i thoughtof what you once said about a fellows calling on the Lord when he wasin hard luck, & i thought i would try it once anyhow, but when i tryedit i got stuck on the start, & all i could get off wos, Lord give a poorfellow a chance to square it for 3 months for Christ's sake, amen; & ikept a thinking, of it over and over as i went along--about an hour afterthat i was in 4th St. & this is what happened & is the cause of my beingwhere i am now & about which i will tell you before i get done writing.
As i was walking along herd a big noise & saw a horse running away with acarriage with 2 children in it, & I grabed up a peace of box cover fromthe side walk & run in the middle of the street, & when the horse came up ismashed him over the head as hard as i could drive--the bord split to peces& the horse checked up a little & I grabbed the reigns & pulled his headdown until he stopped--the gentleman what owned him came running up & soonas he saw the children were all rite, he shook hands with me and gaveme a $50 green back, & my asking the Lord to help me come into my head,& i was so thunderstruck i couldn't drop the reigns nor say nothing--he saw something was up, & coming back to me said, my boy are you hurt?
& the thought come into my head just then to ask him for work; & i askedhim to take back the bill and give me a job--says he, jump in here &lets talk about it, but keep the money--he asked me if i could take careof horses & i said yes, for i used to hang round livery stables & oftenwould help clean & drive horses, he told me he wanted a man for that work,& would give me $16 a month & bord me. You bet i took that chance at once.
that nite in my little room over the stable i sat a long time thinkingover my past life & of what had just happened & i just got down onmy nees & thanked the Lord for the job & to help me to square it,& to bless you for putting me up to it, & the next morning i done itagain & got me some new togs (CLOTHES) & a bible for i made up my mindafter what the Lord had done for me i would read the bible every niteand morning, & ask him to keep an eye on me. When I had been thereabout a week Mr. Brown (that's his name) came in my room one nite and sawme reading the bible--he asked me if i was a Christian & i told him no--he asked me how it was i read the bible instead of papers & books--Well Charlie i thought i had better give him a square deal in the start,so i told him all about my being in prison & about you, & how i had almostdone give up looking for work & how the Lord got me the job when I asked him;& the only way i had to pay him back was to read the bible & square it,& i asked him to give me a chance for 3 months--he talked to me like a fatherfor a long time, & told me i could stay & then i felt better than everi had done in my life, for i had given Mr. Brown a fair start with me &now i didn't fear no one giving me a back cap (EXPOSING HIS PAST LIFE)& running me off the job--the next morning he called me into the library& gave me another square talk, & advised me to study some every day,& he would help me one or 2 hours every nite, & he gave me a Arithmetic,a spelling book, a Geography & a writing book, & he hers me every nite--he lets me come into the house to prayers every morning, & got me put in abible class in the Sunday School which i likes very much for it helps meto understand my bible better.
Now, Charlie the 3 months on the square are up 2 months ago,& as you said, it is the best job i ever did in my life,& i commenced another of the same sort right away, only itis to God helping me to last a lifetime Charlie--i wrotethis letter to tell you I do think God has forgiven my sins& herd your prayers, for you told me you should pray for me--i no i love to read his word & tell him all my troubles &he helps me i know for i have plenty of chances to stealbut i don't feel to as i once did & now i take more pleasurein going to church than to the theater & that wasnt so once--our minister and others often talk with me & a month agothey wanted me to join the church, but I said no, not now,i may be mistaken in my feelings, i will wait awhile,but now i feel that God has called me & on the first Sundayin July i will join the church--dear friend i wish i couldwrite to you as i feel, but i cant do it yet--you no i learnedto read and write while prisons & i aint got well enough alongto write as i would talk; i no i aint spelled all the words ritein this & lots of other mistakes but you will excuse it i no,for you no i was brought up in a poor house until i run away,& that i never new who my father and mother was & i dontno my right name, & i hope you wont be mad at me, but i haveas much rite to one name as another & i have taken your name,for you wont use it when you get out i no, & you are the mani think most of in the world; so i hope you wont be mad--I am doing well, i put $10 a month in bank with $25 of the $50--if you ever want any or all of it let me know, & it is yours.
i wish you would let me send you some now. I send you with thisa receipt for a year of Littles Living Age, i didn't knowwhat you would like & i told Mr. Brown & he said he thought youwould like it--i wish i was nere you so i could send you chuck(REFRESHMENTS) on holidays; it would spoil this weatherfrom here, but i will send you a box next thanksgiving any way--next week Mr. Brown takes me into his store as liteporter & will advance me as soon as i know a little more--he keeps a big granary store, wholesale--i forgot to tellyou of my mission school, sunday school class--the schoolis in the sunday afternoon, i went out two sunday afternoons,and picked up seven kids (LITTLE BOYS) & got them to come in.
two of them new as much as i did & i had them put in a classwhere they could learn something. i dont no much myself,but as these kids cant read i get on nicely with them.
i make sure of them by going after them every Sundayhour before school time, I also got 4 girls to come.
tell Mack and Harry about me, if they will come out herewhen their time is up i will get them jobs at once.
i hope you will excuse this long letter & all mistakes,i wish i could see you for i cant write as i would talk--i hope the warm weather is doing your lungs good--i was afraid when you was bleeding you would die--give my respects to all the boys and tell them how i am doing--i am doing well and every one here treats me as kind as they can--Mr. Brown is going to write to you sometime--i hope some dayyou will write to me, this letter is from your very truefriendC----W----who you know as Jack Hunt.
I send you Mr. Brown's card. Send my letter to him.
Here was true eloquence; irresistible eloquence;and without a single grace or ornament to help it out.
I have seldom been so deeply stirred by any piece of writing.
The reader of it halted, all the way through, on a lame and broken voice;yet he had tried to fortify his feelings by several privatereadings of the letter before venturing into company with it.
He was practising upon me to see if there was any hope of hisbeing able to read the document to his prayer-meeting withanything like a decent command over his feelings. The resultwas not promising. However, he determined to risk it; and did.
He got through tolerably well; but his audience broke down early,and stayed in that condition to the end.
The fame of the letter spread through the town. A brotherminister came and borrowed the manuscript, put it bodily intoa sermon, preached the sermon to twelve hundred people on aSunday morning, and the letter drowned them in their own tears.
Then my friend put it into a sermon and went before his Sundaymorning congregation with it. It scored another triumph.
The house wept as one individual.
