summer vacation quotes for facebook

life on the mississippi by mark twain chapter 50 the 'original jacobs' we had some talk about captain isaiah sellers,now many years dead. he was a fine man, a high-minded man, and greatlyrespected both ashore and on the river. he was very tall, well built,and handsome; and in his old age--as i remember him--his hair was as blackas an indian's, and his eye and hand were as strong and steady andhis nerve and judgment as firm and 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 day of steamboats; and a steamboatpilot before any other steamboat pilot, still surviving at the timei speak of, had ever turned a wheel. consequently his brethren held himin the sort of awe in which illustrious survivors of a bygone ageare always held by their associates. he knew how he was regarded, andperhaps this fact added some trifle of stiffening to his natural dignity,which had been sufficiently stiff in its original state. he left a diary behind him; but apparentlyit did not date back to his

first steamboat trip, which was said to be1811, the year the 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 thesteamer "rambler," at florence, ala., and made during that yearthree trips to new orleans and back--this on the "gen. carrol," between nashvilleand new orleans. it was during his stay on this boat that captainsellers introduced the tap of the bell as a signal to heave the lead,previous to which time it was

the custom for the pilot to speak to the menbelow when soundings were wanted. the proximity of the forecastle tothe pilot-house, no doubt, rendered this an easy matter; but how differenton one of our palaces of the present day. 'in 1827 we find him on board the "president,"a boat of two hundred and eighty-five tons burden, and plying betweensmithland and new orleans. thence he joined the "jubilee" in 1828, andon this boat he did his first piloting in the st. louis trade; hisfirst watch extending from herculaneum to st. genevieve. on may 26, 1836,he completed and left

pittsburgh in charge of the steamer "prairie,"a boat of four hundred tons, and the first steamer with a state-roomcabin ever seen at st. louis. in 1857 he introduced the signal formeeting boats, and which has, with some slight change, been the universalcustom of this day; in fact, is rendered obligatory by act of congress. 'as general items of river history, we quotethe following marginal notes from his general log-- 'in march, 1825, gen. lafayette left new orleansfor st. louis on the low-pressure steamer "natchez."

'in january, 1828, twenty-one steamers leftthe new orleans wharf to celebrate the occasion of gen. jackson's visitto that city. 'in 1830 the "north american" made the runfrom new orleans to 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 fromwhite river to helena, a distance of seventy-five miles, in twelvehours. this was the source of much talk and speculation among parties directlyinterested.

'in 1839 great horseshoe cut-off formed. 'up to the present time, a term of thirty-fiveyears, we ascertain, by reference to the diary, he has made four hundredand sixty round trips to new orleans, which gives a distance ofone million one hundred and four thousand miles, or an average of eighty-sixmiles a day.' whenever captain sellers approached a bodyof 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 elder ones wouldbe always 'showing off' before

these poor fellows; making them sorrowfullyfeel how callow they were, how recent their nobility, and how humbletheir degree, by talking largely and vaporously of old-time experienceson the river; always making it a point to date everything backas far as they could, so as to make the new men feel their newness to thesharpest degree 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 enjoy theeffect produced upon the marveling and envying youngsters!

and perhaps just at this happy stage of theproceedings, the stately figure of captain isaiah sellers, that realand only genuine 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 exultation of theirrecent audience when the ancient captain would begin to drop casualand indifferent remarks of a reminiscent nature--about islands that haddisappeared, and cutoffs that had been made, a generation before the oldestbald-head in the company had ever set his foot in a pilot-house!

many and many a time did this ancient marinerappear on the scene in the above fashion, and spread disaster and humiliationaround him. if one might believe the pilots, he always datedhis islands back to the misty dawn of river history; and he never used thesame island twice; and never did he employ an island that still existed,or give one a name which anybody present was old enough to haveheard of before. if you might believe the pilots, he was always conscientiouslyparticular about little details; never spoke of 'the stateof mississippi,' for instance --no, he would say, 'when the state of mississippiwas where arkansas

now is,' and would never speak of louisianaor missouri in a general way, and leave an incorrect impression onyour mind--no, he would say, 'when louisiana was up the river farther,'or 'when missouri was on the illinois side.' the old gentleman was not of literary turnor capacity, but he used to jot down brief paragraphs of plain practicalinformation about the river, and sign them 'mark twain,' and givethem to the 'new orleans picayune.' they related to the stage and conditionof the river, and were accurate and valuable; and thus far,they contained no poison.

but in speaking of the stage of the riverto-day, at a given point, the captain was pretty apt to drop in a littleremark about this being the first time he had seen the water so high orso low at that particular point for forty-nine years; and now and thenhe would mention island so-and-so, and follow it, in parentheses,with some such 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' paragraphswith unsparing mockery. it so chanced that one of these paragraphs--{footnote[the original ms.

of it, in the captain's own hand, has beensent to me from new orleans. it reads as follows-- vicksburg may 4, 1859. 'my opinion for the benefit of the citizensof new orleans: the water is higher this far up than it has been since8. my opinion is that the water will be feet deep in canal street beforethe first of next june. mrs. turner's plantation at the head of bigblack island is all under water, and it has not been since 1815. 'i. sellers.']}

became the text for my first newspaper article.i burlesqued it broadly, very broadly, stringing my fantastics outto the extent of eight hundred or a thousand words. i was a 'cub' at thetime. i showed my performance to some pilots, and they eagerly rushed itinto print in the 'new orleans true delta.' it was a great pity;for it did nobody any worthy service, and it sent a pang deep into a goodman's heart. there was no malice in my rubbish; but it laughed at thecaptain. it laughed at a man to whom such a thing was new and strange anddreadful. i did not know then, though i do now, that there is no sufferingcomparable with that

which a private person feels when he is forthe first time pilloried in print. captain sellers did me the honor to profoundlydetest me from that day forth. when i say he did me the honor, i amnot using empty words. it was a very real honor to be in the thoughtsof so great a man as captain sellers, and i had wit enough to appreciateit and be proud of it. it was distinction to be loved by such a man;but it was a much greater distinction to be hated by him, because heloved scores of people; but he didn't sit up nights to hate anybody butme.

he never printed another paragraph while helived, and he never again signed 'mark twain' to anything. at the timethat the telegraph brought the news of his death, i was on the pacificcoast. i was a fresh new journalist, and needed a nom de guerre; soi confiscated the ancient mariner's discarded one, and have done mybest to make it remain what it was in his hands--a sign and symbol and warrantthat whatever is found in its company may be gambled on as beingthe petrified truth; how i have succeeded, it would not be modest inme to say. the captain had an honorable pride in hisprofession and an abiding love

for it. he ordered his monument before hedied, and kept it near him until he did die. it stands over his gravenow, in bellefontaine cemetery, st. louis. it is his image, in marble,standing on duty at the pilot wheel; and worthy to stand and confrontcriticism, for it represents a man who in life would have stayedthere till he burned to a cinder, if duty required it. the finest thing we saw on our whole mississippitrip, we saw as we approached new orleans in the steam-tug. thiswas the curving frontage of the crescent city lit up with the whiteglare of five miles of

electric lights. it was a wonderful sight,and very beautiful. chapter 51 reminiscences we left for st. louis in the 'city of batonrouge,' on a delightfully hot day, but with the main purpose of my visitbut lamely accomplished. i had hoped to hunt up and talk with a hundredsteamboatmen, but got so pleasantly involved in the social life ofthe town that i got nothing more than mere five-minute talks with a coupleof dozen of the craft. i was on the bench of the pilot-house whenwe backed out and 'straightened up' for the start--the boatpausing for a 'good ready,'

in the old-fashioned way, and the black smokepiling out of the chimneys equally in the old-fashioned way. then webegan to gather momentum, and presently were fairly under way and boomingalong. it was all as natural and familiar--and so were the shoreward sights--asif 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. captainbixby stepped into the pilot-house. presently the cub closed up onthe rank of steamships. he made me nervous, for he allowed too much waterto show between our boat and the ships. i knew quite well what wasgoing to happen, because

i could date back in my own life and inspectthe record. the captain looked on, during a silent half-minute, thentook the wheel himself, and crowded the boat in, till she went scrapingalong within a hand-breadth of the ships. it was exactly the favor whichhe had done me, about a quarter of a century before, in that samespot, the first time i ever steamed out of the port of new orleans. itwas a very great and sincere pleasure to me to see the thing repeated--withsomebody else as victim. we made natchez (three hundred miles) in twenty-twohours and a half--much the swiftest passage i have evermade over that piece of

water. the next morning i came on with the four o'clockwatch, and saw ritchie successfully run half a dozen crossings ina fog, using for his guidance the marked chart devised and patented by bixbyand himself. this sufficiently evidenced the great value ofthe chart. by and by, when the fog began to clear off,i noticed that the reflection of a tree in the smooth water ofan overflowed bank, six hundred yards away, was stronger and blackerthan the ghostly tree itself. the faint spectral trees, dimly glimpsedthrough the shredding

fog, were very pretty things to see. we had a heavy thunder-storm at natchez, anotherat vicksburg, and still another about fifty miles below memphis.they had an old-fashioned energy which had long been unfamiliar to me.this third storm was accompanied by a raging wind. we tied up tothe bank when we saw the tempest coming, and everybody left the pilot-housebut 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 andthat, and creating swift

waves of alternating green and white accordingto the side of the leaf that was exposed, and these waves raced aftereach other as do their kind over a wind-tossed field of oats. nocolor that was visible anywhere was quite natural--all tints werecharged with a leaden tinge from the solid cloud-bank overhead. the riverwas leaden; all distances the same; and even the far-reaching ranksof combing white-caps were dully shaded by the dark, rich atmospherethrough which their swarming legions marched. the thunder-peals were constantand deafening; explosion followed explosion with but inconsequentialintervals between,

and the reports grew steadily sharper andhigher-keyed, and more trying to the ear; the lightning was as diligentas the thunder, and produced effects which enchanted the eye and sent electricecstasies of mixed delight and apprehension shivering along everynerve in the body in unintermittent procession. the rain poureddown in amazing volume; the ear-splitting thunder-peals broke nearer andnearer; the wind increased in fury and began to wrench off boughs andtree-tops and send them sailing away through space; the pilot-housefell to rocking and straining and cracking and surging, and iwent 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 alpswere not the 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 theycan beat the mississippi, i don't wish to. on this up trip i saw a little towhead (infantisland) half a mile long, which had been formed during the past nineteenyears. since there was so much time to spare that nineteen yearsof it could be devoted to

the construction of a mere towhead, wherewas the use, originally, in rushing this whole globe through in six days?it is likely that if more time had been taken, in the first place, theworld would have been made right, and this ceaseless improving and repairingwould not be necessary now. but if you hurry a world or a house,you are nearly sure to find out by and by that you have left out a towhead,or a broom-closet, or some other little convenience, here andthere, which has got to be supplied, no matter how much expense and vexationit may cost. we had a succession of black nights, goingup the river, and it was

observable that whenever we landed, and suddenlyinundated the trees with the intense sunburst of the electriclight, a certain curious effect was always produced: hundreds of birdsflocked instantly out from the masses of shining green foliage,and went careering hither and thither through the white rays, and oftena song-bird tuned up and fell to singing. we judged that they mistook thissuperb artificial day for the genuine article. we had a delightfultrip in that thoroughly well-ordered steamer, and regretted that itwas accomplished so speedily. by means of diligence and 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. buti found out all about him. his case helped me to realize how lastingcan be the effect of a very trifling occurrence. when he was an apprentice-blacksmithin our village, and i a schoolboy, a couple of youngenglishmen came to the town and sojourned a while; and one day theygot themselves up in cheap royal finery and did the richard iii swordfightwith maniac energy and prodigious powwow, in the presence of thevillage boys. this blacksmith cub was there, and the histrionic poison enteredhis bones. this

vast, lumbering, ignorant, dull-witted loutwas stage-struck, and irrecoverably. he disappeared, and presentlyturned up in st. louis. i ran across him there, by and by. he wasstanding musing on a street corner, with his left hand on his hip, thethumb of his right supporting his chin, face bowed and frowning, slouchhat 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 outof the clouds, but did not

succeed. however, he casually informed me,presently, that he was a member of the walnut street theater company--andhe tried to say it with indifference, but the indifference was thin,and a mighty exultation showed through it. he said he was cast fora part in julius caesar, for that night, and if i should come i would seehim. if i should come! i said i wouldn't miss it if i were dead. i went away stupefied with astonishment, andsaying to myself, 'how strange it is! we always thought this fellowa fool; yet the moment he comes to a great city, where intelligenceand appreciation abound,

the talent concealed in this shabby napkinis at once discovered, and promptly welcomed and honored.' but i came away from the theater that nightdisappointed and offended; for i had had no glimpse of my hero, and hisname 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 thatstood back there in a rank, and sometimes marched in procession aroundthe stage?' 'do you mean the roman army?--those six sandaledroustabouts in nightshirts, with tin shields and helmets,that marched around treading 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 romansoldiers. i was the next

to the last one. a half a year ago i usedto always be the last one; but i've been promoted.' well, they told me that that poor fellow remaineda roman soldier to the last--a matter of thirty-four years. sometimesthey cast him for a 'speaking part,' but not an elaborate one.he could be trusted to go and say, 'my lord, the carriage waits,' butif they ventured to add a sentence or two to this, his memory felt thestrain and he was likely to miss fire. yet, poor devil, he had been patientlystudying the part of hamlet for more than thirty years, and helived and died in the belief

that some day he would be invited to playit! and this is what came of that fleeting visitof those young englishmen to our village such ages and ages ago! whatnoble horseshoes 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, iwas walking along fourth street when a grizzly-headed man gave a sortof 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 aflash i recognized him. i made an effort to blush that strained everymuscle in me, and answered as sweetly and winningly as ever i knew how-- 'been a little slow, but am just this minuteclosing in on the place where they keep it. come in and help.' he softened, and said make it a bottle ofchampagne and he was agreeable. he said he had seen my name inthe papers, and had put all his affairs aside and turned out, resolvedto find me or die; and make

me answer that question satisfactorily, orkill me; though the most of his late asperity had been rather counterfeitthan otherwise. this meeting brought back to me the st. louisriots of about thirty years ago. i spent a week there, at that time,in a boarding-house, and had this young fellow for a neighbor acrossthe hall. we saw some of the fightings and killings; and by and bywe went one night to an armory where two hundred young men had met, uponcall, to be armed and go forth against the rioters, under command of a militaryman. 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 weresweeping everything before them. our column moved at once. it was a veryhot night, and my musket was very heavy. we marched and marched; andthe nearer we approached the seat of war, the hotter i grew and the thirstieri got. i was behind my friend; so, finally, i asked him to hold mymusket while i dropped out and got a drink. then i branched off and wenthome. i was not feeling any solicitude about him of course, becausei knew he was so well armed, now, that he could take care of himself withoutany trouble. if i had had any doubts about that, i would have borrowedanother musket for him.

