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THE MYSTERIOUS
STRANGER

Eseldorf Was a Paradise For Us Boys

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THE COMPLETE
WORKS OF

MARK TWAIN

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THE MYSTERIOUS

STRANGER

HARPER & BROTHERS

NEW YORK

The Mysterious Stranger

Copyright, 1922, by Mark Twain Company
Printed in the United States of Amewca

PROYO. UTAH

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CONTENTS

PAGE

The Mysterious Stranger 3

A Horse's Tale 147

Extract from Captain Stormfield's Visit to Heaven .... 223

A Fable 281

My Platonic Sweetheart 287

Hunting the Deceitful Turkey 307

The McWilliamses and the Burglar Alarm 315

THE MYSTERIOUS
STRANGER

MARK TWAIN

forest-clothed hills cloven by winding gorges where
the sun never penetrated; and to the right a preci-
pice overlooked the river, and between it and the
hills just spoken of lay a far-reaching plain dotted
with little homesteads nested among orchards and
shade trees.

The whole region for leagues around was the
hereditary property of a prince, whose servants kept
the castle always in perfect condition for occupancy,
but neither he nor his family came there oftener
than once in five years. When they came it was as
if the lord of the world had arrived, and had brought
all the glories of its kingdoms along; and when they
went they left a calm behind which was like the deep
sleep which follows an orgy.

Eseldorf was a paradise for us boys. We were not
overmuch pestered with schooling. Mainly we were
trained to be good Christians; to revere the Virgin,
the Church, and the saints above everything. Be-
yond these matters we were not required to know
much; and, in fact, not allowed to. Knowledge
was not good for the common people, and could
make them discontented with the lot which God
had appointed for them, and God would not endure
discontentment with His plans. We had two
priests. One of them, Father Adolf, was a very
zealous and strenuous priest, much considered.

There may have been better priests, in some ways,
than Father Adolf, but there was never one in our
commune who was held in more solemn and awful
respect. This was because he had absolutely no
fear of the Devil. He was the only Christian I have

THE MYSTERIOUS STRANGER

ever known of whom that could be truly said.
People stood in deep dread of him on that account;
for they thought that there must be something
supernatural about him, else he could not be so bold
and so confident. All men speak in bitter disap-
proval of the Devil, but they do it reverently, not
flippantly; but Father Adolf's way was very differ-
ent; he called him by every name he could lay his
tongue to, and it made everyone shudder that heard
him; and often he would even speak of him scorn-
fully and scoffingly; then the people crossed them-
selves and went quickly out of his presence, fearing
that something fearful might happen.

Father Adolf had actually met Satan face to face
more than once, and defied him. This was known
to be so. Father Adolf said it himself. He never
made any secret of it, but spoke it right out. And
that he was speaking true there was proof in at least
one instance, for on that occasion he quarreled with
the enemy, and intrepidly threw his bottle at him;
and there, upon the wall of his study, was the ruddy
splotch where it struck and broke.

But it was Father Peter, the other priest, that
we all loved best and were sorriest for. Some people
charged him with talking around in conversation
that God was all goodness and would find a way to
save all his poor human children. It was a horrible
thing to say, but there was never any absolute proof
that Father Peter said it ; and it was out of character
for him to say it, too, for he was always good and
gentle and truthful. He wasn't charged with
saying it in the pulpit, where all the congregation

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MARK TWAIN

could hear and testify, but only outside, in talk;
and it is easy for enemies to manufacture that.
Father Peter had an enemy and a very powerful
one, the astrologer who lived in a tumbled old tower
up the valley, and put in his nights studying the
stars. Every one knew he could foretell wars and
famines, though that was not so hard, for there
was always a war and generally a famine somewhere.
But he could also read any man's life through the
stars in a big book he had, and find lost property,
and every one in the village except Father Peter
stood in awe of him. Even Father Adolf, who had
defied the Devil, had a wholesome respect for the
astrologer when he came through our village wearing
his tall, pointed hat and his long, flowing robe with
stars on it, carrying his big book, and a staff which
was known to have magic power. The bishop himself
sometimes listened to the astrologer, it was said, for,
besides studying the stars and prophesying, the
astrologer made a great show of piety, which would
impress the bishop, of course.

But Father Peter took no stock in the astrologer.
He denounced him openly as a charlatan — a fraud
with no valuable knowledge of any kind, or powers
beyond those of an ordinary and rather inferior
human being, which naturally made the astrologer
hate Father Peter and wish to ruin him. It was the
astrologer, as we all believed, who originated the
story about Father Peter's shocking remark and
carried it to the bishop. It was said that Father
Peter had made the remark to his niece, Marget,
though Marget denied it and implored the bishop to

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THE MYSTERIOUS STRANGER

believe her and spare her old uncle from poverty and
disgrace. But the bishop wouldn't listen. He sus-
pended Father Peter indefinitely, though he wouldn't
go so far as to excommunicate him on the evidence
of only one witness; and now Father Peter had been
out a couple of years, and our other priest, Father
Adolf, had his flock.

Those had been hard years for the old priest and
Marget. They had been favorites, but of course
that changed when they came under the shadow of
the bishop's frown. Many of their friends fell away
entirely, and the rest became cool and distant.
Marget was a lovely girl of eighteen when the trouble
came, and she had the best head in the village, and
the most in it. She taught the harp, and earned all
her clothes and pocket money by her own industry.
But her scholars fell off one by one now; she was
forgotten when there were dances and parties among
the youth of the village; the young fellows stopped
coming to the house, all except Wilhelm Meidling —
and he could have been spared; she and her uncle
were sad and forlorn in their neglect and disgrace,
and the sunshine was gone out of their lives. Matters
went worse and worse, all through the two years.
Clothes were wearing out, bread was harder and
harder to get. And now, at last, the very end was
come. Solomon Isaacs had lent all the money he
was willing to put on the house, and gave notice
that to-morrow he would foreclose.

CHAPTER II

THREE of us boys were always together, and
had been so from the cradle, being fond of
one another from the beginning, and this affection
deepened as the years went on — Nikolaus Bauman,
son of the principal judge of the local court; Seppi
Wohlmeyer, son of the keeper of the principal inn,
the "Golden Stag," which had a nice garden, with
shade trees reaching down to the riverside, and
pleasure boats for hire; and I was the third —
Theodor Fischer, son of the church organist, who
was also leader of the village musicians, teacher of
the violin, composer, tax-collector of the commune,
sexton, and in other ways a useful citizen, and
respected by all. We knew the hills and the woods
as well as the birds knew them; for we were always
roaming them when we had leisure — at least, when
we were not swimming or boating or fishing, or
playing on the ice or sliding down hill.

And we had the run of the castle park, and very
few had that. It was because we were pets of the
oldest servingman in the castle — Felix Brandt; and
often we went there, nights, to hear him talk about
old times and strange things, and to smoke with him
(he taught us that) and to drink coffee; for he had
served in the wars, and was at the siege of Vienna;
and there, when the Turks were defeated and driven
away, among the captured things were bags of coffee,
and the Turkish prisoners explained the character

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THE MYSTERIOUS STRANGER

of it and how to make a pleasant drink out of it,
and now he always kept coffee by him, to drink
himself and also to astonish the ignorant with.
When it stormed he kept us all night; and while it
thundered and lightened outside he told us about
ghosts and horrors of every kind, and of battles and
murders and mutilations, and such things, and made
it pleasant and cozy inside; and he told these things
from his own experience largely. He had seen many
ghosts in his time, and witches and enchanters, and
once he was lost in a fierce storm at midnight in the
mountains, and by the glare of the lightning had
seen the Wild Huntsman rage on the blast with his
specter dogs chasing after him through the driving
cloud-rack. Also he had seen an incubus once, and
several times he had seen the great bat that sucks
the blood from the necks of people while they are
asleep, fanning them softly with its wings and so
keeping them drowsy till they die.

He encouraged us not to fear supernatural things,
such as ghosts, and said they did no harm, but only
wandered about because they were lonely and dis-
tressed and wanted kindly notice and compassion;
and in time we learned not to be afraid, and even
went down with him in the night Lo the haunted
chamber in the dungeons of the castle. The ghost
appeared only once, and it went by very dim to the
sight and floated noiseless through the air, and then
disappeared; and we scarcely trembled, he had
taught us so well. He said it came up sometimes
in the night and woke him by passing its clammy
hand over his face, but it did him no hurt; it only

MARK TWAIN

wanted sympathy and notice. But the strangest
thing was that he had seen angels — actual angels
out of heaven — and had talked with them. They
had no wings, and wore clothes, and talked and
looked and acted just like any natural person, and
you would never know them for angels except for
the wonderful things they did which a mortal could
not do, and the way they suddenly disappeared
while you were talking with them, which was also
a thing which no mortal could do. And he said
they were pleasant and cheerful, not gloomy and
melancholy, like ghosts.

It was after that kind of a talk one May night that
we got up next morning and had a good breakfast
with him and then went down and crossed the bridge
and went away up into the hills on the left to a
woody hill-top which was a favorite place of ours,
and there we stretched out on the grass in the shade
to rest and smoke and talk over these strange things,
for they were in our minds yet, and impressing us.
But we couldn't smoke, because we had been heed-
less and left our flint and steel behind.

Soon there came a youth strolling toward us
through the trees, and he sat down and began to
talk in a friendly way, just as if he knew us. But
we did not answer him, for he was a stranger and we
were not used to strangers and were shy of them.
He had new and good clothes on, and was handsome
and had a winning face and a pleasant voice, and was
easy and graceful and unembarrassed, not slouchy
and awkward and diffident, like other boys. We
wanted to be friendly with him, but didn't know

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THE MYSTERIOUS STRANGER

how to begin. Then I thought of the pipe, and
wondered if it would be taken as kindly meant if I
offered it to him. But I remembered that we had
no fire, so I was sorry and disappointed. But he
looked up bright and pleased, and said:

"Fire? Oh, that is easy; I will furnish it."
I was so astonished I couldn't speak; for I had
not said anything. He took the pipe and blew his
breath on it, and the tobacco glowed red, and spirals
of blue smoke rose up. We jumped up and were
going to run, for that was natural; and we did run
a few steps, although he was yearningly pleading
for us to stay, and giving us his word that he would
not do us any harm, but only wanted to be friends
with us and have company. So we stopped and
stood, and wanted to go back, being full of curiosity
and wonder, but afraid to venture. He went on
coaxing, in his soft, persuasive way; and when we
saw that the pipe did not blow up and nothing
happened, our confidence returned by little and little,
and presently our curiosity got to be stronger than
our fear, and we ventured back — but slowly, and
ready to fly at any alarm.

He was bent on putting us at ease, and he had the
right art; one could not remain doubtful and
timorous where a person was so earnest and simple
and gentle, and talked so alluringly as he did; no,
he won us over, and it was not long before we were
content and comfortable and chatty, and glad we
had found this new friend. When the feeling of
constraint was all gone we asked him how he had
learned to do that strange thing, and he said he

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MARK TWAIN

hadn't learned it at all; it came natural to him —
like other things — other curious things.

"What ones?"

"Oh, a number; I don't know how many."
Will you let us see you do them?"
Do — please!" the others said.
You won't run away again?"
No — indeed we won't. Please do. Won't you?"

"Yes, with pleasure; but you mustn't forget your
promise, you know."

We said we wouldn't, and he went to a puddle
and came back with water in a cup which he had
made out of a leaf, and blew upon it and threw it
out, and it was a lump of ice the shape of the cup.
We were astonished and charmed, but not afraid any
more ; we were very glad to be there, and asked him to
go on and do some more things. And he did. He said
he would give us any kind of fruit we liked, whether
it was in season or not. We all spoke at once;

"Orange!"

"Apple!"

"Grapes!"

"They are in your pockets," he said, and it was
true. And they were of the best, too, and we ate
them and wished we had more, though none of us
said so.

"You will find them where those came from," he
said, "and everything else your appetites call for;
and you need not name the thing you wish; as long
as I am with you, you have only to wish and find."

And he said true. There was never anything so
wonderful and so interesting. Bread, cakes, sweets,

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THE MYSTERIOUS STRANGER

nuts — whatever one wanted, it was there. He ate
nothing himself, but sat and chatted, and did one
curious thing after another to amuse us. He made
a tiny toy squirrel out of clay, and it ran up a tree
and sat on a limb overhead and barked down at us.
Then he made a dog that was not much larger than
a mouse, and it treed the squirrel and danced about
the tree, excited and barking, and was as alive as
any dog could be. It frightened the squirrel from
tree to tree and followed it up until both were out
of sight in the forest. He made birds out of clay
and .set them free, and they flew away, singing.

At last I made bold to ask him to tell us who he
was.

11 An angel," he said, quite simply, and set another
bird free and clapped his hands and made it fly away.

A kind of awe fell upon us when we heard him say
that, and we were afraid again ; but he said we need
not be troubled, there was no occasion for us to be
afraid of an angel, and he liked us, anyway. He
went on chatting as simply and unaffectedly as ever;
and while he talked he made a crowd of little men
and women the size of your finger, and they went
diligently to work and cleared and leveled off a
space a couple of yards square in the grass and began
to build a cunning little castle in it, the women
mixing the mortar and carrying it up the scaffoldings
in pails on their heads, just as our work-women
have always done, and the men laying the courses
of masonry — five hundred of these toy people
swarming briskly about and working diligently and
wiping the sweat off their faces as natural as life.

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MARK TWAIN

In the absorbing interest of watching those five
hundred little people make the castle grow step by
step and course by course, and take shape and
symmetry, that feeling and awe soon passed away
and we were quite comfortable and at home again.
We asked if we might make some people, and he
said yes, and told Seppi to make some cannon for
the walls, and told Nikolaus to make some halber-
diers, with breastplates and greaves and helmets, and
I was to make some cavalry, with horses, and in
allotting these tasks he called us by our names, but
did not say how he knew them. Then Seppi asked
him what his own name was, and he said, tranquilly,
"Satan," and held out a chip and caught a little
woman on it who was falling from the scaffolding
and put her back where she belonged, and said,
"She is an idiot to step backward like that and not
notice what she is about."

It caught us suddenly, that name did, and our
work dropped out of our hands and broke to pieces
— a cannon, a halberdier, and a horse. Satan
laughed, and asked what was the matter. I said,
"Nothing, only it seemed a strange name for an
angel." He asked why.

"Because it's — it's — well, it's his name, you know."

"Yes — he is my uncle."

He said it placidly, but it took our breath for a
moment and made our hearts beat. He did not seem
to notice that, but mended our halberdiers and things
with a touch, handing them to us finished, and said,
"Don't you remember? — he was an angel himself,
once."

THE MYSTERIOUS STRANGER

"Yes— it's true," said Seppi; "I didn't think of
that."

"Before the Fall he was blameless/'

"Yes," said Nikolaus, "he was without sin."

"It is a good family — ours," said Satan; "there
is not a better. He is the only member of it that
has ever sinned."

I should not be able to make any one understand
how exciting it all was. You know that kind of
quiver that trembles around through you when you
are seeing something so strange and enchanting and
wonderful that it is just a fearful joy to be alive and
look at it; and you know how you gaze, and your
lips turn dry and your breath comes short, but you
wouldn't be anywhere but there, not for the world*
I was bursting to ask one question — I had it on my
tongue's end and could hardly hold it back — but I
was ashamed to ask it; it might be a rudeness.
Satan set an ox down that he had been making, and
smiled up at me and said:

"It wouldn't be a rudeness, and I should forgive
it if it was. Have I seen him? Millions of times.
From the time that I was a little child a thousand
years old I was his second favorite among the nursery
angels of our blood and lineage — to use a human
phrase — yes, from that time until the Fall, eight
thousand years, measured as you count time."

"Eight— thousand!"

"Yes." He turned to Seppi, and went on as if
answering something that was in Seppi's mind:
"Why, naturally I look like a boy, for that is
what I am. With us what you call time is a spacious

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MARK TWAIN

thing; it takes a long stretch of it to grow an angel
to full age." There was a question in my mind, and
he turned to me and answered it, "I am sixteen
thousand years old — counting as you count." Then
he turned to Nikolaus and said: "No, the Fall did
not affect me nor the rest of the relationship. It
was only he that I was named for who ate of the
fruit of the tree and then beguiled the man and the
woman with it. We others are still ignorant of sin ;
we are not able to commit it; we are without
blemish, and shall abide in that estate always.
We — " Two of the little workmen were quarreling,
and in buzzing little bumblebee voices they were
cursing and swearing at each other; now came blows
and blood; then they locked themselves together
in a life-and-death struggle. Satan reached out his
hand and crushed the life out of them with his
fingers, threw them away, wiped the red from his
fingers on his handkerchief, and went on talking
where he had left off: "We cannot do wrong;
neither have we any disposition to do it, for we do
not know what it is."

It seemed a strange speech, in the circumstances,
but we barely noticed that, we were so shocked and
grieved at the wanton murder he had committed —
for murder it was, that was its true name, and it was
without palliation or excuse, for the men had not
wronged him in any way. It made us miserable,
for we loved him, and had thought him so noble and
so beautiful and gracious, and had honestly believed
he was an angel; and to have him do this cruel
thing — ah, it lowered him so, and we had had such

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THE MYSTERIOUS STRANGER

pride in him. He went right on talking, just as if
nothing had happened, telling about his travels, and
the interesting things he had seen in the big worlds
of our solar systems and of other solar systems far
away in the remotenesses of space, and about the
customs of the immortals that inhabit them, some-
how fascinating us, enchanting us, charming us in
spite of the pitiful scene that was now under our
eyes, for the wives of the little dead men had found
the crushed and shapeless bodies and were crying
over them, and sobbing and lamenting, and a priest
was kneeling there with his hands crossed upon his
breast, praying; and crowds and crowds of pity-
ing friends were massed about them, reverently
uncovered, with their bare heads bowed, and many
with the tears running down — a scene which Satan
paid no attention to until the small noise of the
weeping and praying began to annoy them, then he
reached out and took the heavy board seat out of
our swing and brought it down and mashed all
those people into the earth just as if they had been
flies, and went on talking just the same.

An angel, and kill a priest ! An angel who did not
know how to do wrong, and yet destroys in cold
blood hundreds of helpless poor men and women
who had never done him any harm! It made us
sick to see that awful deed, and to think that none
of those poor creatures was prepared except the
priest, for none of them had ever heard a mass or
seen a church. And we were witnesses; we had seen
these murders done and it was our duty to tell,
and let the law take its course.

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MARK TWAIN

But he went on talking right along, and worked
his enchantments upon us again with that fatal
music of his voice. He made us forget everything;
we could only listen to him, and love him, and be
his slaves, to do with us as he would. He made us
drunk with the joy of being with him, and of looking
into the heaven of his eyes, and of feeling the
ecstasy that thrilled along our veins from the touch
of his hand.

18

CHAPTER in

TIE Stranger had seen everything, he had been
everywhere, he knew everything, and he forgot
nothing. What another must study, he learned at a
glance; there were no difficulties for him. And he
made things live before you when he told about
them. He saw the world made; he saw Adam
created; he saw Samson surge against the pillars
and bring the temple down in ruins about him; he
saw Caesar's death; he told of the daily life in
heaven; he had seen the damned writhing in the
red waves of hell; and he made us see all these
things, and it was as if we were on the spot and
looking at them with our own eyes. And we felt
them, too, but there was no sign that they were
anything to him beyond mere entertainments.
Those visions of hell, those poor babes and women
and girls and lads and men shrieking and supplicating
in anguish — why, we could hardly bear it, but he
was as bland about it as if it had been so many
imitation rats in an artificial fire.

And always when he was talking about men and
women here on the earth and their doings — even
their grandest and sublimest — we were secretly
ashamed, for his manner showed that to him they
and their doings were of paltry poor consequence;
often you would think he was talking about flies,
if you didn't know. Once he even said, in so many
words, that our people down here were quite inter-

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MARK TWAIN

esting to him, notwithstanding they were so dull
and ignorant and trivial and conceited, and so
diseased and rickety, and such a shabby, poor,
worthless lot all around. He said it in a quite
matter-of-course way and without bitterness, just as
a person might talk about bricks or manure or any
other thing that was of no consequence and hadn't
feelings. I could see he meant no offense, but in
my thoughts I set it down as not very good manners.

11 Manners !" he said. "Why, it is merely the
truth, and truth is good manners; manners are a
fiction. The castle is done. Do you like it?"

Any one would have been obliged to like it. It
was lovely to look at, it was so shapely and fine,
and so cunningly perfect in all its particulars, even
to the little flags waving from the turrets. Satan
said we must put the artillery in place now, and
station the halberdiers and display the cavalry.
Our men and horses were a spectacle to see, they
were so little like what they were intended for;
for, of course, we had no art in making such things.
Satan said they were the worst he had seen; and
when he touched them and made them alive, it was
just ridiculous the way they acted, on account of
their legs not being of uniform lengths. They reeled
and sprawled around as if they were drunk, and
endangered everybody's lives around them, and
finally fell over and lay helpless and kicking. It
made us all laugh, though it was a shameful thing
to see. The guns were charged with dirt, to fire a
salute, but they were so crooked and so badly made
that they all burst when they went off, and killed

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THE MYSTERIOUS STRANGER

some of the gunners and crippled the others. Satan
said we would have a storm now, and an earthquake,
if we liked, but we must stand off a piece, out of
danger. We wanted to call the people away, too,
but he said never mind them; they were of no
consequence, and we could make more, some time *
or other, if we needed them.

A small storm-cloud began to settle down black
over the castle, and the miniature lightning and
thunder began to play, and the ground to quiver,
and the wind to pipe and wheeze, and the rain to fall,
and all the people flocked into the castle for shelter.
The cloud settled down blacker and blacker, and one
could see the castle only dimly through it; the
lightning blazed out flash upon flash and pierced
the castle and set it on fire, and the flames shone
out red and fierce through the cloud, and the people
came flying out, shrieking, but Satan brushed them
back, paying no attention to our begging and crying
and imploring; and in the midst of the howling of
the wind and volleying of the thunder the magazine
blew up, the earthquake rent the ground wide, and
the castle's wreck and ruin tumbled into the chasm,
which swallowed it from sight, and closed upon it,
with all that innocent life, not one of the five hundred
poor creatures escaping. Our hearts were broken;
we could not keep from crying.

Don't cry," Satan said; "they were of no value M

But they are gone to hell!"

Oh, it is no matter; we can make plenty more/'
It was of no use to try to move him; evidently he
was wholly without feeling, and could not tinder-

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MARK TWAIN

stand. He was full of bubbling spirits, and as gay
as if this were a wedding instead of a fiendish
massacre. And he was bent on making us feel as
he did, and of course his magic accomplished his
desire. It was no trouble to him; he did whatever
he pleased with us. In a little while we were dancing
on that grave, and he was playing to us on a strange,
sweet instrument which he took out of his pocket;
and the music — but there is no music like that,
unless perhaps in heaven, and that was where he
brought it from, he said. It made one mad, for
pleasure; and we could not take our eyes from him,
and the looks that went out of our eyes came from
our hearts, and their dumb speech was worship.
He brought the dance from heaven, too, and the
bliss of paradise was in it.

Presently he said he must go away on an errand.
But we could not bear the thought of it, and clung
to him, and pleaded with him to stay; and that
pleased him, and he said so, and said he would not
go yet, but would wait a little while and we would
sit down and talk a few minutes longer; and he
told us Satan was only his real name, and he was to
be known by it to us alone, but he had chosen
another one to be called by in the presence of
others; just a common one, such as people have —
Philip Traum.

It sounded so odd and mean for such a being!
But it was his decision, and we said nothing; his
decision was sufficient.