My friend went on summer vacation up into the fishing regionsof our northern British neighbors, and carried this sermonwith him, since he might possibly chance to need a sermon.
He was asked to preach, one day. The little church was full.
Among the people present were the late Dr. J. G. Holland,the late Mr. Seymour of the 'New York Times,' Mr. Page,the philanthropist and temperance advocate, and, I think,Senator Frye, of Maine. The marvelous letter did its wonted work;all the people were moved, all the people wept; the tearsflowed in a steady stream down Dr. Holland's cheeks, and nearlythe same can be said with regard to all who were there.
Mr. Page was so full of enthusiasm over the letter that he saidhe would not rest until he made pilgrimage to that prison,and had speech with the man who had been able to inspire afellow-unfortunate to write so priceless a tract.
Ah, that unlucky Page!--and another man. If they had only been in Jericho,that letter would have rung through the world and stirred all the hearts ofall the nations for a thousand years to come, and nobody might ever have foundout that it was the confoundedest, brazenest, ingeniousest piece of fraudand humbuggery that was ever concocted to fool poor confiding mortals with!
The letter was a pure swindle, and that is the truth.
And take it by and large, it was without a compeer among swindles.
It was perfect, it was rounded, symmetrical, complete, colossal!
The reader learns it at this point; but we didn't learn ittill some miles and weeks beyond this stage of the affair.
My friend came back from the woods, and he and other clergymenand lay missionaries began once more to inundate audienceswith their tears and the tears of said audiences; I begged hardfor permission to print the letter in a magazine and tell the waterystory of its triumphs; numbers of people got copies of the letter,with permission to circulate them in writing, but not in print;copies were sent to the Sandwich Islands and other far regions.
Charles Dudley Warner was at church, one day, when the worn letter was readand wept over. At the church door, afterward, he dropped a peculiarly coldiceberg down the clergyman's back with the question--'Do you know that letter to be genuine?'
It was the first suspicion that had ever been voiced;but it had that sickening effect which first-uttered suspicionsagainst one's idol always have. Some talk followed--'Why--what should make you suspect that it isn't genuine?'
'Nothing that I know of, except that it is too neat, and compact, and fluent,and nicely put together for an ignorant person, an unpractised hand.
I think it was done by an educated man.'
The literary artist had detected the literary machinery.
If you will look at the letter now, you will detect it yourself--it is observable in every line.
Straightway the clergyman went off, with this seed of suspicionsprouting in him, and wrote to a minister residing in that townwhere Williams had been jailed and converted; asked for light;and also asked if a person in the literary line (meaning me)might be allowed to print the letter and tell its history.
He presently received this answer--Rev. -----MY DEAR FRIEND,--In regard to that 'convict's letter' there can beno doubt as to its genuineness. 'Williams,' to whom it was written,lay in our jail and professed to have been converted, and Rev. Mr.----,the chaplain, had great faith in the genuineness of the change--as much as one can have in any such case.
The letter was sent to one of our ladies, who is a Sunday-school teacher,--sent either by Williams himself, or the chaplain of the State'sprison, probably. She has been greatly annoyed in having so much publicity,lest it might seem a breach of confidence, or be an injury to Williams.
In regard to its publication, I can give no permission; though if the namesand places were omitted, and especially if sent out of the country,I think you might take the responsibility and do it.
It is a wonderful letter, which no Christian genius, much lessone unsanctified, could ever have written. As showing the workof grace in a human heart, and in a very degraded and wicked one,it proves its own origin and reproves our weak faith in its powerto cope with any form of wickedness.
'Mr. Brown' of St. Louis, some one said, was a Hartford man.
Do all whom you send from Hartford serve their Master as well?
P.S.--Williams is still in the State's prison, serving out along sentence--of nine years, I think. He has been sick and threatenedwith consumption, but I have not inquired after him lately.
This lady that I speak of corresponds with him, I presume,and will be quite sure to look after him.
This letter arrived a few days after it was written--and up wentMr. Williams's stock again. Mr. Warner's low-down suspicionwas laid in the cold, cold grave, where it apparently belonged.
It was a suspicion based upon mere internal evidence, anyway;and when you come to internal evidence, it's a big field and a gamethat two can play at: as witness this other internal evidence,discovered by the writer of the note above quoted, that 'itis a wonderful letter--which no Christian genius, much lessone unsanctified, could ever have written.'
I had permission now to print--provided I suppressed namesand places and sent my narrative out of the country.
So I chose an Australian magazine for vehicle, as being farenough out of the country, and set myself to work on my article.
And the ministers set the pumps going again, with the letter towork the handles.
But meantime Brother Page had been agitating.
He had not visited the penitentiary, but he had sent a copyof the illustrious letter to the chaplain of that institution,and accompanied it with--apparently inquiries. He got an answer,dated four days later than that other Brother's reassuring epistle;and before my article was complete, it wandered into my hands.
The original is before me, now, and I here append it.
It is pretty well loaded with internal evidence of the mostsolid description--STATE'S PRISON, CHAPLAIN'S OFFICE, July 11, 1873.
DEAR BRO. PAGE,--Herewith please find the letter kindly loaned me.
I am afraid its genuineness cannot be established.
It purports to be addressed to some prisoner here. No such letterever came to a prisoner here. All letters received are carefullyread by officers of the prison before they go into the handsof the convicts, and any such letter could not be forgotten.
Again, Charles Williams is not a Christian man, but a dissolute,cunning prodigal, whose father is a minister of the gospel.
His name is an assumed one. I am glad to have made your acquaintance.
I am preparing a lecture upon life seen through prison bars,and should like to deliver the same in your vicinity.
And so ended that little drama. My poor article went into the fire;for whereas the materials for it were now more abundant andinfinitely richer than they had previously been, there were partiesall around me, who, although longing for the publication before,were a unit for suppression at this stage and complexion of the game.
They said: 'Wait--the wound is too fresh, yet.' All the copiesof the famous letter except mine disappeared suddenly; and from thattime onward, the aforetime same old drought set in in the churches.
As a rule, the town was on a spacious grin for a while, but therewere places in it where the grin did not appear, and where it wasdangerous to refer to the ex-convict's letter.
A word of explanation. 'Jack Hunt,' the professed writer of the letter,was an imaginary person. The burglar Williams--Harvard graduate,son of a minister--wrote the letter himself, to himself: got it smuggledout of the prison; got it conveyed to persons who had supported andencouraged him in his conversion--where he knew two things would happen:
the genuineness of the letter would not be doubted or inquired into;and the nub of it would be noticed, and would have valuable effect--the effect, indeed, of starting a movement to get Mr. Williams pardonedout of prison.