i left the city pretty early the next morning,and if this grizzled man had not happened to encounter my name in thepapers the other day in st. louis, and felt moved to seek me out, i shouldhave carried to my grave a heart-torturing uncertainty as to whetherhe 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 hadhad the muskets; but, in the circumstances, he seemed better fixed to conductthe investigations than i was. one monday, near the time of our visit tost. louis, the

'globe-democrat' came out with a couple ofpages of sunday statistics, whereby it appeared that 119,448 st. louispeople attended the morning and evening church services the day before,and 23,102 children attended sunday-school. thus 142,550 persons, out ofthe city's total of 400,000 population, respected the day religious-wise.i found these statistics, in a condensed form, in a telegram of theassociated press, and preserved them. they made it apparent thatst. louis was in a higher state of grace than she could have claimedto be in my time. but now that i canvass the figures narrowly, i suspectthat the telegraph

mutilated them. it cannot be that there aremore than 150,000 catholics in the town; the other 250,000 must be classifiedas protestants. out of these 250,000, according to this questionabletelegram, only 26,362 attended church and sunday-school, while outof the 150,000 catholics, 116,188 went to church and sunday-school. chapter 52 a burning brand all at once the thought came into my mind,'i have not sought out mr. brown.' upon that text i desire to depart from thedirect line of my subject,

and make a little excursion. i wish to reveala secret which i have carried with me nine years, and which hasbecome burdensome. upon a certain occasion, nine years ago, ihad said, with strong feeling, 'if ever i see st. louis again, iwill seek out mr. brown, the great grain merchant, and ask of him the privilegeof shaking him by the hand.' the occasion and the circumstances were asfollows. a friend of mine, a clergyman, came one evening and said-- 'i have a most remarkable letter here, whichi want to read to you, if

i can do it without breaking down. i mustpreface it with some explanations, however. the letter is writtenby an ex-thief and ex-vagabond of the lowest origin and basestrearing, a man all 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 serving a nine-yearterm in a certain state prison, for burglary. williams was aparticularly daring burglar, and plied that trade during a number of years;but he was caught at last and jailed, to await trial in a town wherehe had broken into a house at

night, pistol in hand, and forced the ownerto hand over to him $8,000 in government bonds. williams was not a commonsort of person, by any means; he was a graduate of harvard college,and came of good new england stock. his father was a clergyman.while lying in jail, his health began to fail, and he was threatenedwith consumption. this fact, together with the opportunity for reflectionafforded by solitary confinement, had its effect--its natural effect.he fell into serious thought; his early training asserted itselfwith power, and wrought with strong influence upon his mind and heart.he put his old life behind

him, and became an earnest christian. someladies in the town heard of this, visited him, and by their encouragingwords supported him in his good resolutions and strengthened him to continuein his new life. the trial ended in his conviction and sentenceto the state prison for the term of nine years, as i have before said.in the prison he became acquainted with the poor wretch referred toin the beginning of my talk, jack hunt, the writer of the letter whichi am going to read. you will see that the acquaintanceship bore fruit forhunt. when hunt's time was out, he wandered to st. louis; and from thatplace he wrote his letter

to williams. the letter got no further thanthe office of the prison warden, of course; prisoners are not oftenallowed to receive letters from outside. the prison authorities readthis letter, but did not destroy it. they had not the heart to do it.they read it to several persons, and eventually it fell into the handsof those ladies of whom i spoke a while ago. the other day i came acrossan old friend of mine--a clergyman--who had seen this letter, and wasfull of it. the mere remembrance of it so moved him that he couldnot talk of it without his voice breaking. he promised to get a copyof it for me; and here it is

--an exact copy, with all the imperfectionsof the original preserved. it has many slang expressions in it--thieves'argot--but their meaning has been interlined, in parentheses, by theprison authorities'-- st. louis, june 9th 1872. mr. w---- friend charlie if i may call youso: i no you are surprised to get a letter from me, but i hope you won'tbe mad at my writing to you. i want to tell you my thanks for the way youtalked to me when i was in prison--it has led me to try and be a betterman; i guess you thought i did not cair for what you said, & at thefirst go off i didn't, but i

noed you was a man who had don big work withgood men & want no sucker, nor want gasing & all the boys knod it. i used to think at nite what you said, & forit i nocked off swearing months before my time was up, for i saw itwant no good, nohow--the day my time was up you told me if i would shakethe cross (quit stealing) & live on the square for months, it would bethe best job i ever done in my life. the state agent give me a ticketto here, & on the car i thought more of what you said to me, but didn'tmake up my mind. when we got to chicago on the cars from there tohere, i pulled off an old

woman's leather; (robbed her of her pocketbook)i hadn't no more than got it off when i wished i hadn't done it,for awhile before that i made up my mind to be a square bloke, for monthson your word, but forgot it when i saw the leather was a grip (easy toget)--but i kept clos to her & when she got out of the cars at a way placei said, marm have you lost anything. & she tumbled (discovered) her leatherwas off (gone)--is this it says i, giving it to her--well if you ainthonest, says she, but i hadn't got cheak enough to stand that sortof talk, so i left her in a hurry. when i got here i had $1 and 25 centsleft & i didn't get no work

for 3 days as i aint strong enough for roustabout on a steam bote (for a deck hand)--the afternoon of the 3rd dayi spent my last 10 cts for moons (large, round sea-biscuit) & cheese& i felt pretty rough & was thinking i would have to go on the dipe (pickingpockets) again, when i thought of what you once said about a fellowscalling on the lord when he was in hard luck, & i thought i would tryit once anyhow, but when i tryed it i got stuck on the start, & all icould get off wos, lord give a poor fellow a chance to square it for 3months for christ's sake, amen; & i kept a thinking, of it over andover as i went along--about an

hour after that i was in 4th st. & this iswhat happened & is the cause of my being where i am now & about which iwill tell you before i get done writing. as i was walking along herda big noise & saw a horse running away with a carriage with 2 childrenin it, & i grabed up a peace of box cover from the side walk & runin the middle of the street, & when the horse came up i smashed him overthe head as hard as i could drive--the bord split to peces & the horsechecked up a little & i grabbed the reigns & pulled his head downuntil he stopped--the gentleman what owned him came running up & soonas he saw the children

were all rite, he shook hands with me andgave me 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--hesaw 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 & letstalk 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 thatwork, & would give me $16

a month & bord me. you bet i took that chanceat once. that nite in my little room over the stable i sat a long timethinking over my past life & of what had just happened & i just got downon my 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 nite andmorning, & ask him to keep an eye on me. when i had been there abouta week mr. brown (that's his name) came in my room one nite and saw mereading the bible--he asked me

if i was a christian & i told him no--he askedme how it was i read the bible instead of papers & books--well charliei thought i had better give him a square deal in the start, so itold him all about my being in prison & about you, & how i had almost donegive 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 & squareit, & i asked him to give me a chance for 3 months--he talked to me likea father for a long time, & told me i could stay & then i felt betterthan ever i had done in my life, for i had given mr. brown a fair startwith me & now i didn't fear

no one giving me a back cap (exposing hispast life) & running me off the job--the next morning he called meinto the library & gave me another square talk, & advised me to studysome every day, & he would help me one or 2 hours every nite, & he gaveme a arithmetic, a spelling book, a geography & a writing book, & he hersme every nite--he lets me come into the house to prayers every morning,& got me put in a bible class in the sunday school which i likes verymuch for it helps me to understand my bible better. now, charlie the 3 months on the square areup 2 months ago, & as you

said, it is the best job i ever did in mylife, & i commenced another of the same sort right away, only it is togod helping me to last a lifetime charlie--i wrote this letter to tellyou i do think god has forgiven my sins & herd your prayers, foryou told me you should pray for me--i no i love to read his word & tellhim all my troubles & he helps me i know for i have plenty of chancesto steal but 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 ministerand others often talk with me & a month ago they wanted me to jointhe 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 firstsunday in july i will join the church--dear friend i wish i could writeto you as i feel, but i cant do it yet--you no i learned to read andwrite while prisons & i aint got well enough along to write as i wouldtalk; i no i aint spelled all the words rite in this & lots of othermistakes but you will excuse it i no, for you no i was brought up in apoor house until i run away, & that i never new who my father and motherwas & i dont no 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 youwont use it when you get out i no, & you are the man i think most of inthe world; so i hope you wont be mad--i am doing well, i put $10 amonth in bank with $25 of the $50--if you ever want any or all of it letme know, & it is yours. i wish you would let me send you some now. isend you with this a receipt for a year of littles living age, i didn'tknow what you would like & i told mr. brown & he said he thought you wouldlike it--i wish i was nere you so i could send you chuck (refreshments)on holidays; it would spoil this weather from here, but i will send youa box next thanksgiving any

way--next week mr. brown takes me into hisstore as lite porter & will advance me as soon as i know a little more--hekeeps a big granary store, wholesale--i forgot to tell you ofmy mission school, sunday school class--the school is in the sundayafternoon, 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 class where they could learn something. i dont nomuch myself, but as these kids cant read i get on nicely with them.i make sure of them by going after them every sunday hour before schooltime, i also got 4 girls

to come. tell mack and harry about me, ifthey will come out here when their time is up i will get them jobs at once.i hope you will excuse this long letter & all mistakes, i wish icould see you for i cant write as i would talk--i hope the warm weather isdoing your lungs good--i was afraid when you was bleeding you would die--givemy respects to all the boys and tell them how i am doing--i am doingwell and every one here treats me as kind as they can--mr. brown isgoing to write to you sometime--i hope some day you will write tome, this letter is from your very true friend

c---- w---- who you know as jack hunt. i send you mr. brown's card. send my letterto him. here was true eloquence; irresistible eloquence;and without a single grace or ornament to help it out. i have seldombeen so deeply stirred by any piece of writing. the reader of ithalted, all the way through, on a lame and broken voice; yet he had triedto fortify his feelings by several private readings of the letterbefore venturing into company with it. he was practising upon me to seeif there was any hope of his

being able to read the document to his prayer-meetingwith anything like a decent command over his feelings. theresult was not promising. however, he determined to risk it; and did.he got through tolerably well; but his audience broke down early, andstayed in that condition to the end. the fame of the letter spread through thetown. a brother minister came and borrowed the manuscript, put it bodilyinto a sermon, preached the sermon to twelve hundred people on a sundaymorning, and the letter drowned them in their own tears. then my friendput it into a sermon and

went before his sunday morning congregationwith it. it scored another triumph. the house wept as one individual. my friend went on summer vacation up intothe fishing regions of our northern british neighbors, and carried thissermon with him, since he might possibly chance to need a sermon. hewas asked to preach, one day. the little church was full. among the peoplepresent 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 wontedwork; all the people were

moved, all the people wept; the tears flowedin a steady stream down dr. holland's cheeks, and nearly the same canbe said with regard to all who were there. mr. page was so full of enthusiasmover the letter that he said he would not rest until he made pilgrimageto that prison, and had speech with the man who had been able to inspirea fellow-unfortunate to write so priceless a tract. ah, that unlucky page!--and another man. ifthey had only been in jericho, that letter would have rung throughthe world and stirred all the hearts of all the nations for a thousandyears to come, and nobody

might ever have found out that it was theconfoundedest, brazenest, ingeniousest piece of fraud and humbuggerythat was ever concocted to fool poor confiding mortals with! the letter was a pure swindle, and that isthe 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 wedidn't learn it till 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 audiences with theirtears and the tears of said audiences; i begged hard for permissionto print the letter in a magazine and tell the watery story of itstriumphs; numbers of people got copies of the letter, with permissionto circulate them in writing, but not in print; copies were sent to thesandwich islands and other far regions. charles dudley warner was at church, one day,when the worn letter was read and wept over. at the church door,afterward, he dropped a peculiarly cold iceberg down the clergyman'sback with the question--