We had seen wonders this day; and my thoughts
began to run on the pleasure it would be to tell

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THE MYSTERIOUS STRANGER

them when I got home, but he noticed those
thoughts, and said:

"No, all these matters are a secret among us four.
I do not mind your trying to tell them, if you like,
but I will protect your tongues, and nothing of the
secret will escape from them."

It was a disappointment, but it couldn't be helped,
and it cost us a sigh or two. We talked pleasantly
along, and he was always reading our thoughts and
responding to them, and it seemed to me that this
was the most wonderful of all the things he did, but
he interrupted my musings and said:

"No, it would be wonderful for you, but it is not
wonderful for me. I am not limited like you. I am
not subject to human conditions. I can measure
and understand your human weaknesses, for I have
studied them; but I have none of them. My flesh
is not real, although it would seem firm to your
touch; my clothes are not real; I am a spirit.
Father Peter is coming. We looked around, but
did not see any one. "He is not in sight yet, but
you will see him presently."

"Do you know him, Satan?"

"No."

"Won't you talk with him when he comes? He
is not ignorant and dull, like us, and he would so
like to talk with you. Will you?"

"Another time, yes, but not now. I must go on
my errand after a little. There he is now; you can
see him. Sit still, and don't say anything."

We looked up and saw Father Peter approaching
through the chestnuts. We three were sitting

23

MARK TWAIN

together in the grass, and Satan sat in front of us
in the path. Father Peter came slowly along with
his head down, thinking, and stopped within a couple
of yards of us and took off his hat and got out his
silk handkerchief, and stood there mopping his face
and looking as if he were going to speak to us, but
he didn't. Presently he muttered, "I can't think
what brought me here; it seems as if I were in my
study a minute ago — but I suppose I have been
dreaming along for an hour and have come all this
stretch without noticing; for I am not myself in
these troubled days." Then he went mumbling
along to himself and walked straight through Satan,
just as if nothing were there. It made us catch our
breath to see it. We had the impulse to cry out,
the way you nearly always do when a startling
thing happens, but something mysteriously restrained
us and we remained quiet, only breathing fast.
Then the trees hid Father Peter after a little, and
Satan said :

"It is as I told you — I am only a spirit."

"Yes, one perceives it now," said Nikolaus, "but
we are not spirits. It is plain he did not see you,
but were we invisible, too? He looked at us, but
he didn't seem to see us."

"No, none of us was visible to him, for I wished
it so."

It seemed almost too good to be true, that we
were actually seeing these romantic and wonderful
things, and that it was not a dream. And there
he sat, looking just like anybody — so natural and
simple and charming, and chatting along again the

24

THE MYSTERIOUS STRANGER

same as ever, and — well, words cannot make you
understand what we felt. It was an ecstasy; and
an ecstasy is a thing that will not go into words;
it feels like music, and one cannot tell about music
so that another person can get the feeling of it. He
was back in the old ages once more now, and making
them live before us. He had seen so much, so much !
It was just a wonder to look at him and try to think
how it must seem to have such experience behind one.

But it made you seem sorrowfully trivial, and the
creature of a day, and such a short and paltry day,
too. And he didn't say anything to raise up your
drooping pride — no, not a word. He always spoke
of men in the same old indifferent way — just as one
speaks of bricks and manure-piles and such things;
you could see that they were of no consequence to
him, one way or the other. He didn't mean to hurt
us, you could see that; just as we don't mean to
insult a brick when we disparage it; a brick's
emotions are nothing to us ; it never occurs to us to
think whether it has any or not.

Once when he was bunching the most illustrious
kings and conquerors and poets and prophets and
pirates and beggars together — just a brick-pile — I
was shamed into putting in a word for man, and asked
him why he made so much difference between men
and himself. He had to struggle with that a moment ;
he didn't seem to understand how I could ask such
a strange question. Then he said:

"The difference between man and me? The
difference between a mortal and an immortal?
between a cloud and a spirit?" He picked up a

25

MARK TWAIN

wood-louse that was creeping along a piece of bark:
"What is the difference between Caesar and this?"

I said, "One cannot compare things which by
their nature and by the interval between them are
not comparable."

"You have answered your own question," he
said. "I will expand it. Man is made of dirt — I
saw him made. I am not made of dirt. Man is a
museum of diseases, a home of impurities; he comes
to-day and is gone to-morrow; he begins as dirt
and departs as stench; I am of the aristocracy of
the Imperishables. And man has the Moral Sense.
You understand? He has the Moral Sense. That
would seem to be difference enough between us, all
by itself."

He stopped there, as if that settled the matter.
I was sorry, for at that time I had but a dim idea of
what the Moral Sense was. I merely knew that we
were proud of having it, and when he talked like
that about it, it wounded me, and I felt as a girl
feels who thinks her dearest finery is being admired
and then overhears strangers making fun of it. For
a while we were all silent, and I, for one, was
depressed. Then Satan began to chat again, and
soon he was sparkling along in such a cheerful and
vivacious vein that my spirits rose once more. He
told some very cunning things that put us in a gale
of laughter; and when he was telling about the time
that Samson tied the torches to the foxes' tails and
set them loose in the Philistines' corn, and Samson
sitting on the fence slapping his thighs and laughing,
with the tears running down his cheeks, and lost his

26

it
a

THE MYSTERIOUS STRANGER

balance and fell off the fence, the memory of that
picture got him to laughing, too, and we did have a
most lovely and jolly time. By and by he said:

"I am going on my errand now."

"Don't !" we all said. "Don't go; stay with us.
You won't come back."

"Yes, I will; I give you my word."

"When? To-night? Say when."
It won't be long. You will see."
We like you."

'And I you. And as a proof of it I will show you
something fine to see. Usually when I go I merely
vanish; but now I will dissolve myself and let you
see me do it."

He stood up, and it was quickly finished. He
thinned away and thinned away until he was a
soap-bubble, except that he kept his shape. You
could see the bushes through him as clearly as you
see things through a soap-bubble, and all over him
played and flashed the delicate iridescent colors of
the bubble, and along with them was that thing
shaped like a window-sash which you always see on
the globe of the bubble. You have seen a bubble
strike the carpet and lightly bound along two or
three times before it bursts. He did that. He
sprang — touched the grass — bounded — floated along
— touched again — and so on, and presently exploded
— puff ! and in his place was vacancy.

It was a strange and beautiful thing to see. We
did not say anything, but sat wondering and dream-
ing and blinking; and finally Seppi roused up and
said, mournfully sighing:

27

MARK TWAIN

"I suppose none of it has happened/*

Nikolaus sighed and said about the same.

I was miserable to hear them say it, for it was the
same cold fear that was in my own mind. Then we
saw poor old Father Peter wandering along back,
with his head bent down, searching the ground.
When he was pretty close to us he looked up and saw
us, and said, "How long have you been here, boys?"

"A little while, Father."

"Then it is since I came by, and maybe you can
help me. Did you come up by the path?"

"Yes, Father."

"That is good. I came the same way. I have
lost my wallet. There wasn't much in it, but a very
little is much to me, for it was all I had. I suppose
you haven't seen anything of it?"

"No, Father, but we will help you hunt."

"It is what I was going to ask you. Why, here
It is!"

We hadn't noticed it; yet there it lay, right
where Satan stood when he began to melt — if he
did melt and it wasn't a delusion. Father Peter
picked it up and looked very much surprised.

"It is mine," he said, "but not the contents.
This is fat; mine was flat; mine was light; this is
heavy." He opened it; it was stuffed as full as it
could hold with gold coins. He let us gaze our fill;
and of course we did gaze, for we had never seen so
much money at one time before. All our mouths
came open to say "Satan did it!" but nothing
came out. There it was, you see — we couldn't tell
what Satan didn't want told; he had said so himself.

28

THE MYSTERIOUS STRANGER

"Boys, did you do this?"

It made us laugh. And it made him laugh, too,
as soon as he thought what a foolish question it was.

"Who has been here?"

Our mouths came open to answer, but stood so
for a moment, because we couldn't say "Nobody,"
for it wouldn't be true, and the right word didn't
seem to come; then I thought of the right one, and
said it :

"Not a human being."

"That is so," said the others, and let their mouths
go shut.

"It is not so," said Father Peter, and looked at
us very severely. "I came by here a while ago, and
there was no one here, but that is nothing; some
one has been here since. I don't mean to say that
the person didn't pass here before you came, and I
don't mean to say you saw him, but some one did
pass, that I know. On your honor — you saw no
one?"

Not a human being."

That is sufficient; I know you are telling me the
truth."

He began to count the money on the path, we on
our knees eagerly helping to stack it in little piles.

"It's eleven hundred ducats odd!" he said. "Oh
dear! if it were only mine — and I need it so!" and
his voice broke and his lips quivered.

"It is yours, sir!" we all cried out at once, "every
heller!"

"No — it isn't mine. Only four ducats are mine;
the rest . . . !" He fell to dreaming, poor old soul,

29

14

MARK TWAIN

and caressing some of the coins in his hands, and
forgot where he was, sitting there on his heels with
his old gray head bare; it was pitiful to see. "No,"
he said, waking up, "it isn't mine. I can't account
for it. I think some enemy . . . it must be a trap."

Nikolaus said: "Father Peter, with the exception
of the astrologer you haven't a real enemy in the
village — nor Marget, either. And not even a half-
enemy that's rich enough to chance eleven hundred
ducats to do you a mean turn. I'll ask you if that's
so or not?"

He couldn't get around that argument, and it
cheered him up. "But it isn't mine, you see — it
isn't mine, in any case."

He said it in a wistful way, like a person that
wouldn't be sorry, but glad, if anybody would con-
tradict him.

"It is yours, Father Peter, and we are witness to
it. Aren't we, boys?"

"Yes, we are — and we'll stand by it, too."

"Bless your hearts, you do almost persuade me;
you do, indeed. If I had only a hundred-odd ducats
of it! The house is mortgaged for it, and we've no
home for our heads if we don't pay to-morrow. And
that four ducats is all we've got in the — "

"It's yours, every bit of it, and you've got to take
it — we are bail that it's all right. Aren't we,
Theodor? Aren't we, Seppi?"

We two said yes, and Nikolaus stuffed the money
back into the shabby old wallet and made the owner
take it. So he said he would use two hundred of it,
for his house was good enough security for that, and

30

THE MYSTERIOUS STRANGER

would put the rest at interest till the rightful owner
came for it; and on our side we must sign a paper
showing how he got the money — a paper to show to
the villagers as proof that he had not got out of his
troubles dishonestly.

3i

CHAPTER IV

IT made immense talk next day, when Father
Peter paid Solomon Isaacs in gold and left the
rest of the money with him at interest. Also, there
was a pleasant change; many people called at the
house to congratulate him, and a number of cool
old friends became kind and friendly again; and, to
top all, Marget was invited to a party.

And there was no mystery; Father Peter told the
whole circumstance just as it happened, and said
he could not account for it, only it was the plain
hand of Providence, so far as he could see.

One or two shook their heads and said privately
it looked more like the hand of Satan; and really
that seemed a surprisingly good guess for ignorant
people like that. Some came slyly buzzing around
and tried to coax us boys to come out and "tell the
truth ;" and promised they wouldn't ever tell, but
only wanted to know for their own satisfaction,
because the whole thing was so curious. They even
wanted to buy the secret, and pay money for it;
and if we could have invented something that would
answer — but we couldn't; we hadn't the ingenuity,
so we had to let the chance go by, and it was a pity.

We carried that secret around without any trouble,
but the other one, the big one, the splendid one,
burned the very vitals of us, it was so hot to get
out and we so hot to let it out and astonish people
with it. But we had to keep it in; in fact, it kept

32

THE MYSTERIOUS STRANGER

itself in. Satan said it would, and it did. We went
off every day and got to ourselves in the woods so
that we could talk about Satan, and really that was
the only subject we thought of or cared anything
about; and day and night we watched for him and
hoped he would come, and we got more and more
impatient all the time. We hadn't any interest in
the other boys any more, and wouldn't take part in
their games and enterprises. They seemed so tame,
after Satan ; and their doings so trifling and common-
place after his adventures in antiquity and the con-
stellations, and his miracles and meltings and ex-
plosions, and all that.

During the first day we were in a state of anxiety
on account of one thing, and we kept going to Father
Peter's house on one pretext or another to keep track
of it. That was the gold coin; we were afraid it
would crumble and turn to dust, like fairy money.
If it did — But it didn't. At the end of the day no
complaint had been made about it, so after that we
were satisfied that it was real gold, and dropped the
anxiety out of our minds.

There was a question which we wanted to ask
Father Peter, and finally we went there the second
evening, a little diffidently, after drawing straws,
and I asked it as casually as I could, though it did
not sound as casual as I wanted, because I didn't
know how:

"What is the Moral Sense, sir?"

He looked down, surprised, over his great spec-
tacles, and said, "Why, it is the faculty which en-
ables us to distinguish good from evil."

33

MARK TWAIN

It threw some light, but not a glare, and I was a
little disappointed, also to some degree embarrassed.
He was waiting for me to go on, so, in default of
anything else to say, I asked, "Is it valuable?"

"Valuable? Heavens! lad, it is the one thing
that lifts man above the beasts that perish and makes
him heir to immortality !"

This did not remind me of anything further to say,
so I got out, with the other boys, and we went away
with that indefinite sense you have often had of
being filled but not fatted. They wanted me to
explain, but I was tired.

We passed out through the parlor, and there was
Marget at the spinnet teaching Marie Lueger. So
one of the deserting pupils was back; and an in-
fluential one, too; the others would follow. Marget
jumped up and ran and thanked us again, with tears
in her eyes — this was the third time — for saving her
and her uncle from being turned into the street, and
we told her again we hadn't done it; but that was
her way, she never could be grateful enough for
anything a person did for her; so we let her have
her say. And as we passed through the garden,
there was Wilhelm Meidling sitting there waiting,
for it was getting toward the edge of the evening,
and he would be asking Marget to take a walk along
the river with him when she was done with the lesson.
He was a young lawyer, and succeeding fairly well
and working his way along, little by little. He was
very fond of Marget, and she of him. He had not
deserted along with the others, but had stood his
ground all through. His faithfulness was not lost on

34

THE MYSTERIOUS STRANGER

Marget and her uncle. He hadn't so very much
talent, but he was handsome and good, and these
are a kind of talents themselves and help along. He
asked us how the lesson was getting along, and we
told him it was about done. And maybe it was so;
we didn't know anything about it, but we judged it
would please him, and it did, and didn't cost us
anything.

35

CHAPTER V

ON the fourth day comes the astrologer from
his crumbling old tower up the valley, where
he had heard the news, I reckon. He had a private
talk with us, and we told him what we could, for
we were mightily in dread of him. He sat there
studying and studying awhile to himself; then he
asked:

"How many ducats did you say?"

"Eleven hundred and seven, sir."

Then he said, as if he were talking to himself:
"It is ver-y singular. Yes . . . very strange. A
curious coincidence.' ' Then he began to ask ques-
tions, and went over the whole ground from the
beginning, we answering. By and by he said:
"Eleven hundred and six ducats. It is a large sum."

"Seven," said Seppi, correcting him.

"Oh, seven, was it? Of course a ducat more or
less isn't of consequence, but you said eleven hundred
and six before."

It would not have been safe for us to say he was
mistaken, but we knew he was. Nikolaus said, "We
ask pardon for the mistake, but we meant to say
seven."

"Oh, it is no matter, lad; it was merely that I
noticed the discrepancy. It is several days, and you
cannot be expected to remember precisely. One is
apt to be inexact when there is no particular circum-
stance to impress the count upon the memory."

36

THE MYSTERIOUS STRANGER

"But there was one, sir," said Seppi, eagerly.

"What was it, my son?" asked the astrologer,
indifferently.

"First, we all counted the piles of coin, each in
turn, and all made it the same — eleven hundred and
six. But I had slipped one out, for fun, when the
count began, and now I slipped it back and said,
'I think there is a mistake — there are eleven hundred
and seven; let us count again/ We did, and of
course I was right. They were astonished; then I
told how it came about."

The astrologer asked us if this was so, and we said
it was.

"That settles it," he said. 4T know the thief
now. Lads, the money was stolen."

Then he went away, leaving us very much troubled,
and wondering what he could mean. In about an
hour we found out; for by that time it was all over
the village that Father Peter had been arrested for
stealing a great sum of money from the astrologer.
Everybody's tongue was loose and going. Many said
it was not in Father Peter's character and must be a
mistake; but the others shook their heads and said
misery and want could drive a suffering man to
almost anything. About one detail there were no
differences; all agreed that Father Peter's account of
how the money came into his hands was just about
unbelievable — it had such an impossible look. They
said it might have come into the astrologer's hands
in some such way, but into Father Peter's, never!
Our characters began to suffer now. We were
Father Peter's only witnesses; how much did he

37

MARK TWAIN

probably pay us to back up his fantastic tale?
People talked that kind of talk to us pretty freely
and frankly, and were full of scoffings when we
begged them to believe really we had told only the
truth. Our parents were harder on us than any one
else. Our fathers said we were disgracing our
families, and they commanded us to purge ourselves
of our lie, and there was no limit to their anger when
we continued to say we had spoken true. Our
mothers cried over us and begged us to give back
our bribe and get back our honest names and save
our families from shame, and come out and honorably
confess. And at last we were so worried and harassed
that we tried to tell the whole thing, Satan and all —
but no, it wouldn't come out. We were hoping and
longing all the time that Satan would come and help
us out of our trouble, but there was no sign of him.
Within an hour after the astrologer's talk with us,
Father Peter was in prison and. the money sealed up
and in the hands of the officers of the law. The
money was in a bag, and Solomon Isaacs said he
had not touched it since he had counted it; his oath
was taken that it was the same money, and that the
amount was eleven hundred and seven ducats
Father Peter claimed trial by the ecclesiastical court,
but our other priest, Father Adolf, said an ecclesi-
astical court hadn't jurisdiction over a suspended
priest. The bishop upheld him. That settled it;
the case would go to trial in the civil court. The
court would not sit for some time to come. Wilhelm
Meidling would be Father Peter's lawyer and do the
best he could, of course, but he told us privately

38

On the Fourth Day Comes the Astrologer from
His Crumbling Old Tower

THE MYSTERIOUS STRANGER

that a weak case on his side and all the power and
prejudice on the other made the outlook bad.

So Marget's new happiness died a quick death.
No friends came to condole with her, and none were
expected; an unsigned note withdrew her invitation
to the party. There would be no scholars to take
lessons. How could she support herself? She could
remain in the house, for the mortgage was paid off,
though the government and not poor Solomon Isaacs
had the mortgage-money in its grip for the present.
Old Ursula, who was cook, chambermaid, house-
keeper, laundress, and everything else for Father
Peter, and had been Marget's nurse in earlier years,
said God would provide. But she said that from
habit, for she was a good Christian. She meant to
help in the providing, to make sure, if she could
find a way.

We boys wanted to go and see Marget and show
friendliness for her, but our parents were afraid of
offending the community and wouldn't let us. The
astrologer was going around inflaming everybody
against Father Peter, and saying he was an aban-
doned thief and had stolen eleven hundred and seven
gold ducats from him. He said he knew he was a
thief from that fact, for it was exactly the sum he
had lost and which Father Peter pretended he had
"found."

In the afternoon of the fourth day after the
catastrophe old Ursula appeared at our house and
asked for some washing to do, and begged my mother
to keep this secret, to save Marget's pride, who
would stop this project if she found it out, yet Marget

39

MARK TWAIN

had not enough to eat and was growing weak.
Ursula was growing weak herself, and showed it;
and she ate of the food that was offered her like a
starving person, but could not be persuaded to carry-
any home, for Marget would not eat charity food.
She took some clothes down to the stream to wash
them, but we saw from the window that handling
the bat was too much for her strength; so she was
called back and a trifle of money offered her, which
she was afraid to take lest Marget should suspect;
then she took it, saying she would explain that she
found it in the road. To keep it from being a lie
and damning her soul, she got me to drop it while
she watched ; then she went along by there and found
it, and exclaimed with surprise and joy, and picked
it up and went her way. Like the rest of the village,
she could tell every-day lies fast enough and without
taking any precautions against fire and brimstone
on their account; but this was a new kind of lie, and
it had a dangerous look because she hadn't had any
practice in it. After a week's practice it wouldn't
have given her any trouble. It is the way we are
made.

I was in trouble, for how would Marget live?
Ursula could not find a coin in the road every day —
perhaps not even a second one. And I was ashamed,
too, for not having been near Marget, and she so in
need of friends; but that was my parents' fault,
not mine, and I couldn't help it.

I was walking along the path, feeling very down-
hearted, when a most cheery and tingling freshening-
up sensation went rippling through me, and I was

40

THE MYSTERIOUS STRANGER

too glad for any words, for I knew by that sign that
Satan was by. I had noticed it before. Next
moment he was alongside of me and I was telling
him all my trouble and what had been happening
to Marget and her uncle. While we were talking we
turned a curve and saw old Ursula resting in the
shade of a tree, and she had a lean stray kitten in
her lap and was petting it. I asked her where she
got it, and she said it came out of the woods and
followed her; and she said it probably hadn't any
mother or any friends and she was going to take it
home and take care of it. Satan said :

"I understand you are very poor. Why do you
want to add another mouth to feed? Why don't you
give it to some rich person?"

Ursula bridled at this and said: " Perhaps you
would like to have it. You must be rich, with your
fine clothes and quality airs." Then she sniffed and
said: "Give it to the rich — the idea! The rich
don't care for anybody but themselves; it's only the
poor that have feeling for the poor, and help them.
The poor and God. God will provide for this
kitten."

"What makes you think so?"

Ursula's eyes snapped with anger. "Because I
know it!" she said. "Not a sparrow falls to the
ground without His seeing it."

"But it falls, just the same. What good is seeing
it fall?"

Old Ursula's jaws worked, but she could not get
any word out for the moment, she was so horrified.
When she got her tongue she stormed out, "Go

41

MARK TWAIN

about your business, you puppy, or I will take a
stick to you!"

I could not speak, I was so scared. I knew that
with his notions about the human race Satan would
consider it a matter of no consequence to strike her
dead, there being "plenty more;" but my tongue
stood still, I could give her no warning. But nothing
happened; Satan remained tranquil — tranquil and
indifferent. I suppose he could not be insulted by
Ursula any more than the king could be insulted by
a tumble-bug. The old woman jumped to her feet
when she made her remark, and did it as briskly as
a young girl. It had been many years since she had
done the like of that. That was Satan's influence;
he was a fresh breeze to the weak and the sick,
wherever he came. His presence affected even the
lean kitten, and it skipped to the ground and began
to chase a leaf. This surprised Ursula, and she
stood looking at the creature and nodding her head
wonderingly, her anger quite forgotten.

"What's come over it?" she said. "Awhile ago
it could hardly walk."

"You have not seen a kitten of that breed before,"
said Satan.

Ursula was not proposing to be friendly with the
mocking stranger, and she gave him an ungentle
look and retorted: "Who asked you to come here
and pester me, I'd like to know? And what do you
know about what I've seen and what I haven't seen?"

"You haven't seen a kitten with the hair-spines
on its tongue pointing to the front, have you?"

"No — nor you, either."

42

THE MYSTERIOUS STRANGER

"Well, examine this one and see."

Ursula was become pretty spry, but the kitten
was spryer, and she could not catch it, and had to
give it up. Then Satan said:

"Give it a name, and maybe it will come."

Ursula tried several names, but the kitten was not
interested.

"Call it Agnes. Try that."

The creature answered to the name and came*
Ursula examined its tongue. "Upon my word, it's
true!" she said. "I have not seen this kind of a cat
before. Is it yours?"

"No."

"Then how did you know its name so pat?"

"Because all cats of that breed are named Agnes;
they will not answer to any other."