That 'nub' is so ingeniously, so casually, flung in, and immediatelyleft there in the tail of the letter, undwelt upon, that an indifferentreader would never suspect that it was the heart and core of the epistle,if he even took note of it at all, This is the 'nub'--'i hope the warm weather is doing your lungs good--I WAS AFRAIDWHEN YOU WAS BLEEDING YOU WOULD DIE--give my respects,' etc.
That is all there is of it--simply touch and go--no dwelling upon it.
Nevertheless it was intended for an eye that would be swift to see it;and it was meant to move a kind heart to try to effect the liberation of apoor reformed and purified fellow lying in the fell grip of consumption.
When I for the first time heard that letter read, nine years ago,I felt that it was the most remarkable one I had ever encountered.
And it so warmed me toward Mr. Brown of St. Louis that I said that if everI visited that city again, I would seek out that excellent man and kissthe hem of his garment if it was a new one. Well, I visited St. Louis,but I did not hunt for Mr. Brown; for, alas! the investigationsof long ago had proved that the benevolent Brown, like 'Jack Hunt,'
was not a real person, but a sheer invention of that gifted rascal,Williams--burglar, Harvard graduate, son of a clergyman.
WE took passage in one of the fast boats of the St. Louis and St. PaulPacket Company, and started up the river.
When I, as a boy, first saw the mouth of the Missouri River, it was twenty-twoor twenty-three miles above St. Louis, according to the estimate of pilots;the wear and tear of the banks have moved it down eight miles since then;and the pilots say that within five years the river will cut through andmove the mouth down five miles more, which will bring it within ten milesof St. Louis.
About nightfall we passed the large and flourishing townof Alton, Illinois; and before daylight next morning the townof Louisiana, Missouri, a sleepy village in my day, but a briskrailway center now; however, all the towns out there arerailway centers now. I could not clearly recognize the place.
This seemed odd to me, for when I retired from the rebel armyin '61 I retired upon Louisiana in good order; at least in goodenough order for a person who had not yet learned how to retreataccording to the rules of war, and had to trust to native genius.
It seemed to me that for a first attempt at a retreat it wasnot badly done. I had done no advancing in all that campaignthat was at all equal to it.
There was a railway bridge across the river here well sprinkledwith glowing lights, and a very beautiful sight it was.
At seven in the morning we reached Hannibal, Missouri, where my boyhoodwas spent. I had had a glimpse of it fifteen years ago, and another glimpsesix years earlier, but both were so brief that they hardly counted.
The only notion of the town that remained in my mind was the memoryof it as I had known it when I first quitted it twenty-nine years ago.
That picture of it was still as clear and vivid to me as a photograph.
I stepped ashore with the feeling of one who returns out of adead-and-gone generation. I had a sort of realizing sense of whatthe Bastille prisoners must have felt when they used to come outand look upon Paris after years of captivity, and note how curiouslythe familiar and the strange were mixed together before them.
I saw the new houses--saw them plainly enough--but they did notaffect the older picture in my mind, for through their solid bricksand mortar I saw the vanished houses, which had formerly stood there,with perfect distinctness.
It was Sunday morning, and everybody was abed yet. So I passedthrough the vacant streets, still seeing the town as it was,and not as it is, and recognizing and metaphorically shakinghands with a hundred familiar objects which no longer exist;and finally climbed Holiday's Hill to get a comprehensive view.
The whole town lay spread out below me then, and I could mark and fixevery locality, every detail. Naturally, I was a good deal moved.
I said, 'Many of the people I once knew in this tranquil refuge of mychildhood are now in heaven; some, I trust, are in the other place.'
The things about me and before me made me feel like a boy again--convinced me that I was a boy again, and that I had simply beendreaming an unusually long dream; but my reflections spoiled all that;for they forced me to say, 'I see fifty old houses down yonder,into each of which I could enter and find either a man or a womanwho was a baby or unborn when I noticed those houses last, or agrandmother who was a plump young bride at that time.'
From this vantage ground the extensive view up and down the river,and wide over the wooded expanses of Illinois, is very beautiful--one of the most beautiful on the Mississippi, I think; which isa hazardous remark to make, for the eight hundred miles of riverbetween St. Louis and St. Paul afford an unbroken successionof lovely pictures. It may be that my affection for the one inquestion biases my judgment in its favor; I cannot say as to that.
No matter, it was satisfyingly beautiful to me, and it had thisadvantage over all the other friends whom I was about to greet again:
it had suffered no change; it was as young and fresh and comely and graciousas ever it had been; whereas, the faces of the others would be old,and scarred with the campaigns of life, and marked with their griefsand defeats, and would give me no upliftings of spirit.
An old gentleman, out on an early morning walk, came along, and wediscussed the weather, and then drifted into other matters. I could notremember his face. He said he had been living here twenty-eight years.
So he had come after my time, and I had never seen him before.
I asked him various questions; first about a mate of mine in Sunday school--what became of him?
'He graduated with honor in an Eastern college, wandered off intothe world somewhere, succeeded at nothing, passed out of knowledgeand memory years ago, and is supposed to have gone to the dogs.'
'He was bright, and promised well when he was a boy.'
'Yes, but the thing that happened is what became of it all.'
I asked after another lad, altogether the brightest in our villageschool when I was a boy.
'He, too, was graduated with honors, from an Eastern college;but life whipped him in every battle, straight along, and he diedin one of the Territories, years ago, a defeated man.'
I asked after another of the bright boys.
'He is a success, always has been, always will be, I think.'
I inquired after a young fellow who came to the town to studyfor one of the professions when I was a boy.
'He went at something else before he got through--went from medicineto law, or from law to medicine--then to some other new thing;went away for a year, came back with a young wife; fell to drinking,then to gambling behind the door; finally took his wife and two youngchildren to her father's, and went off to Mexico; went from badto worse, and finally died there, without a cent to buy a shroud,and without a friend to attend the funeral.'
'Pity, for he was the best-natured, and most cheery and hopefulyoung fellow that ever was.'
I named another boy.
'Oh, he is all right. Lives here yet; has a wife and children,and is prospering.'
Same verdict concerning other boys.
I named three school-girls.
'The first two live here, are married and have children;the other is long ago dead--never married.'
I named, with emotion, one of my early sweethearts.