'do you know that letter to be genuine?' it was the first suspicion that had ever beenvoiced; 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 itisn't genuine?' 'nothing that i know of, except that it istoo neat, and compact, and fluent, and nicely put together for an ignorantperson, an unpractised hand. i think it was done by an educated man.' the literary artist had detected the literarymachinery. if you will

look at the letter now, you will detect ityourself--it is observable in every line. straightway the clergyman went off, with thisseed of suspicion sprouting in him, and wrote to a ministerresiding in that town where williams had been jailed and converted; askedfor light; and also asked if a person in the literary line (meaningme) might be allowed to print the letter and tell its history. he presentlyreceived this answer-- rev. ---- ---- my dear friend,--in regard to that 'convict'sletter' there can be no

doubt as to its genuineness. 'williams,' towhom it was written, lay in our jail and professed to have been converted,and rev. mr. ----, the chaplain, had great faith in the genuinenessof 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's prison, probably. she has been greatlyannoyed in having so much publicity, lest it might seem a breach ofconfidence, or be an injury to williams. in regard to its publication, ican give no permission; though

if the names and places were omitted, andespecially if sent out of the country, i think you might take the responsibilityand do it. it is a wonderful letter, which no christiangenius, much less one unsanctified, could ever have written. asshowing the work of grace in a human heart, and in a very degraded andwicked one, it proves its own origin and reproves our weak faith in itspower to cope with any form of wickedness. 'mr. brown' of st. louis, some one said, wasa hartford man. do all whom you send from hartford serve their masteras well?

p.s.--williams is still in the state's prison,serving out a long sentence--of nine years, i think. he has beensick and threatened with consumption, but i have not inquired afterhim 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 waswritten--and up went mr. williams's stock again. mr. warner's low-downsuspicion was 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 game thattwo can play at: as witness this other internal evidence, discovered bythe writer of the note above quoted, that 'it is a wonderful letter--whichno christian genius, much less one unsanctified, could ever have written.' i had permission now to print--provided isuppressed names and places and sent my narrative out of the country.so i chose an australian magazine for vehicle, as being far enoughout of the country, and set myself to work on my article. and the ministersset the pumps going again, with the letter to work the handles.

but meantime brother page had been agitating.he had not visited the penitentiary, but he had sent a copy of theillustrious letter to the chaplain of that institution, and accompaniedit with--apparently inquiries. he got an answer, dated four dayslater than that other brother's reassuring epistle; and before myarticle was complete, it wandered into my hands. the original is beforeme, now, and i here append it. it is pretty well loaded with internalevidence of the most solid description-- state's prison, chaplain's office, july 11,1873.

dear bro. page,--herewith please find theletter 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 carefully readby officers of the prison before they go into the hands of the convicts,and any such letter could not be forgotten. again, charles williamsis not a christian man, but a dissolute, cunning prodigal, whose fatheris a minister of the gospel. his name is an assumed one. i am glad to havemade your acquaintance. i am preparing a lecture upon life seen throughprison bars, and should

like to deliver the same in your vicinity. and so ended that little drama. my poor articlewent into the fire; for whereas the materials for it were nowmore abundant and infinitely richer than they had previously been, therewere parties all around me, who, although longing for the publicationbefore, were a unit for suppression at this stage and complexion ofthe game. they said: 'wait --the wound is too fresh, yet.' all the copiesof the famous letter except mine disappeared suddenly; and fromthat time 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 professedwriter of the letter, was an imaginary person. the burglar williams--harvardgraduate, son of a minister--wrote the letter himself, to himself:got it smuggled out of the prison; got it conveyed to persons whohad supported and encouraged him in his conversion--where he knew two thingswould happen: the genuineness of the letter would not be doubtedor inquired into; and the

nub of it would be noticed, and would havevaluable effect--the effect, indeed, of starting a movement to get mr.williams pardoned out of prison. that 'nub' is so ingeniously, so casually,flung in, and immediately left there in the tail of the letter, undweltupon, that an indifferent reader would never suspect that it was theheart 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 lungsgood--i was afraid when you was bleeding you would die--give my respects,'etc.

that is all there is of it--simply touch andgo--no dwelling upon it. nevertheless it was intended for an eye thatwould be swift to see it; and it was meant to move a kind heart to tryto effect the liberation of a poor reformed and purified fellow lyingin the fell grip of consumption. when i for the first time heard that letterread, nine years ago, i felt that it was the most remarkable one i hadever encountered. and it so warmed me toward mr. brown of st. louisthat i said that if ever i visited that city again, i would seek outthat excellent man and kiss

the 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 investigations of long ago had proved that the benevolent brown,like 'jack hunt,' was not a real person, but a sheer invention of thatgifted rascal, williams--burglar, harvard graduate, son ofa clergyman. chapter 53 my boyhood's home we took passage in one of the fast boats ofthe st. louis and st. paul packet company, and started up the river. when i, as a boy, first saw the mouth of themissouri river, it was

twenty-two or twenty-three miles above st.louis, according to the estimate of pilots; the wear and tear of thebanks have moved it down eight miles since then; and the pilots saythat within five years the river will cut through and move the mouthdown five miles more, which will bring it within ten miles of st. louis. about nightfall we passed the large and flourishingtown of alton, illinois; and before daylight next morningthe town of louisiana, missouri, a sleepy village in my day, buta brisk railway center now; however, all the towns out there are railwaycenters now. i could not

clearly recognize the place. this seemed oddto me, for when i retired from the rebel army in '61 i retired uponlouisiana in good order; at least in good enough order for a person whohad not yet learned how to retreat according to the rules of war,and had to trust to native genius. it seemed to me that for a first attemptat a retreat it was not badly done. i had done no advancing in allthat campaign that was at all equal to it. there was a railway bridge across the riverhere well sprinkled with glowing lights, and a very beautiful sightit was.

at seven in the morning we reached hannibal,missouri, where my boyhood was spent. i had had a glimpse of it fifteenyears ago, and another glimpse six years earlier, but both were sobrief that they hardly counted. the only notion of the town thatremained in my mind was the memory of it as i had known it when i firstquitted it twenty-nine years ago. that picture of it was still asclear and vivid to me as a photograph. i stepped ashore with the feelingof one who returns out of a dead-and-gone generation. i had a sort ofrealizing sense of what the bastille prisoners must have felt when theyused to come out and look

upon paris after years of captivity, and notehow curiously the familiar and the strange were mixed togetherbefore them. i saw the new houses--saw them plainly enough--but theydid not affect the older picture in my mind, for through their solidbricks and mortar i saw the vanished houses, which had formerly stoodthere, with perfect distinctness. it was sunday morning, and everybody was abedyet. so i passed through the vacant streets, still seeing the townas it was, and not as it is, and recognizing and metaphorically shakinghands with a hundred familiar

objects which no longer exist; and finallyclimbed holiday's hill to get a comprehensive view. the whole town lay spreadout below me then, and i could mark and fix every locality, every detail.naturally, i was a good deal moved. i said, 'many of the people ionce knew in this tranquil refuge of my childhood are now in heaven;some, i trust, are in the other place.' the things about me and beforeme made me feel like a boy again--convinced me that i was a boy again,and that i had simply been dreaming an unusually long dream; but my reflectionsspoiled all that; for they forced me to say, 'i see fifty oldhouses down yonder, into

each of which i could enter and find eithera man or a woman who was a baby or unborn when i noticed those houseslast, or a grandmother who was a plump young bride at that time.' from this vantage ground the extensive viewup 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 is a hazardous remark to make, for the eight hundred miles of riverbetween st. louis and st. paul afford an unbroken succession of lovelypictures. it may be that my affection for the one in question biasesmy judgment in its favor; i

cannot say as to that. no matter, it was satisfyinglybeautiful to me, and it had this advantage over all the otherfriends whom i was about to greet again: it had suffered no change;it was as young and fresh and comely and gracious as ever it had been;whereas, the faces of the others would be old, and scarred with thecampaigns of life, and marked with their griefs and defeats, and would giveme no upliftings of spirit. an old gentleman, out on an early morningwalk, came along, and we discussed the weather, and then drifted intoother matters. i could not

remember his face. he said he had been livinghere twenty-eight years. so he had come after my time, and i had neverseen him before. i asked him various questions; first about a mateof mine in sunday school--what became of him? 'he graduated with honor in an eastern college,wandered off into the world somewhere, succeeded at nothing, passedout of knowledge and memory years ago, and is supposed to havegone to the dogs.' 'he was bright, and promised well when hewas a boy.' 'yes, but the thing that happened is whatbecame of it all.'

i asked after another lad, altogether thebrightest in our village school when i was a boy. 'he, too, was graduated with honors, froman eastern college; but life whipped him in every battle, straight along,and he died in one of the territories, years ago, a defeated man.' i asked after another of the bright boys. 'he is a success, always has been, alwayswill be, i think.' i inquired after a young fellow who came tothe town to study for one of the professions when i was a boy.

'he went at something else before he got through--wentfrom medicine to law, or from law to medicine--then to someother new thing; went away for a year, came back with a young wife; fellto drinking, then to gambling behind the door; finally took hiswife and two young children to her father's, and went off to mexico; wentfrom bad to worse, and finally died there, without a cent to buya shroud, and without a friend to attend the funeral.' 'pity, for he was the best-natured, and mostcheery and hopeful young fellow that ever was.'

i named another boy. 'oh, he is all right. lives here yet; hasa wife and children, and is prospering.' same verdict concerning other boys. i named three school-girls. 'the first two live here, are married andhave 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 isgetting ready to marry an old fellow out in colorado somewhere. she's gotchildren scattered around here and there, most everywheres.' the answer to several other inquiries wasbrief and simple-- 'killed in the war.' 'well, now, his case is curious! there wasn'ta human being in this town but knew that that boy was a perfect chucklehead;perfect dummy; just a stupid ass, as you may say. everybody knewit, and everybody said it. well, if that very boy isn't the first lawyerin 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 accountingfor it, except that if you send a damned fool to st. louis, and you don'ttell them he's a damned fool they'll never find it out. there's onething sure--if i had a damned fool i should know what to do withhim: ship him to st. louis--it's the noblest market in the worldfor that kind of property.

well, when you come to look at it all around,and chew at it and think it over, don't it just bang anything you everheard of?' 'well, yes, it does seem to. but don't youthink maybe it was the hannibal people who were mistaken about theboy, and not the st. louis people.' 'oh, nonsense! the people here have knownhim from the very cradle--they knew him a hundred times better than the st.louis idiots could have known him. no, if you have got any damnedfools that you want to realize on, take my advice--send them to st. louis.'

i mentioned a great number of people whomi 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 ofthe lot, the answer was comforting: 'prosperous--live here yet--town litteredwith their children.' i asked about miss ----. died in the insane asylum three or four yearsago--never was out of it from the time she went in; and was alwayssuffering, too; never got a 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 foolsmight have some fun! i was a small boy, at the time; and i saw thosegiddy young ladies come tiptoeing into the room where miss ---- satreading at midnight by a lamp. the girl at the head of the file worea shroud and a doughface, she crept behind the victim, touched her onthe shoulder, and she looked up and screamed, and then fell into convulsions.she did not recover from the fright, but went mad. in these daysit seems incredible that people believed in ghosts so short a timeago. but they did.