Ursula was impressed. "It is the most wonderful
thing F ' Then a shadow of trouble came into her face,
for her superstitions were aroused, and she reluc-
tantly put the creature down, saying: "I suppose
I must let it go; I am not afraid — no, not exactly
that, though the priest — well, IVe heard people —
indeed, many people . . . And, besides, it is quite
well now and can take care of itself." She sighed,
and turned to go, murmuring: "It is such a pretty
one, too, and would be such company — and the
house is so sad and lonesome these troubled
days . . . Miss Marget so mournful and just a
shadow, and the old master shut up in jail."

"It seems a pity not to keep it," said Satan.

Ursula turned quickly — just as if she were hoping
some one would encourage her.

43

MARK TWAIN

"Why?" she asked, wistfully.

"Because this breed brings luck."

"Does it? Is it true? Young man, do you know
it to be true? How does it bring luck?

"Well, it brings money, anyway."

Ursula looked disappointed. "Money? A cat
bring money? The idea! You could never sell it
here; people do not buy cats here; one can't even
give them away." She turned to go.

1 ' I don't mean sell it. I mean have an income from
it. This kind is called the Lucky Cat. Its owner
finds four silver groschen in his pocket every morning.

I saw the indignation rising in the old woman's
face. She was insulted. This boy was making fun
of her. That was her thought. She thrust her
hands into her pockets and straightened up to give
him a piece of her mind. Her temper was all up,
and hot. Her mouth came open and let out three
words of a bitter sentence, . . . then it fell silent,
and the anger in her face turned to surprise or
wonder or fear, or something, and she slowly brought
out her hands from her pockets and opened them
and held them so. In one was my piece of money,
in the other lay four silver groschen. She gazed
a little while, perhaps to see if the groschen would
vanish away; then she said, fervently:

"It's true — it's true — and I'm ashamed and beg
forgiveness, O dear master and benefactor!" And
she ran to Satan and kissed his hand, over and over
again, according to the Austrian custom.

In her heart she probably believed it was a witch-
cat and an agent of the Devil; but no matter, it

44

THE MYSTERIOUS STRANGER

was all the more certain to be able to keep its con-
tract and furnish a daily good living for the family,
for in matters of finance even the piousest of our
peasants would have more confidence in an arrange-
ment with the Devil than with an archangel.
Ursula started homeward, with Agnes in her arms,
and I said I wished I had her privilege of seeing
Marget.

Then I caught my breath, for we were there.
There in the parlor, and Marget standing looking
at us, astonished. She was feeble and pale, but I
knew that those conditions would not last in Satan's
atmosphere, and it turned out so. I introduced
Satan — that is, Philip Traum — and we sat down and
talked. There was no constraint. We were simple
folk, in our village, and when a stranger was a
pleasant person we were soon friends. Marget
wondered how we got in without her hearing us.
Traum said the door was open, and we walked in
and waited until she should turn around and greet
us. This was not true; no door was open; we
entered through the walls or the roof or down the
chimney, or somehow; but no matter, what Satan
wished a person to believe, the person was sure to
believe, and so Marget was quite satisfied with that
explanation. And then the main part of her mind
was on Traum, anyway; she couldn't keep her eyes
off him, he was so beautiful. That gratified me, and
made me proud. I hoped he would show off some,
but he didn't. He seemed only interested in being
friendly and telling lies. He said he was an orphan.
That made Marget pity him. The water came into

45

MARK TWAIN

her eyes. He said he had never known his mamma;
she passed away while he was a young thing; and
said his papa was in shattered health, and had no
property to speak of — in fact, none of any earthly
value — but he had an uncle in business down in the
tropics, and he was very well off and had a monopoly,
and it was from this uncle that he drew his support.
The very mention of a kind uncle was enough to
remind Marget of her own, and her eyes filled again.
She said she hoped their two uncles would meet,
some day. It made me shudder. Philip said he
hoped so, too; and that made me shudder again.

11 Maybe they will," said Marget. "Does your
uncle travel much?"

"Oh yes, he goes all about; he has business every-
where."

And so they went on chatting, and poor Marget
forgot her sorrow for one little while, anyway. It
was probably the only really bright and cheery hour
she had known lately. I saw she liked Philip, and
I knew she would. And when he told her he was
studying for the ministry I could see that she liked
him better than ever. And then, when he promised
to get her admitted to the jail so that she could see
her uncle, that was the capstone. He said he would
give the guards a little present, and she must always
go in the evening after dark, and say nothing,
"but just show this paper and pass in, and show it
again when you come out" — and he scribbled some
queer marks on the paper and gave it to her, and she
was ever so thankful, and right away was in a fever
for the sun to go down; for in that old, cruel time

46

THE MYSTERIOUS STRANGER

prisoners were not allowed to see their friends, and
sometimes they spent years in the jails without ever
seeing a friendly face. I judged that the marks on
the paper were an enchantment, and that the guards
would not know what they were doing, nor have any
memory of it afterward; and that was indeed the
way of it. Ursula put her head in at the door now
and said:

11 Supper's ready, miss." Then she saw us and
looked frightened, and motioned me to come to her,
which I did, and she asked if we had told about the
cat. I said no, and she was relieved, and said
please don't; for if Miss Marget knew, she would
think it was an unholy cat and would send for a
priest and have its gifts all purified out of it, and
then there wouldn't be any more dividends. So I
said we wouldn't tell, and she was satisfied. Then
I was beginning to say good-by to Marget, but
Satan interrupted and said, ever so politely — well,
I don't remember just the words, but anyway he as
good as invited himself to supper, and me, too. Of
course Marget was miserably embarrassed, for she
had no reason to suppose there would be half enough
for a sick bird. Ursula heard him, and she came
straight into the room, not a bit pleased. At first
she was astonished to see Marget looking so fresh
and rosy, and said so; then she spoke up in her
native tongue, which was Bohemian, and said — as I
learned afterward — "Send him away, Miss Marget;
there's not victuals enough."

Before Marget could speak, Satan had the word,
and was talking back to Ursula in her own language

47

MARK TWAIN

— which was a surprise to her, and for her mistress,
too. He said, "Didn't I see you down the road
awhile ago?"

"Yes, sir."

"Ah, that pleases me; I see you remember me."
He stepped to her and whispered: "I told you it is
a Lucky Cat. Don't be troubled; it will provide."

That sponged the slate of Ursula's feelings clean
of its anxieties, and a deep, financial joy shone in
her eyes. The cat's value was augmenting. It was
getting full time for Marget to take some sort of
notice of Satan's invitation, and she did it in the
best way, the honest way that was natural to her.
She said she had little to offer, but that we were
welcome if we would share it with her.

We had supper in the kitchen, and Ursula waited
at table. A small fish was in the frying-pan, crisp
and brown and tempting, and one could see that
Marget was not expecting such respectable food as
this. Ursula brought it, and Marget divided it
between Satan and me, declining to take any of it
herself; and was beginning to say she did not care
for fish to-day, but she did not finish the remark.
It was because she noticed that another fish had
appeared in the pan. She looked surprised, but did
not say anything. She probably meant to inquire
of Ursula about this later. There were other sur-
prises: flesh and game and wines and fruits — things
which had been strangers in that house lately; but
Marget made no exclamations, and now even looked
V unsurprised, which was Satan's influence, of course.
Satan talked right along, and was entertaining, and

48

THE MYSTERIOUS STRANGER

made the time pass pleasantly and cheerfully; and
although he told a good many lies, it was no harm
in him, for he was only an angel and did not know
any better. They do not know right from wrong;
I knew this, because I remembered what he had
said about it. He got on the good side of Ursula.
He praised her to Marget, confidentially, but speak-
ing just loud enough for Ursula to hear. He said
she was a fine woman, and he hoped some day to
bring her and his uncle together. Very soon Ursula
was mincing and simpering around in a ridiculous
girly way, and smoothing out her gown and prinking
at herself like a foolish old hen, and all the time
pretending she was not hearing what Satan was
saying. I was ashamed, for it showed us to be
what Satan considered us, a silly race and trivial.
Satan said his uncle entertained a great deal, and
to have a clever woman presiding over the festivities
would double the attractions of the place.

"But your uncle is a gentleman, isn't he?" asked
Marget.

"Yes," said Satan indifferently; "some even call
him a Prince, out of compliment, but he is not
bigoted; to him personal merit is everything, rank
nothing."

My hand was hanging down by my chair; Agnes
came along and licked it; by this act a secret was
revealed. I started to say, "It is all a mistake;
this is just a common, ordinary cat; the hair-needles
on her tongue point inward, not outward." But the
words did not come, because they couldn't. Satan
smiled upon me, and I understood.

49

MARK TWAIN

When it was dark Marget took food and wine and
fruit, in a basket, and hurried away to the jail, and
Satan and I walked toward my home. I was thinking
to myself that I should like to see what the inside of
the jail was like; Satan overheard the thought, and
the next moment we were in the jail. We were in
the torture-chamber, Satan said. The rack was
there, and the other instruments, and there was a
smoky lantern or two hanging on the walls and
helping to make the place look dim and dreadful.
There were people there — and executioners — but as
they took no notice of us, it meant that we were
invisible. A young man lay bound, and Satan said
he was suspected of being a heretic, and the execu-
tioners were about to inquire into it. They asked
the man to confess to the charge, and he said he
could not, for it was not true. Then they drove
splinter after splinter under his nails, and he shrieked
with the pain. Satan was not disturbed, but I
could not endure it, and had to be whisked out of
there. I was faint and sick, but the frejjjj air revived
me, and we walked toward my home. \I said it was
a brutal thing.

"No, it was a human thing. You should not
insult the brutes by such a misuse of that word;
they have not deserved it," and he went on talking
like that. * ' It is like your paltry race — always lying,
always claiming virtues which it hasn't got, always
denying them to the higher animals, which alone
possess them. No brute ever does a cruel thing —
that is the monopoly of those with the Moral Sense.
When a brute inflicts pain he does it innocently; it

50

THE MYSTERIOUS STRANGER

is not wrong; for him there is no such thing as
wrong. And he does not inflict pain for the pleasure
of inflicting it — only man does that. Inspired ;by
that mongrel Moral Sense of his! A sense whose
function is to distinguish between right and wrong,
with liberty to choose which of them he will do.
Now what advantage can he get out of that? He is
always choosing, and in nine cases out of ten he *
prefers the wrong. There shouldn't be any wrong;
and without the Moral Sense there couldn't be any.
And yet he is such an unreasoning creature that he
is not able to perceive that the Moral Sense degrades M
him to the bottom layer of animated beings and is a
shameful possession Are you feeling better? Let
me show you something."

Si

CHAPTER VI

IN a moment we were in a French village. We
walked through a great factory of some sort,
where men and women and little children were toiling
in heat and dirt and a fog of dust; and they were
clothed in rags, and drooped at their work, for they
were worn and half starved, and weak and drowsy.
Satan said:

"It is some more Moral Sense. The proprietors
are rich, and very holy; but the wage they pay to
these poor brothers and sisters of theirs is only
enough to keep them from dropping dead with
hunger. The work-hours are fourteen per day,
winter and summer — from six in the morning till
eight at night — little children and all. And they
walk to and from the pigsties which they inhabit —
four miles each way, through mud and slush, rain,
snow, sleet, and storm, daily, year in and year out.
They get four hours of sleep. They kennel together,
three families in a room, in unimaginable filth and
stench; and disease comes, and they die off like flies.
Have they committed a crime, these mangy things?
No. What have they done, that they are punished
so? Nothing at all, except getting themselves born
into your foolish race. You have seen how they
treat a misdoer there in the jail; now you see how
they treat the innocent and the worthy. Is your
race logical? Are these ill-smelling innocents better
off than that heretic? Indeed, no; his punishment

52

THE MYSTERIOUS STRANGER

is trivial compared with theirs. They broke him on
the wheel and smashed him to rags and pulp after
we left, and he is dead now, and free of your precious
race; but these poor slaves here — why, they have
been dying for years, and some of them will not
escape from life for years to come. It is the Moral
Sense which teaches the factory proprietors the dif-
ference between right and wrong — you perceive the
result. They think themselves better than dogs.
Ah, you are such an illogical, unreasoning race!
And paltry — oh, unspeakably !"

Then he dropped all seriousness and just over-
strained himself making fun of us, and deriding our
pride in our warlike deeds, our great heroes, our
imperishable fames, our mighty kings, our ancient
aristocracies, our venerable history — and laughed and
laughed till it was enough to make a person sick to
hear him; and finally he sobered a little and said,
"But, after all, it is not all ridiculous; there is a sort
of pathos about it when one remembers how few
are your days, how childish your pomps, and what
shadows you are!"

Presently all things vanished suddenly from my
sight, and I knew what it meant. The next moment
we were walking along in our village; and down
toward the. river I saw the twinkling lights of the
Golden Stag. Then in the dark I heard a joyful cry:

"He's come again!"

It was Seppi Wohlmeyer. He had felt his blood
leap and his spirits risei in a way that could mean
only one thing, and he knew Satan was near, although
it was too dark to see him. He came to us, and we

53

MARK TWAIN

walked along together, and Seppi poured out his
gladness like water. It was as if he were a lover and
had found his sweetheart who had been lost. Seppi
was a smart and animated boy, and had enthusiasm
and expression, and was a contrast to Nikolaus and
me. He was full of the last new mystery, now — the
disappearance of Hans Oppert, the village loafer.
People were beginning to be curious about it, he said.
He did not say anxious — curious was the right word,
and strong enough. No one had seen Hans for a
couple of days.

"Not since he did that brutal thing, you know,"
he said.

"What brutal thing?" It was Satan that asked.

"Well, he is always clubbing his dog, which is a
good dog, and his only friend, and is faithful, and
loves him, and does no one any harm; and two days
ago he was at it again, just for nothing — just for
pleasure — and the dog was howling and begging, and
Theodor and I begged, too, but he threatened us,
and struck the dog again with all his might and
knocked one of his eyes out, and he said to us,
'There, I hope you are satisfied now; that's what
you have got for him by your damned meddling ' —
and he laughed, the heartless brute." Seppi's voice
trembled with pity and anger. I guessed what Satan
would say, and he said it.

"There is that misused word again — that shabby
slander. Brutes do not act like that, but only men."

"Well, it was inhuman, anyway."

"No, it wasn't, Seppi; it was human — quite
distinctly human. It is not pleasant to hear you

54

"Life Itself Is Only A Vision, A Dream

THE MYSTERIOUS STRANGER

libel the higher animals by attributing to them
dispositions which they are free from, and which
are found nowhere but in the human heart. None
of the higher animals is tainted with the disease called
the Moral Sense. Purify your language, Seppi ; drop
those lying phrases out of it."

He spoke pretty sternly — for him — and I was sorry
I hadn't warned Seppi to be more particular about
the word he used. I knew how he was feeling. He
would not want to offend Satan; he would rather
offend all his kin. There was an uncomfortable
silence, but relief soon came, for that poor dog came
along now, with his eye hanging down, and went
straight to Satan, and began to moan and mutter
brokenly, and Satan began to answer in the same
way, and it was plain that they were talking together
in the dog language. We all sat down in the grass, in
the moonlight, for the clouds were breaking away now,
and Satan took the dog's head in his lap and put the
eye back in its place, and the dog was comfortable,
and he wagged his tail and licked Satan's hand, and
looked thankful and said the same; I knew he was
saying it, though I did not understand the words.
Then the two talked together a bit, and Satan said:

"He says his master was drunk."

"Yes, he was," said we.

"And an hour later he fell over the precipice
there beyond the Cliff Pasture."

"We know the place; it is three miles from here."

"And the dog has been often to the village, beg-
ging people to go there, but he was only driven
away and not listened to."

55

MARK TWAIN

We remembered it, but hadn't understood what he
wanted.

"He only wanted help for the man who had
misused him, and he thought only of that, and has
had no food nor sought any. He has watched by his
master two nights. What do you think of your race ?
Is heaven reserved for it, and this dog ruled out, as
your teachers tell you? Can your race add anything
to this dog's stock of morals and magnanimities ?"
He spoke to the creature, who jumped up, eager
and happy, and apparently ready for orders and im-
patient to execute them. ' ' Get some men ; go with the
dog — he will show you that carrion ; and take a priest
along to arrange about insurance, for death is near."

With the last word he vanished, to our sorrow and
disappointment. We got the men and Father Adolf,
and we saw the man die. Nobody cared but the dog ;
he mourned and grieved, and licked the dead face,
and could not be comforted. We buried him where
he was, and without a coffin, for he had no money,
and no friend but the dog. If we had been an hour
earlier the priest would have been in time to send
that poor creature to heaven, but now he was gone
down into the awful fires, to burn forever. It
seemed such a pity that in a world where so many
people have difficulty to put in their time, one little
hour could not have been spared for this poor
creature who needed it so much, and to whom it
would have made the difference between eternal joy
and eternal pain. It gave an appalling idea of the
value of an hour, and I thought I could never waste
one again without remorse and terror. Seppi was

56

THE MYSTERIOUS STRANGER

depressed and grieved, and said it must be so much
better to be a dog and not run such awful risks.
We took this one home with us and kept him for
our own. Seppi had a very good thought as we were
walking along, and it cheered us up and made us
feel much better. He said the dog had forgiven the
man that had wronged him so, and maybe God
would accept that absolution.

There was a very dull week, now, for Satan did not
come, nothing much was going on, and we boys
could not venture to go and see Marget, because
the nights were moonlit and our parents might find
us out if we tried. But we came across Ursula a
couple of times taking a walk in the meadows beyond
the river to air the cat, and we learned from her
that things were going well. She had natty new
clothes on and bore a prosperous look. The four
groschen a day were arriving without a break, but
were not being spent for food and wine and such
things — the cat attended to all that.

Marget was enduring her forsakenness and isolation
fairly well, all things considered, and was cheerful, by
help of Wilhelm Meidling. She spent an hour or
two every night in the jail with her uncle, and had
fattened him up with the cat's contributions. But
she was curious to know more about Philip Traum,
and hoped I would bring him again. Ursula was
curious about him herself, and asked a good many
questions about his uncle. It made the boys laugh,
for I had told them the nonsense Satan had been
stuffing her with. She got no satisfaction out of us,
our tongues being tied.

57

MARK TWAIN

Ursula gave us a small item of information:
money being plenty now, she had taken on a servant
to help about the house and run errands. She tried
to tell it in a commonplace, matter-of-course way,
but she was so set up by it and so vain of it that her
pride in it leaked out pretty plainly. It was beautiful
to see her veiled delight in this grandeur, poor old
thing, but when we heard the name of the servant
we wondered if she had been altogether wise; for
although we were young, and often thoughtless, we
had fairly good perception on some matters. This
boy was Gottfried Narr, a dull, good creature, with
no harm in him and nothing against him personally;
still, he was under a cloud, and properly so, for it had
not been six months since a social blight had mildewed
the family — his grandmother had been burned as a
witch. When that kind of a malady is in the blood
it does not always come out with just one burning.
Just now was not a good time for Ursula and Marget
to be having dealings with a member of such a family,
for the witch-terror had risen higher during the past
year than it had ever reached in the memory of the
oldest villagers. The mere mention of a witch was
almost enough to frighten us out of our wits. This
was natural enough, because of late years there were
more kinds of witches than there used to be; in
old times it had been only old women, but of late
years they were of all ages — even children of eight
and nine; it was getting so that anybody might turn
out to be a familiar of the Devil — age and sex hadn't
anything to do with it. In our little region we had
tried to extirpate the witches, but the more of them

58

THE MYSTERIOUS STRANGER

we burned the more of the breed rose up in their
places.

Once, in a school for girls only ten miles away, the
teachers found that the back of one of the girls was
all red and inflamed, and they were greatly frightened,
believing it to be the Devil's marks. The girl was
scared, and begged them not to denounce her, and
said it was only fleas; but of course it would not do
to let the matter rest there. All the girls were
examined, and eleven out of the fifty were badly
marked, the rest less so. A commission was
appointed, but the eleven only cried for their mothers
and would not confess. Then they were shut up,
each by herself, in the dark, and put on black bread
and water for ten days and nights; and by that time
they were haggard and wild, and their eyes were dry
and they did not cry any more, but only sat and
mumbled, and would not take the food. Then one
of them confessed, and said they had often ridden
through the air on broomsticks to the witches'
Sabbath, and in a bleak place high up in the moun-
tains had danced and drunk and caroused with
several hundred other witches and the Evil One,
and all had conducted themselves in a scandalous
way and had reviled the priests and blasphemed
God. That is what she said — not in narrative form,
for she was not able to remember any of the details
without having them called to her mind one after
the other; but the commission did that, for they
knew just what questions to ask, they being all
written down for the use of witch-commissioners two
centuries before. They asked, "Did you do so and

59

MARK TWAIN

so?" and she always said yes, and looked weary and
tired, and took no interest in it. And so when the
other ten heard that this one confessed, they con-
fessed, too, and answered yes to the questions. Then
they were burned at the stake all together, which
was just and right; and everybody went from all the
countryside to see it. I went, too; but when I saw
that one of them was a bonny, sweet girl I used to
play with, and looked so pitiful there chained to the
stake, and her mother crying over her and devouring
her with kisses and clinging around her neck, and
saying, "Oh, my God! oh, my God!" it was too
dreadful, and I went away.

It was bitter cold weather when Gottfried's grand-
mother was burned. It was charged that she had
cured bad headaches by kneading the person's head
and neck with her fingers — as she said — but really
by the Devil's help, as everybody knew. They were
going to examine her, but she stopped them, and
confessed straight off that her power was from the
Devil. So they appointed to burn her next morning,
early, in our market-square. The officer who was to
prepare the fire was there first, and prepared it. She
was there next — brought by the constables, who left
her and went to fetch another witch. Her family
did not come with her. They might be reviled,
maybe stoned, if the people were excited. I came,
and gave her an apple. She was squatting at the
fire, warming herself and waiting; and her old lips
and hands were blue with the cold. A strangei
came next. He was a traveler, passing through;
and he spoke to her gently, and, seeing nobody but

60

THE MYSTERIOUS STRANGER

me there to hear, said he was sorry for her. And he
asked if what she confessed was true, and she said
no. He looked surprised and still more sorry then,
and asked her:

"Then why did you confess ?"

"I am old and very poor/' she said, "and I work
for my living. There was no way but to confess.
If I hadn't they might have set me free. That would
ruin me, for no one would forget that I had been
suspected of being a witch, and so I would get no
more work, and wherever I went they would set the
dogs on me. In a little while I would starve. The
fire is best; it is soon over. You have been good to
me, you two, and I thank you."

She snuggled closer to the fire, and put out her
hands to warm them, the snow-flakes descending soft
and still on her old gray head and making it white
and whiter. The crowd was gathering now, and an
egg came flying and struck her in the eye, and broke
and ran down her face. There was a laugh at that.

I told Satan all about the eleven girls and the old
woman, once, but it did not affect him. He only
said it was the human race, and what the human
race did was of no consequence. And he said he
had seen it made; and it was not made of clay; it
was made of mud — part of it was, anyway. I knew
what he meant by that — the Moral Sense. He saw
the thought in my head, and it tickled him and made
him laugh. Then he called a bullock out of a pasture
and petted it and talked with it, and said:

"There — he wouldn't drive children mad with
hunger and fright and loneliness, and then burn

61

MARK TWAIN

them for confessing to things invented for them
which had never happened. And neither would he
break the hearts of innocent, poor old women and
make them afraid to trust themselves among their
own race; and he would not insult them in their
death-agony. For he is not besmirched with the
Moral Sense, but is as the angels are, and knows no
wrong, and never does it."

Lovely as he was, Satan could be cruelly offensive
when he chose ; and he always chose when the human
race was brought to his attention. He always
turned up his nose at it, and never had a kind word
for it.