'She is all right. Been married three times; buried two husbands,divorced from the third, and I hear she is getting ready to marryan old fellow out in Colorado somewhere. She's got children scatteredaround here and there, most everywheres.'
The answer to several other inquiries was brief and simple--'Killed in the war.'
I named another boy.
'Well, now, his case is curious! There wasn't a human beingin this town but knew that that boy was a perfect chucklehead;perfect dummy; just a stupid ass, as you may say.
Everybody knew it, and everybody said it. Well, if that veryboy isn't the first lawyer in the State of Missouri to-day,I'm a Democrat!'
'Is that so?'
'It's actually so. I'm telling you the truth.'
'How do you account for it?'
'Account for it? There ain't any accounting for it,except that if you send a damned fool to St. Louis, and youdon't tell them he's a damned fool they'll never find it out.
There's one thing sure--if I had a damned fool I should knowwhat to do with him: ship him to St. Louis--it's the noblestmarket in the world for that kind of property. Well, when youcome to look at it all around, and chew at it and think it over,don't it just bang anything you ever heard of?'
'Well, yes, it does seem to. But don't you think maybe itwas the Hannibal people who were mistaken about the boy,and not the St. Louis people'
'Oh, nonsense! The people here have known him from the very cradle--they knew him a hundred times better than the St. Louis idiots couldhave known him. No, if you have got any damned fools that you wantto realize on, take my advice--send them to St. Louis.'
I mentioned a great number of people whom I had formerly known.
Some were dead, some were gone away, some had prospered,some had come to naught; but as regarded a dozen or so of the lot,the answer was comforting:
'Prosperous--live here yet--town littered with their children.'
I asked about Miss ----Died in the insane asylum three or four years ago--never was out of itfrom the time she went in; and was always suffering, too; never gota shred of her mind back.'
If he spoke the truth, here was a heavy tragedy, indeed.
Thirty-six years in a madhouse, that some young fools might have some fun!
I was a small boy, at the time; and I saw those giddy young ladies cometiptoeing into the room where Miss ---- sat reading at midnight by a lamp.
The girl at the head of the file wore a shroud and a doughface,she crept behind the victim, touched her on the shoulder,and she looked up and screamed, and then fell into convulsions.
She did not recover from the fright, but went mad. In these days itseems incredible that people believed in ghosts so short a time ago.
But they did.
After asking after such other folk as I could call to mind,I finally inquired about MYSELF:
'Oh, he succeeded well enough--another case of damned fool.
If they'd sent him to St. Louis, he'd have succeeded sooner.'
It was with much satisfaction that I recognized the wisdomof having told this candid gentleman, in the beginning,that my name was Smith.
Being left to myself, up there, I went on picking out old houses in thedistant town, and calling back their former inmates out of the moldy past.
Among them I presently recognized the house of the father of Lem Hackett(fictitious name). It carried me back more than a generation in a moment,and landed me in the midst of a time when the happenings of life were notthe natural and logical results of great general laws, but of special orders,and were freighted with very precise and distinct purposes--partly punitivein intent, partly admonitory; and usually local in application.
When I was a small boy, Lem Hackett was drowned--on a Sunday.
He fell out of an empty flat-boat, where he was playing.
Being loaded with sin, he went to the bottom like an anvil.
He was the only boy in the village who slept that night.
We others all lay awake, repenting. We had not needed the information,delivered from the pulpit that evening, that Lem's was a caseof special judgment--we knew that, already. There was a ferociousthunder-storm, that night, and it raged continuously until near dawn.
The winds blew, the windows rattled, the rain swept along the roofin pelting sheets, and at the briefest of intervals the inky blacknessof the night vanished, the houses over the way glared out whiteand blinding for a quivering instant, then the solid darkness shutdown again and a splitting peal of thunder followed, which seemedto rend everything in the neighborhood to shreds and splinters.
I sat up in bed quaking and shuddering, waiting for the destructionof the world, and expecting it. To me there was nothing strangeor incongruous in heaven's making such an uproar about Lem Hackett.
Apparently it was the right and proper thing to do.
Not a doubt entered my mind that all the angels were grouped together,discussing this boy's case and observing the awful bombardmentof our beggarly little village with satisfaction and approval.
There was one thing which disturbed me in the most serious way;that was the thought that this centering of the celestial intereston our village could not fail to attract the attention of the observersto people among us who might otherwise have escaped notice for years.
I felt that I was not only one of those people, but the very one mostlikely to be discovered. That discovery could have but one result:
I should be in the fire with Lem before the chill of the riverhad been fairly warmed out of him. I knew that this would beonly just and fair. I was increasing the chances against myselfall the time, by feeling a secret bitterness against Lem for havingattracted this fatal attention to me, but I could not help it--this sinful thought persisted in infesting my breast in spite of me.
Every time the lightning glared I caught my breath, and judged I was gone.
In my terror and misery, I meanly began to suggest other boys,and mention acts of theirs which were wickeder than mine, and peculiarlyneeded punishment--and I tried to pretend to myself that I was simplydoing this in a casual way, and without intent to divert the heavenlyattention to them for the purpose of getting rid of it myself.
With deep sagacity I put these mentions into the form of sorrowingrecollections and left-handed sham-supplications that the sins of thoseboys might be allowed to pass unnoticed--'Possibly they may repent.'
'It is true that Jim Smith broke a window and lied about it--but maybe he did not mean any harm. And although Tom Holmessays more bad words than any other boy in the village,he probably intends to repent--though he has never said he would.
And whilst it is a fact that John Jones did fish a littleon Sunday, once, he didn't really catch anything but only just onesmall useless mud-cat; and maybe that wouldn't have been so awfulif he had thrown it back--as he says he did, but he didn't. Pitybut they would repent of these dreadful things--and maybe they willyet.'
But while I was shamefully trying to draw attention to these poor chaps--who were doubtless directing the celestial attention to me at the same moment,though I never once suspected that--I had heedlessly left my candle burning.
It was not a time to neglect even trifling precautions. There was no occasionto add anything to the facilities for attracting notice to me--so I putthe light out.
It was a long night to me, and perhaps the most distressful one I ever spent.
I endured agonies of remorse for sins which I knew I had committed,and for others which I was not certain about, yet was sure that they hadbeen set down against me in a book by an angel who was wiser than I and didnot trust such important matters to memory. It struck me, by and by,that I had been making a most foolish and calamitous mistake, in one respect:
doubtless I had not only made my own destruction sure by directing attentionto those other boys, but had already accomplished theirs!--Doubtless thelightning had stretched them all dead in their beds by this time!
