454 LIFE ON 1HE MISSISSIPPI.
offended; for I had had no glimpse of my hero, and his name was not
in the bills. I met him on the street the next morning, and before I
could speak, he asked—
* Did you see me ?'
' No, you weren't there/
He looked surprised and disappointed. He said—
4 Yes, I was. Indeed I was. I was a Boman soldier/
4 Which oneT
' Why didn't you see them Roman soldiers that stood back
there in a rank, and sometimes inarched in procession around the
stageT
* Do you mean the Koman army ?—those six sandalled roust-
abouts in nightshirts, with tin shields and helmets, that marched
around treading on each other's heels, in charge of a spider-legged eon*
sumptive dressed like themselves ? *
* That's it! that's it! I was one of them Roman soldiers. I was
the next to the last one. A half a year ago I used to always be the
last one; but I've been promoted/
Well, they told me that that poor fellow remained a Roman
soldier to the last—a matter of thirty-four years* Sometimes they
cast Mm for a ' speaking part/ but not an elaborate one. He coqld
be trusted to go and say, c My lord, the carriage waits,* but if they
ventured to add a sentence or two to this, his memory felt the strain
and he was likely to miss fire. Yet, poor devil, he had been patiently
studying the part of Hamlet for more than thirty years, and lie
lived and died in the belief that some day he would be invited to
play it i
And this is what came of that fleeting visit of those young
Englishmen to our village such ages and ages ago! What noble horse-
shoes this man might have made, but for those Englishmen; and
what an inadequate Koman soldier he did make !
A day or two after we reached St. Louis, I was walking along
"Fourth Street when a grizzly-headed man gave a sort of start as he
passed me, then stopped, came back, inspected me narrowly, with a
clouding brow, and finally said with deep asperity—
* Look here, have you got that drink yetf*
A maniac, I judged, at first. But all in a flash I recognised him.