Well, as I was saying, we boys doubted if it was
a good time for Ursula to be hiring a member of the
Narr family. We were right. When the people
found it out they were naturally indignant. And,
moreover, since Marget and Ursula hadn't enough
to eat themselves, where was the money coming
from to feed another mouth? That is what they
wanted to know; and in order to find out they
stopped avoiding Gottfried and began to seek his
society and have sociable conversations with him.
He was pleased — not thinking any harm and not
seeing the trap — and so he talked innocently along,
and was no discreeter than a cow.

11 Money !" he said; "they've got plenty of it.
They pay me two groschen a week, besides my keep.
And they live on the fat of the land, I can tell you;
the prince himself can't beat their table."

This astonishing statement was conveyed by the
astrologer to Father Adolf on a Sunday morning

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THE MYSTERIOUS STRANGER

when he was returning from mass. He was deeply
moved, and said:

"This must be looked into."

He said there must be witchcraft at the bottom
of it,1 and told the villagers to resume relations
with Marget and Ursula in a private and unosten-
tatious way, and keep both eyes open. They were
told to keep their own counsel, and not rouse the
suspicions of the household. The villagers were at
first a bit reluctant to enter such a dreadful place,
but the priest said they would be under his protection
while there, and no harm could come to them,
particularly if they carried a trifle of holy water
along and kept their beads and crosses handy. This
satisfied them and made them willing to go; envy
and malice made the baser sort even eager to go.

And so poor Marget began to have company again,
and was as pleased as a cat. She was like 'most
anybody else — just human, and happy in her pros-
perities and not averse from showing them off a little;
and she was humanly grateful to have the warm
shoulder turned to her and be smiled upon by her
friends and the village again; for of all the hard
things to bear, to be cut by your neighbors and left
in contemptuous solitude is maybe the hardest.

The bars were down, and we could all go there
now, and we did — our parents and all — day after
day. The cat began to strain herself. She provided
the top of everything for those companies, and in
abundance — among them many a dish and many a
wine which they had not tasted before and which
they had not even heard of except at second-hand

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MARK TWAIN

from the prince's servants. And the tableware was
much above ordinary, too.

Marget was troubled at times, and pursued Ursula
with questions to an uncomfortable degree; but
Ursula stood her ground and stuck to it that it was
Providence, and said no word about the cat. Marget
knew that nothing was impossible to Providence, but
she could not help having doubts that this effort
was from there, though she was afraid to say so,
lest disaster come of it. Witchcraft occurred to her,
bat she put the thought aside, for this was before
Gottfried joined the household, and she knew Ursula
was pious and a bitter hater of witches. By the
time Gottfried arrived Providence, was established,
unshakably intrenched, and getting all the gratitude.
The cat made no murmur, but went on composedly
improving in style and prodigality by experience.

In any community, big or little, there is always a
fair proportion of people who are not malicious or
unkind by nature, and who never do unkind things
except when they are overmastered by fear, or when
tiieir self-interest is greatly in danger, or some such
matter as that. Eseldorf had its proportion of such
people, and ordinarily their good and gentle influence
was felt, but these were not ordinary -times — on
account of the witch-dread — and so we did not seem
to have any gentle and compassionate hearts left,
to speak of. Every person was frightened at the
unaccountable state of things at Marget's house, not
doubting that witchcraft was at the /bottom of it,
and fright frenzied their reason. Naturally there
were some who pitied Marget and Ursula for the

64

THE MYSTERIOUS STRANGER

danger that was gathering about them, but naturally
they did not say so; it would not have been safe.
So the others had it all their own way, and there
was none to advise the ignorant girl and the foolish
woman and warn them to modify their doings. We
boys wanted to warn them, but we backed down
when it came to the pinch, being afraid. We found
that we were not manly enough nor brave enough
to do a generous action when there was a chance
that it could get us into trouble. Neither of us
confessed this poor spirit to the others, but did as
other people would have done — dropped the subject
and talked about something else. And I knew we
all felt mean, eating and drinking Marget's fine
things along with those companies of spies, and
petting her and complimenting her with the rest,
and seeing with self-reproach how foolishly happy
she was, and never saying a word to put her on her
guard. And, indeed, she was happy, and as proud
as a princess, and so grateful to have friends again.
And all the time these people were watching with
all their eyes and reporting all they saw to Father
Adolf.

But he couldn't make head or tail of the situation.
There must be an enchanter somewhere on the
premises, but who was it? Marget was not seen to
do any jugglery, nor was Ursula, nor yet Gottfried;
and still the wines and dainties never ran short, and
a guest could not call for a thing and not get it. To
produce these effects was usual enough with witches
and enchanters — that part of it was not new; but
to do it without any incantations, or even any

65

MARK TWAIN

rumblings or earthquakes or lightnings or appari-
tions— that was new, novel, wholly irregular. There
was nothing in the books like this. Enchanted
things were always unreal. Gold turned to dirt in
an unenchanted atmosphere, food withered away
and vanished. But this test failed in the present
case. The spies brought samples: Father Adolf
prayed over them, exorcised them, but it did no
good; they remained sound and real, they yielded
to natural decay only, and took the usual time to
do it.

Father Adolf was not merely puzzled, he was also
exasperated; for these evidences very nearly con-
vinced him — privately — that there was no witch-
craft in the matter. It did not wholly convince him,
for this could be a new kind of witchcraft. There
was a way to find out as to this: if this prodigal
abundance of provender was not brought in from
the outside, but produced on the premises, there was
witchcraft, sure.

66

CHAPTER VII

MARGET announced a party, and invited forty
people; the date for it was seven days away.
This was a fine opportunity. Marget's house stood
by itself, and it could be easily watched. All the
week it was watched night and day. Marget's
household went out and in as usual, but they carried
nothing in their hands, and neither they nor others
brought anything to the house. This was ascertained.
Evidently rations for forty people were not being
fetched. If they were furnished any sustenance it
would have to be made on the premises. It was true
that Marget went out with a basket every evening,
but the spies ascertained that she always brought it
back empty.

The guests arrived at noon and filled the place.
Father Adolf followed; also, after a little, the
astrologer, without invitation. The spies had in-
formed him that neither at the back nor the front
had any parcels been brought in. He entered, and
found the eating and drinking going on finely, and
everything progressing in a lively and festive way.
He glanced around and perceived that many of the
cooked delicacies and all of the native and foreign
fruits were of a perishable character, and he also
recognized that these were fresh and perfect. No
apparitions, no incantations, no thunder. That
settled it. This was witchcraft. And not only
that, but of a new kind — a kind never dreamed of

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MARK TWAIN

before. It was a prodigious power, an illustrious
power; he resolved to discover its secret. The
announcement of it would resound throughout the
world, penetrate to the remotest lands, paralyze all
the nations with amazement — and carry his name
with it, and make him renowned forever. It was
a wonderful piece of luck, a splendid piece of luck;
the glory of it made him dizzy.

All the house made room for him; Marget politely
seated him; Ursula ordered Gottfried to bring a
special table for him. Then she decked it and
furnished it, and asked for his orders.

" Bring me what you will," he said.

The two servants brought supplies from the pantry,
together with white wine and red — a bottle of each.
The astrologer, who very likely had never seen such
delicacies before, poured out a beaker of red wine,
drank it off, poured another, then began to eat with
a grand appetite.

I was not expecting Satan, for it was more than a
week since I had seen or heard of him, but now he
came in — I knew it by the feel, though people were
in the way and I could not see him. I heard him
apologizing for intruding; and he was going away,
but Marget urged him to stay, and he thanked
her and stayed. She brought him along, introducing
him to the girls, and to Meidling, and to some of
the elders; and there was quite a rustle of whispers:
"It's the young stranger we hear so much about and
can't get sight of, he is away so much." "Dear,
dear, but he is beautiful — what is his name?"
"Philip Traum." "Ah, it fits him!" (You see,

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THE MYSTERIOUS STRANGER

"Traum" is German for "Dream.") "What does
he do?" "Studying for the ministry, they say*"
"His face is his fortune — he'll be a cardinal some
day." "Where is his home?" "Away down some-
where in the tropics, they say — has a rich uncle
down there." And so on. He made his way at
once; everybody was anxious to know him and talk
with him. Everybody noticed how cool and fresh
it was, all of a sudden, and wondered at it, for they
could see that the sun was beating down the same
as before, outside, and the sky was clear of clouds,
but no one guessed the reason, of course.

The astrologer had drunk his second beaker; ha
poured out a third. He set the bottle down, and by
accident overturned it. He seized it before mueh
was spilled, and held it up to the light, saying,
"What a pity — it is royal wine." Then his face
lighted with joy or triumph, or something, and he
said, * ' Quick ! Bring a bowl. ' '

It was brought — a four-quart one. He took tip
that two-pint bottle and began to pour; went on
pouring, the red liquor gurgling and gushing into the
white bowl and rising higher and higher up its
sides, everybody staring and holding their breath —
and presently the bowl was full to the brim.

"Look at the bottle," he said, holding it up; "it
is full yet !" I glanced at Satan, and in that moment
he vanished. Then Father Adolf rose up, flushed and
excited, crossed himself, and began to thunder in his
great voice, ' * This house is bewitched and accursed ! "
People began to cry and shriek and crowd toward
the door. "I summon this detected household to — "

69

MARK TWAIN

His words were cut off short. His face became
red, then purple, but he could not utter another
sound. Then I saw Satan, a transparent film, melt
into the astrologer's body; then the astrologer put
up his hand, and apparently in his own voice said,
"Wait — remain where you are." All stopped where
they stood. "Bring a funnel!" Ursula brought it,
trembling and scared, and he stuck it in the bottle
and took up the great bowl and began to pour the
wine back, the people gazing and dazed with astonish-
ment, for they knew the bottle was already full
before he began. He emptied the whole of the bowl
into the bottle, then smiled out over the room,
chuckled, and said, indifferently: "It is nothing —
anybody can do it ! With my powers I can even do
much more."

A frightened cry burst out everywhere. "Oh, my
God, he is possessed!" and there was a tumultuous
rush for the door which swiftly emptied the house
of all who did not belong in it except us boys and
Meidling. We boys knew the secret, and would
have told it if we could, but we couldn't. We were
very thankful to Satan for furnishing that good help
at the needful time.

Marget was pale, and crying; Meidling looked
kind of petrified; Ursula the same; but Gottfried
was the worst — he couldn't stand, he was so weak
and scared. For he was of a witch family, you
know, and it would be bad for him to be suspected.
Agnes came loafing in, looking pious and unaware,
and wanted to rub up against Ursula and be petted,
but Ursula was afraid of her and shrank away from

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THE MYSTERIOUS STRANGER

her, but pretending she was not meaning any
incivility, for she knew very well it wouldn't answer
to have strained relations with that kind of a cat.
But we boys took Agnes and petted her, for Satan
would not have befriended her if he had not had a
good opinion of her, and that was indorsement
enough for us. He seemed to trust anything that
hadn't the Moral Sense.

Outside, the guests, panic-stricken, scattered in
every direction and fled in a pitiable state of terror;
and such a tumult as they made with their running
and sobbing and shrieking and shouting that soon
all the village came flocking from their houses to see
what had happened, and they thronged the street
and shouldered and jostled one another in excitement
and fright; and then Father Adolf appeared, and
they fell apart in two walls like the cloven Red Sea,
and presently down this lane the astrologer came
striding and mumbling, and where he passed the
lanes surged back in packed masses, and fell silent
with awe, and their eyes stared and their breasts
heaved, and several women fainted; and when he
was gone by the crowd swarmed together and fol-
lowed him at a distance, talking excitedly and asking
questions and finding out the facts. Finding out
the facts and passing them on to others, with
improvements — improvements which soon enlarged
the bowl of wine to a barrel, and made the one
bottle hold it all and yet remain empty to the last.

When the astrologer reached the market-square he
went straight to a juggler, fantastically dressed, who
was keeping three brass balls in the air, and took

71

MARK TWAIN

them from him and faced around upon the approach-
ing crowd and said: "This poor clown is ignorant
of his art. Come forward and see an expert perform. ' '
So saying, he tossed the balls up one after another
and set them whirling in a slender bright oval in the
air, and added another, then another and another,
and soon — no one seeing whence he got them — add-
ing, adding, adding, the oval lengthening all the time,
his hands moving so swiftly that they were just a
web or a blur and not distinguishable as hands;
and such as counted said there were now a hundred
balls in the air. The spinning great oval reached up
twenty feet in the air and was a shining and glinting
and wonderful sight. Then he folded his arms and
told the balls to go on spinning without his help —
and they did it. After a couple of minutes he said,
"There, that will do," and the oval broke and came
crashing down, and the balls scattered abroad and
rolled every whither. And wherever one of them
came the people fell back in dread, and no one would
touch it. It made him laugh, and he scoffed at the
people and called them cowards and old women.
Then he turned and saw the tight-rope, and said
foolish people were daily wasting their money to see
a clumsy and ignorant varlet degrade that beautiful
art ; now they should see the work of a master. With
that he made a spring into the air and lit firm on his
feet on the rope. Then he hopped the whole length
of it back and forth on one foot, with his hands
clasped over his eyes; and next he began to throw
somersaults, both backward and forward, and threw
twenty-seven.

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THE MYSTERIOUS STRANGER

The people murmured, for the astrologer was old,
and always before had been halting of movement
and at times even lame, but he was nimble enough
now and went on with his antics in the liveliest
manner. Finally he sprang lightly down and walked
away, and passed up the road and around the corner
and disappeared. Then that great, pale, silent, solid
crowd drew a deep breath and looked into one
another's faces as if they said: "Was it real? Did
you see it, or was it only I — and I was dreaming?"
Then they broke into a low murmur of talking, and
fell apart in couples, and moved toward their homes,
still talking in that awed way, with faces close
together and laying a hand on an arm and making
other such gestures as people make when they have
been deeply impressed by something.

We boys followed behind our fathers, and listened,
catching all we could of what they said; and when
they sat down in our house and continued their talk
they still had us for company. They were in a sad
mood, for it was certain, they said, that disaster for
the village must follow this awful visitation of
witches and devils. Then my father remembered
that Father Adolf had been struck dumb at the
moment of his denunciation.

"They have not ventured to lay their hands upon
an anointed servant of God before," he said; "and
how they could have dared it this time I cannot
make out, for he wore his crucifix. Isn't it so?"

"Yes," said the others, "we saw it."

"It is serious, friends, it is very serious. Always
before, we had a protection. It has failed."

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MARK TWAIN

The others shook, as with a sort of chill, and mut-
tered those words over — "It has failed." "God has
forsaken us."

"It is true," said Seppi Wohlmeyer's father; there
is nowhere to look for help."

"The people will realize this," said Nikolaus's
father, the judge, "and despair will take away their
courage and their energies. We have indeed fallen
upon evil times."

He sighed, and Wohlmeyer said, in a troubled
voice : ' ' The report of it all will go about the country,
and our village will be shunned as being under the
displeasure of God. The Golden Stag will know
hard times."

"True, neighbor," said my father; "all of us will
suffer — all in repute, many in estate. And, good
God!—"

"What is it?"

"That can come — to finish us!"

"Name it— urn Gottes Willen!"

"The Interdict!"

It smote like a thunderclap, and they were like
to swoon with the terror of it. Then the dread of
this calamity roused their energies, and they stopped
brooding and began to consider ways to avert it.
They discussed this, that, and the other way, and
talked till the afternoon was far spent, then confessed
that at present they could arrive at no decision. So
they parted sorrowfully, with oppressed hearts which
were filled with bodings.

While they were saying their parting words I
slipped out and set my course for Marget's house to

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THE MYSTERIOUS STRANGER

see what was happening there. I met many people,
but none of them greeted me. It ought to have
been surprising, but it was not, for they were so
distraught with fear and dread that they were not in
their right minds, I think; they were white and
haggard, and walked like persons in a dream, their
eyes open but seeing nothing, their lips moving but
uttering nothing, and worriedly clasping and unclasp-
ing their hands without knowing it.

At Marget's it was like a funeral. She and
Wilhelm sat together on the sofa, but said nothing,
and not even holding hands. Both were steeped in
gloom, and Marget's eyes were red from the crying
she had been doing. She said:

"I have been begging him to go, and come no
more, and so save himself alive. I cannot bear to be
his murderer. This house is bewitched, and no
inmate will escape the fire. But he will not go, and
he will be lost with the rest."

Wilhelm said he would not go ; if there was danger
for her, his place was by her, and there he would
remain. Then she began to cry again, and it was
all so mournful that I wished I had stayed away.
There was a knock, now, and Satan came in, fresh
and cheery and beautiful, and brought that winy
atmosphere of his and changed the whole thing. He
never said a word about what had been happening,
nor about the awful fears which were freezing the
blood in the hearts of the community, but began to
talk and rattle on about all manner of gay and
pleasant things: and next about music — an artful
stroke which cleared away the remnant of Marget's

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MARK TWAIN

depression and brought her spirits and her interests
broad awake. She had not heard any one talk so
well and so knowingly on that subject before, and she
was so uplifted by it and so charmed that what she
was feeling lit up her face and came out in her words ;
and Wilhelm noticed it and did not look as pleased
as he ought to have done. And next Satan branched
off into poetry, and recited some, and did it well,
and Marget was charmed again; and again Wilhelm
was not as pleased as he ought to have been, and this
time Marget noticed it and was remorseful.

I fell asleep to pleasant music that night — the
patter of rain upon the panes and the dull growling
of distant thunder. Away in the night Satan came
and roused me and said: ''Come with me. Where
shall we go?"

"Anywhere — so it is with you."

Then there was a fierce glare of sunlight, and he
said, "This is China."

That was a grand surprise, and made me sort of
drunk with vanity and gladness to think I had come
so far — so much, much farther than anybody else in
our village, including Bartel Sperling, who had such
a great opinion of his travels. We buzzed around
over that empire for more than half an hour, and
saw the whole of it. It was wonderful, the spectacles
we saw; and some were beautiful, others too horrible
to think. For instance — However, I may go into
that by and by, and also why Satan chose China
for this excursion instead of another place; it would
interrupt my tale to do it now. Finally we stopped
flitting and lit.

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THE MYSTERIOUS STRANGER

We sat upon a mountain commanding a vast
landscape of mountain-range and gorge and valley
and plain and river, with cities and villages slumber-
ing in the sunlight, and a glimpse of blue sea on the
farther verge. It was a tranquil and dreamy picture,
beautiful to the eye and restful to the spirit. If we
could only make a change like that whenever we
wanted to, the world would be easier to live in than '
it is, for change of scene shifts the mind's burdens
to the other shoulder and banishes old, shop-worn
wearinesses from mind and body both.

We talked together, and I had the idea of trying
to reform Satan and persuade him to lead a better
life. I told him about all those things he had been
doing, and begged him to be more considerate and
stop making people unhappy. I said I knew he did
n> mean any harm, but that he ought to stop and
consider the possible consequences of a thing before
launching it in that impulsive and random way of
his; then he would not make so much trouble. He
was not hurt by this plain speech; he only looked
amused and surprised, and said:

"What? I do random things? Indeed, I never *
do. I stop and consider possible consequences?
Where is the need? I know what the consequences
are going to be — always.' '

"Oh, Satan, then how could you do these things?"

"Well, I will tell you, and you must understand if
you can. You belong to a singular race. Every
man is a suffering-machine and a happiness-machine
combined. The two functions work together har-
moniously, with a fine and delicate precision, on the

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MARK TWAIN

give-and-take principle. For every happiness turned
out in the one department the other stands ready
to modify it with a sorrow or a pain — maybe a
dozen. In most cases the man's life is about equally
divided between happiness and unhappiness. When
this is not the case the unhappiness predominates —
always; never the other. Sometimes a man's make
and disposition are such that his misery-machine is
able to do nearly all the business. Such a man goes
through life almost ignorant of what happiness is.
Everything he touches, everything he does, brings
a misfortune upon him. You have seen such people?
To that kind of a person life is not an advantage,
is it? It is only a disaster. Sometimes for an hour's
happiness a man's machinery makes him pay years
of misery. Don't you know that? It happens every
now and then. I will give you a case or two pres-
ently. Now the people of your village are nothing
to me — you know that, don't you?"

I did not like to speak out too flatly, so I said I
had suspected it.

"Well, it is true that they are nothing to me. It
is not possible that they should be. The difference
between them and me is abysmal, immeasurable.
They have no intellect.'*

"No intellect?"

€l Nothing that resembles it. At a future time I
will examine what man calls his mind and give you
the details of that chaos, then you will see and
understand. Men have nothing in common with me
— there is no point of contact; they have foolish
little feelings and foolish little vanities and imper-

78

THE MYSTERIOUS STRANGER

tinences and ambitions; their foolish little life is
but a laugh, a sigh, and extinction; and they have
no sense. Only the Moral Sense. I will show you
what I mean. Here is a red spider, not so big as a
pin's head. Can you imagine an elephant being inter-
ested in him — caring whether he is happy or isn't, or
whether he is wealthy or poor, or whether his sweet-
heart returns his love or not, or whether his mother
is sick or well, or whether he is looked up to in society
or not, or whether his enemies will smite him or his
friends desert him, or whether his hopes will suf-
fer blight or his political ambitions fail, or whether
he shall die in the bosom of his family or neglected
and despised in a foreign land? These things can
never be important to the elephant; they are noth-
ing to him; he cannot shrink his sympathies to the
microscopic size of them. Man is to me as the
red spider is to the elephant. The elephant has
nothing against the spider — he cannot get down to
that remote level; I have nothing against man.
The elephant is indifferent; I am indifferent. The
elephant would not take the trouble to do the
spider an ill turn; if he took the notion he might
do him a good turn, if it came in his way and cost
nothing. I have done men good service, but no ill
turns.

"The elephant lives a century, the red spider a
day; in power, intellect, and dignity the one creature
is separated from the other by a distance which is
simply astronomical. Yet in these, as in all qualities,
man is immeasurably further below me than is the
wee spider below the elephant.

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MARK TWAIN

"Man's mind clumsily and tediously and labori-
ously patches little trivialities together and gets a
result — such as it is. My mind creates ! Do you get
the force of that? Creates anything it desires — and
in a moment. Creates without material. Creates
fluids, solids, colors — anything, everything — out of
the airy nothing which is called Thought. A man
imagines a silk thread, imagines a machine to make
it, imagines a picture, then by weeks of labor em-
broiders it on canvas with the thread. I think the
whole thing, and in a moment it is before you —
created.

"I think a poem, music, the record of a game of
chess — anything — and it is there. This is the im-
mortal mind — nothing is beyond its reach. Noth-
ing can obstruct my vision ; the rocks are transparent
to me, and darkness is daylight. I do not need to
open a book; I take the whole of its contents into
my mind at a single glance, through the cover;
and in a million years I could not forget a single
word of it, or its place in the volume. Nothing
goes on in the skull of man, bird, fish, insect, or
other creature which can be hidden from me. I
pierce the learned man's brain with a single glance,
and the treasures which cost him threescore years
to accumulate are mine; he can forget, and he does
forget, but I retain.

"Now, then, I perceive by your thoughts that you
are understanding me fairly well. Let us proceed.
Circumstances might so fall out that the elephant
could like the spider — supposing he can see it — but
he could not love it. His love is for his own kind — for

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THE MYSTERIOUS STRANGER

his equals. An angel's love is sublime, adorable,
divine, beyond the imagination of man — infinitely
beyond it ! But it is limited to his own august order.
If it fell upon one of your race for only an instant,
it would consume its object to ashes. No, we can-
not love men, but we can be harmlessly indifferent
to them; we can also like them, sometimes. I like
you and the boys, I like Father Peter, and for your
sakes I am doing all these things for the villagers."

He saw that I was thinking a sarcasm, and he
explained his position.