The anguish and the fright which this thought gave me made my previoussufferings seem trifling by comparison.
Things had become truly serious. I resolved to turn overa new leaf instantly; I also resolved to connect myselfwith the church the next day, if I survived to see itssun appear. I resolved to cease from sin in all its forms,and to lead a high and blameless life for ever after.
I would be punctual at church and Sunday-school; visit the sick;carry baskets of victuals to the poor (simply to fulfilthe regulation conditions, although I knew we had none among usso poor but they would smash the basket over my head for my pains);I would instruct other boys in right ways, and take the resultingtrouncings meekly; I would subsist entirely on tracts;I would invade the rum shop and warn the drunkard--and finally,if I escaped the fate of those who early become too good to live,I would go for a missionary.
The storm subsided toward daybreak, and I dozed gradually to sleepwith a sense of obligation to Lem Hackett for going to eternal sufferingin that abrupt way, and thus preventing a far more dreadful disaster--my own loss.
But when I rose refreshed, by and by, and found that those other boyswere still alive, I had a dim sense that perhaps the whole thingwas a false alarm; that the entire turmoil had been on Lem's accountand nobody's else. The world looked so bright and safe that theredid not seem to be any real occasion to turn over a new leaf.
I was a little subdued, during that day, and perhaps the next;after that, my purpose of reforming slowly dropped out of my mind,and I had a peaceful, comfortable time again, until the next storm.
That storm came about three weeks later; and it was the mostunaccountable one, to me, that I had ever experienced;for on the afternoon of that day, 'Dutchy' was drowned.
Dutchy belonged to our Sunday-school. He was a Germanlad who did not know enough to come in out of the rain;but he was exasperatingly good, and had a prodigious memory.
One Sunday he made himself the envy of all the youth and the talkof all the admiring village, by reciting three thousand verses ofScripture without missing a word; then he went off the very next dayand got drowned.
Circumstances gave to his death a peculiar impressiveness.
We were all bathing in a muddy creek which had a deep holein it, and in this hole the coopers had sunk a pile of greenhickory hoop poles to soak, some twelve feet under water.
We were diving and 'seeing who could stay under longest.'
We managed to remain down by holding on to the hoop poles.
Dutchy made such a poor success of it that he was hailed withlaughter and derision every time his head appeared above water.
At last he seemed hurt with the taunts, and begged usto stand still on the bank and be fair with him and give himan honest count--'be friendly and kind just this once, and notmiscount for the sake of having the fun of laughing at him.'
Treacherous winks were exchanged, and all said 'All right, Dutchy--go ahead, we'll play fair.'
Dutchy plunged in, but the boys, instead of beginning to count,followed the lead of one of their number and scamperedto a range of blackberry bushes close by and hid behind it.
They imagined Dutchy's humiliation, when he should rise aftera superhuman effort and find the place silent and vacant,nobody there to applaud. They were 'so full of laugh' with the idea,that they were continually exploding into muffled cackles.
Time swept on, and presently one who was peeping through the briers,said, with surprise--'Why, he hasn't come up, yet!'
The laughing stopped.
'Boys, it 's a splendid dive,' said one.
'Never mind that,' said another, 'the joke on him is all the better for it.'
There was a remark or two more, and then a pause.
Talking ceased, and all began to peer through the vines.
Before long, the boys' faces began to look uneasy, then anxious,then terrified. Still there was no movement of the placid water.
Hearts began to beat fast, and faces to turn pale.
We all glided out, silently, and stood on the bank, our horrifiedeyes wandering back and forth from each other's countenancesto the water.
'Somebody must go down and see!'
Yes, that was plain; but nobody wanted that grisly task.
'Draw straws!'
So we did--with hands which shook so, that we hardly knewwhat we were about. The lot fell to me, and I went down.
The water was so muddy I could not see anything, but I felt aroundamong the hoop poles, and presently grasped a limp wrist whichgave me no response--and if it had I should not have known it,I let it go with such a frightened suddenness.
The boy had been caught among the hoop poles and entangledthere, helplessly. I fled to the surface and told the awful news.
Some of us knew that if the boy were dragged out at once he mightpossibly be resuscitated, but we never thought of that. We did notthink of anything; we did not know what to do, so we did nothing--except that the smaller lads cried, piteously, and we all struggledfrantically into our clothes, putting on anybody's that came handy,and getting them wrong-side-out and upside-down, as a rule.
Then we scurried away and gave the alarm, but none of us went back to seethe end of the tragedy. We had a more important thing to attend to:
we all flew home, and lost not a moment in getting ready to leada better life.
The night presently closed down. Then came on that tremendousand utterly unaccountable storm. I was perfectly dazed; I couldnot understand it. It seemed to me that there must be some mistake.
The elements were turned loose, and they rattled and banged and blazedaway in the most blind and frantic manner. All heart and hope wentout of me, and the dismal thought kept floating through my brain,'If a boy who knows three thousand verses by heart is not satisfactory,what chance is there for anybody else?'
Of course I never questioned for a moment that the storm wason Dutchy's account, or that he or any other inconsequentialanimal was worthy of such a majestic demonstration from on high;the lesson of it was the only thing that troubled me;for it convinced me that if Dutchy, with all his perfections,was not a delight, it would be vain for me to turn over a new leaf,for I must infallibly fall hopelessly short of that boy,no matter how hard I might try. Nevertheless I did turn it over--a highly educated fear compelled me to do that--but succeedingdays of cheerfulness and sunshine came bothering around,and within a month I had so drifted backward that again Iwas as lost and comfortable as ever.
Breakfast time approached while I mused these musings and calledthese ancient happenings back to mind; so I got me back intothe present and went down the hill.
On my way through town to the hotel, I saw the house which wasmy home when I was a boy. At present rates, the people who nowoccupy it are of no more value than I am; but in my time theywould have been worth not less than five hundred dollars apiece.
They are colored folk.
After breakfast, I went out alone again, intending to hunt up someof the Sunday-schools and see how this generation of pupils mightcompare with their progenitors who had sat with me in those placesand had probably taken me as a model--though I do not rememberas to that now. By the public square there had been in my daya shabby little brick church called the 'Old Ship of Zion,'
which I had attended as a Sunday-school scholar; and I foundthe locality easily enough, but not the old church; it was gone,and a trig and rather hilarious new edifice was in its place.