after asking after such other folk as i couldcall to mind, i finally inquired about myself: 'oh, he succeeded well enough--another caseof damned fool. if they'd sent him to st. louis, he'd have succeededsooner.' it was with much satisfaction that i recognizedthe wisdom of having told this candid gentleman, in the beginning,that my name was smith. chapter 54 past and present being left to myself, up there, i went onpicking out old houses in the distant town, and calling back their formerinmates out of the moldy

past. among them i presently recognized thehouse of the father of lem hackett (fictitious name). it carried me backmore than a generation in a moment, and landed me in the midst of atime when the happenings of life were not the natural and logical resultsof great general laws, but of special orders, and were freightedwith very precise and distinct purposes--partly punitive in intent, partlyadmonitory; and usually local in application. when i was a small boy, lem hackett was drowned--ona 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 wasthe only boy in the village who slept that night. we others all lay awake,repenting. we had not needed the information, delivered from thepulpit that evening, that lem's was a case of special judgment--we knewthat, already. there was a ferocious thunder-storm, that night, andit raged continuously until near dawn. the winds blew, the windows rattled,the rain swept along the roof in pelting sheets, and at the briefestof intervals the inky blackness of the night vanished, the housesover the way glared out white and blinding for a quivering instant,then the solid darkness shut

down again and a splitting peal of thunderfollowed, which seemed to rend everything in the neighborhood to shredsand splinters. i sat up in bed quaking and shuddering, waiting forthe destruction of the world, and expecting it. to me there was nothingstrange or incongruous in heaven's making such an uproar about lem hackett.apparently it was the right and proper thing to do. not a doubtentered my mind that all the angels were grouped together, discussing thisboy's case and observing the awful bombardment of our beggarly littlevillage with satisfaction and approval. there was one thing which disturbedme in the most serious

way; that was the thought that this centeringof the celestial interest on our village could not fail to attract theattention of the observers to people among us who might otherwise haveescaped notice for years. i felt that i was not only one of those people,but the very one most likely to be discovered. that discovery couldhave but one result: i should be in the fire with lem before thechill of the river had been fairly warmed out of him. i knew that thiswould be only just and fair. i was increasing the chances against myselfall the time, by feeling a secret bitterness against lem for having attractedthis fatal attention

to me, but i could not help it--this sinfulthought persisted in infesting my breast in spite of me. everytime 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 mentionacts of theirs which were wickeder than mine, and peculiarly neededpunishment--and i tried to pretend to myself that i was simply doingthis in a casual way, and without intent to divert the heavenly attentionto them for the purpose of getting rid of it myself. with deep sagacityi put these mentions into the form of sorrowing recollectionsand left-handed

sham-supplications that the sins of thoseboys might be allowed to pass unnoticed--'possibly they may repent.' 'itis true that jim smith broke a window and lied about it--but maybe he didnot mean any harm. and although tom holmes says more bad words thanany other boy in the village, he probably intends to repent--thoughhe has never said he would. and whilst it is a fact that john jonesdid fish a little on sunday, once, he didn't really catch anythingbut only just one small useless mud-cat; and maybe that wouldn't havebeen so awful if he had thrown it back--as he says he did, but hedidn't. pity but they would

repent of these dreadful things--and maybethey will yet.' but while i was shamefully trying to drawattention to these poor chaps --who were doubtless directing the celestialattention to me at the same moment, though i never once suspected that--ihad heedlessly left my candle burning. it was not a time to neglecteven trifling precautions. there was no occasion to add anything to thefacilities for attracting notice to me--so i put the light out. it was a long night to me, and perhaps themost distressful one i ever spent. i endured agonies of remorse forsins which i knew i had

committed, and for others which i was notcertain about, yet was sure that they had been set down against me ina book by an angel who was wiser than i and did not trust such importantmatters to memory. it struck me, by and by, that i had been makinga most foolish and calamitous mistake, in one respect: doubtlessi 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 anguishand the fright which this thought gave me made my previous sufferingsseem trifling by

comparison. things had become truly serious. i resolvedto turn over a new leaf instantly; i also resolved to connect myselfwith the church the next day, if i survived to see its sun appear.i resolved to cease from sin in all its forms, and to lead a high and blamelesslife for ever after. i would be punctual at church and sunday-school;visit the sick; carry baskets of victuals to the poor (simplyto fulfil the regulation conditions, although i knew we had none amongus so poor but they would smash the basket over my head for my pains);i would instruct other boys

in right ways, and take the resulting trouncingsmeekly; i would subsist entirely on tracts; i would invadethe rum shop and warn the drunkard--and finally, if i escaped the fateof those who early become too good to live, i would go for a missionary. the storm subsided toward daybreak, and idozed gradually to sleep with a sense of obligation to lem hackett for goingto eternal suffering in that abrupt way, and thus preventing a farmore dreadful disaster--my own loss. but when i rose refreshed, by and by, andfound that those other boys

were still alive, i had a dim sense that perhapsthe whole thing was a false alarm; that the entire turmoil hadbeen on lem's account and nobody's else. the world looked so brightand safe that there did not seem to be any real occasion to turn overa new leaf. i was a little subdued, during that day, and perhaps thenext; 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; andit was the most unaccountable one, to me, that i had everexperienced; for on the

afternoon of that day, 'dutchy' was drowned.dutchy belonged to our sunday-school. he was a german lad who didnot know enough to come in out of the rain; but he was exasperatinglygood, and had a prodigious memory. one sunday he made himself the envyof all the youth and the talk of all the admiring village, by recitingthree thousand verses of scripture without missing a word; then hewent off the very next day and got drowned. circumstances gave to his death a peculiarimpressiveness. we were all bathing in a muddy creek which had a deephole in it, and in this hole

the coopers had sunk a pile of green hickoryhoop poles to soak, some twelve feet under water. we were diving and'seeing who could stay under longest.' we managed to remain down by holdingon to the hoop poles. dutchy made such a poor success of it thathe was hailed with laughter and derision every time his head appearedabove water. at last he seemed hurt with the taunts, and begged us to standstill on the bank and be fair with him and give him an honest count--'befriendly and kind just this once, and not miscount for the sake ofhaving 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 ofbeginning to count, followed the lead of one of their number and scamperedto a range of blackberry bushes close by and hid behind it. they imagineddutchy's humiliation, when he should rise after a superhuman effortand find the place silent and vacant, nobody there to applaud. theywere 'so full of laugh' with the idea, that they were continually explodinginto muffled cackles. time swept on, and presently one who was peepingthrough 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 jokeon him is all the better for it.' there was a remark or two more, and then apause. talking ceased, and all began to peer through the vines. beforelong, the boys' faces began to look uneasy, then anxious, then terrified.still there was no movement of the placid water. hearts beganto beat fast, and faces

to turn pale. we all glided out, silently,and stood on the bank, our horrified eyes wandering back and forth fromeach other's countenances to the water. 'somebody must go down and see!' yes, that was plain; but nobody wanted thatgrisly task. 'draw straws!' so we did--with hands which shook so, thatwe hardly knew what 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 which gaveme no response--and if it had i should not have known it, i let it gowith such a frightened suddenness. the boy had been caught among the hoop polesand entangled there, helplessly. i fled to the surface and toldthe awful news. some of us knew that if the boy were dragged out atonce he might possibly be resuscitated, but we never thought of that.we did not think of anything; we did not know what to do, so wedid nothing--except that the smaller lads cried, piteously, and we allstruggled frantically into

our clothes, putting on anybody's that camehandy, 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 tosee the 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 lead a betterlife. the night presently closed down. then cameon that tremendous and utterly unaccountable storm. i was perfectlydazed; i could not understand it. it seemed to me that theremust be some mistake. the elements were turned loose, and they rattledand banged and blazed away

in the most blind and frantic manner. allheart and hope went out of me, and the dismal thought kept floating throughmy brain, 'if a boy who knows three thousand verses by heart is notsatisfactory, what chance is there for anybody else?' of course i never questioned for a momentthat the storm was on 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 convincedme that if dutchy, with all his perfections, was not a delight, itwould be vain for me to turn

over a new leaf, for i must infallibly fallhopelessly short of that boy, no matter how hard i might try. neverthelessi did turn it over--a highly educated fear compelled me to do that--butsucceeding days of cheerfulness and sunshine came bothering around,and within a month i had so drifted backward that again i wasas lost and comfortable as ever. breakfast time approached while i mused thesemusings and called these ancient happenings back to mind; so i gotme back into the present and went down the hill.

on my way through town to the hotel, i sawthe house which was my home when i was a boy. at present rates, the peoplewho now occupy it are of no more value than i am; but in my time theywould have been worth not less than five hundred dollars apiece. theyare colored folk. after breakfast, i went out alone again, intendingto hunt up some of the sunday-schools and see how this generationof pupils might compare with their progenitors who had sat with mein those places and had probably taken me as a model--though i donot remember as to that now. by the public square there had been in myday a shabby little brick

church called the 'old ship of zion,' whichi had attended as a sunday-school scholar; and i found the localityeasily enough, but not the old church; it was gone, and a trig andrather hilarious new edifice was in its place. the pupils were better dressedand better looking than were those of my time; consequently theydid not resemble their ancestors; and consequently there was nothingfamiliar to me in their faces. still, i contemplated them with a deepinterest and a yearning wistfulness, and if i had been a girl i wouldhave cried; for they were the offspring, and represented, and occupiedthe places, of boys and

girls some of whom i had loved to love, andsome of whom i had loved to hate, but all of whom were dear to me forthe one reason or the other, so many years gone by--and, lord, where bethey now! i was mightily stirred, and would have beengrateful to be allowed to remain unmolested and look my fill; but abald-summited superintendent who had been a tow-headed sunday-school mateof mine on that spot in the early ages, recognized me, and i talked aflutter of wild nonsense to those children to hide the thoughts whichwere in me, and which could not have been spoken without a betrayal offeeling that would have been

recognized as out of character with me. making speeches without preparation is nogift of mine; and i was resolved to shirk any new opportunity, butin the next and larger sunday-school i found myself in the rear ofthe assemblage; so i was very willing to go on the platform a momentfor the sake of getting a good look at the scholars. on the spur ofthe moment i could not recall any of the old idiotic talks which visitorsused to insult me with when i was a pupil there; and i was sorry for this,since it would have given me time and excuse to dawdle there and takea long and satisfying look

at what i feel at liberty to say was an arrayof fresh young comeliness not matchable in another sunday-school ofthe same size. as i talked merely to get a chance to inspect; and asi strung out 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 hadbut the one--was perfect: perfect in manners, perfect in dress, perfectin conduct, perfect in filial piety, perfect in exterior godliness;but at bottom he was a

prig; and as for the contents of his skull,they could have changed place with the contents of a pie and nobodywould have been the worse off for it but the pie. this fellow's reproachlessnesswas a standing reproach to every lad in the village. he wasthe admiration of all the mothers, and the detestation of all theirsons. i was told what became of him, but as it was a disappointment tome, i will not enter into details. he succeeded in life. chapter 55 a vendetta and other things during my three days' stay in the town, iwoke up every morning with the

impression that i was a boy--for in my dreamsthe faces were all young again, and looked as they had looked in theold times--but i went to bed a hundred years old, every night--for meantimei had been seeing those faces as they are now. of course i suffered some surprises, alongat first, before i had become adjusted to the changed state of things. imet young ladies who did not seem to have changed at all; but they turnedout to be the daughters of the young ladies i had in mind--sometimestheir grand-daughters. when you are told that a stranger of fifty is agrandmother, there is nothing

surprising about it; but if, on the contrary,she is a person whom you knew as a little girl, it seems impossible.you say to yourself, 'how can a little girl be a grandmother.' it takessome little time to accept and realize the fact that while you have beengrowing old, your friends have not been standing still, in that matter. i noticed that the greatest changes observablewere with the women, not the men. i saw men whom thirty years had changedbut slightly; but their wives had grown old. these were good women;it is very wearing to 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 his coatas he went; and then everybody knew a steamboat was coming. everybodyknew, also, that john stavely was not expecting anybody by the boat--orany freight, either; and stavely must have known that everybodyknew this, still it made no difference to him; he liked to seem to himselfto be expecting a hundred thousand tons of saddles by this boat, andso he went on all his life, enjoying being faithfully on hand to receiveand receipt for those

saddles, in case by any miracle they shouldcome. a malicious quincy paper used always to refer to this town, inderision as '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 flying down thestreet struggling with his fluttering coat. but there was a carpenter who was my chiefesthero. he was a mighty liar, but i did not know that; i believedeverything he said. he was a romantic, sentimental, melodramatic fraud,and his bearing impressed

me with awe. i vividly remember the firsttime he took me into his confidence. he was planing a board, and everynow and then he would pause and heave a deep sigh; and occasionallymutter broken sentences--confused and not intelligible--butout of their midst an ejaculation sometimes escaped which made meshiver and did me good: one was, 'o god, it is his blood!' i sat on thetool-chest and humbly and shudderingly admired him; for i judged hewas 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 myhistory; for oh, i must relieve my burdened soul, or i shall die!' he cautioned me once more to be 'as silentas the grave;' then he told me he was a 'red-handed murderer.' he putdown his plane, held his hands out before him, contemplated them sadly, andsaid-- 'look--with these hands i have taken the livesof thirty human beings!'

the effect which this had upon me was an inspirationto him, and he turned himself loose upon his subject withinterest and energy. he left generalizing, and went into details,--beganwith his first murder; described it, told what measures he had takento 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 my hairs rise by suddenly snatching it out and showingit to me. at the end of this first seance i went homewith six of his fearful secrets among my freightage, and found thema great help to my dreams,

which had been sluggish for a while back.i sought him again and again, on my saturday holidays; in fact i spent thesummer with him--all of it which was valuable to me. his fascinationsnever diminished, for he threw something fresh and stirring, inthe way of horror, into each successive murder. he always gave names, dates,places--everything. this by and by enabled me to note two things: thathe had killed his victims in every quarter of the globe, and that thesevictims were always named lynch. the destruction of the lynches wentserenely on, saturday after saturday, until the original thirty had multipliedto sixty--and more to

be heard from yet; then my curiosity got thebetter of my timidity, and i asked how it happened that these justlypunished persons all bore the same name. my hero said he had never divulged that darksecret to any living 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 'withall the sweet affection of her pure and noble nature.' but he had a rival,a 'base hireling' named archibald lynch, who said the girl shouldbe his, or he would 'dye his

hands in her heart's best blood.' the carpenter,'innocent and happy in love's young dream,' gave no weight tothe threat, but led his 'golden-haired darling to the altar,' andthere, the two were made one; there also, just as the minister's hands werestretched in blessing over their heads, the fell deed was done--witha knife--and the bride fell a corpse at her husband's feet. and what didthe husband do? he plucked forth that knife, and kneeling by the bodyof his lost one, swore to 'consecrate his life to the exterminationof all the human scum that bear the hated name of lynch.'