"I have wrought well for the villagers, though it
does not look like it on the surface. Your race
never know good fortune from ill. They are always
mistaking the one for the other. It is because they
cannot see into the future. What I am doing for
the villagers will bear good fruit some day; in some
cases to themselves; in others, to unborn generations
of men. No one will ever know that I was the
cause, but it will be none the less true, for all that.
lAmong you boys you have a game: you stand a row
of bricks on end a few inches apart; you push a
brick, it knocks its neighbor over, the neighbor
knocks over the next brick — and so on till all the
row is prostrate. That is human life. A child's
first act knocks over the initial brick, and the rest
will follow inexorably If you could see into the
future, as I can, you would see everything that was
going to happen to that creature; for nothing can
change the order of its life after the first event has
determined it. That is, nothing will change it,
because each act unfailingly begets an act, that act

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MARK TWAIN

begets another, and so on to the end, and the seer
can look forward down the line and see just when
each act is to have birth, from cradle to grave.' *

"Does God order the career?"

"Foreordain it? No. The man's circumstances
and environment order it. His first act determines
the second and all that follow after. But suppose,
for argument's sake, that the man should skip one
of these acts; an apparently trifling one, for instance;
suppose that it had been appointed that on a certain
day, at a certain hour and minute and second and
fraction of a second he should go to the well, and he
didn't go. That man's career would. change utterly,
from that moment; thence to the grave it would
be wholly different from the career which his first
act as a child had arranged for him. Indeed, it might
be that if he had gone to the well he would have
ended his career on a throne, and that omitting to do
it would set him upon a career that would lead to
beggary and a pauper's grave. For instance: if at
any time — say in boyhood — Columbus had skipped
the triflingest little link in the chain of acts projected
and made inevitable by his first childish act, it
would have changed his whole subsequent life, and
he would have become a priest and died obscure in
an Italian village, and America would not have been
discovered for two centuries afterward. I know this.
To skip any one of the billion acts in Columbus's
chain would have wholly changed his life. I have
examined his billion of possible careers, and in only
one of them occurs the discovery of America. You
people do not suspect that all of your acts are of one

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THE MYSTERIOUS STRANGER

size and importance, but it is true; to snatch at an
appointed fly is as big with fate for you as in any
other appointed act — "

"As the conquering of a continent, for instance?"

11 Yes. Now, then, no man ever does drop a link —
the thing has never happened! Even when he is
trying to make up his mind as to whether he will do
a thing or not, that itself is a link, an act, and has its
proper place in his chain ; and when he finally decides
an act, that also was the thing which he was abso-
lutely certain to do. You see, now, that a man will
never drop a link in his chain. . He cannot. If he
made up his mind to try, that project would itself
be an unavoidable link — a thought bound to occur
to him at that precise moment, and made certain by
the first act of his babyhood/'

It seemed so dismal !

FHe is a prisoner for life," I said sorrowfully,
"and cannot get free."

4 'No, of himself he cannot get away from the
consequences of his first childish actjj But I can
free him."

I looked up wistfully.

"I have changed the careers of a number of your
villagers."

I tried to thank him, but found it difficult, and let
it drop.

u I shall make some other changes. You know
that little Lisa Brandt?"

"Oh yes, everybody does. My mother says she is
so sweet and so lovely that she is not like any other
child. She says she will be the pride of the village

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when she grows up; and its idol, too, just as she is

now.

"I shall change her future."

"Make it better?" I asked.

"Yes. And I will change the future of Nikolaus."

I was glad, this time, and said, "I don't need to
ask about his case; you will be sure to do generously
by him."

"It is my intention."

Straight off I was building that great future of
Nicky's in my imagination, and had already made a
renowned general of him and hofmeister at the court,
when I noticed that Satan was waiting for me to get
ready to listen again. I was ashamed of having
exposed my cheap imaginings to him, and was ex-
pecting some sarcasms, but it did not happen. He
proceeded with his subject:

"Nicky's appointed life is sixty-two years."

"That's grand!" I said.

"Lisa's, thirty-six. But, as I told you, I shall
change their lives and those ages. Two minutes
and a quarter from now Nikolaus will wake out of
his sleep and find the rain blowing in. It was
appointed that he should turn over and go to sleep
again. But I have appointed that he shall get up
and close the window first. That trifle will change
his career entirely. He will rise in the morning two
minutes later than the chain of his life had appointed
him to rise. By consequence, thenceforth nothing
will ever happen to him in accordance with the details
of the old chain." He took out his watch and sat
looking at it a few moments, then said: "Nikolaus

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THE MYSTERIOUS STRANGER

has risen to close the window. His life is changed, his
new career has begun. There will be consequences."

It made me feel creepy; it was uncanny.

"But for this change certain things would happen
twelve days from now. For instance, Nikolaus
would save Lisa from drowning. He would arrive
on the scene at exactly the right moment — four
minutes past ten, the long-ago appointed instant of
time — and the water would be shoal, the achievement
easy and certain. But he will arrive some seconds
too late, now; Lisa will have struggled into deeper
water. He will do his best, but both will drown."

1 ' Oh, Satan ! oh, dear Satan !" I cried, with the tears
rising in my eyes, "save them! Don't let it happen.
I can't bear to lose Nikolaus, he is my loving play-
mate and friend; and think of Lisa's poor mother!"

I clung to him and begged and pleaded, but he
was not moved. He made me sit down again, and
told me I must hear him out.

"I have changed Nikolaus's life, and this has
changed Lisa's. If I had not done this, Nikolaus
would save Lisa, then he would catch cold from his
drenching ; one of your race's fantastic and desolating
scarlet fevers would follow, with pathetic after-
effects; for forty-six years he would lie in his bed a
paralytic log, deaf, dumb, blind, and praying night
and day for the blessed relief of death. Shall I
change his life back?"

"Oh no! Oh, not for the world! In charity and
pity leave it as it is."

"It is best so. I could not have changed any
other link in his life and done him so good a service.

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He had a billion possible careers, but not one of
them was worth living; they were charged full with
miseries and disasters. But for my intervention he
would do his brave deed twelve days from now — a
deed begun and ended in six minutes — and get for
all reward those forty-six years of sorrow and suffer-
ing I told you of. It is one of the cases I was thinking
of awhile ago when I said that sometimes an act
which brings the actor an hour's happiness and self-
satisfaction is paid for — or punished — by years of
suffering.' '

I wondered what poor little Lisa's early death would
save her from. He answered the thought:

"From ten years of pain and slow recovery from
an accident, and then from nineteen years' pollution,
shame, depravity, crime, ending with death at the
hands of the executioner. Twelve days hence she
will die; her mother would save her life if she could.
Am I not kinder than her mother?"

"Yes — oh, indeed yes; and wiser."

"Father Peter's case is coming on presently. He
will be acquitted, through unassailable proofs of his
innocence."

"Why, Satan, how can that be? Do you really
think it?"

"Indeed, I know it. His good name will be re-
stored, and the rest of his life will be happy."

"I can believe it. To restore his good name will
have that effect."

"His happiness will not proceed from that cause.
I shall change his life that day, for his good. He
will never know his good name has been restored."

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THE MYSTERIOUS STRANGER

In my mind — and modestly — I asked for par-
ticulars, but Satan paid no attention to my thought.
Next, my mind wandered to the astrologer, and I
wondered where he might be.

"In the moon," said Satan, with a fleeting sound
which I believed was a chuckle. "I've got him on
the cold side of it, too. He doesn't know where he
is, and is not having a pleasant time; still, it is good
enough for him, a good place for his star studies. I
shall need him presently; then I shall bring him back
and possess him again. He has a long and cruel and
odious life before him, but I will change that, for I
have no feeling against him and am quite willing to
do him a kindness. I think I shall get him burned."

He had such strange notions of kindness! But
angels are made so, and do not know any better.
Their ways are not like our ways; and, besides,
human beings are nothing to them; they think they
are only freaks. It seems to me odd that he should
put the astrologer so far away; he could have
dumped him in Germany just as well, where he
would be handy.

"Far away?" said Satan. "To me no place is far
away; distance does not exist for me. The sun is
less than a hundred million miles from here, and the
light that is falling upon us has taken eight minutes
to come; but I can make that flight, or any other,
in a fraction of time so minute that it cannot be
measured by a watch. I have but to think the
journey, and it is accomplished."

I held out my hand and said, "The light lies
upon it; think it into a glass of wine, Satan."

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MARK TWAIN

He did it. I drank the wine.

"Break the glass," he said.

I broke it.

"There — you see it is real. The villagers thought
the brass balls were magic stuff and as perishable as
smoke. They were afraid to touch them. You are
a curious lot — your race. But come along; I have
business. I will put you to bed." Said and done.
Then he was gone; but his voice came back to me
through the rain and darkness saying, "Yes, tell
Seppi, but no other."

It was the answer to my thought.

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CHAPTER VIII

SLEEP would not come. It was not because I
was proud of my travels and excited about
having been around the big world to China, and
feeling contemptuous of Bartel Sperling, "the trav-
eler," as he called himself, and looked down upon us
others because he had been to Vienna once and
was the only Eseldorf boy who had made such a
journey and seen the world's wonders. At another
time that would have kept me awake, but it did
not affect me now. No, my mind was filled with
Nikolaus, my thoughts ran upon him only, and the
good days we had seen together at romps and frolics
in the woods and the fields and the river in the long
summer days, and skating and sliding in the winter
when our parents thought we were in school. And
now he was going out of this young life, and the
summers and winters would come and go, and we
others would rove and play as before, but his place
would be vacant; we should see him no more.
To-morrow he would not suspect, but would be as
he had always been, and it would shock me to hear
him laugh, and see him do lightsome and frivolous
things, for to me he would be a corpse, with waxen
hands and dull eyes, and I should see the shroud
around his face; and next day he would not suspect,
nor the next, and all the time his handful of days
would be wasting swiftly away and that awful thing
coming nearer and nearer, his fate closing steadily

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around him and no one knowing it but Seppi and
me. Twelve days — only twelve days. It was awful
to think of. I noticed that in my thoughts I was
not calling him by his familiar names, Nick and
Nicky, but was speaking of him by his full name,
and Teverently, as one sp'eaks of the dead. Also,
as incident after incident of our comradeship came
thronging into my mind out of the past, I noticed
that they were mainly cases where I had wronged
him or hurt him, and they rebuked me and re-
proached me, and my heart was wrung with remorse,
just as it is when we remember our unkindnesses to
friends who have passed beyond the veil, and we
wish we could have them back again, if only for a
moment, so that we could go on our knees to them
and say, "Have pity, and forgive."

Once when we were nine years old he went a long
errand of nearly two miles for the fruiterer, who
gave him a splendid big apple for reward, and he
was flying home with it, almost beside himself with
astonishment and delight, and I met him, and he let
me look at the apple, not thinking of treachery, and
I ran off with it, eating it as I ran, he following rgp
and begging; and when he overtook me I offered him
the core, which was all that was left; and I laughed.
Then he turned away, crying, and said he had
meant to give it to his little sister. That smote me,
for she was slowly getting well of a sickness, and it
would have been a proud moment for him, to see
her joy and surprise and have her caresses. But I
was ashamed to say I was ashamed, and only said
something rude and mean, to pretend I did not care,

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THE MYSTERIOUS STRANGER

and he made no reply in words, but there was a
wounded look in his face as he turned away toward
his home which rose before me many times in after
years, in the night, and reproached me and made me
ashamed again. It had grown dim in my mind, by
and by, then it disappeared; but it was back now,
and not dim.

Once at school, when we were eleven, I upset my
ink and spoiled four copy-books, and was in danger
of severe punishment; but I put it upon him, and he
got the whipping.

And only last year I had cheated him in a trade,
giving him a large fish-hook which was partly broken
through for three small sound ones. The first fish
he caught broke the hook, but he did not know I
was blamable, and he refused to take back one of
the small hooks which my conscience forced me to
offer him, but said, "A trade is a trade; the hook
was bad, but that was not your fault.' '

No, I could not sleep. These little, shabby wrongs
upbraided me and tortured me, and with a pain
much sharper than one feels when the wrongs have
been done to the living. Nikolaus was living, but no
matter ; he was to me as one already dead. The wind
was still moaning about the eaves, the rain still pat-
tering upon the panes.

In the morning I sought out Seppi and told him.
It was down by the river. His lips moved, but he
did not say anything, he only looked dazed and
stunned, and his face turned very white. He stood
like that a few moments, the tears welling into his
eyes, then he turned away and I locked my arm in

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MARK TWAIN

his and we walked along thinking, but not speaking.
We crossed the bridge and wandered through the
meadows and up among the hills and the woods,
and at last the talk came and flowed freely, and it
was all about Nikolaus and was a recalling of the
life we had lived with him. And every now and
then Seppi said, as if to himself:

"Twelve days! — less than twelve days."

We said we must be with him all the time; we
must have all of him we could; the days were
precious now. Yet we did not go to seek him. It
would be like meeting the dead, and we were afraid.
We did not say it, but that was what we were feeling.
And so it gave us a shock when we turned a curve and
came upon Nikolaus face to face. He shouted, gaily :

"Hi-hi! What is the matter? Have you seen a
ghost?"

We couldn't speak, but there was no occasion; he
was willing to talk for us all, for he had just seen
Satan and was in high spirits about it. Satan had
told him about our trip to China, and he had begged
Satan to take him a journey, and Satan had promised.
It was to be a far journey, and wonderful and
beautiful; and Nikolaus had begged him to take us,
too, but he said no, he would take us some day,
maybe, but not now. Satan would come for him on
the 13th, and Nikolaus was already counting the
hours, he was so impatient.

That was the fatal day. We were already counting
the hours, too.

We wandered many a mile, always following paths
which had been our favorites from the days when

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THE MYSTERIOUS STRANGER

we were little, and always we talked about the old
times. All the blitheness was with Nikolaus; we
others could not shake off our depression. Our tone
toward Nikolaus was so strangely gentle and tender
and yearning that he noticed it, and was pleased;
and we were constantly doing him deferential little
offices of courtesy, and saying, "Wait, let me do that
for you," and that pleased him, too. I gave him
seven fish-hooks — all I had — and made him take
them; and Seppi gave him his new knife and a
humming-top painted red and yellow — atonements
for swindles practised upon him formerly, as I
learned later, and probably no longer remembered
by Nikolaus now. These things touched him, and
he could not have believed that we loved him so;
and his pride in it and gratefulness for it cut us to
the heart, we were so undeserving of them. When
we parted at last, he was radiant, and said he had
never had such a happy day.

As we walked along homeward, Seppi said, "We
always prized him, but never so much as now, when
we are going to lose him."

Next day and every day we spent all of our spare
time with Nikolaus; and also added to it time which
we (and he) stole from work and other duties, and
this cost the three of us some sharp scoldings, and
some threats of punishment. Every morning two
of us woke with a start and a shudder, saying, as the
days flew along, "Only ten days left;" "only nine
days left;" "only eight;" "only seven." Always it
was narrowing. Always Nikolaus was gay and
happy, and always puzzled because we were not.

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MARK TWAIN

He wore his invention to the bone trying to invent
ways to cheer us up, but it was only a hollow success;
he could see that our jollity had no heart in it, and
that the laughs we broke into came up against
some obstruction or other and suffered damage and
decayed into a sigh. He tried to find out what the
matter was, so that he could help us out of our
trouble or make it lighter by sharing it with us ; so we
had to tell many lies to deceive him and appease him.

But the most distressing thing of all was that he
was always making plans, and often they went
beyond the 13th! Whenever that happened it made
us groan in spirit. All his mind was fixed upon
finding some way to conquer our depression and
cheer us up; and at last, when he had but three
days to live, he fell upon the right idea and was
jubilant over it — a boys-and-girls' frolic and dance
in the woods, up there where we first met Satan,
and this was to occur on the 14th. It was ghastly,
for that was his funeral day. We couldn't venture
to protest; it would only have brought a "Why?"
which we could not answer. He wanted us to help
him invite his guests, and we did it — one can refuse
nothing to a dying friend. But it was dreadful, for
really we were inviting them to his funeral.

It was an awful eleven days; and yet, with a
lifetime stretching back between to-day and then,
they are still a grateful memory to me, and beautiful.
In effect they were days of companionship with one's
sacred dead, and I have known no comradeship that
was so close or so precious. We clung to the hours
and the minutes, counting them as they wasted away,

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THE MYSTERIOUS STRANGER

and parting with them with that pain and bereave-
ment which a miser feels who sees his hoard filched
from him coin by coin by robbers and is helpless to
prevent it.

When the evening of the last day came we stayed
out too long; Seppi and I were in fault for that; we
could not bear to part with Nikolaus; so it was very
late when we left him at his door. We lingered near
awhile, listening; and that happened which we were
fearing. His father gave him the promised punish-
ment, and we heard his shrieks. But we listened
only a moment, then hurried away, remorseful for
this thing which we had caused. And sorry for the
father, too; our thought being, "If he only knew —
if he only knew!' '

In the morning Nikolaus did not meet us at the
appointed place, so we went to his home to see what
the matter was. His mother said:

"His father is out of all patience with these goings-
on, and will not have any more of it. Half the time
when Nick is needed he is not to be found; then it
turns out that he has been gadding around with you
two. His father gave him a flogging last night. It
always grieved me before, and many's the time I
have begged him off and saved him, but this time he
appealed to me in vain, for I was out of patience
myself."

"I wish you had saved him just this one time,"
I said, my voice trembling a little; "it would ease
a pain in your heart to remember it some day."

She was ironing at the time, and her back was
partly toward me. She turned about with a startled

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MARK TWAIN

or wondering look in her face and said, "What do
you mean by that?"

I was not prepared, and didn't know anything to
say; so it was awkward, for she kept looking at me;
but Seppi was alert and spoke up:

"Why, of course it would be pleasant to remember,
for the very reason we were out so late was that
Nikolaus got to telling how good you are to him,
and how he never got whipped when you were by
to save him; and he was so full of it, and we were so
full of the interest of it, that none of us noticed how
late it was getting."

"Did he say that? Did he?" and she put her
apron to her eyes.

"You can ask Theodor — he will tell you the same."

" It is a dear, good lad, my Nick, ' ' she said. " I am
sorry I let him get whipped; I will never do it again.
To think — all the time I was sitting here last night,
fretting and angry at him, he was loving me and prais-
ing me! Dear, dear, if we could only know! Then
we shouldn't ever go wrong; but we are only poor,
dumb beasts groping around and making mistakes.
I sha'n't ever think of last night without a pang."

She was like all the rest; it seemed as if nobody
could open a mouth, in these wretched days, without
saying something that made us shiver. They were
"groping around," and did not know what true,
sorrowfully true things they were saying by accident.

Seppi asked if Nikolaus might go out with us.

"I am sorry," she answered, "but he can't. To
punish him further, his father doesn't allow him tc
go out of the house to-day."

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THE MYSTERIOUS STRANGER

We had a great hope! I saw it in Seppi's eyes.
We thought, "If he cannot leave the house, he can-
not be drowned.' ' Seppi asked, to make sure:

"Must he stay in all day, or only the morning?"

"All day. It's such a pity, too; it's a beautiful
day, and he is so unused to being shut up. But he
is busy planning his party, and maybe that is com-
pany for him. I do hope he isn't too lonesome."

Seppi saw that in her eye which emboldened him
to ask if we might go up and help him pass his time.

"And welcome!" she said, right heartily. "Now
I call that real friendship, when you might be abroad
in the fields and the woods, having a happy time.
You are good boys, I'll allow that, though you
don't always find satisfactory ways of improving it.
Take these cakes — for yourselves — and give him this
one, from his mother."

The first thing we noticed when we entered
Nikolaus's room was the time — a quarter to 10.
Could that be correct? Only such a few minutes to
live! I felt a contraction at my heart. Nikolaus
jumped up and gave us a glad welcome. He was in
good spirits over his plannings for his party and had
not been lonesome.

"Sit down," he said, "and look at what I've
been doing. And I've finished a kite that you will
say is a beauty. It's drying, in the kitchen; I'll
fetch it."

He had been spending his penny savings in fanciful
trifles of various kinds, to go as prizes in the games,
and they were marshaled with fine and showy effect
upon the table. He said:

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MARK TWAIN

" Examine them at your leisure while I get mother
to touch up the kite with her iron if it isn't dry
enough yet."

Then he tripped out and went clattering down-
stairs, whistling.

We did not look at the things; we couldn't take
any interest in anything but the clock. We sat
staring at it in silence, listening to the ticking, and
every time the minute-hand jumped we nodded
recognition — one minute fewer to cover in the race
for life or for death. Finally Seppi drew a deep
breath and said:

"Two minutes to ten. Seven minutes more and
he will pass the death-point. Theodor, he is going
to be saved! He's going to — "

"Hush! I'm on needles. Watch the clock and
keep still/*

Five minutes more. We were panting with the
strain and the excitement. Another three minutes,
and there was a footstep on the stair.

1 ' Saved P ' And we jumped up and faced the door.

The old mother entered, bringing the kite. "Isn't
it a beauty?" she said. "And, dear me, how he has
slaved over it — ever since daylight, I think, and only
finished it awhile before you came." She stood it
against the wall, and stepped back to take a view of
it. "He drew the pictures his own self, and I think
they are very good. The church isn't so very good,
I'll have to admit, but look at the bridge — any one
can recognize the bridge in a minute. He asked me
to bring it up. . . . Dear me! it's seven minutes
past ten, and I — "

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THE MYSTERIOUS STRANGER

"But where is he?"

"He? Oh, he'll be here soon; he's gone out a
minute."

"Gone out?"

"Yes. Just as he came down-stairs little Lisa's
mother came in and said the child had wandered off
somewhere, and as she was a little uneasy I told
Nikolaus to never mind about his father's orders — go
and look her up. . . . Why, how white you two do
look! I do believe you are sick. Sit down; I'll
fetch something. That cake has disagreed with you.
It is a little heavy, but I thought — "

She disappeared without finishing her sentence,
and we hurried at once to the back window and
looked toward the river. There was a great crowd
at the other end of the bridge, and people were
flying toward that point from every direction.

"Oh, it is all over — poor Nikolaus ! Why, oh, why
did she let him get out of the house!"

"Come away," said Seppi, half sobbing, "come
quick — we can't bear to meet her; in five minutes
she will know."

But we were not to escape. She came upon us at
the foot of the stairs, with her cordials in her hands,
and made us come in and sit down and take the
medicine. Then she watched the effect, and it did
not satisfy her; so she made us wait longer, and
kept upbraiding herself for giving us the unwhole-
some cake.

Presently the thing happened which we were
dreading. There was a sound of tramping and
scraping outside, and a crowd came solemnly in,

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MARK TWAIN

with heads uncovered, and laid the two drowned
bodies on the bed.

"Oh, my God!" that poor mother cried out, and
fell on her knees, and put her arms about her dead
boy and began to cover the wet face with kisses.
"Oh, it was I that sent him, and I have been his
death. If I had obeyed, and kept him in the
house, this would not have happened. And I am
rightly punished; I was cruel to him last night,
and him begging me, his own mother, to be his
friend."

And so she went on and on, and all the women
cried, and pitied her, and tried to comfort her, but
she could not forgive herself and could not be
comforted, and kept on saying if she had not sent
him out he would be alive and well now, and she
was the cause of his death.