The pupils were better dressed and better looking than were thoseof my time; consequently they did not resemble their ancestors;and consequently there was nothing familiar to me in their faces.
Still, I contemplated them with a deep interest and a yearning wistfulness,and if I had been a girl I would have cried; for they were the offspring,and represented, and occupied the places, of boys and girls someof whom I had loved to love, and some of whom I had loved to hate,but all of whom were dear to me for the one reason or the other,so many years gone by--and, Lord, where be they now!
I was mightily stirred, and would have been grateful to be allowedto remain unmolested and look my fill; but a bald-summited superintendentwho had been a tow-headed Sunday-school mate of mine on that spotin the early ages, recognized me, and I talked a flutter of wildnonsense to those children to hide the thoughts which were in me,and which could not have been spoken without a betrayal of feelingthat would have been recognized as out of character with me.
Making speeches without preparation is no gift of mine;and I was resolved to shirk any new opportunity, but inthe next and larger Sunday-school I found myself in the rearof the assemblage; so I was very willing to go on the platforma moment for the sake of getting a good look at the scholars.
On the spur of the moment I could not recall any of the old idiotictalks which visitors used to insult me with when I was a pupil there;and I was sorry for this, since it would have given me timeand excuse to dawdle there and take a long and satisfying lookat what I feel at liberty to say was an array of fresh youngcomeliness not matchable in another Sunday-school of the same size.
As I talked merely to get a chance to inspect; and as I strungout the random rubbish solely to prolong the inspection,I judged it but decent to confess these low motives,and I did so.
If the Model Boy was in either of these Sunday-schools, I did not see him.
The Model Boy of my time--we never had but the one--was perfect:
perfect in manners, perfect in dress, perfect in conduct, perfect infilial piety, perfect in exterior godliness; but at bottom he was aprig; and as for the contents of his skull, they could have changedplace with the contents of a pie and nobody would have been the worse offfor it but the pie. This fellow's reproachlessness was a standingreproach to every lad in the village. He was the admiration of all themothers, and the detestation of all their sons. I was told what becameof him, but as it was a disappointment to me, I will not enter intodetails. He succeeded in life.
DURING my three days' stay in the town, I woke up every morningwith the impression that I was a boy--for in my dreams the faceswere all young again, and looked as they had looked in the old times--but I went to bed a hundred years old, every night--for meantime Ihad been seeing those faces as they are now.
Of course I suffered some surprises, along at first,before I had become adjusted to the changed state of things.
I met young ladies who did not seem to have changed at all;but they turned out to be the daughters of the young ladiesI had in mind--sometimes their grand-daughters. When youare told that a stranger of fifty is a grandmother, there isnothing surprising about it; but if, on the contrary, she isa person whom you knew as a little girl, it seems impossible.
You say to yourself, 'How can a little girl be a grandmother.'
It takes some little time to accept and realize the fact that while youhave been growing old, your friends have not been standing still,in that matter.
I noticed that the greatest changes observable were with the women,not the men. I saw men whom thirty years had changed but slightly;but their wives had grown old. These were good women; it is very wearingto be good.
There was a saddler whom I wished to see; but he was gone.
Dead, these many years, they said. Once or twice a day,the saddler used to go tearing down the street, putting on hiscoat as he went; and then everybody knew a steamboat was coming.
Everybody knew, also, that John Stavely was not expecting anybodyby the boat--or any freight, either; and Stavely must have knownthat everybody knew this, still it made no difference to him;he liked to seem to himself to be expecting a hundred thousandtons of saddles by this boat, and so he went on all his life,enjoying being faithfully on hand to receive and receiptfor those saddles, in case by any miracle they should come.
A malicious Quincy paper used always to refer to this town, in derisionas 'Stavely's Landing.' Stavely was one of my earliest admirations;I envied him his rush of imaginary business, and the displayhe was able to make of it, before strangers, as he went flyingdown the street struggling with his fluttering coat.
But there was a carpenter who was my chiefest hero. He was a mighty liar,but I did not know that; I believed everything he said. He was a romantic,sentimental, melodramatic fraud, and his bearing impressed me with awe.
I vividly remember the first time he took me into his confidence. He wasplaning a board, and every now and then he would pause and heave a deep sigh;and occasionally mutter broken sentences--confused and not intelligible--but out of their midst an ejaculation sometimes escaped which made me shiverand did me good: one was, 'O God, it is his blood!' I sat on the tool-chestand humbly and shudderingly admired him; for I judged he was full of crime.
At last he said in a low voice--'My little friend, can you keep a secret?'
I eagerly said I could.
'A dark and dreadful one?'
I satisfied him on that point.
'Then I will tell you some passages in my history; for oh,I MUST relieve my burdened soul, or I shall die! '
He cautioned me once more to be 'as silent as the grave;'
then he told me he was a 'red-handed murderer.'
He put down his plane, held his hands out before him,contemplated them sadly, and said--'Look--with these hands I have taken the lives of thirty human beings!'
The effect which this had upon me was an inspiration to him,and he turned himself loose upon his subject with interest and energy.
He left generalizing, and went into details,--began with his first murder;described it, told what measures he had taken to avert suspicion;then passed to his second homicide, his third, his fourth, and so on.
He had always done his murders with a bowie-knife, and he made all myhairs rise by suddenly snatching it out and showing it to me.
At the end of this first seance I went home with six of hisfearful secrets among my freightage, and found them a greathelp to my dreams, which had been sluggish for a while back.
I sought him again and again, on my Saturday holidays; in fact Ispent the summer with him--all of it which was valuable to me.
His fascinations never diminished, for he threw something freshand stirring, in the way of horror, into each successive murder.
He always gave names, dates, places--everything. This by and by enabledme to note two things: that he had killed his victims in everyquarter of the globe, and that these victims were always named Lynch.
The destruction of the Lynches went serenely on, Saturday after Saturday,until the original thirty had multiplied to sixty--and more to beheard from yet; then my curiosity got the better of my timidity,and I asked how it happened that these justly punished persons all borethe same name.
My hero said he had never divulged that dark secret to anyliving being; but felt that he could trust me, and thereforehe would lay bare before me the story of his sad and blighted life.
He had loved one 'too fair for earth,' and she had reciprocated'with all the sweet affection of her pure and noble nature.'