that was it. he had been hunting down thelynches and slaughtering them, from that day to this--twenty years.he had always used that same consecrated knife; with it he had murderedhis long array of lynches, and with it he had left upon the foreheadof each victim a peculiar mark--a cross, deeply incised. said he-- 'the cross of the mysterious avenger is knownin europe, in america, in china, in siam, in the tropics, in thepolar seas, in the deserts of asia, in all the earth. wherever in the uttermostparts of the globe, a lynch has penetrated, there has the mysteriouscross been seen, and

those who have seen it have shuddered andsaid, "it is his mark, he has been here." you have heard of the mysteriousavenger--look upon him, for before you stands no less a person! but beware--breathenot a word to any soul. be silent, and wait. some morningthis town will flock aghast to view a gory corpse; on its brow will beseen the awful sign, and men will tremble and whisper, "he has beenhere--it is the mysterious avenger's mark!" you will come here, but ishall 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 asi had not yet seen the book then, i took his inventions for truth, anddid not suspect that he was a plagiarist. however, we had a lynch living in the town;and the more i reflected upon his impending doom, the more i couldnot sleep. it seemed my plain duty to save him, and a still plainer andmore important duty to get some sleep for myself, so at last i venturedto go to mr. lynch and tell him what was about to happen to him--understrict secrecy. i advised him to 'fly,' and certainly expected him to doit. but he laughed at me; and

he did not stop there; he led me down to thecarpenter's shop, gave the carpenter a jeering and scornful lecture uponhis silly pretensions, slapped his face, made him get down on hisknees and beg--then went off and left me to contemplate the cheap and pitifulruin of what, in my eyes, had so lately been a majestic and incomparablehero. the carpenter blustered, flourished his knife, and doomedthis lynch in his usual volcanic style, the size of his fateful wordsundiminished; but it was all wasted upon me; he was a hero to me nolonger, but only a poor, foolish, exposed humbug. i was ashamed ofhim, and ashamed of myself; i

took no further interest in him, and neverwent to his shop any more. he was a heavy loss to me, for he was the greatesthero i had ever known. the fellow must have had some talent; forsome of his imaginary murders were so vividly and dramatically describedthat i remember all their details yet. the people of hannibal are not more changedthan is the town. it is no longer a village; it is a city, with amayor, and a council, and water-works, and probably a debt. it has fifteenthousand people, is a thriving and energetic place, and is pavedlike the rest of the west

and south--where a well-paved street and agood sidewalk are things so seldom seen, that one doubts them when hedoes see them. the customary half-dozen railways center in hannibal now,and there is a new depot which cost a hundred thousand dollars. inmy time the town had no specialty, and no commercial grandeur; thedaily packet usually landed a passenger and bought a catfish, and tookaway another passenger and a hatful of freight; but now a huge commercein lumber has grown up and a large miscellaneous commerce is one of theresults. a deal of money changes hands there now.

bear creek--so called, perhaps, because itwas always so particularly bare of bears--is hidden out of sight now,under islands and continents of piled lumber, and nobody but an expertcan find it. i used to get drowned in it every summer regularly, andbe drained 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 wasa famous breeder of chills and fever in its day. i remember one summerwhen everybody in town had this disease at once. many chimneys were shakendown, and all the houses were so racked that the town had to be rebuilt.the chasm or gorge

between lover's leap and the hill west ofit is supposed by scientists to have been caused by glacial action. thisis a mistake. there is an interesting cave a mile or twobelow hannibal, among the bluffs. i would have liked to revisit it,but had not time. in my time the person who then owned it turned itinto a mausoleum for his daughter, aged fourteen. the body of thispoor child was put into a copper cylinder filled with alcohol, and thiswas suspended in one of the dismal avenues of the cave. the top ofthe cylinder was removable; and it was said to be a common thing for thebaser order of tourists to

drag the dead face into view and examine itand comment upon it. chapter 56 a question of law the slaughter-house is gone from the mouthof bear creek and so is the small jail (or 'calaboose') which once stoodin its neighborhood. a citizen asked, 'do you remember when jimmyfinn, the town drunkard, was burned to death in the calaboose?' observe, now, how history becomes defiled,through lapse of time and the help of the bad memories of men. jimmyfinn was not burned in the calaboose, but died a natural death in a tanvat, of a combination of

delirium tremens and spontaneous combustion.when i say natural death, i mean it was a natural death for jimmy finnto 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 anybodyelse; i knew too much of it, in that bygone day, to relish speakingof it. that tramp was wandering about the streets one chilly evening,with a pipe in his mouth, and begging for a match; he got neithermatches nor courtesy; on the contrary, a troop of bad little boys followedhim around and amused themselves with nagging and annoying him.i assisted; but at last, some

appeal which the wayfarer made for forbearance,accompanying it with a pathetic reference to his forlorn and friendlesscondition, touched such sense of shame and remnant of right feelingas were left in me, and i went away and got him some matches, and thenhied me home and to bed, heavily weighted as to conscience, and unbuoyantin spirit. an hour or two afterward, the man was arrested and lockedup in the calaboose by the marshal--large name for a constable, butthat was his title. at two in the morning, the church bells rang forfire, and everybody turned out, of course--i with the rest. the tramphad used his matches

disastrously: he had set his straw bed onfire, and the oaken sheathing of the room had caught. when i reached theground, two hundred men, women, and children stood massed together,transfixed with horror, and staring at the grated windows of the jail.behind the iron bars, and tugging frantically at them, and screamingfor help, stood the tramp; he seemed like a black object set against a sun,so white and intense was the light at his back. that marshal couldnot be found, and he had the only key. a battering-ram was quickly improvised,and the thunder of its blows upon the door had so encouraging a soundthat the spectators broke

into wild cheering, and believed the mercifulbattle won. but it was not so. the timbers were too strong; they didnot yield. it was said that the man's death-grip still held fast to thebars after he was dead; and that in this position the fires wrapped himabout and consumed him. as to this, i do not know. what was seen afteri recognized the face that was pleading through the bars was seen byothers, not by me. i saw that face, so situated, every nightfor a long time afterward; and i believed myself as guilty of the man's deathas if i had given him the matches purposely that he might burn himselfup with them. i had not a

doubt that i should be hanged if my connectionwith this tragedy were found out. the happenings and the impressionsof that time are burnt into my memory, and the study of them entertainsme as much now as they themselves distressed me then. if anybodyspoke of that grisly matter, i was all ears in a moment, and alert to hearwhat might be said, for i was always dreading and expecting to findout that i was suspected; and so fine and so delicate was the perceptionof my guilty conscience, that it often detected suspicion in the mostpurposeless remarks, and in looks, gestures, glances of the eye whichhad 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, howsoevercarelessly and 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 onething--the fact that i was an inveterate talker in my sleep. but onenight i awoke and found my bed-mate--my younger brother--sitting up inbed 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 throat and my hair on end. 'what did i say. quick--out with it--whatdid 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 talkingabout. i think you are

sick or crazy or something. but anyway, you'reawake, and i'll get to sleep while i've got a chance.' he fell asleep and i lay there in a cold sweat,turning this new terror over in the whirling chaos which did dutyas my mind. the burden of my thought was, how much did i divulge? howmuch does he know?--what a distress is this uncertainty! but by and byi evolved an idea--i would wake my brother and probe him with a supposititiouscase. 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 man should 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 saythe tomahawk; i said the pistol. now don't you keep breaking inthat 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 himto be careful with it, because it was loaded, and he went off andshot himself with that pistol--fooling with it, you know, and probablydoing 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 murderer for letting him have that pistol?'

after deep thought came this answer-- 'well, i should think i was guilty of something--maybemurder--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--thereseemed to be no other way. but i would do it cautiously, and keepa watch out for suspicious effects. i said-- 'i was supposing a case, but i am coming tothe real one now. do you know how the man came to be burned up in thecalaboose?'

'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 wantedsome matches to light his pipe. a boy got him some. the man set fireto the calaboose with those very matches, and burnt himself up.' '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 heavyverdict-- 'if the man was drunk, and the boy knew it,the boy murdered that man. this is certain.'

faint, sickening sensations crept along allthe fibers of my body, and i seemed to know how a person feels who hearshis death sentence pronounced from the bench. i waited to hearwhat 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. isimply shuddered. then he added-- 'yes, before you got half through tellingabout the thing, i knew perfectly well who the boy was; it was bencoontz!'

i came out of my collapse as one who risesfrom the dead. i said, with admiration-- 'why, how in the world did you ever guessit?' 'you told it in your sleep.' i said to myself, 'how splendid that is! thisis a habit which must be cultivated.' my brother rattled innocently on-- 'when you were talking in your sleep, youkept mumbling something about "matches," which i couldn't make anythingout of; but just now, when

you began to tell me about the man and thecalaboose and the matches, i remembered that in your sleep you mentionedben coontz two or three times; so i put this and that together, yousee, and right away i knew it was ben that burnt that man up.' i praised his sagacity effusively. presentlyhe asked-- 'are you going to give him up to the law?' 'no,' i said; 'i believe that this will bea lesson to him. i shall keep an eye on him, of course, for that is butright; but if he stops where he is and reforms, it shall never be saidthat i betrayed him.'

'how good you are!' 'well, i try to be. it is all a person cando in a world like this.' and now, my burden being shifted to othershoulders, my terrors soon faded away. the day before we left hannibal, a curiousthing fell under my notice--the surprising spread which longitudinaltime undergoes there. i learned it from one of the most unostentatiousof men--the colored coachman of a friend of mine, who lives threemiles 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 tillten. he excused himself by saying-- 'de time is mos' an hour en a half slowerin de country en what it is in de town; you'll be in plenty time, boss. sometimeswe shoves out early for church, sunday, en fetches up dah rightplum in de middle er de sermon. diffunce in de time. a body can'tmake no calculations 'bout i had lost two hours and a half; but i hadlearned a fact worth four. chapter 57 an archangel from st. louis northward there are all theenlivening signs of the

presence of active, energetic, intelligent,prosperous, practical nineteenth-century populations. the peopledon't dream, they work. the happy result is manifest all around in thesubstantial outside aspect of things, and the suggestions of wholesomelife and comfort that everywhere appear. quincy is a notable example--a brisk, handsome,well-ordered city; and now, as formerly, interested in art, letters,and other high things. but marion city is an exception. marion cityhas gone backwards in a most unaccountable way. this metropolispromised so well that the

projectors tacked 'city' to its name in thevery beginning, with full confidence; but it was bad prophecy. wheni first saw marion city, thirty-five years ago, it contained one street,and nearly or quite six houses. it contains but one house now, andthis one, in a state of ruin, is getting ready to follow the former fiveinto the river. doubtless marion city was too near to quincy. it hadanother disadvantage: it was situated in a flat mud bottom, below high-watermark, whereas quincy stands high up on the slope of a hill. in the beginning quincy had the aspect andways of a model new england

town: and these she has yet: broad, cleanstreets, trim, neat dwellings and lawns, fine mansions, stately blocks ofcommercial buildings. and there are ample fair-grounds, a well keptpark, and many attractive drives; library, reading-rooms, a couple ofcolleges, some handsome and costly churches, and a grand court-house,with grounds which occupy a square. the population of the city is thirtythousand. there are some large factories here, and manufacturing, ofmany sorts, is done on a great scale. la grange and canton are growing towns, buti missed alexandria; was

told it was under water, but would come upto blow in the summer. keokuk was easily recognizable. i lived therein 1857--an extraordinary year there in real-estate matters. the 'boom'was something wonderful. everybody bought, everybody sold--except widowsand preachers; they always hold on; and when the tide ebbs, theyget left. anything in the semblance of a town lot, no matter how situated,was salable, and at a figure which would still have been high ifthe ground had been sodded with greenbacks. the town has a population of fifteen thousandnow, and is progressing

with a healthy growth. it was night, and wecould not see details, for which we were sorry, for keokuk has the reputationof being a beautiful city. it was a pleasant one to live in longago, and doubtless has advanced, not retrograded, in that respect. a mighty work which was in progress therein my day is finished now. this is the canal over the rapids. it is eightmiles long, three hundred feet wide, and is in no place less than sixfeet deep. its masonry is of the majestic kind which the war departmentusually deals in, and will endure like a roman aqueduct. the work costfour or five millions.