It shows how foolish people are when they blame
themselves for anything they have done. Satan
knows, and he said nothing happens that your first
act hasn't arranged to happen and made inevitable;
and so, of your own motion you can't ever alter the
scheme or do a thing that will break a link. Next
we heard screams, and Frau Brandt came wildly
plowing and plunging through the crowd with her
dress in disorder and hair flying loose, and flung
herself upon her dead child with moans and kisses
and pleadings and endearments; and by and by she
rose up almost exhausted with her outpourings of
passionate emotion, and clenched her fist and lifted
it toward the sky, and her tear-drenched face grew
hard and resentful, and she said:

ioo

THE MYSTERIOUS STRANGER

"For nearly two weeks I have had dreams and
presentiments and warnings that death was going
to strike what was most precious to me, and day and
night and night and day I have groveled in the dirt
before Him praying Him to have pity on my innocent
child and save it from harm — and here is His answer !" '

Why, He' had saved it from harm — but she did not
know.

She wiped the tears from her eyes and cheeks, and
stood awhile gazing down at the child and caressing
its face and its hair with her hands; then she spoke
again in that bitter tone: "But in His hard heart is
no compassion. I will never pray again.' ,

She gathered her dead child to her bosom and
strode away, the crowd falling back to let her pass,
and smitten dumb by the awful words they had
heard. Ah, that poor woman! It is as Satan said,
we do not know good fortune from bad, and are
always mistaking the one for the other. Many a
time since I have heard people pray to God to spare
the life of sick persons, but I have never done it.

Both funerals took place at the same time in our
little church next day. Everybody was there,
including the party guests. Satan was there, too;
which was proper, for it was on account of his efforts
that the funerals had happened. Nikolaus had
departed this life without absolution, and a collection
was taken up for masses, to get him out of pur-
gatory. Only two-thirds of the required money was
gathered, and the parents were going to try to borrow
the rest, but Satan furnished it. He told us privately
that there was no purgatory, but he had contributed •*

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MARK TWAIN

in order that Nikolaus's parents and their friends
might be saved from worry and distress. We thought
it very good of him, but he said money did not cost
him anything.

At the graveyard the body of little Lisa was
seized for debt by a carpenter to whom the mother
owed fifty groschen for work done the year before.
She had never been able to pay this, and was not
able now. The carpenter took the corpse home and
kept it four days in his cellar, the mother weeping
and imploring about his house all the time; then he
buried it in his brother's cattle-yard, without relig-
ious ceremonies. It drove the mother wild with grief
and shame, and she forsook her work and went daily
about the town, cursing the carpenter and blasphem-
ing the laws of the emperor and the church, and it
was pitiful to see. Seppi asked Satan to interfere,
but he said the carpenter and the rest were members
of the human race and were acting quite neatly for
that species of animal. He would interfere if he
found a horse acting in such a way, and we must
inform him when we came across that kind of horse
doing that kind of a human thing, so that he could
stop it. We believed this was sarcasm, for of course
there wasn't any such horse.

But after a few days we found that we could not
abide that poor woman's distress, so we begged
Satan to examine her several possible careers, and
see if he could not change her, to her profit, to a
new one. He said the longest of her careers as they
now stood gave her forty-two years to live, and her
shortest one twenty-nine, and that both were charged

1 02

THE MYSTERIOUS STRANGER

with grief and hunger and cold and pain. The only
improvement he could make would be to enable her
to skip a certain three minutes from now; and he
asked us if he should do it. This was such a short
time to decide in that we went to pieces with nervous
excitement, and before we could pull ourselves
together and ask for particulars he said the time
would be up in a few more seconds; so then we
gasped out, "Do it!"

"It is done," he said; "she was going around a
corner; I have turned her back; it has changed her
career."

"Then what will happen, Satan?"

"It is happening now. She is having words with
Fischer, the weaver. In his anger Fischer will
straightway do what he would not have done
but for this accident. He was present when she
stood over her child's body and uttered those blas-
phemies."

"What will he do?"

" He is doing it now — betraying her. In three days
she will go to the stake."

We could not speak; we were frozen with horror,
for if we had not meddled with her career she would
have been spared this awful fate. Satan noticed
these thoughts, and said:

"What you are thinking is strictly human-like —
that is to say, foolish. The woman is advantaged.
Die when she might, she would go to heaven. By
this prompt death she gets twenty-nine years more
of heaven than she is entitled to, and escapes twenty-
nine years of misery here."

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MARK TWAIN

A moment before we were bitterly making up our
minds that we would ask no more favors of Satan for
friends of ours, for he did not seem to know any way
to do a person a kindness but by killing him ; but the
whole aspect of the case was changed now, and we
were glad of what we had done and full of happiness
in the thought of it.

After a little I began to feel troubled about Fischer,
and asked, timidly, "Does this episode change
Fischer's life-scheme, Satan ?"

"Change it? Why, certainly. And radically. If
he had not met Frau Brandt awhile ago he would
die next year, thirty-four years of age. Now he will
live to be ninety, and have a pretty prosperous and
comfortable life of it, as human lives go."

We felt a great joy and pride in what we had done
for Fischer, and were expecting Satan to sympathize
with this feeling; but he showed no sign and this
made us uneasy. We waited for him to speak, but
he didn't; so, to assuage our solicitude we had to
ask him if there was any defect in Fischer's good
luck. Satan considered the question a moment, then
said, with some hesitation:

"Well, the fact is, it is a delicate point. Under
his several former possible life-careers he was going
to heaven."

We were aghast. ' ' Oh, Satan ! and under this one — "

"There, don't be so distressed. You were sincerely
trying to do him a kindness; let that comfort you."

"Oh, dear, dear, that cannot comfort us. You
ought to have told us what we were doing, then we
wouldn't have acted so."

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THE MYSTERIOUS STRANGER

But it made no impression on him. He had never
felt a pain or a sorrow, and did not know what they
were, in any really informing way. He had no
knowledge of them except theoretically — that is to
say, intellectually. And of course that is no good.
One can never get any but a loose and ignorant
notion of such things except by experience. We tried
our best to make him comprehend the awful thing
that had been done and how we were compromised
by it, but he couldn't seem to get hold of it. He said
he did not think it important where Fischer went to;
in heaven he would not be missed, there were
"plenty there." We tried to make him see that he
was missing the point entirely; that Fischer, and not
other people, was the proper one to decide about the
importance of it ; but it all went for nothing ; he said
he did not care for Fischer — there were plenty more
Fischers.

The next minute Fischer went by on the other side
of the way, and it made us sick and faint to see him,
remembering the doom that was upon him, and we
the cause of it. And how unconscious he was that
anything had happened to him! You could see by
his elastic step and his alert manner that he was well
satisfied with himself for doing that hard turn for
poor Frau Brandt. He kept glancing back over his
shoulder expectantly. And, sure enough, pretty soon
Frau Brandt followed after, in charge of the officers
and wearing jingling chains. A mob was in her wake,
jeering and shouting, "Blasphemer and heretic !"
and some among them were neighbors and friends of
her happier days. Some were trying to strike her,

105

MARK TWAIN

and the officers were not taking as much trouble as
they might to keep them from it.

"Oh, stop them, Satan l" It was out before we
remembered that he could not interrupt them for a
moment without changing their whole after-lives.
He puffed a little puff toward them with his lips and
they began to reel and stagger and grab at the empty
air; then they broke apart and fled in every direc-
tion, shrieking, as if in intolerable pain. He had
crushed a rib of each of them with that little puff.
We could not help asking if their life-chart was
changed.

"Yes, entirely. Some have gained years, some
have lost them. Some few will profit in various
ways by the change, but only that few."

We did not ask if we had brought poor Fischer's
luck to any of them. We did not wish to know.
We fully believed in Satan's desire to do us kind-
nesses, but we were losing confidence in his judg-
ment. It was at this time that our growing anxiety
to have him look over our life-charts and suggest
improvements began to fade out and give place to
other interests.

For a day or two the whole village was a chattering
turmoil over Frau Brandt's case and over the
mysterious calamity that had overtaken the mob,
and at her trial the place was crowded. She was
easily convicted of her blasphemies, for she uttered
those terrible words again and said she would not
take them back. When warned that she was
imperiling her life, she said they could take it in
welcome, she did not want it, she would rather live

1 06

THE MYSTERIOUS STRANGER

with the professional devils in perdition than with
these imitators in the village. They accused her of
breaking all those ribs by witchcraft, and asked her
if she was not a witch? She answered scornfully:

"No. If I had that power would any of you holy
hypocrites be alive five minutes? No; I would
strike you all dead. Pronounce your sentence and
let me go; I am tired of your society.' '

So they found her guilty, and she was excom-
municated and cut off from the joys of heaven and
doomed to the fires of hell; then she was clothed in a
coarse robe and delivered to the secular arm, and con-
ducted to the market-place, the bell solemnly tolling
the while. We saw her chained to the stake, and saw
the first film of blue smoke rise on the still air. Then
her hard face softened, and she looked upon the
packed crowd in front of her and said, with gentleness :

"We played together once, in long-agone days
when we were innocent little creatures. For the
sake of that, I forgive you."

We went away then, and did not see the fires
consume her, but we heard the shrieks, although we
put our fingers in our ears. When they ceased we
knew she was in heaven, notwithstanding the excom-
munication; and we were glad of her death and not
sorry that we had brought it about.

One day, a little while after this, Satan appeared
again. We were always watching out for him, for
life was never very stagnant when he was by. He
came upon us at that place in the woods where we
had first met him. Being boys, we wanted to be
entertained; we asked him to do a show for us.

107

MARK TWAIN

"Very well," he said; "would you like to see a
history of the progress of the human race? — its devel-
opment of that product which it calls civilization ?"

We said we should.

So, with a thought, he turned the place into the
Garden of Eden, and we saw Abel praying by his
altar; then Cain came walking toward him with his
club, and did not seem to see us, and would have
stepped on my foot if I had not drawn it in. He
spoke to his brother in a language which we did not
understand; then he grew violent and threatening,
and we knew what was going to happen, and turned
away our heads for the moment; but we heard the
crash of the blows and heard the shrieks and the
groans; then there was silence, and we saw Abel
lying in his blood and gasping out his life, and Cain
standing over him and looking down at him, vengeful
and unrepentant.

Then the vision vanished, and was followed by a
long series of unknown wars, murders, and massacres.
Next we had the Flood, and the Ark tossing around
in the stormy waters, with lofty mountains in the
distance showing veiled and dim through the rain.
Satan said:

"The progress of your race was not satisfactory.
It is to have another chance now."

The scene changed, and we saw Noah overcome
with wine.

Next, we had Sodom and Gomorrah, and "the
attempt to discover two or three respectable persons
there," as Satan described it. Next, Lot and his
daughters in the cave.

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THE MYSTERIOUS STRANGER

Next came the Hebraic wars, and we saw the
victors massacre the survivors and their cattle,
and save the young girls alive and distribute them
around.

Next we had Jael; and saw her slip into the tent
and drive the nail into the temple of her sleeping
guest; and we were so close that when the blood
gushed out it trickled in a little, red stream to our
feet, and we could have stained our hands in it if
we had wanted to.

Next we had Egyptian wars, Greek wars, Roman
wars, hideous drenchings of the earth with blood;
and we saw the treacheries of the Romans toward
the Carthaginians, and the sickening spectacle of the
massacre of those brave people. Also we saw Caesar
invade Britain — "not that those barbarians had done
him any harm, but because he wanted their land, and
desired to confer the blessings of civilization upon
their widows and orphans,' * as Satan explained.

Next, Christianity was born. Then ages of Europe
passed in review before us, and we saw Christianity
and Civilization march hand in hand through those
ages, "leaving famine and death and desolation in
their wake, and other signs of the progress of the
human race," as Satan observed.

And always we had wars, and more wars, and still
other wars — all over Europe, all over the world.
"Sometimes in the private interest of royal families,"
Satan said, "sometimes to crush a weak nation;
but never a war started by the aggressor for any clean
purpose — there is no such war in the history of the

race."

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MARK TWAIN

"Now," said Satan, "you have seen your progress
down to the present, and you must confess that it is
wonderful — in its way. We must now exhibit the
future."

He showed us slaughters more terrible in their
destruction of life, more devastating in their engines
of war, than any we had seen.

"You perceive," he said, "that you have made
continual progress. Cain did his murder with a club ;
the Hebrews did their murders with javelins and
swords; the Greeks and Romans added protective
armor and the fine arts of military organization and
generalship; the Christian has added guns and gun-
powder; a few centuries from now he will have so
greatly improved the deadly effectiveness of his
weapons of slaughter that all men will confess that
without Christian civilization war must have re-
mained a poor and trifling thing to the end of time/'

Then he began to laugh in the most unfeeling way,
and make fun of the human race, although he knew
that what he had been saying shamed us and
wounded us. No one but an angel could have acted
so; but suffering is nothing to them; they do not
know what it is, except by hearsay.

More than once Seppi and I had tried in a humble
and diffident way to convert him, and as he had
remained silent we had taken his silence as a sort of
encouragement; necessarily, then, this talk of his
was a disappointment to us, for it showed that we
had made no deep impression upon him. The
thought made us sad, and we knew then how the
missionary must feel when he has been cherishing a

no

THE MYSTERIOUS STRANGER

glad hope and has seen it blighted. We kept our
grief to ourselves, knowing that this was not the
time to continue our work.

Satan laughed his unkind laugh to a finish; then
he said: Fit is a remarkable progress. In five or six
thousand years five or six high civilizations have
risen, flourished, commanded the wonder of the
world, then faded out and disappeared; and not one
of them except the latest ever invented any sweeping
and adequate way to kill people. They all did their
best — to kill being the chief est ambition of the human
race and the earliest incident in its history — but only
the Christian civilization has scored a triumph to
be proud of. Two or three centuries from now it will
be recognized that all the competent killers are
Christians; then the pagan world will go to school
to the Christian — not to acquire his religion, but his
guns. The Turk and the Chinaman will buy those
to kill missionaries and converts withjj

By this time his theater was at work again, and
before our eyes nation after nation drifted by, during
two or three centuries, a mighty procession, an end-
less procession, raging, struggling, wallowing through
seas of blood, smothered in battle-smoke through
which the flags glinted and the red jets from the
cannon darted; and always we heard the thunder of
the guns and the cries of the dying.

''And what does it amount to?" said Satan, with
his evil chuckle. ''Nothing at all. You gain noth-
ing; you always come out where you went in. For
a million years the race has gone on monotonously
propagatihg itself and monotonously reperforming

in

MARK TWAIN

this dull nonsense — to what end? No wisdom can
guess! Who gets a profit out of it? Nobody but a
parcel of usurping little monarchs and nobilities who
despise you; would feel defiled if you touched them;
would shut the door in your face if you proposed to
call; whom you slave for, fight for, die for, and are
not ashamed of it, but proud; whose existence is a
perpetual insult to you and you are afraid to resent
it; who are mendicants supported by your alms,
yet assume toward you the airs of benefactor toward
beggar; who address you in the language of master
to slave, and are answered in the language of slave
to master; who are worshiped by you with your
mouth, while in your heart — if you have one — you
despise yourselves for it. The first man was a
hypocrite and a coward, qualities which have not
yet failed in his line; it is the foundation upon which
all civilizations have been built. Drink to their
perpetuation! Drink to their augmentation ! Drink
to — " Then he saw by our faces how much we were
hurt, and he cut his sentence short and stopped
chuckling, and his manner changed. He said,
gently: "No, we will drink one another's health,
and let civilization go. The wine which has flown to
our hands out of space by desire is earthly, and good
enough for that other toast; but throw away the
glasses; we will drink this one in wine which has not
visited this world before."

We obeyed, and reached up and received the new
cups as they descended. They were shapely and
beautiful goblets, but they were not made of any
material that we were acquainted with. They seemed

112

THE MYSTERIOUS STRANGER

to be in motion, they seemed to be alive; and cer-
tainly the colors in them were in motion. They
were very brilliant and sparkling, and of every tint,
and they were never still, but flowed to and fro in
rich tides which met and broke and flashed out
dainty explosions of enchanting color. I think it
was most like opals washing about in waves and
flashing out their splendid fires. But there is nothing
to compare the wine with. We drank it, and felt
a strange and witching ecstasy as of heaven go
stealing through us, and Seppi's eyes filled and he
said worshipingly:

"We shall be there some day, and then — "
He glanced furtively at Satan, and I think he
hoped Satan would say, "Yes, you will be there
some day," but Satan seemed to be thinking about
something else, and said nothing. This made me
feel ghastly, for I knew he had heard; nothing,
spoken or unspoken, ever escaped him. Poor Seppi
looked distressed, and did not finish his remark.
The goblets rose and clove their way into the sky,
a triplet of radiant sundogs, and disappeared. Why
didn't they stay ? It seemed a bad sign, and depressed
me. Should I ever see mine again? Would Seppi
ever see his?

"3

CHAPTER IX

r* was wonderful, the mastery Satan had over
time and distance. For him they did not exist.
He called them human inventions, and said they
were artificialities. We often went to the most dis-
tant parts of the globe with him, and stayed weeks
and months, and yet were gone only a fraction of a
second, as a rule. You could prove it by the clock.
One day when our people were in such awful dis-
tress because the witch commission were afraid to
proceed against the astrologer and Father Peter's
household, or against any, indeed, but the poor and
the friendless, they lost patience and took to witch-
hunting on their own score, and began to chase a
born lady who was known to have the habit of
curing people by devilish arts, such as bathing them,
washing them, and nourishing them instead of bleed-
ing them and purging them through the ministrations
of a barber-surgeon in the proper way. She came
flying down, with the howling and cursing mob after
her, and tried to take refuge in houses, but the doors
were shut in her face. They chased her more than
half an hour, we following to see it, and at last she
was exhausted and fell, and they caught her. They
dragged her to a tree and threw a rope over the limb,
and began to make a noose in it, some holding her,
meantime, and she crying and begging, and her
young daughter looking on and weeping, but afraid
to say or do anything.

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THE MYSTERIOUS STRANGER

They hanged the lady, and I threw a stone at her,
although in my heart I was sorry for her; but all
were throwing stones and each was watching his
neighbor, and if I had not done as the others did it
would have been noticed and spoken of. Satan burst
out laughing. \

All that were near by turned upon him, astonished
and not pleased. It was an ill time to laugh, for his
free and scoffing ways and his supernatural music
had brought him under suspicion all over the town
and turned many privately against him. The big
blacksmith called attention to him now, raising his
voice so that all should hear, and said:

1 ' What are you laughing at ? Answer ! Moreover,
please explain to the company why you threw no
stone."

"Are you sure I did not throw a stone?"

"Yes. You needn't try to get out of it; I had
my eye on you."

"And I — I noticed you!" shouted two others.

"Three witnesses," said Satan: "Mueller, the
blacksmith; Klein, the butcher's man; Pfeiffer, the
weaver's journeyman. Three very ordinary liars.
Are there any more?"

"Never mind whether there are others or not, and
never mind about what you consider us — three's
enough to settle your matter for you. You'll prove
that you threw a stone, or it shall go hard with you."

"That's so!" shouted the crowd, and surged up
as closely as they could to the center of interest.

"And first you will answer that other question,"
cried the blacksmith, pleased with himself for being

"5

MARK TWAIN

mouthpiece to the public and hero of the occasion.
"What are you laughing at?"

Satan smiled and answered, pleasantly: "To see
three cowards stoning a dying lady when they were
so near death themselves."

You could see the superstitious crowd shrink and
catch their breath, under the sudden shock. The
blacksmith, with a show of bravado, said:

1 ' Pooh ! What do you know about it ?"

"I? Everything. By profession I am a fortune-
teller, and I read the hands of you three — and some
others — when you lifted them to stone the woman.
One of you will die to-morrow week; another of you
will die to-night; the third has but five minutes to
live — and yonder is the clock!"

It made a sensation. The faces of the crowd
blanched, and turned mechanically toward the clock.
The butcher and the weaver seemed smitten with an
illness, but the blacksmith braced up and said, with
spirit :

"It is not long to wait for prediction number one.
If it fails, young master, you will not live a whole
minute after, I promise you that."

No one said anything; all watched the clock in a
deep stillness which was impressive. When four and
a half minutes were gone the blacksmith gave a
sudden gasp and clapped his hands upon his heart,
saying, "Give me breath! Give me room!" and
began to sink down. The crowd surged back, no
one offering to support him, and he fell lumbering
to the ground and was dead. The people stared
at him, then at Satan, then at one another; and

116

THE MYSTERIOUS STRANGER

their lips moved, but no words came. Then Satan
said:

" Three saw that I threw no stone. Perhaps there
are others; let them speak.' '

It struck a kind of panic into them, and, although
no one answered him, many began to violently accuse
one another, saying, " You said he didn't throw,"
and getting for reply, "It is a lie, and I will make
you eat it!" And so in a moment they were in a
raging and noisy turmoil, and beating and banging
one another; and in the midst was the only indiffer-
ent one — the dead lady hanging from her rope, her
troubles forgotten, her spirit at peace.

So we walked away, and I was not at ease, but
was saying to myself, "He told them he was laugh-
ing at them, but it was a lie — he was laughing at me,"

That made him laugh again, and he said, "Yes,
I was laughing at you, because, in fear of what others
might report about you, you stoned the woman when
your heart revolted at the act — but I was laughing
at the others, too."

"Why?"

"Because their case was yours."

"How is that?"

"Well, there were sixty-eight people there, and
sixty-two of them had no more desire to throw a stone
than you had."

"Satan!"

"Oh, it's true. (I know your race. It is made up
of sheep. It is governed by minorities, seldom or
never by majorities. It suppresses its feelings and
its beliefs and follows the handful that makes the

117

MARK TWAIN

most noise. Sometimes the noisy handful is right,
sometimes wrong; but no matter, the crowd follows
| itj The vast majority of the race, whether savage
)k or civilized, are secretly kind-hearted and shrink
from inflicting pain, but in the presence of the aggres-
sive and pitiless minority they don't dare to assert
themselves. Think of it ! One kind-hearted creature
spies upon another, and sees to it that he loyally
helps in iniquities which revolt both of them. Speak-
ing as an expert, I know that ninety-nine out of a
hundred of your race were strongly against the killing
of witches when that foolishness was first agitated by
a handful of pious lunatics in the long ago. And I
know that even to-day, after ages of transmitted
prejudice and silly teaching, only one person in
twenty puts any real heart into the harrying of a
witch. And yet apparently everybody hates witches
and wants them killed. Some day a handful will
rise up on the other side and make the most noise —
perhaps even a single daring man with a big voice
and a determined front will do it— and in a week
all the sheep will wheel and follow him, and witch-
hunting will come to a sudden end.

Monarchies, aristocracies, and religions are all
based upon thai large defect in your race — the
individual's distrust of his neighbor, and his desire,
for safety's or comfort's sake, to stand well in his
neighbor's eye. These institutions will always
remain, and always flourish, and always oppress
you, affront you, and degrade you, because you will
always be and remain slaves of minorities. There
was never a country where the majority of the people

118

THE MYSTERIOUS STRANGER

were in their secret hearts loyal to any of these
institutions.' '

I did not like to hear our race called sheep, and
said I did not think they were.

"Still, it is true, lamb," said Satan. "Look at
you in war — what mutton you are, and how ridic-
ulous !"

"In war? How?"

"There has never been a just one, never an
honorable one — on the part of the instigator of the
war. I can see a million years ahead, and this rule
will never change in so many as half a dozen instances.
The loud little handful — as usual — will shout for the
war. The pulpit will — warily and cautiously — object
— at first; the great, big, dull bulk of the nation will
rub its sleepy eyes and try to make out why there
should be a war, and will say, earnestly and indig-
nantly, "It is unjust and dishonorable, and there is
no necessity for it." Then the handful will shout
louder. A few fair men on the other side will argue
and reason against the war with speech and pen, and
at first will have a hearing and be applauded; but it
will not last long; those others will outshout them,
and presently the anti-war audiences will thin out and
lose popularity. Before long you will see this curious
thing: the speakers stoned from the platform, and
free speech strangled by hordes of furious men who
in their secret hearts are still at one with those
stoned speakers — as earlier — but do not dare to say
so. And now the whole nation — pulpit and all — will
take up the war-cry, and shout itself hoarse, and
mob any honest man who ventures to open his

119

MARK TWAIN

mouth; and presently such mbuths will cease to
open. Next the statesmen will invent cheap lies,
putting the blame upon the nation that is attacked,
and every man will be glad of those conscience-
soothing falsities, and will diligently study them, and
refuse to examine any refutations of them; and thus
he will by and by convince himself that the war is
just, and will thank God for the better sleep he
enjoys after this process of grotesque self-deception."