But he had a rival, a 'base hireling' named Archibald Lynch,who said the girl should be his, or he would 'dye his handsin her heart's best blood.' The carpenter, 'innocent andhappy in love's young dream,' gave no weight to the threat,but led his 'golden-haired darling to the altar,' and there,the two were made one; there also, just as the minister's handswere stretched in blessing over their heads, the fell deed was done--with a knife--and the bride fell a corpse at her husband's feet.
And what did the husband do? He plucked forth that knife,and kneeling by the body of his lost one, swore to 'consecratehis life to the extermination of all the human scum that bearthe hated name of Lynch.'
That was it. He had been hunting down the Lynches and slaughtering them,from that day to this--twenty years. He had always used that sameconsecrated knife; with it he had murdered his long array of Lynches,and with it he had left upon the forehead of each victim a peculiar mark--a cross, deeply incised. Said he--'The cross of the Mysterious Avenger is known in Europe, in America,in China, in Siam, in the Tropics, in the Polar Seas, in the deserts of Asia,in all the earth. Wherever in the uttermost parts of the globe, a Lynchhas penetrated, there has the Mysterious Cross been seen, and those whohave seen it have shuddered and said, "It is his mark, he has been here."You have heard of the Mysterious Avenger--look upon him, for before youstands no less a person! But beware--breathe not a word to any soul.
Be silent, and wait. Some morning this town will flock aghast to viewa gory corpse; on its brow will be seen the awful sign, and men will trembleand whisper, "He has been here--it is the Mysterious Avenger's mark!"You will come here, but I shall have vanished; you will see me no more.'
This ass had been reading the 'Jibbenainosay,' no doubt,and had had his poor romantic head turned by it; but as I hadnot yet seen the book then, I took his inventions for truth,and did not suspect that he was a plagiarist.
However, we had a Lynch living in the town; and the more Ireflected upon his impending doom, the more I could not sleep.
It seemed my plain duty to save him, and a still plainerand more important duty to get some sleep for myself,so at last I ventured to go to Mr. Lynch and tell himwhat was about to happen to him--under strict secrecy.
I advised him to 'fly,' and certainly expected him to do it.
But he laughed at me; and he did not stop there; he led medown to the carpenter's shop, gave the carpenter a jeering andscornful lecture upon his silly pretensions, slapped his face,made him get down on his knees and beg--then went off andleft me to contemplate the cheap and pitiful ruin of what,in my eyes, had so lately been a majestic and incomparable hero.
The carpenter blustered, flourished his knife, and doomed thisLynch in his usual volcanic style, the size of his fatefulwords undiminished; but it was all wasted upon me; he was a heroto me no longer, but only a poor, foolish, exposed humbug.
I was ashamed of him, and ashamed of myself; I took no furtherinterest in him, and never went to his shop any more. He was aheavy loss to me, for he was the greatest hero I had ever known.
The fellow must have had some talent; for some of his imaginarymurders were so vividly and dramatically described that I remember alltheir details yet.
The people of Hannibal are not more changed than is the town.
It is no longer a village; it is a city, with a mayor, and a council,and water-works, and probably a debt. It has fifteen thousand people,is a thriving and energetic place, and is paved like the restof the west and south--where a well-paved street and a good sidewalkare things so seldom seen, that one doubts them when he does see them.
The customary half-dozen railways center in Hannibal now,and there is a new depot which cost a hundred thousand dollars.
In my time the town had no specialty, and no commercial grandeur;the daily packet usually landed a passenger and bought a catfish,and took away another passenger and a hatful of freight; but now a hugecommerce in lumber has grown up and a large miscellaneous commerceis one of the results. A deal of money changes hands there now.
Bear Creek--so called, perhaps, because it was always so particularlybare of bears--is hidden out of sight now, under islands andcontinents of piled lumber, and nobody but an expert can find it.
I used to get drowned in it every summer regularly, and bedrained out, and inflated and set going again by some chance enemy;but not enough of it is unoccupied now to drown a person in.
It was a famous breeder of chills and fever in its day.
I remember one summer when everybody in town had thisdisease at once. Many chimneys were shaken down, and allthe houses were so racked that the town had to be rebuilt.
The chasm or gorge between Lover's Leap and the hill west of itis supposed by scientists to have been caused by glacial action.
This is a mistake.
There is an interesting cave a mile or two below Hannibal, among the bluffs.
I would have liked to revisit it, but had not time. In my time the personwho then owned it turned it into a mausoleum for his daughter, aged fourteen.
The body of this poor child was put into a copper cylinder filled withalcohol, and this was suspended in one of the dismal avenues of the cave.
The top of the cylinder was removable; and it was said to be a common thingfor the baser order of tourists to drag the dead face into view and examine itand comment upon it.
THE slaughter-house is gone from the mouth of Bear Creek and so isthe small jail (or 'calaboose') which once stood in its neighborhood.
A citizen asked, 'Do you remember when Jimmy Finn, the town drunkard,was burned to death in the calaboose?'
Observe, now, how history becomes defiled, through lapse of timeand the help of the bad memories of men. Jimmy Finn was notburned in the calaboose, but died a natural death in a tan vat,of a combination of delirium tremens and spontaneous combustion.
When I say natural death, I mean it was a natural death forJimmy Finn to die. The calaboose victim was not a citizen;he was a poor stranger, a harmless whiskey-sodden tramp.
I know more about his case than anybody else; I knew too much of it,in that bygone day, to relish speaking of it. That tramp was wanderingabout the streets one chilly evening, with a pipe in his mouth,and begging for a match; he got neither matches nor courtesy;on the contrary, a troop of bad little boys followed himaround and amused themselves with nagging and annoying him.
I assisted; but at last, some appeal which the wayfarer madefor forbearance, accompanying it with a pathetic reference to hisforlorn and friendless condition, touched such sense of shameand remnant of right feeling as were left in me, and I went awayand got him some matches, and then hied me home and to bed,heavily weighted as to conscience, and unbuoyant in spirit.
An hour or two afterward, the man was arrested and locked upin the calaboose by the marshal--large name for a constable,but that was his title. At two in the morning, the church bells rangfor fire, and everybody turned out, of course--I with the rest.
The tramp had used his matches disastrously: he had set his strawbed on fire, and the oaken sheathing of the room had caught.
When I reached the ground, two hundred men, women, and childrenstood massed together, transfixed with horror, and staringat the grated windows of the jail. Behind the iron bars,and tugging frantically at them, and screaming for help,stood the tramp; he seemed like a black object set againsta sun, so white and intense was the light at his back.