after an hour or two spent with former friends,we started up the river again. keokuk, a long time ago, was an occasionalloafing-place of that erratic genius, henry clay dean. i believei never saw him but once; but he was much talked of when i lived there.this is what was said of him-- he began life poor and without education.but he educated himself--on the curbstones of keokuk. he would sit downon a curbstone with his book, careless or unconscious of the clatterof commerce and the tramp of the passing crowds, and bury himself inhis studies by the hour, never changing his position except to drawin his knees now and then

to let a dray pass unobstructed; and whenhis book was finished, its contents, however abstruse, had been burntinto his memory, and were his permanent possession. in this way he acquireda vast hoard of all sorts of learning, and had it pigeon-holed in hishead where he could put his intellectual hand on it whenever it was wanted. his clothes differed in no respect from a'wharf-rat's,' except that they were raggeder, more ill-assorted andinharmonious (and therefore more extravagantly picturesque), and severallayers dirtier. nobody could infer the master-mind in the top ofthat edifice from the edifice

itself. he was an orator--by nature in the first place,and later by the training of experience and practice. whenhe was out on a canvass, his name was a lodestone which drew the farmersto his stump from fifty miles around. his theme was always politics.he used no notes, for a volcano does not need notes. in 1862, ason of keokuk's late distinguished citizen, mr. claggett, gaveme this incident concerning dean-- the war feeling was running high in keokuk(in '61), and a great

mass meeting was to be held on a certain dayin the new athenaeum. a distinguished stranger was to address thehouse. after the building had been packed to its utmost capacity with swelteringfolk of both sexes, the stage still remained vacant--the distinguishedstranger had failed to connect. the crowd grew impatient, andby and by indignant and rebellious. about this time a distressed managerdiscovered dean on a curb-stone, explained the dilemma to him,took his book away from him, rushed him into the building the back way,and told him to make for the stage and save his country.

presently a sudden silence fell upon the grumblingaudience, and everybody's eyes sought a single point--thewide, empty, carpetless stage. a figure appeared there whose aspectwas familiar to hardly a dozen persons present. it was the scarecrowdean--in foxy shoes, down at the heels; socks of odd colors, also 'down;'damaged trousers, relics of antiquity, and a world too short, exposingsome inches of naked ankle; an unbuttoned vest, also too short, and exposinga zone of soiled and wrinkled linen between it and the waistband;shirt bosom open; long black handkerchief, wound round and roundthe neck like a bandage;

bob-tailed blue coat, reaching down to thesmall of the back, with sleeves which left four inches of forearmunprotected; small, stiff-brimmed soldier-cap hung on a cornerof the bump of--whichever bump it was. this figure moved gravely outupon the stage and, with sedate and measured step, down to the front,where it paused, and dreamily inspected the house, saying no word.the silence of surprise held its own for a moment, then was brokenby a just audible ripple of merriment which swept the sea of faceslike the wash of a wave. the figure remained as before, thoughtfullyinspecting. another wave

started--laughter, this time. it was followedby another, then a third--this last one boisterous. and now the stranger stepped back one pace,took off his soldier-cap, tossed it into the wing, and began to speak,with deliberation, nobody listening, everybody laughing and whispering.the speaker talked on unembarrassed, and presently delivered a shotwhich went home, and silence and attention resulted. he followedit quick and fast, with other telling things; warmed to his work andbegan to pour his words out, instead of dripping them; grew hotterand hotter, and fell to

discharging lightnings and thunder--and nowthe house began to break into applause, to which the speaker gave noheed, but went hammering straight on; unwound his black bandage andcast it away, still thundering; presently discarded the bob tailedcoat and flung it aside, firing up higher and higher all the time;finally flung the vest after the coat; and then for an untimed period stoodthere, like another vesuvius, spouting smoke and flame, lava andashes, raining pumice-stone and cinders, shaking the moral earth withintellectual crash upon crash, explosion upon explosion, while the mad multitudestood upon their feet

in a solid body, answering back with a ceaselesshurricane of cheers, through a thrashing snowstorm of waving handkerchiefs. 'when dean came,' said claggett, 'the peoplethought he was an escaped lunatic; but when he went, they thought hewas an escaped archangel.' burlington, home of the sparkling burdette,is another hill city; and also a beautiful one; unquestionably so; afine and flourishing city, with a population of twenty-five thousand,and belted with busy factories of nearly every imaginable description.it was a very sober city, too--for the moment--for a most soberingbill was pending; a bill

to forbid the manufacture, exportation, importation,purchase, sale, borrowing, lending, stealing, drinking, smelling,or possession, by conquest, inheritance, intent, accident, orotherwise, in the state of iowa, of each and every deleterious beverageknown to the human race, except water. this measure was approved byall the rational people in the state; but not by the bench of judges. burlington has the progressive modern city'sfull equipment of devices for right and intelligent government; includinga paid fire department, a thing which the great city of new orleansis without, but still

employs that relic of antiquity, the independentsystem. in burlington, as in all these upper-rivertowns, one breathes a go-ahead atmosphere which tastes good in thenostrils. an opera-house has lately been built there which is in strongcontrast with the shabby dens which usually do duty as theaters incities of burlington's size. we had not time to go ashore in muscatine,but had a daylight view of it from the boat. i lived there awhile, manyyears ago, but the place, now, had a rather unfamiliar look; so i supposeit has clear outgrown the town which i used to know. in fact, i knowit has; for i remember it as

a small place--which it isn't now. but i rememberit best for a lunatic who caught me out in the fields, onesunday, and extracted a butcher-knife from his boot and proposed tocarve me up with it, unless i acknowledged him to be the only sonof the devil. i tried to compromise on an acknowledgment that hewas the only member of the family i had met; but that did not satisfyhim; he wouldn't have any half-measures; i must say he was the soleand only son of the devil--he whetted his knife on his boot. it did notseem worth while to make trouble about a little thing like that; soi swung round to his view of

the matter and saved my skin whole. shortlyafterward, he went to visit his father; and as he has not turned up since,i trust he is there yet. and i remember muscatine--still more pleasantly--forits summer sunsets. i have never seen any, on either side of theocean, that equaled them. they used the broad smooth river as a canvas,and painted on it every imaginable dream of color, from the mottleddaintinesses and delicacies of the opal, all the way up, through cumulativeintensities, to blinding purple and crimson conflagrations which wereenchanting to the eye, but sharply tried it at the same time. all theupper mississippi region

has these extraordinary sunsets as a familiarspectacle. it is the true sunset land: i am sure no other country canshow so good a right to the name. the sunrises are also said to be exceedinglyfine. i do not know. chapter 58 on the upper river the big towns drop in, thick and fast, now:and between stretch processions of thrifty farms, not desolatesolitude. hour by hour, the boat plows deeper and deeper into the greatand populous north-west; and with each successive section of it which isrevealed, one's surprise and respect gather emphasis and increase.such a people, and such

achievements as theirs, compel homage. thisis an independent race who think for themselves, and who are competentto do it, because they are educated and enlightened; they read, theykeep abreast of the best and newest thought, they fortify every weakplace in their land with a school, a college, a library, and a newspaper;and they live under law. solicitude for the future of a race like thisis not in order. this region is new; so new that it may besaid to be still in its babyhood. by what it has accomplished whilestill teething, one may forecast what marvels it will do in the strengthof its maturity. it

is so new that the foreign tourist has notheard of it yet; and has not visited it. for sixty years, the foreign touristhas steamed up and down the river between st. louis and new orleans,and then gone home and written his book, believing he had seen allof the river that was worth seeing or that had anything to see. in notsix of all these books is there mention of these upper river towns--forthe reason that the five or six tourists who penetrated this regiondid it before these towns were projected. the latest tourist of themall (1878) made the same old regulation trip--he had not heard that therewas anything north of st.

louis. yet there was. there was this amazing region,bristling with great towns, projected day before yesterday, soto speak, and built next morning. a score of them number from fifteenhundred to five thousand people. then we have muscatine, ten thousand;winona, ten thousand; moline, ten thousand; rock island, twelvethousand; la crosse, twelve thousand; burlington, twenty-five thousand;dubuque, twenty-five thousand; davenport, thirty thousand; st.paul, fifty-eight thousand, minneapolis, sixty thousand and upward.

the foreign tourist has never heard of these;there is no note of them in his books. they have sprung up in the night,while he slept. so new is this region, that i, who am comparativelyyoung, am yet older than it is. when i was born, st. paul had a populationof three persons, minneapolis had just a third as many. thethen population of minneapolis died two years ago; and when he died he hadseen himself undergo an increase, in forty years, of fifty-nine thousandnine hundred and ninety-nine persons. he had a frog's fertility. i must explain that the figures set down above,as the population of st.

paul and minneapolis, are several months old.these towns are far larger now. in fact, i have just seen a newspaperestimate which gives the former seventy-one thousand, and the latterseventy-eight thousand. this book will not reach the public for six orseven months yet; none of the figures will be worth much then. we had a glimpse of davenport, which is anotherbeautiful city, crowning a hill--a phrase which applies to all thesetowns; for they are all comely, all well built, clean, orderly, pleasantto the eye, and cheering to the spirit; and they are all situatedupon hills. therefore

we will give that phrase a rest. the indianshave a tradition that marquette and joliet camped where davenportnow stands, in 1673. the next white man who camped there, did it abouta hundred and seventy years later--in 1834. davenport has gatheredits thirty thousand people within the past thirty years. she sends morechildren to her schools now, than her whole population numbered twenty-threeyears ago. she has the usual upper river quota of factories,newspapers, and institutions of learning; she has telephones, local telegraphs,an electric alarm, and an admirable paid fire department, consistingof six hook and ladder

companies, four steam fire engines, and thirtychurches. davenport is the official residence of two bishops--episcopaland catholic. opposite davenport is the flourishing townof rock island, which lies at the foot of the upper rapids. a great railroadbridge connects the two towns--one of the thirteen which fret themississippi and the pilots, between st. louis and st. paul. the charming island of rock island, threemiles long and half a mile wide, belongs to the united states, and thegovernment has turned it into a wonderful park, enhancing its naturalattractions by art, and

threading its fine forests with many milesof drives. near the center of the island one catches glimpses, throughthe trees, of ten vast stone four-story buildings, each of which coversan acre of ground. these are the government workshops; for the rockisland establishment is a national armory and arsenal. we move up the river--always through enchantingscenery, there being no other kind on the upper mississippi--and passmoline, a center of vast manufacturing industries; and clinton andlyons, great lumber centers; and presently reach dubuque, which is situatedin a rich mineral region.

the lead mines are very productive, and ofwide extent. dubuque has a great number of manufacturing establishments;among them a plow factory which has for customers all christendom ingeneral. at least so i was told by an agent of the concern who was onthe boat. he said-- 'you show me any country under the sun wherethey really know how to plow, and if i don't show you our mark onthe plow they use, i'll eat that plow; and i won't ask for any woostershyresauce to flavor it up with, either.' all this part of the river is rich in indianhistory and traditions.

black hawk's was once a puissant name hereabouts;as was keokuk's, further down. a few miles belowdubuque is the tete de mort--death's-head rock, or bluff--to thetop of which the french drove a band of indians, in early times, and coopedthem up there, with death for a certainty, and only the manner of itmatter of choice--to starve, or jump off and kill themselves. black hawkadopted the ways of the white people, toward the end of his life;and when he died he was buried, near des moines, in christian fashion,modified by indian custom; that is to say, clothed in a christianmilitary uniform, and

with a christian cane in his hand, but depositedin the grave in a sitting posture. formerly, a horse had alwaysbeen buried with a chief. the substitution of the cane shows that blackhawk's haughty nature was really humbled, and he expected to walk whenhe got over. we noticed that above dubuque the water ofthe mississippi was olive-green--rich and beautiful and semi-transparent,with the sun on it. of course the water was nowhere as clearor of as fine a complexion as it is in some other seasons of the year;for now it was at flood stage, and therefore dimmed and blurred bythe mud manufactured from

caving banks. the majestic bluffs that overlook the river,along through this region, charm one with the grace and variety of theirforms, and the soft beauty of their adornment. the steep verdantslope, whose base is at the water's edge is topped by a lofty rampartof broken, turreted rocks, which are exquisitely rich and mellow in color--mainlydark browns and dull greens, but splashed with other tints.and then you have the shining river, winding here and there andyonder, its sweep interrupted at intervals by clusters of wooded islandsthreaded by silver channels;

and you have glimpses of distant villages,asleep upon capes; and of stealthy rafts slipping along in the shadeof the forest walls; and of white steamers vanishing around remote points.and it is all as tranquil and reposeful as dreamland, and hasnothing this-worldly about it--nothing to hang a fret or a worry upon. until the unholy train comes tearing along--whichit presently does, ripping the sacred solitude to rags and tatterswith its devil's warwhoop and the roar and thunder of its rushingwheels--and straightway you are back in this world, and with one ofits frets ready to hand for

your entertainment: for you remember thatthis is the very road whose stock always goes down after you buy it, andalways goes up again as soon as you sell it. it makes me shudder tothis day, to remember that i once came near not getting rid of my stockat all. it must be an awful thing to have a railroad left on your hands. the locomotive is in sight from the deck ofthe steamboat almost the whole way from st. louis to st. paul--eighthundred miles. these railroads have made havoc with the steamboatcommerce. the clerk of our boat was a steamboat clerk before these roadswere built. in that day

the influx of population was so great, andthe freight business so heavy, that the boats were not able to keepup with the demands made upon their carrying capacity; consequentlythe captains were very independent and airy--pretty 'biggity,' asuncle remus would say. the clerk nut-shelled the contrast between theformer time and the present, thus-- 'boat used to land--captain on hurricane roof--mightystiff and straight--iron ramrod for a spine--kid gloves,plug tile, hair parted behind--man on shore takes off hat and says--

'"got twenty-eight tons of wheat, cap'n--begreat favor if you can take them." 'captain says-- '"'ll take two of them"--and don't even condescendto look at him. 'but nowadays the captain takes off his oldslouch, and smiles all the way around to the back of his ears, and getsoff a bow which he hasn't got any ramrod to interfere with, and says-- '"glad to see you, smith, glad to see you--you'relooking well--haven't seen you looking so well for years--what yougot for us?"

