474

LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI.

property. Well, when you come to look at it all around, and

at it and think it over, don't it just bang anything you ever heard

of?'

* Well, yes, it does seem to. But don't you think mayhe it was

the Hannibal people who were mistaken about the boy, and not the

St. Louis people ? *

6 Oh, nonsense 1 The people here have known him from the very

cradle—they knew him a hundred times better than the St. Lotus

idiots could have
known him. No,
if you have got any
damned fools that
you want to realise
on, take my advice
—send them to St.
Louis.'

I mentioned a
great number of
people whom I had
formerly known.
Some were dead,
some were gone a-
way, some had
prospered, some
had come to naught;
but as regarded a
dozen or so of ike
A PRACTICAL JOKE. lot, the answer was

comforting:

* Prosperous—live here yet—town littered with their children/
I asked about Miss ------

* Died in the insane asylum three or four years ago—never was
out of it from the time she went in; and was always suffering, too;
n0ver got a shred of her mind back.1

If he spoke the truth, here was a heavy tragedy, indeed. Thirty-
six years in a madhouse, that some young fools might have some fan!
I was a small boy, at the time j and I saw those giddy young Iadie»