That marshal could not be found, and he had the only key.
A battering-ram was quickly improvised, and the thunder of itsblows upon the door had so encouraging a sound that the spectatorsbroke into wild cheering, and believed the merciful battle won.
But it was not so. The timbers were too strong; they did not yield.
It was said that the man's death-grip still held fast to the barsafter he was dead; and that in this position the fires wrapped himabout and consumed him. As to this, I do not know. What was seenafter I recognized the face that was pleading through the barswas seen by others, not by me.
I saw that face, so situated, every night for a long time afterward;and I believed myself as guilty of the man's death as if I had givenhim the matches purposely that he might burn himself up with them.
I had not a doubt that I should be hanged if my connection withthis tragedy were found out. The happenings and the impressionsof that time are burnt into my memory, and the study of thementertains me as much now as they themselves distressed me then.
If anybody spoke of that grisly matter, I was all ears in a moment,and alert to hear what might be said, for I was always dreadingand expecting to find out that I was suspected; and so fineand so delicate was the perception of my guilty conscience,that it often detected suspicion in the most purposeless remarks,and in looks, gestures, glances of the eye which had no significance,but which sent me shivering away in a panic of fright, just the same.
And how sick it made me when somebody dropped, howsoever carelesslyand barren of intent, the remark that 'murder will out!'
For a boy of ten years, I was carrying a pretty weighty cargo.
All this time I was blessedly forgetting one thing--the fact that I was an inveterate talker in my sleep.
But one night I awoke and found my bed-mate--my younger brother--sitting up in bed and contemplating me by the light of the moon.
I said--'What is the matter?'
'You talk so much I can't sleep.'
I came to a sitting posture in an instant, with my kidneys in my throatand my hair on end.
'What did I say. Quick--out with it--what did I say?'
'Nothing much.'
'It's a lie--you know everything.'
'Everything about what?'
'You know well enough. About THAT.'
'About WHAT?--I don't know what you are talking about.
I think you are sick or crazy or something. But anyway,you're awake, and I'll get to sleep while I've got a chance.'
He fell asleep and I lay there in a cold sweat, turning thisnew terror over in the whirling chaos which did duty as my mind.
The burden of my thought was, How much did I divulge?
How much does he know?--what a distress is this uncertainty!
But by and by I evolved an idea--I would wake my brother and probe himwith a supposititious case. I shook him up, and said--'Suppose a man should come to you drunk--'
'This is foolish--I never get drunk.'
'I don't mean you, idiot--I mean the man. Suppose a MANshould come to you drunk, and borrow a knife, or a tomahawk,or a pistol, and you forgot to tell him it was loaded, and--'
'How could you load a tomahawk?'
'I don't mean the tomahawk, and I didn't say the tomahawk; I said the pistol.
Now don't you keep breaking in that way, because this is serious.
There's been a man killed.'
'What! in this town?'
'Yes, in this town.'
'Well, go on--I won't say a single word.'
'Well, then, suppose you forgot to tell him to be careful with it,because it was loaded, and he went off and shot himself with that pistol--fooling with it, you know, and probably doing it by accident, being drunk.
Well, would it be murder?'
'No--suicide.'
'No, no. I don't mean HIS act, I mean yours: would you be a murdererfor letting him have that pistol?'
After deep thought came this answer--'Well, I should think I was guilty of something--maybe murder--yes, probably murder, but I don't quite know.'
This made me very uncomfortable. However, it was not a decisive verdict.
I should have to set out the real case--there seemed to be no other way.
But I would do it cautiously, and keep a watch out for suspicious effects.
I said--'I was supposing a case, but I am coming to the real one now.
Do you know how the man came to be burned up in the calaboose?'
'No.'
'Haven't you the least idea?'
'Not the least.'
'Wish you may die in your tracks if you have?'
'Yes, wish I may die in my tracks.'
'Well, the way of it was this. The man wanted some matches to lighthis pipe. A boy got him some. The man set fire to the calaboosewith those very matches, and burnt himself up.'
'Is that so?'
'Yes, it is. Now, is that boy a murderer, do you think?'
'Let me see. The man was drunk?'
'Yes, he was drunk.'
'Very drunk?'
'Yes.'
'And the boy knew it?'
'Yes, he knew it.'
There was a long pause. Then came this heavy verdict--'If the man was drunk, and the boy knew it, the boy murdered that man.
This is certain.'
Faint, sickening sensations crept along all the fibers of my body,and I seemed to know how a person feels who hears his death sentencepronounced from the bench. I waited to hear what my brother would say next.
I believed I knew what it would be, and I was right. He said--'I know the boy.'
I had nothing to say; so I said nothing. I simply shuddered.
Then he added--'Yes, before you got half through telling about the thing,I knew perfectly well who the boy was; it was Ben Coontz! '
I came out of my collapse as one who rises from the dead.
I said, with admiration--'Why, how in the world did you ever guess it?'
'You told it in your sleep.'
I said to myself, 'How splendid that is! This is a habitwhich must be cultivated.'
My brother rattled innocently on--'When you were talking in your sleep, you kept mumbling somethingabout "matches," which I couldn't make anything out of; but just now,when you began to tell me about the man and the calaboose and the matches,I remembered that in your sleep you mentioned Ben Coontz two or three times;so I put this and that together, you see, and right away I knew it was Benthat burnt that man up.'
I praised his sagacity effusively. Presently he asked--'Are you going to give him up to the law?'
'No,' I said; 'I believe that this will be a lesson to him.
I shall keep an eye on him, of course, for that is but right;but if he stops where he is and reforms, it shall never be said thatI betrayed him.'
'How good you are!'
'Well, I try to be. It is all a person can do in a world like this.'
And now, my burden being shifted to other shoulders, my terrorssoon faded away.
The day before we left Hannibal, a curious thing fell under my notice--the surprising spread which longitudinal time undergoes there.
I learned it from one of the most unostentatious of men--the coloredcoachman of a friend of mine, who lives three miles from town.
He was to call for me at the Park Hotel at 7.30 P.M., and drive me out.
But he missed it considerably--did not arrive till ten. He excusedhimself by saying--'De time is mos' an hour en a half slower in de country enwhat it is in de town; you'll be in plenty time, boss.
Sometimes we shoves out early for church, Sunday, en fetches updah right plum in de middle er de sermon. Diffunce in de time.
A body can't make no calculations 'bout it.'
I had lost two hours and a half; but I had learned a fact worth four.