'"nuth'n", says smith; and keeps his hat on,and just turns his back and goes to talking with somebody else. 'oh, yes, eight years ago, the captain wason top; but it's smith's turn now. eight years ago a boat used to go upthe river with every stateroom full, and people piled five and six deep onthe cabin floor; and a solid deck-load of immigrants and harvesters downbelow, into the bargain. to get a first-class stateroom, you'd got toprove sixteen quarterings of nobility and four hundred years of descent,or be personally acquainted with the nigger that blacked the captain'sboots. but it's all changed

now; plenty staterooms above, no harvestersbelow--there's a patent self-binder now, and they don't have harvestersany more; they've gone where the woodbine twineth--and they didn'tgo by steamboat, either; went by the train.' up in this region we met massed acres of lumberrafts coming down--but not floating leisurely along, in the old-fashionedway, manned with joyous and reckless crews of fiddling, song-singing,whiskey-drinking, breakdown-dancing rapscallions; no, the wholething was shoved swiftly along by a powerful stern-wheeler, modernfashion, and the small

crews were quiet, orderly men, of a sedatebusiness aspect, with not a suggestion of romance about them anywhere. along here, somewhere, on a black night, weran some exceedingly narrow and intricate island-chutes by aid of theelectric light. behind was solid blackness--a crackless bank of it; ahead,a narrow elbow of water, curving between dense walls of foliage thatalmost touched our bows on both sides; and here every individual leaf,and every individual ripple stood out in its natural color, and floodedwith a glare as of noonday intensified. the effect was strange, and fine,and very striking.

we passed prairie du chien, another of fathermarquette's camping-places; and after some hours of progressthrough varied and beautiful scenery, reached la crosse. hereis a town of twelve or thirteen thousand population, with electriclighted streets, and with blocks of buildings which are stately enough,and also architecturally fine enough, to command respect in any city.it is a choice town, and we made satisfactory use of the hour allowedus, in roaming it over, though the weather was rainier than necessary. chapter 59 legends and scenery

we added several passengers to our list, atla crosse; among others an old gentleman who had come to this north-westernregion with the early settlers, and was familiar with every partof it. pardonably proud of it, too. he said-- 'you'll find scenery between here and st.paul that can give the hudson points. you'll have the queen's bluff--sevenhundred feet high, and just as imposing a spectacle as you can findanywheres; and trempeleau island, which isn't like any other islandin america, i believe, for it is a gigantic mountain, with precipitous sides,and is full of indian

traditions, and used to be full of rattlesnakes;if you catch the sun just right there, you will have a picturethat will stay with you. and above winona you'll have lovely prairies;and then come the thousand islands, too beautiful for anything; green?why you never saw foliage so green, nor packed so thick; it's like a thousandplush cushions afloat on a looking-glass--when the water 's still;and then the monstrous bluffs on both sides of the river--ragged,rugged, dark-complected--just the frame that's wanted; you always want astrong frame, you know, to throw up the nice points of a delicate pictureand make them stand out.'

the old gentleman also told us a touchingindian legend or two--but not very powerful ones. after this excursion into history, he cameback to the scenery, and described it, detail by detail, from the thousandislands to st. paul; naming its names with such facility, trippingalong his theme with such nimble and confident ease, slamming in a three-tonword, here and there, with such a complacent air of 'tisn't-anything,-i-can-do-it-any-time-i-want-to, and letting off finesurprises of lurid eloquence at such judicious intervals, that ipresently began to suspect--

but no matter what i began to suspect. hearhim-- 'ten miles above winona we come to fountaincity, nestling sweetly at the feet of cliffs that lift their awful fronts,jovelike, toward the blue depths of heaven, bathing them in virginatmospheres that have known no other contact save that of angels'wings. 'and next we glide through silver waters,amid lovely and stupendous aspects of nature that attune our hearts toadoring admiration, about twelve miles, and strike mount vernon, sixhundred feet high, with romantic ruins of a once first-class hotelperched far among the cloud

shadows that mottle its dizzy heights--soleremnant of once-flourishing mount vernon, town of early days, now desolateand utterly deserted. 'and so we move on. past chimney rock we fly--nobleshaft of six hundred feet; then just before landing at minnieskaour attention is attracted by a most striking promontory rising overfive hundred feet--the ideal mountain pyramid. its conic shape--thickly-woodedsurface girding its sides, and its apex like that of a cone, causethe spectator to wonder at nature's workings. from its dizzy heightssuperb views of the forests, streams, bluffs, hills and dalesbelow and beyond for miles are

brought within its focus. what grander riverscenery can be conceived, as we gaze upon this enchanting landscape,from the uppermost point of these bluffs upon the valleys below? the primevalwildness and awful loneliness of these sublime creations of natureand nature's god, excite feelings of unbounded admiration, and therecollection of which can never be effaced from the memory, as we viewthem in any direction. 'next we have the lion's head and the lioness'shead, carved by nature's hand, to adorn and dominate the beauteousstream; and then anon the river widens, and a most charming and magnificentview of the valley

before us suddenly bursts upon our vision;rugged hills, clad with verdant forests from summit to base, levelprairie lands, holding in their lap the beautiful wabasha, city of thehealing waters, puissant foe of bright's disease, and that grandestconception of nature's works, incomparable lake pepin--these constitutea picture whereon the tourist's eye may gaze uncounted hours, withrapture unappeased and unappeasable. 'and so we glide along; in due time encounteringthose majestic domes, the mighty sugar loaf, and the sublime maiden'srock--which latter,

romantic superstition has invested with avoice; and oft-times as the birch canoe glides near, at twilight, thedusky paddler fancies he hears the soft sweet music of the long-departedwinona, darling of indian song and story. 'then frontenac looms upon our vision, delightfulresort of jaded summer tourists; then progressive red wing; and diamondbluff, impressive and preponderous in its lone sublimity; then prescottand the st. croix; and anon we see bursting upon us the domes andsteeples of st. paul, giant young chief of the north, marching with seven-leaguestride in the

van of progress, banner-bearer of the highestand newest civilization, carving his beneficent way with the tomahawkof commercial enterprise, sounding the warwhoop of christian culture,tearing off the reeking scalp of sloth and superstition to plant therethe steam-plow and the school-house--ever in his front stretch aridlawlessness, ignorance, crime, despair; ever in his wake bloom thejail, the gallows, and the pulpit; and ever--' 'have you ever traveled with a panorama?' 'i have formerly served in that capacity.'

my suspicion was confirmed. 'do you still travel with it?' 'no, she is laid up till the fall season opens.i am helping now to work up the materials for a tourist's guide whichthe st. louis and st. paul packet company are going to issue thissummer for the benefit of travelers who go by that line.' 'when you were talking of maiden's rock, youspoke of the long-departed winona, darling of indian song and story.is she the maiden of the rock?--and are the two connected by legend?'

'yes, and a very tragic and painful one. perhapsthe most celebrated, as well as the most pathetic, of all the legendsof the mississippi.' we asked him to tell it. he dropped out ofhis conversational vein and back into his lecture-gait without an effort,and rolled on as follows-- 'a little distance above lake city is a famouspoint known as maiden's rock, which is not only a picturesque spot,but is full of romantic interest from the event which gave it itsname, not many years ago this locality was a favorite resort for the siouxindians on account of the fine fishing and hunting to be had there,and large numbers of them were

always to be found in this locality. amongthe families which used to resort here, was one belonging to the tribeof wabasha. we-no-na (first-born) was the name of a maiden whohad plighted her troth to a lover belonging to the same band. but herstern parents had promised her hand to another, a famous warrior, and insistedon her wedding him. the day was fixed by her parents, to her greatgrief. she appeared to accede to the proposal and accompany them to therock, for the purpose of gathering flowers for the feast. on reachingthe rock, we-no-na ran to its summit and standing on its edge upbraidedher parents who were

below, for their cruelty, and then singinga death-dirge, threw herself from the precipice and dashed them in pieceson the rock below.' 'dashed who in pieces--her parents?' 'well, it certainly was a tragic business,as you say. and moreover, there is a startling kind of dramatic surpriseabout it which i was not looking for. it is a distinct improvementupon the threadbare form of indian legend. there are fifty lover's leapsalong the mississippi from whose summit disappointed indian girls havejumped, but this is the only jump in the lot hat turned out in the rightand satisfactory way. what

became of winona?' 'she was a good deal jarred up and jolted:but she got herself together and disappeared before the coroner reachedthe fatal spot; and 'tis said she sought and married her true love,and wandered with him to some distant clime, where she lived happyever after, her gentle spirit mellowed and chastened by the romantic incidentwhich had so early deprived her of the sweet guidance of a mother'slove and a father's protecting arm, and thrown her, all unfriended,upon the cold charity of a censorious world.'

i was glad to hear the lecturer's descriptionof the scenery, for it assisted my appreciation of what i saw ofit, and enabled me to imagine such of it as we lost by the intrusion ofnight. as the lecturer remarked, this whole regionis blanketed with indian tales and traditions. but i reminded him thatpeople usually merely mention this fact--doing it in a way to makea body's mouth water--and judiciously stopped there. why? because theimpression left, was that these tales were full of incident and imagination--apleasant impression which would be promptly dissipated if thetales were told. i showed him

a lot of this sort of literature which i hadbeen collecting, and he confessed that it was poor stuff, exceedinglysorry rubbish; and i ventured to add that the legends which hehad himself told us were of this character, with the single exceptionof the admirable story of winona. he granted these facts, but said thatif i would hunt up mr. schoolcraft's book, published near fifty yearsago, and now doubtless out of print, i would find some indian inventionsin it that were very far from being barren of incident and imagination;that the tales in hiawatha were of this sort, and they camefrom schoolcraft's book; and

that there were others in the same book whichmr. longfellow could have turned into verse with good effect. for instance,there was the legend of 'the undying head.' he could not tell it,for many of the details had grown dim in his memory; but he wouldrecommend me to find it and enlarge my respect for the indian imagination.he said that this tale, and most of the others in the book, were currentamong the indians along this part of the mississippi when hefirst came here; and that the contributors to schoolcraft's book hadgot them directly from indian lips, and had written them down with strictexactness, and without

embellishments of their own. i have found the book. the lecturer was right.there are several legends in it which confirm what he said. i will offertwo of them--'the undying head,' and 'peboan and seegwun, an allegoryof the seasons.' the latter is used in hiawatha; but it is worth readingin the original form, if only that one may see how effective a genuinepoem can be without the helps and graces of poetic measure and rhythm-- peboan and seegwun. an old man was sitting alone in his lodge,by the side of a frozen

stream. it was the close of winter, and hisfire was almost out, he appeared very old and very desolate. his lockswere white with age, and he trembled in every joint. day after daypassed in solitude, and he heard nothing but the sound of the tempest,sweeping before it the new-fallen snow. one day, as his fire was just dying, a handsomeyoung man approached and entered his dwelling. his cheeks were redwith the blood of youth, his eyes sparkled with animation, and a smileplayed upon his lips. he walked with a light and quick step. his foreheadwas bound with a wreath

of sweet grass, in place of a warrior's frontlet,and he carried a bunch of flowers in his hand. 'ah, my son,' said the old man, 'i am happyto see you. come in. come and tell me of your adventures, and what strangelands you have been to see. let us pass the night together. i willtell you of my prowess and exploits, and what i can perform. you shalldo the same, and we will amuse ourselves.' he then drew from his sack a curiously wroughtantique pipe, and having filled it with tobacco, rendered mild by amixture of certain leaves,

handed it to his guest. when this ceremonywas concluded they began to speak. 'i blow my breath,' said the old man, 'andthe stream stands still. the water becomes stiff and hard as clear stone.' 'i breathe,' said the young man, 'and flowersspring up over the plain.' 'i shake my locks,' retorted the old man,'and snow covers the land. the leaves fall from the trees at my command,and my breath blows them away. the birds get up from the water, and fly toa distant land. the animals hide themselves from my breath, and the veryground becomes as hard as

flint.' 'i shake my ringlets,' rejoined the youngman, 'and warm showers of soft rain fall upon the earth. the plantslift up their heads out of the earth, like the eyes of children glisteningwith delight. my voice recalls the birds. the warmth of my breathunlocks the streams. music fills the groves wherever i walk, and allnature rejoices.' at length the sun began to rise. a gentlewarmth came over the place. the tongue of the old man became silent. therobin and bluebird began to sing on the top of the lodge. the streambegan to murmur by the door,

and the fragrance of growing herbs and flowerscame softly on the vernal breeze. daylight fully revealed to the young man thecharacter of his entertainer. when he looked upon him, he hadthe icy visage of peboan.{footnote [winter.]} streams beganto flow from his eyes. as the sun increased, he grew less and less in stature,and anon had melted completely away. nothing remained on the placeof his lodge-fire but the miskodeed,{footnote [the trailing arbutus.]}a small white flower, with a pink border, which is one of the earliestspecies of northern plants.