1 20

CHAPTER X

DAYS and days went by now, and no Satan. It
was dull without him. But the astrologer,
who had returned from his excursion to the moon,
went about the village, braving public opinion, and
getting a stone in the middle of his back now and
then when some witch-hater got a safe chance to
throw it and dodge out of sight. Meantime two
influences had been working well for Marget. That
Satan, who was quite indifferent to her, had stopped
going to her house after a visit or two had hurt her
pride, and she had set herself the task of banishing
him from her heart. Reports of Wilhelm Meidling's
dissipation brought to her from time to time by old
Ursula had touched her with remorse, jealousy of
Satan being the cause of it; and so now, these two
matters working upon her together, she was getting
a good profit out of the combination — her interest
in Satan was steadily cooling, her interest in Wilhelm
as steadily warming. All that was needed to com-
plete her conversion was that Wilhelm should brace
up and do something that should cause favorable
talk and incline the public toward him again.

The opportunity came now. Marget sent and
asked him to defend her uncle in the approaching
trial, and he was greatly pleased, and stopped
drinking and began his preparations with diligence*
With more diligence than hope, in fact, for it was not
a promising case. He had many interviews in his

121

MARK TWAIN

office with Seppi and me, and threshed out our
testimony pretty thoroughly, thinking to find some
valuable grains among the chaff, but the harvest
was poor, of course.

If Satan would only come! That was my constant
thought. He could invent some way to win the
case; for he had said it would be won, so he neces-
sarily knew how it could be done. But the days
dragged on, and still he did not come. Of course I
did not doubt that it would win, and that Father
Peter would be happy for the rest of his life, since
Satan had said so; yet I knew I should be much
more comfortable if he would come and tell us how
to manage it. It was getting high time for Father
Peter to have a saving change toward happiness, for
by general report he was worn out with his imprison-
ment and the ignominy that was burdening him, and
was like to die of his miseries unless he got relief
soon.

At last the trial came on, and the people gathered
from all around to witness it; among them many
strangers from considerable distances. Yes, every-
body was there except the accused. He was too
feeble in body for the strain. But Marget was
present, and keeping up her hope and her spirit the
best she could. The money was present, too. It
was emptied on the table, and was handled and
caressed and examined by such as were privileged.

The astrologer was put in the witness-box* He
had on his best hat and robe for the occasion.

Question. You claim that this money is yours?

Answer. I do.

122

THE MYSTERIOUS STRANGER

Q. How did you come by it?

A. I found the bag in the road when I was
returning from a journey.

Q. When?

A. More than two years ago.

Q. What did you do with it?

A. I brought it home and hid it in a secret place
in my observatory, intending to find the owner if
I could.

Q. You endeavored to find him?

A. I made diligent inquiry during several months,
but nothing came of it.

Q. And then?

A. I thought it not worth while to look further,
and was minded to use the money in finishing the
wing of the foundling-asylum connected with the
priory and nunnery. So I took it out of its hiding-
place and counted it to see if any of it was missing.
And then —

Q. Why do you stop ? Proceed.

A. I am sorry to have to say this, but just as I
had finished and was restoring the bag to its place,
I looked up and there stood Father Peter behind me.

Several murmured, "That looks bad," but others
answered, "Ah, but he is such a liar!"

Q. That made you uneasy?

A. No; I thought nothing of it at the time, for
Father Peter often came to me unannounced to ask
for a little help in his need.

Marget blushed crimson at hearing her uncle
falsely and impudently charged with begging, es-
pecially from one he had always denounced as a

123

MARK TWAIN

fraud, and was going to speak, but remembered
herself in time and held her peace.

Q. Proceed.

A. In the end I was afraid to contribute the
money to the foundling-asylum, but elected to wait
yet another year and continue my inquiries. When
I heard of Father Peter's find I was glad, and no
suspicion entered my mind; when I came home a
day or two later and discovered that my own money
was gone I still did not suspect until three circum-
stances connected with Father Peter's good fortune
struck me as being singular coincidences.

Q. Pray name them.

A . Father Peter had found his money in a path — I
had found mine in a road. Father Peter's find con-
sisted exclusively of gold ducats — mine also. Father
Peter found eleven hundred and seven ducats — I
exactly the same.

This closed his evidence, and certainly it made
a strong impression on the house; one could see
that.

Wilhelm Meidling asked him some questions, then
called us boys, and we told our tale. It made the
people laugh, and we were ashamed. We were feeling
pretty badly, anyhow, because Wilhelm was hope-
less, and showed it. He was doing as well as he
could, poor young fellow, but nothing was in his
favor, and such sympathy as there was was now
plainly not with his client. It might be difficult for
court and people to believe the astrologer's story,
considering his character, but it was almost impossible
to believe Father Peter's. We were already feeling

124

THE MYSTERIOUS STRANGER

badly enough, but when the astrologer's lawyer said
he believed he would not ask us any questions — for
our story was a little delicate and it would be cruel
for him to put any strain upon it — everybody tit-
tered, and it was almost more than we could bear.
Then he made a sarcastic little speech, and got so
much fun out of our tale, and it seemed so ridiculous
and childish and every way impossible and foolish,
that it made everybody laugh till the tears came;
and at last Marget could not keep up her courage
any longer, but broke down and cried, and I was so
sorry for her.

Now I noticed something that braced me up. It
was Satan standing alongside of Wilhelm ! And there
was such a contrast! — Satan looked so confident,
had such a spirit in his eyes and face, and Wilhelm
looked so depressed and despondent. We two were
comfortable now, and judged that he would testify
and persuade the bench and the people that black
was white and white black, or any other color he
wanted it. We glanced around to see what, the
strangers in the house thought of him, for he was
beautiful, you know — stunning, in fact — but no one
was noticing him; so we knew by that that he was
invisible.

The lawyer was saying his last words; and while
he was saying them Satan began to melt into
Wilhelm. He melted into him and disappeared;
and then there was a change, when his spirit began
to look out of Wilhelm's eyes.

That lawyer finished quite seriously, and with
dignity. He pointed to the money, and said:

125

MARK TWAIN

"The love of it is the root of all evil. There it
lies, the ancient tempter, newly red with the shame
of its latest victory — the dishonor of a priest of God
and his two poor juvenile helpers in crime. If it
could but speak, let us hope that it would be con-
strained to confess that of all its conquests this was
the basest and the most pathetic."

He sat down. Wilhelm rose and said :

"From the testimony of the accuser I gather that
he found this money in a road more than two years
ago. Correct me, sir, if I misunderstood you."

The astrologer said his understanding of it was
correct.

"And the money so found was never out of his
hands thenceforth up to a certain definite date — the
last day of last year. Correct me, sir, if I am wrong."

The astrologer nodded his head. Wilhelm turned
to the bench and said:

"If I prove that this money here was not that
money, then it is not his?"

"Certainly not; but this is irregular. If you had
such a witness it was your duty to give proper
notice of it and have him here to — " He broke off
and began to consult with the other judges. Mean-
time that other lawyer got up excited and began to
protest against allowing new witnesses to be brought
into the case at this late stage.

The judges decided that his contention was just
and must be allowed.

"But this is not a new witness," said Wilhelm.
"It has already been partly examined. I speak of
the coin."

126

THE MYSTERIOUS STRANGER

"The coin? What can the coin say?"

"It can say it is not the coin that the astrologer
once possessed. It can say it was not in existence
last December. By its date it can say this."

And it was so! There was the greatest excitement
in the court while that lawyer and the judges were
reaching for coins and examining them and exclaim-
ing. And everybody was full of admiration of
Wilhelm's brightness in happening to think of that
neat idea. At last order was called and the court
said:

"All of the coins but four are of the date of the pres-
ent year. The court tenders its sincere sympathy to
the accused, and its deep regret that he, an innocent
man, through an unfortunate mistake, has suffered
the undeserved humiliation of imprisonment and
trial. The case is dismissed."

So the money could speak, after all, though that
lawyer thought it couldn't. The court rose, and
almost everybody came forward to shake hands with
Marget and congratulate her, and then to shake
with Wilhelm and praise him; and Satan had
stepped out of Wilhelm and was standing around
looking on full of interest, and people walking
through him every which way, not knowing he was
there. And Wilhelm could not explain why he only
thought of the date on the coins at the last moment,
instead of earlier; he said it just occurred to him,
all of a sudden, like an inspiration, and he brought
it right out without any hesitation, for, although he
didn't examine the coins, he seemed, somehow, to
know it was true. That was honest of him, and like
«** 127

MARK TWAIN

him; another would have pretended he had thought
of it earlier, and was keeping it back for a surprise.

He had dulled down a little now; not much, but
still you could notice that he hadn't that luminous
look in his eyes that he had while Satan was in him.
He nearly got it back, though, for a moment when
Marget came and praised him and thanked him and
couldn't keep him from seeing how proud she was of
him. The astrologer went off dissatisfied and curs-
ing, and Solomon Isaacs gathered up the money and
carried it away. It was Father Peter's for good and
all, now.

Satan was gone. I judged that he had spirited
himself away to the jail to tell the prisoner the news;
and in this I was right. Marget and the rest of us
hurried thither at our best speed, in a great state of
rejoicing.

Well, what Satan had done was this: he had
appeared before that poor prisoner, exclaiming, "The
trial is over, and you stand forever disgraced as a
thief — by verdict of the court!"

The shock unseated the old man's reason. When
we arrived, ten minutes later, he was parading
pompously up and down and delivering commands
to this and that and the other constable or jailer,
and calling them Grand Chamberlain, and Prince
This and Prince That, and Admiral of the Fleet,
Field Marshal in Command, and all such fustian,
and was as happy as a bird. He thought he was
Emperor!

Marget flung herself on his breast and cried, and
indeed everybody was moved almost to heartbreak.

128

THE MYSTERIOUS STRANGER

He recognized Marget, but could not understand
why she should cry. He patted her on the shoulder
and said:

" Don't do it, dear; remember, there are witnesses,
and it is not becoming in the Crown Princess. Tell
me your trouble — it shall be mended; there is
nothing the Emperor cannot do." Then he looked
around and saw old Ursula with her apron to her
eyes. He was puzzled at that, and said, "And what
is the matter with you?"

Through her sobs she got out words explaining that
she was distressed to see him — "so." He reflected
over that a moment, then muttered, as if to himself:
"A singular old thing, the Dowager Duchess — means
well, but is always snuffling and never able to tell
what it is about. It is because she doesn't know."
His eyes fell on Wilhelm. "Prince of India," he
said, "I divine that it is you that the Crown
Princess is concerned about. Her tears shall be
dried; I will no longer stand between you; she shall
share your throne; and between you you shall
inherit mine. There, little lady, have I done well?
You can smile now — isn't it so?"

He petted Marget and kissed her, and was so
contented with himself and with everybody that he
could not do enough for us all, but began to give
away kingdoms and such things right and left, and
the least that any of us got was a principality. And
so at last, being persuaded to go home, he marched
in imposing state; and when the crowds along the
way saw how it gratified him to be hurrahed at, they
humored him to the top of his desire, and he

129

MARK TWAIN

responded with condescending bows and gracious
smiles, and often stretched out a hand and said,
"Bless you, my people !"

As pitiful a sight as ever I saw. And Marget, and
old Ursula crying all the way.

On my road home I came upon Satan, and
reproached him with deceiving me with that lie.
He was not embarrassed, but said, quite simply and
composedly:

"Ah, you mistake; it was the truth. I said he
would be happy the rest of his days, and he will, for
he will always think he is the Emperor, and his
pride in it and his joy in it will endure to the end.
He is now, and will remain, the one utterly happy
person in this empire."

"But the method of it, Satan, the method!
Couldn't you have done it without depriving him
of his reason?"

It was difficult to irritate Satan, but that accom-
plished it.

f""What an ass you are!" he said. "Are you so
unobservant as not to have found out that sanity
and happiness are an impossible combination? No
sane man can be happy, for to him life is real, and he
sees what a fearful thing it is. Only the mad can be
happy, and not many of thosej The few that imagine
themselves kings or gods are happy, the rest are no
happier than the sane. Of course, no man is entirely
in his right mind at any time, but I have been
referring to the extreme cases. I have taken from
this man that trumpery thing which the race regards
as a Mind; I have replaced his tin life with a silver-

130

THE MYSTERIOUS STRANGER

gilt fiction; you see the result — and you criticize!
I said I would make him permanently happy, and I
have done it. I have made him happy by the only
means possible to his race — and you are not satisfied I"
He heaved a discouraged sigh, and said, "It seems
to me that this race is hard to please."

There it was, you see. He didn't seem to know
any way to do a person a favor except by killing him
or making a lunatic out of him. I apologized, as
well as I could; but privately I did not think much
of his processes — at that time.

Satan was accustomed to say that our race lived
a life of continuous and uninterrupted self-deception.
It duped itself from cradle to grave with shams and
delusions which it mistook for realities, and this
made its entire life a sham. Of the score of fine
qualities which it imagined it had and was vain of, it
really possessed hardly one. It regarded itself as gold,
and was only brass. One day when he was in this vein
he mentioned a detail — the sense of humor. I cheered
up then, and took issue. I said we possessed it.

"There spoke the race!" he said; "always ready
to claim what it hasn't got, and mistake its ounce of
brass filings for a ton of gold-dust. You have a
mongrel perception of humor, nothing more; a mul-
titude of you possess that. This multitude see the
comic side of a thousand low-grade and trivial things
— broad incongruities, mainly; grotesqueries, absurd-
ities, evokers of the horse-laugh. The ten thousand
high-grade comicalities which exist in the world are
sealed from their dull vision. [Will a day come when

131 1>J^

MARK TWAIN

the race will detect the funniness of these juvenilities
and laugh at them — and by laughing at them destroy
them ? For your race, in its poverty, has unquestion-
ably one really effective weapon — -laughter. Power,
money, persuasion, supplication, persecution — these
can lift at a colossal humbug — push it a little —
weaken it a little, century by century; but only
laughter can blow it to rags and atoms at a blast.
Against the assault of laughter nothing can standi^ j
You are always fussing and fighting with your other ^
weapons. Do you ever use that one? No; you
leave it lying rusting. As a race, do you ever use it
at all? No; you lack sense and the courage^

We were traveling at the time and stopped at a
little city in India and looked on while a juggler did
his tricks before a group of natives. They were
wonderful, but I knew Satan could beat that game,
and I begged him to show off a little, and he said he
would. He changed himself into a native in turban
and breech-cloth, and very considerately conferred
on me a temporary knowledge of the language.

The juggler exhibited a seed, covered it with earth
in a small flower-pot, then put a rag over the pot ; after
a minute the rag began to rise; in ten minutes it had
risen a foot; then the rag was removed and a little
tree was exposed, with leaves upon it and ripe fruit.
We ate the fruit, and it was good. But Satan said:

"Why do you cover the pot? Can't you grow the
tree in the sunlight?"

"No," said the juggler; "no one can do that."

"You are only an apprentice; you don't know your

132

THE MYSTERIOUS STRANGER

trade. Give me the seed. I will show you." He took
the seed and said, "What shall I raise from it?"

"It is a cherry seed; of course you will raise a
cherry."

"Oh no; that is a trifle; any novice can do that.
Shall I raise an orange-tree from it?"

"Oh yes!" and the juggler laughed.

"And shall I make it bear other fruits as well as
oranges?"

"If God wills!" and they all laughed.

Satan put the seed in the ground, put a handful
of dust on it, and said, "Rise!"

A tiny stem shot up and began to grow, and grew
so fast that in five minutes it was a great tree, and
we were sitting in the shade of it. There was a
murmur of wonder, then all looked up and saw a
strange and pretty sight, for the branches were
heavy with fruits of many kinds and colors — oranges,
grapes, bananas, peaches, cherries, apricots, and so
on. Baskets were brought, and the unlading of the
tree began; and the people crowded around Satan
and kissed his hand, and praised him, calling him the
prince of jugglers. The news went about the town,
and everybody came running to see the wonder — and
they remembered to bring baskets, too. But the
tree was equal to the occasion ; it put out new fruits
as fast as any were removed; baskets were filled by
the score and by the hundred, but always the supply
remained undiminished. At last a foreigner in white
linen and sun-helmet arrived, and exclaimed, angrily:

"Away from here! Clear out, you dogs; the tree
is on my lands and is my property."

i33

MARK TWAIN

The natives put down their baskets and made hum-
ble obeisance. Satan made humble obeisance, too, with
his fingers to his forehead, in the native way, and said :

" Please let them have their pleasure for an hour,
sir — only that, and no longer. Afterward you may
forbid them; and you will still have more fruit than
you and the state together can consume in a year."

This made the foreigner very angry, and he cried
out, "Who are you, you vagabond, to tell your betters
what they may do and what they mayn't!" and he
struck Satan with his cane and followed this error
with a kick.

The fruits rotted on the branches, and the leaves
withered and fell. The foreigner gazed at the bare
limbs with the look of one who is surprised, and not
gratified. Satan said:

"Take good care of the tree, for its health and
yours are bound together. It will never bear again,
but if you tend it well it will live long. Water its
roots once in each hour every night — and do it
yourself; it must not be done by proxy, and to do
it in daylight will not answer. If you fail only once
in any night, the tree will die, and you likewise. Do
not go home to your own country any more — you
would not reach there; make no business or pleasure
engagements which require you to go outside your
gate at night — you cannot afford the risk; do not
rent or sell this place — it would be injudicious."

The foreigner was proud and wouldn't beg, but I
thought he looked as if he would like to. While he
stood gazing at Satan we vanished away and landed
in Ceylon.

J34

THE MYSTERIOUS STRANGER

I was sorry for that man; sorry Satan hadn't been
his customary self and killed him or made him a
lunatic. It would have been a mercy. Satan over-
heard the thought, and said:

"I would have done it but for his wife, who has
not offended me. She is coming to him presently
from their native land, Portugal. She is well, but
has not long to live, and has been yearning to see
him and persuade him to go back with her next year.
She will die without knowing he can't leave that
place?"

"He won't tell her?"

"He? He will not trust that secret with any one;
he will reflect that it could be revealed in sleep, in
the hearing of some Portuguese guest's servant
some time or other."

"Did none of those natives understand what you
said to him?"

"None of them understood, but he will always be
afraid that some of them did. That fear will be
torture to him, for he has been a harsh master to
them. In his dreams he will imagine them chopping
his tree down. That will make his days uncomfort-
able— I have already arranged for his nights."

It grieved me, though not sharply, to see him take
such a malicious satisfaction in his plans for this
foreigner.

"Does he believe what you told him, Satan?"

"He thought he didn't, but our vanishing helped.
The tree, where there had been no tree before — that
helped. The insane and uncanny variety of fruits —
the sudden withering — all these things are helps.

i35

MARK TWAIN

Let him think as he may, reason as he may, one
thing is certain, he will water the tree. But between
this and night he will begin his changed career with
a very natural precaution — for him."

"What is that?"

"He will fetch a priest to cast out the tree's devil
You are such a humorous race — and don't suspect it,"

"Will he tell the priest?"

"No. He will say a juggler from Bombay created
it, and that he wants the juggler's devil driven out
of it, so that it will thrive and be fruitful again.
The priest's incantations will fail; then the Portu-
guese will give up that scheme and get his watering-
pot ready."

"But the priest will burn the tree. I know it; he
will not allow it to remain."

"Yes, and anywhere in Europe he would burn the
man, too. But in India the people are civilized, and
these things will not happen. The man will drive
the priest away and take care of the tree."

I reflected a little, then said, "Satan, you have
given him a hard life, I think."

"Comparatively. It must not be mistaken for a
holiday."

We flitted from place to place around the world as
we had done before, Satan showing me a hundred
wonders, most of them reflecting in some way the
weakness and triviality of our race. He did this now
every lew days — not out of malice — I am sure of
that — it only seemed to amuse and interest him,
just as a naturalist might be amused and interested
by a collection of ants.

136

CHAPTER XI

FOR as much as a year Satan continued these
visits, but at last he came less often, and then
for a long time he did not come at all. This always
made me lonely and melancholy. I felt that he was
losing interest in our tiny world and might at any
time abandon his visits entirely. When one day he
finally came to me I was overjoyed, but only for a
little while. He had come to say good-by, he told
me, and for the last time. He had investigations
and undertakings in other corners of the universe,
he said, that would keep him busy for a longer period
than I could wait for his return.

"And you are going away, and will not come back
any more?"

"Yes," he said. "We have comraded long to-
gether, and it has been pleasant — pleasant for both;
but I must go now, and we shall not see each other
any more."

"In this life, Satan, but in another? We shall
meet in another, surely?"

Then, all tranquilly and soberly, he made the
strange answer, "There is no other"

A subtle influence blew upon my spirit from his,
bringing with it a vague, dim, but blessed and hope-
ful feeling that the incredible words might be true —
even wmstbe true.

"Have you never suspected this, Theodor?"

1 - No. How could I ? But if it can only be true — "

i37

M

MARK TWAIN

"It is true."

A gust of thankfulness rose in my breast, but a
doubt checked it before it could issue in words, and
I said, "But — but — we have seen that future life —
seen it in its actuality, and so — "
0 "It was a vision — it had no existence."

I could hardly breathe for the great hope that was
struggling in me. "A vision? — a vi — "
*~ "Life itself is only a vision, a dream."

It was electrical. By God! I had had that very
thought a thousand times in my musings !

"Nothing exists; all is a dream. God — man — the
world — the sun, the moon, the wilderness of stars — a
dream, all a dream; they have no existence. Nothing
exists save empty space — and you!"

"I!"

"And you are not you — you have no body, no
blood, no bones, you are but a thought. I myself
have no existence; I am but a dream — your dream,
creature of your imagination. In a moment you will
have realized this, then you will banish me from
your visions and I shall dissolve into the nothingness
out of which you made me. . . .

"I am perishing already — I am failing — I am
passing away. In a little while you will be alone
in shoreless space, to wander its limitless solitudes
without friend or comrade forever — for you will
remain a thought, the only existent thought, and
by your nature inextinguishable, indestructible. But
I, your poor servant, have revealed you to your-
self and set you free. Dream other dreams, and
better!

138

THE MYSTERIOUS STRANGER

11 Strange! that you should not have suspected
years ago — centuries, ages, eons, ago ! — £ or you have
existed, companionless, through all the eternities.
Strange, indeed, that you should not have suspected
that your universe and its contents were only dreams,
visions, fiction ! Strange, because they are so frankly
and hysterically insane — like all dreams Ufa God who y/
could make good children as easily as bad, yet pre-
ferred to make bad ones; who could have made
every one of them happy, yet never made a single
happy one; who made them prize their bitter life,
yet stingily cut it short; who gave his angels eternal i
happiness unearned, yet required his other children
to earn it; who gave his angels painless lives, yet
cursed his other children with biting miseries and \
maladies of mind and body; who mouths justice
and invented hell — mouths mercy and invented hell
— mouths Golden Rules, and forgiveness multiplied
by seventy times seven, and invented hell; who
mouths morals to other people and has none him-
self; who frowns upon crimes, yet commits them
all; who created man without invitation, then tries
to shuffle the responsibility for man's acts upon
man, instead of honorably placing it where it belongs,
upon himself; and finally, with altogether divine
obtuseness, invites this poor, abused slave to wor-
ship him! . . jX

"You perceive, now, that these things are all impos-
sible except in a dream. You perceive that they are
pure and puerile insanities, the silly creations of an
imagination that is not conscious of its freaks — in a
word, that they are a dream, and you the maker of

139

MARK TWAIN

it. The dream-marks are all present; you should
have recognized them earlier.

t'Tt is true, that which I have revealed to you;
there is no God, no universe, no human race, no
earthly life, no heaven, no hell. It is all a dream — a
grotesque and foolish dream. Nothing exists but
you. And you are but a thought — a vagrant thought,
a useless thought, a homeless thought, wandering
forlorn among the empty eternities £j

He vanished, and left me appalled; for I knew,
and realized, that all he had said was true.