'the undying head' is a rather long tale,but it makes up in weird conceits, fairy-tale prodigies, variety ofincident, and energy of movement, for what it lacks in brevity.{footnote[see appendix d.]} chapter 60 speculations and conclusions we reached st. paul, at the head of navigationof the mississippi, and there our voyage of two thousand miles fromnew orleans ended. it is about a ten-day trip by steamer. it can probablybe done quicker by rail. i judge so because i know that one maygo by rail from st. louis to hannibal--a distance of at least a hundredand twenty miles--in seven

hours. this is better than walking; unlessone is in a hurry. the season being far advanced when we werein new orleans, the roses and magnolia blossoms were falling; but here inst. paul it was the snow, in new orleans we had caught an occasionalwithering breath from over a crater, apparently; here in st. paul we caughta frequent benumbing one from over a glacier, apparently. but i wander from my theme. st. paul is awonderful town. it is put together in solid blocks of honest brick andstone, and has the air of intending to stay. its post-office was establishedthirty-six years ago;

and by and by, when the postmaster receiveda letter, he carried it to washington, horseback, to inquire what wasto be done with it. such is the legend. two frame houses were built thatyear, and several persons were added to the population. a recent numberof the leading st. paul paper, the 'pioneer press,' gives some statisticswhich furnish a vivid contrast to that old state of things, to wit:population, autumn of the present year (1882), 71,000; number of lettershandled, first half of the year, 1,209,387; number of houses builtduring three-quarters of the year, 989; their cost, $3,186,000. theincrease of letters over the

corresponding six months of last year wasfifty per cent. last year the new buildings added to the city cost above$4,500,000. st. paul's strength lies in her commerce--i meanhis commerce. he is a manufacturing city, of course--all the citiesof that region are--but he is peculiarly strong in the matter of commerce.last year his jobbing trade amounted to upwards of $52,000,000. he has a custom-house, and is building a costlycapitol to replace the one recently burned--for he is the capitalof the state. he has churches without end; and not the cheap poor kind,but the kind that the rich

protestant puts up, the kind that the poorirish 'hired-girl' delights to erect. what a passion for building majesticchurches the irish hired-girl has. it is a fine thing for ourarchitecture but too often we enjoy her stately fanes without giving hera grateful thought. in fact, instead of reflecting that 'every brickand every stone in this beautiful edifice represents an ache or apain, and a handful of sweat, and hours of heavy fatigue, contributed bythe back and forehead and bones of poverty,' it is our habit to forgetthese things entirely, and merely glorify the mighty temple itself,without vouchsafing one

praiseful thought to its humble builder, whoserich heart and withered purse it symbolizes. this is a land of libraries and schools. st.paul has three public libraries, and they contain, in the aggregate,some forty thousand books. he has one hundred and sixteen school-houses,and pays out more than seventy thousand dollars a year in teachers'salaries. there is an unusually fine railway station;so large is it, in fact, that it seemed somewhat overdone, in the matterof size, at first; but at the end of a few months it was perceivedthat the mistake was

distinctly the other way. the error is tobe corrected. the town stands on high ground; it is aboutseven hundred feet above the sea level. it is so high that a wide viewof river and lowland is offered from its streets. it is a very wonderful town indeed, and isnot finished yet. all the streets are obstructed with building material,and this is being compacted into houses as fast as possible,to make room for more--for other people are anxious to build, as soonas they can get the use of the streets to pile up their bricks and stuffin.

how solemn and beautiful is the thought, thatthe earliest pioneer of civilization, the van-leader of civilization,is never the steamboat, never the railroad, never the newspaper, neverthe sabbath-school, never the missionary--but always whiskey! such isthe case. look history over; you will see. the missionary comes after thewhiskey--i mean he arrives after the whiskey has arrived; next comesthe poor immigrant, with ax and hoe and rifle; next, the trader; next,the miscellaneous rush; next, the gambler, the desperado, the highwayman,and all their kindred in sin of both sexes; and next, the smart chap whohas bought up an old grant

that covers all the land; this brings thelawyer tribe; the vigilance committee brings the undertaker. all theseinterests bring the newspaper; the newspaper starts up politicsand a railroad; all hands turn to and build a church and a jail--andbehold, civilization is established for ever in the land. but whiskey,you see, was the van-leader in this beneficent work. it alwaysis. it was like a foreigner--and excusable in a foreigner--tobe ignorant of this great truth, and wander off into astronomy to borrowa symbol. but if he had been conversant with the facts, he would havesaid--

westward the jug of empire takes its way. this great van-leader arrived upon the groundwhich st. paul now occupies, in june 1837. yes, at that date,pierre parrant, a canadian, built the first cabin, uncorked his jug, andbegan to sell whiskey to the indians. the result is before us. all that i have said of the newness, briskness,swift progress, wealth, intelligence, fine and substantial architecture,and general slash and go, and energy of st. paul, will applyto his near neighbor, minneapolis--with the addition that the latteris the bigger of the two

cities. these extraordinary towns were ten miles apart,a few months ago, but were growing so fast that they may possiblybe joined now, and getting along under a single mayor. at any rate, withinfive years from now there will be at least such a substantialligament of buildings stretching between them and uniting them thata stranger will not be able to tell where the one siamese twin leavesoff and the other begins. combined, they will then number a populationof two hundred and fifty thousand, if they continue to grow as theyare now growing. thus, this

center of population at the head of mississippinavigation, will then begin a rivalry as to numbers, with that centerof population at the foot of it--new orleans. minneapolis is situated at the falls of st.anthony, which stretch across the river, fifteen hundred feet, andhave a fall of eighty-two feet--a waterpower which, by art, has beenmade of inestimable value, business-wise, though somewhat to thedamage of the falls as a spectacle, or as a background against whichto get your photograph taken.

thirty flouring-mills turn out two millionbarrels of the very choicest of flour every year; twenty sawmills producetwo hundred million feet of lumber annually; then there are woolenmills, cotton mills, paper and oil mills; and sash, nail, furniture,barrel, and other factories, without number, so to speak. the great flouring-millshere and at st. paul use the 'new process' and mash the wheatby rolling, instead of grinding it. sixteen railroads meet in minneapolis, andsixty-five passenger trains arrive and depart daily. in this place, asin st. paul, journalism

thrives. here there are three great dailies,ten weeklies, and three monthlies. there is a university, with four hundred students--and,better still, its good efforts are not confined to enlighteningthe one sex. there are sixteen public schools, with buildings whichcost $500,000; there are six thousand pupils and one hundred and twenty-eightteachers. there are also seventy churches existing, and alot more projected. the banks aggregate a capital of $3,000,000, and thewholesale jobbing trade of the town amounts to $50,000,000 a year.

near st. paul and minneapolis are severalpoints of interest--fort snelling, a fortress occupying a river-bluffa hundred feet high; the falls of minnehaha, white-bear lake, and soforth. the beautiful falls of minnehaha are sufficiently celebrated--theydo not need a lift from me, in that direction. the white-bear lakeis less known. it is a lovely sheet of water, and is being utilized as asummer resort by the wealth and fashion of the state. it has its club-house,and its hotel, with the modern improvements and conveniences; itsfine summer residences; and plenty of fishing, hunting, and pleasant drives.there are a dozen minor

summer resorts around about st. paul and minneapolis,but the white-bear lake is the resort. connected with white-bearlake is a most idiotic indian legend. i would resist the temptationto print it here, if i could, but the task is beyond my strength.the guide-book names the preserver of the legend, and compliments his'facile pen.' without further comment or delay then, let us turnthe said facile pen loose upon the reader-- a legend of white-bear lake. every spring, for perhaps a century, or aslong as there has been a

nation of red men, an island in the middleof white-bear lake has been visited by a band of indians for the purposeof making maple sugar. tradition says that many springs ago, whileupon this island, a young warrior loved and wooed the daughter of hischief, and it is said, also, the maiden loved the warrior. he had againand again been refused her hand by her parents, the old chief allegingthat he was no brave, and his old consort called him a woman! the sun had again set upon the 'sugar-bush,'and the bright moon rose high in the bright blue heavens, when theyoung warrior took down his

flute and went out alone, once more to singthe story of his love, the mild breeze gently moved the two gay feathersin his head-dress, and as he mounted on the trunk of a leaning tree,the damp snow fell from his feet heavily. as he raised his flute to hislips, his blanket slipped from his well-formed shoulders, and lay partlyon the snow beneath. he began his weird, wild love-song, but soonfelt that he was cold, and as he reached back for his blanket, some unseenhand laid it gently on his shoulders; it was the hand of his love, hisguardian angel. she took her place beside him, and for the present theywere happy; for the indian

has a heart to love, and in this pride heis as noble as in his own freedom, which makes him the child of theforest. as the legend runs, a large white-bear, thinking, perhaps, thatpolar snows and dismal winter weather extended everywhere, took up his journeysouthward. he at length approached the northern shore of the lakewhich now bears his name, walked down the bank and made his way noiselesslythrough the deep heavy snow toward the island. it was the same springensuing that the lovers met. they had left their first retreat, andwere now seated among the branches of a large elm which hung far overthe lake. (the same tree is

still standing, and excites universal curiosityand interest.) for fear of being detected, they talked almost in awhisper, and now, that they might get back to camp in good time and therebyavoid suspicion, they were just rising to return, when the maidenuttered a shriek which was heard at the camp, and bounding toward theyoung brave, she caught his blanket, but missed the direction of her footand fell, bearing the blanket with her into the great arms of theferocious monster. instantly every man, woman, and child of the band wereupon the bank, but all unarmed. cries and wailings went up from everymouth. what was to be

done'? in the meantime this white and savagebeast held the breathless maiden in his huge grasp, and fondled withhis precious prey as if he were used to scenes like this. one deafeningyell from the lover warrior is heard above the cries of hundreds of histribe, and dashing away to his wigwam he grasps his faithful knife,returns almost at a single bound to the scene of fear and fright, rushesout along the leaning tree to the spot where his treasure fell, and springingwith the fury of a mad panther, pounced upon his prey. theanimal turned, and with one stroke of his huge paw brought the loversheart to heart, but the next

moment the warrior, with one plunge of theblade of his knife, opened the crimson sluices of death, and the dyingbear relaxed his hold. that night there was no more sleep for theband or the lovers, and as the young and the old danced about the carcassof the dead monster, the gallant warrior was presented with anotherplume, and ere another moon had set he had a living treasure added tohis heart. their children for many years played upon the skin of the white-bear--fromwhich the lake derives its name--and the maiden and the braveremembered long the fearful scene and rescue that made them one,for kis-se-me-pa and

ka-go-ka could never forget their fearfulencounter with the huge monster that came so near sending them tothe happy hunting-ground. it is a perplexing business. first, she felldown out of the tree--she and the blanket; and the bear caught her andfondled her--her and the blanket; then she fell up into the tree again--leavingthe blanket; meantime the lover goes war-whooping homeand comes back 'heeled,' climbs the tree, jumps down on the bear, thegirl jumps down after him--apparently, for she was up the tree--resumesher place in the bear's arms along with the blanket, the loverrams his knife into the

bear, and saves--whom, the blanket? no--nothingof the sort. you get yourself all worked up and excited about thatblanket, and then all of a sudden, just when a happy climax seems imminentyou are let down flat--nothing saved but the girl. whereas,one is not interested in the girl; she is not the prominent featureof the legend. nevertheless, there you are left, and there you must remain;for if you live a thousand years you will never know who gotthe blanket. a dead man could get up a better legend than this one. i don'tmean a fresh dead man either; i mean a man that's been dead weeksand weeks.

we struck the home-trail now, and in a fewhours were in that astonishing chicago--a city where they arealways rubbing the lamp, and fetching up the genii, and contriving andachieving new impossibilities. it is hopeless for the occasional visitorto try to keep up with chicago--she outgrows his prophecies fasterthan he can make them. she is always a novelty; for she is neverthe chicago you saw when you passed through the last time. the pennsylvaniaroad rushed us to new york without missing schedule time ten minutesanywhere on the route; and there ended one of the most enjoyablefive-thousand-mile journeys i

have ever had the good fortune to make.