140

A HORSE'S TALE

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Although I have had several opportunities to see
a bull-fight, I have never seen one; but I needed a
bull-fight in this story, and a trustworthy one will be
found in it. I got it out of John Hay's Castilian
Days, reducing and condensing it to fit the require-
ments of this small story. Mr. Hay and I were
friends from early times, and if he were still with us
he would not rebuke me for the liberty I have taken.

The knowledge of military minutiae exhibited in
this story will be found to be correct, but it is not
mine; I took it from Army Regulations, ed. 1904;
Hardy's Tactics — Cavalry, revised ed., 1861; and
Jomini's Handbook of Military Etiquette, West Point
ed., 1905.

It would not be honest in me to encourage by
silence the inference that I composed the Horse's
private bugle-call, for I did not. I lifted it, as
Aristotle says. It is the opening strain in The
Pizzicato in Sylvia, by Delibes. When that master
was composing it he did not know it was a bugle-call,
it was I that found it out.

Along through the story I have distributed a few
anachronisms and unborn historical incidents and
such things, so as to help the tale over the difficult
places. This idea is not original with me; I got it
out of Herodotus. Herodotus says, ' ' Very few things
happen at the right time, and the rest do not happen

H3

at all: the conscientious historian will correct these
defects."

The cats in the chair do not belong to me, but to
another.

These are all the exceptions. What is left of the
story is mine.

MARK TWAIN.

Lone Tree Hill, Dublin,
New Hampshire, October, 1905.

144

Part I

A HORSE'S TALE*

CHAPTER I

SOLDIER BOY PRIVATELY TO HIMSELF

I AM Buffalo Bill's horse. I have spent my life
under his saddle — with him in it, too, and he is
good for two hundred pounds, without his clothes;
and there is no telling how much he does weigh when
he is out on the war-path and has his batteries belted
on. He is over six feet, is young, hasn't an ounce
of waste flesh, is straight, graceful, springy in his
motions, quick as a cat, and has a handsome face,
and black hair dangling down on his shoulders, and
is beautiful to look at; and nobody is braver than
he is, and nobody is stronger, except myself. Yes,
a person that doubts that he is fine to see should see
him in his beaded buckskins, on my back and his
rifle peeping above his shoulder, chasing a hostile
trail, with me going like the wind and his hair
streaming out behind from the shelter of his broad
slouch. Yes, he is a sight to look at then — and I'm
part of it myself.

I am his favorite horse, out of dozens. Big as he
is, I have carried him eighty-one miles between
nightfall and sunrise on the scout; and I am good

* Copyright, 1906, by Harper & Brothers.

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MARK TWAIN

for fifty, day in and day out, and all the time. I am
not large, but I am built on a business basis. I
have carried him thousands and thousands of miles
on scout duty for the army, and there's not a gorge,
nor a pass, nor a valley, nor a fort, nor a trading
post, nor a buffalo-range in the whole sweep of the
Rocky Mountains and the Great Plains that we
don't know as well as we know the bugle-calls. He
is Chief of Scouts to the Army of the Frontier, and
it makes us very important. In such a position as I
hold in the military service one needs to be of good
family and possess an education much above the com-
mon to be worthy of the place. I am the best-
educated horse outside of the hippodrome, every-
body says, and the best-mannered. It may be so, it
is not for me to say; modesty is the best policy, I
think. Buffalo Bill taught me the most of what I
know, my mother taught me much, and I taught
myself the rest. Lay a row of moccasins before
me — Pawnee, Sioux, Shoshone, Cheyenne, Blackfoot,
and as many other tribes as you please — and I can
name the tribe every moccasin belongs to by the
make of it. Name it in horse-talk, and could do it
in American if I had speech.

I know some of the Indian signs — the signs they
make with their hands, and by signal-fires at night
and columns of smoke by day. Buffalo Bill taught
me how to drag wounded soldiers out of the line of
fire with my teeth; and I've done it, too; at least
I've dragged him out of the battle when he was
wounded. And not just once, but twice. Yes, I
know a lot of things. I remember forms, and gaits,

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A HORSE'S TALE

and faces ; and you can't disguise a person that's done
me a kindness so that I won't know him thereafter
wherever I find him. I know the art of searching
for a trail, and I know the stale track from the fresh.
I can keep a trail all by myself, with Buffalo Bill
asleep in the saddle; ask him — he will tell you so.
Many a time, when he has ridden all night, he has
said to me at dawn, "Take the watch, Boy; if the
trail freshens, call me." Then he goes to sleep. He
knows he can trust me, because I have a reputation.
A scout horse that has a reputation does not play
with it.

My mother was all American — no alkali-spider
about her, I can tell you; she was of the best blood
of Kentucky, the bluest Blue-grass aristocracy, very
proud and acrimonious — or maybe it is ceremonious.
I don't know which it is. But it is no matter; size
is the main thing about a word, and that one's up to
standard. She spent her military life as colonel of
the Tenth Dragoons, and saw a deal of rough service
— distinguished service it was, too. I mean, she
carried the Colonel; but it's all the same. Where
would he be without his horse? He wouldn't arrive.
It takes two to make a colonel of dragoons. She was
a fine dragoon horse, but never got above that. She
was strong enough for the scout service, and had the
endurance, too, but she couldn't quite come up to
the speed required; a scout horse has to have steel
in his muscle and lightning in his blood.

My father was a bronco. Nothing as to lineage —
that is, nothing as to recent lineage — but plenty good
enough when you go a good way back. When

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MARK TWAIN

Professor Marsh was out here hunting bones for the
chapel of Yale University he found skeletons of
horses no bigger than a fox, bedded in the rocks, and
he said they were ancestors of my father. My
mother heard him say it ; and he said those skeletons
were two million years old, which astonished her and
made her Kentucky pretensions look small and pretty
antiphonal, not to say oblique. Let me see. ... I
used to know the meaning of those words, but . . .
well, it was years ago, and 'tisn't as vivid now as it
was when they were fresh. That sort of words
doesn't keep, in the kind of climate we have out
here. Professor Marsh said those skeletons were
fossils. So that makes me part blue grass and part
fossil; if there is any older or better stock, you will
have to look for it among the Four Hundred, I
reckon. I am satisfied with it. And am a happy
horse, too, though born out of wedlock.

And now we are back at Fort Paxton once more,
after a forty-day scout, away up as far as the Big
Horn. Everything quiet. Crows and Blackfeet
squabbling — as usual — but no outbreaks, and settlers
feeling fairly easy.

The Seventh Cavalry still in garrison, here; also
the Ninth Dragoons, two artillery companies, and
some infantry. All glad to see me, including Gen-
eral Alison, commandant. The officers' ladies and
children well, and called upon me — with sugar.
Colonel Drake, Seventh Cavalry, said some pleasant
things; Mrs. Drake was very complimentary; also
Captain and Mrs. Marsh, Company B, Seventh
Cavalry; also the Chaplain, who is always kind and

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A HORSE'S TALE

pleasant to me, because I kicked the lungs out of a
trader once. It was Tommy Drake and Fanny
Marsh that furnished the sugar — nice children, the
nicest at the post, I think.

That poor orphan child is on her way from France
— everybody is full of the subject. Her father was
General Alison's brother; married a beautiful young
Spanish lady ten years ago, and has never been in
America since. They lived in Spain a year or two,
then went to France. Both died some months ago.
This little girl that is coming is the only child.
General Alison is glad to have her. He has never
seen her. He is a very nice old bachelor, but is an
old bachelor just the same and isn't more than about
a year this side of retirement by age limit; and so
what does he know about taking care of a little maid
nine years old? If I could have her it would be
another matter, for I know all about children, and
they adore me. Buffalo Bill will tell you so himself.

I have some of this news from overhearing the
garrison-gossip, the rest of it I got from Potter, the
General's dog. Potter is the great Dane. He is
privileged, all over the post, like Shekels, the Seventh
Cavalry's dog, and visits everybody's quarters and
picks up everything that is going, in the way of news.
Potter has no imagination, and no great deal of
culture, perhaps, but he has a historical mind and a
good memory, and so he is the person I depend upon
mainly to post me up when I get back from a scout.
That is, if Shekels is out on depredation and I can't
get hold of him.

151

CHAPTER n

LETTER FROM ROUEN — TO GENERAL ALISON

71 y^Y dear Brother-in-law ; — Please let me write
j[ yJL s,gain in Spanish, I cannot trust my English,
and I am aware, from what your brother used to say,
that army officers educated at the Military Academy
of the United States are taught our tongue. It is
as I told you in my other letter: both my poor
sister and her husband, when they found they could
not recover, expressed the wish that you should
have their little Catherine— as knowing that you
would presently be retired from the army — rather
than that she should remain with me, who am
broken in health, or go to your mother in California,
whose health is also frail.

You do not know the child, therefore I must tell
you something about her. You will not be ashamed
of her looks, for she is a copy in little of her beautiful
mother — and it is that Andalusian beauty which is
not surpassable, even in your country. She has her
mother's charm and grace and good heart and sense
of justice, and she has her father's vivacity and
cheerfulness and pluck and spirit of enterprise, with
the affectionate disposition and sincerity of both
parents.

My sister pined for her Spanish home all these
years of exile ; she was always talking of Spain to the
child, and tending and nourishing the love of Spain

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A HORSE'S TALE

in the little thing's heart as a precious flower; and
she died happy in the knowledge that the fruitage of
her patriotic labors was as rich as even she could
desire.

Cathy is a sufficiently good little scholar, for her
nine years; her mother taught her Spanish herself,
and kept it always fresh upon her ear and her tongue
by hardly ever speaking with her in any other tongue ;
her father was her English teacher, and talked with
her in that language almost exclusively; French has
been her everyday speech for more than seven years
among her playmates here; she has a good working
use of governess — German and Italian. It is true
that there is always a faint foreign fragrance about
her speech, no matter what language she is talking,
but it is only just noticeable, nothing more, and is
rather a charm than a mar, I think. In the ordinary
child-studies Cathy is neither before nor behind the
average child of nine, I should say. But I can say
this for her: in love for her friends and in high-
mindedness and good-heartedness she has not many
equals, and in my opinion no superiors. And I beg
of you, let her have her way with the dumb animals
— they are her worship. It is an inheritance from
her mother. She knows but little of cruelties and
oppressions — keep them from her sight if you can.
She would flare up at them and make trouble, in
her small but quite decided and resolute way; for
she has a character of her own, and lacks neither
promptness nor initiative. Sometimes her judgment
is at fault, but I think her intentions are always
right. Once when she was a little creature of three

i53

MARK TWAIN

or four years she suddenly brought her tiny foot
down upon the floor in an apparent outbreak of
indignation, then fetched it a backward wipe, and
stooped down to examine the result. Her mother
said:

"Why, what is it, child? What has stirred you
so?"

"!Mamma, the big ant was trying to kill the little
one."

"And so you protected the little one."

"Yes, mamma, because he had no friend, and I
wouldn't let the big one kill him."

"But you have killed them both."

Cathy was distressed, and her lip trembled. She
picked up the remains and laid them upon her palm,
and said :

"Poor little anty, I'm so sorry; and I didn't
mean to kill you, but there wasn't any other way to
save you, it was such a hurry."

She is a dear and sweet little lady, and when she
goes it will give me a sore heart. But she will be
happy with you, and if your heart is old and tired,
give it into her keeping; she will make it young
again, she will refresh it, she will make it sing. Be
good to her, for all our sakes!

My exile will soon be over now. As soon as I
am a little stronger I shall see my Spain again ; and
that will make me y oung again !

Mercedes.

i54

CHAPTER III

GENERAL ALISON TO HIS MOTHER

I AM glad to know that you are all well, in San
Bernardino.
. . • That grandchild of yours has been here — well,
I do not quite know how many days it is; nobody
can keep account of days or anything else where she
is! Mother, she did what the Indians were never
able to do. She took the Fort — took it the first
day! Took me, too; took the colonels, the captains,
the women, the children, and the dumb brutes; took
Buffalo Bill, and all his scouts; took the garrison — to
the last man; and in forty-eight hours the Indian
encampment was hers, illustrious old Thunder-Bird
and all. Do I seem to have lost my solemnity, my
gravity, my poise, my dignity? You would lose your
own, in my circumstances. Mother, you never saw
such a winning little devil. She is all energy, and
spirit, and sunshine, and interest in everybody and
everything, and pours out her prodigal love upon
every creature that will take it, high or low, Christian
or pagan, feathered or furred; and none has declined
it to date, and none ever will, I think. But she has
a temper, and sometimes it catches fire and flames
up, and is likely to burn whatever is near it; but it
is soon over, the passion goes as quickly as it comes.
Of course she has an Indian name already; Indians
always rechristen a stranger early, Thunder-Bird

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MARK TWAIN

attended to her case. He gave her the Indian
equivalent for firebug, or firefly. He said:

" 'Times, ver' quiet, ver' soft, like summer night,
but when she mad she blaze.' '

Isn't it good? Can't you see the flare? She's
beautiful, mother, beautiful as a picture; and there
is a touch of you in her face, and of her father — poor
George! and in her unresting activities, and her
fearless ways, and her sunbursts and cloudbursts,
she is always bringing George back to me. These
impulsive natures are dramatic. George was dra-
matic, so is this Lightning-Bug, so is Buffalo Bill.
When Cathy first arrived — it was in the forenoon —
Buffalo Bill was away, carrying orders to Major
Fuller, at Five Forks, up in the Clayton Hills. At
mid-afternoon I was at my desk, trying to work,
and this sprite had been making it impossible for
half an hour. At last I said:

"Oh, you bewitching little scamp, can't you be
quiet just a minute or two, and let your poor old
uncle attend to a part of his duties?"

"I'll try, uncle; I will, indeed," she said.

"Well, then, that's a good child — kiss me. Now,
then, sit up in thatchair, and set your eye on that
clock. There — that's right. If you stir — if you so
much as wink — for four whole minutes, I'll bite you !"

It was very sweet and humble and obedient she
looked, sitting there, still as a mouse; I could hardly
keep from setting her free and telling her to make as
much racket as she wanted to. During as much as
two minutes there was a most unnatural and heavenly
quiet and repose, then Buffalo Bill came thundering

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A HORSE'S TALE

up to the door in all his scout finery, flung himself
out of the saddle, said to his horse, "Wait for me,
Boy," and stepped in, and stopped dead in his
tracks — gazing at the child. She forgot orders, and
was on the floor in a moment, saying:

"Oh, you are so beautiful! Do you like me?"
"No, I don't, I love you!" and he gathered her up
with a hug, and then set her on his shoulder —
apparently nine feet from the floor.

She was at home. She played with his long hair,
and admired his big hands and his clothes and his
carbine, and asked question after question, as fast
as he could answer, until I excused them both for
half an hour, in order to have a chance to finish my
work. Then I heard Cathy exclaiming over Soldier
Boy; and he was worthy of her raptures, for he is
a wonder of a horse, and has a reputation which is
as shining as his own silken hide.

i57

CHAPTER IV

CATHY TO HER AUNT MERCEDES

OH, it is wonderful here, aunty dear, just para-
dise! Oh, if you could only see it! everything
so wild and lovely; such grand plains, stretching
such miles and miles and miles, all the most delicious
velvety sand and sage-brush, and rabbits as big as a
dog, and such tall and noble jackassful ears that that
is what they name them by; and such vast moun-
tains, and so rugged and craggy and lofty, with
cloud-shawls wrapped around their shoulders, and
looking so solemn and awful and satisfied; and the
charming Indians, oh, how you would dote on them,
aunty dear, and they would on you, too, and they
would let you hold their babies, the way they do
me, and they are the fattest, and brownest, and
sweetest little things, and never cry, and wouldn't
if they had pins sticking in them, which they haven't,
because they are poor and can't afford it; and the
horses and mules and cattle and dogs — hundreds and
hundreds and hundreds, and not an animal that you
can't do what you please with, except uncle Thomas,
but I don't mind him, he's lovely; and oh, if you
could hear the bugles: too — too — too-too — too — toof
and so on — per-fectly beautiful! Do you recognize
that one? It's the first toots of the reveille; it goes,
dear me, so early in the morning ! — then I and every
other soldier on the whole place are up and out in a

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A HORSE'S TALE

minute, except uncle Thomas, who is most unaccount-
ably lazy, I don't know why, but I have talked to
him about it, and I reckon it will be better, now. He
hasn't any faults much, and is charming and sweet,
like Buffalo Bill, and Thunder-Bird, and Mammy
Dorcas, and Soldier Boy, and Shekels, and Potter,
and Sour-Mash, and — well, they're all that, just
angels, as you may say.

The very first day I came, I don't know how long
ago it was, Buffalo Bill took me on Soldier Boy to
Thunder-Bird's camp, not the big one which is out
on the plain, which is White Cloud's, he took me to
that one next day, but this one is four or five miles
up in the hills and crags, where there is a great
shut-in meadow, full of Indian lodges and dogs and
squaws and everything that is interesting, and a
brook of the clearest water running through it, with
white pebbles on the bottom and trees all along the
banks cool and shady and good to wade in, and as the
sun goes down it is dimmish in there, but away up
against the sky you see the big peaks towering up
and shining bright and vivid in the sun, and some-
times an eagle sailing by them, not flapping a
wing, the same as if he was asleep; and young
Indians and girls romping and laughing and carrying
on,' around the spring and the pool, and not much
clothes on except the girls, and dogs fighting, and
the squaws busy at work, and the bucks busy resting,
and the old men sitting in a bunch smoking, and
passing the pipe not to the left but to the right,
which means there's been a row in the camp and they
are settling it if they can, and children playing just

i59

MARK TWAIN

the same as any other children, and little boys
shooting at a mark with bows, and I cuffed one of
them because he hit a dog with a club that wasn't
doing anything, and he resented it but before long
he wished he hadn't: but this sentence is getting
too long and I will start another. Thunder-Bird
put on his Sunday-best war outfit to let me see him,
and he was splendid to look at, with his face painted
red and bright and intense like a fire-coal and a
valance of eagle feathers from the top of his head
all down his back, and he had his tomahawk, too,
and his pipe, which has a stem which is longer than
my arm, and I never had such a good time in an
Indian camp in my life, and I learned a lot of words
of the language, and next day BB took me to the
camp out on the Plains, four miles, and I had
another good time and got acquainted with some
more Indians and dogs; and the big chief, by the
name of White Cloud, gave me a pretty little bow
and arrows and I gave him my red sash-ribbon, and
in four days I could shoot very well with it and beat
any white boy of my size at the post; and I have
been to those camps plenty of times since; and I
have learned to ride, too, BB taught me, and every
day he practises me and praises me, and every
time I do better than ever he lets me have a scamper
on Soldier Boy, and that's the last agony of pleasure!
for he is the charmingest horse, and so beautiful
and shiny and black, and hasn't another color on
him anywhere, except a white star in his forehead,
not just an imitation star, but a real one, with
four points, shaped exactly like a star that's hand-

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A HORSE'S TALE

made, and if you should cover him all up but his
star you would know him anywhere, even in Jeru-
salem or Australia, by that. And I got acquainted
with a good many of the Seventh Cavalry, and the
dragoons, and officers, and families, and horses, in
the first few days, and some more in the next few
and the next few and the next few, and now I know
more soldiers and horses than you can think, no
matter how hard you try. I am keeping up my
studies every now and then, but there isn't much
time for it. I love you so! and I send you a hug
and a kiss. Cathy.

P.S. — I belong to the Seventh Cavalry and Ninth
Dragoons, I am an officer, too, and do not have to
work on account of not getting any wages.

161

CHAPTER V

GENERAL ALISON TO MERCEDES

SHE has been with us a good nice long time, now.
You are troubled about your sprite because
this is such a wild frontier, hundreds of miles from
civilization, and peopled only by wandering tribes
of savages? You fear for her safety? Give yourself
no uneasiness about her. Dear me, she's in a nursery !
and she's got more than eighteen hundred nurses.
It would distress the garrison to suspect that you
think they can't take care of her. They think they
can. They would tell you so themselves. You see,
the Seventh Cavalry has never had a child of its
very own before, and neither has the Ninth Dragoons;
and so they are like all new mothers, they think
there is no other child like theirs, no other child
so wonderful, none that is so worthy to be faithfully
and tenderly looked after and protected. These
bronzed veterans of mine are very good mothers, I
think, and wiser than some other mothers; for they
let her take lots of risks, and it is a good education
for her; and the more risks she takes and comes
successfully out of, the prouder they are of her.
They adopted her, with grave and formal military
ceremonies of their own invention — solemnities is
the truer word; solemnities that were so profoundly
solemn and earnest, that the spectacle wculd have
been comical if it hadn't been so touching. It was

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A HORSE'S TALE

a good show, and as stately and complex as guard-
mount and the trooping of the colors; and it had
its own special music, composed for the occasion by
the bandmaster of the Seventh; and the child was
as serious as the most serious war-worn soldier of
them all; and finally when they throned her upon
the shoulder of the oldest veteran, and pronounced
her "well and truly adopted/ ' and the bands struck
up and all saluted and she saluted in return, it was
better and more moving than any kindred thing
I have seen on the stage, because stage things are
make-believe, but this was real and the players'
hearts were in it.

It happened several weeks ago, and was followed
by some additional solemnities. The men created
a couple of new ranks, thitherto unknown to the
army regulations, and conferred them upon Cathy,
with ceremonies suitable to a duke. So now she is
Corporal-General of the Seventh Cavalry, and Flag-
Lieutenant of the Ninth Dragoons, with the privilege
(decreed by the men) of writing U.S.A. after her
name! Also, they presented her a pair of shoulder-
straps — both dark blue, the one with F. L. on it, the
other with C. G. Also, a sword. She wears them.
Finally, they granted her the salute. I am witness
that that ceremony is faithfully observed by both
parties — and most gravely and decorously, too. I
have never seen a soldier smile yet, while delivering
it, nor Cathy in returning it.

Ostensibly I was not present at these proceedings,
and am ignorant of them; but I was where I could
see. I was afraid of one thing — the jealousy of the

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MARK TWAIN

other children of the post; but there is nothing of
that, I am glad to say. On the contrary, they are
proud of their comrade and her honors. It is a
surprising thing, but it is true. The children are
devoted to Cathy, for she has turned their dull
frontier life into a sort of continuous festival; also
they know her for a stanch and steady friend, a
friend who can always be depended upon, and does
not change with the weather.

She has become a rather extraordinary rider, under
the tutorship of a more than extraordinary teacher —
BB, which is her pet name for Buffalo Bill. She
pronounces it beeby. He has not only taught her
seventeen ways of breaking her neck, but twenty-
two ways of avoiding it. He has infused into her
the best and surest protection of a horseman — con-
fidence. He did it gradually, systematically, little
by little, a step at a time, and each step made sure
before the next was essayed. And so he inched her
along up through terrors that had been discounted
by training before she reached them, and therefore
were not recognizable as terrors when she got to
them. Well, she is a daring little rider, now, and is
perfect in what she knows of horsemanship. By and
by she will know the art like a West Point cadet,
and will exercise it as fearlessly. She doesn't know
anything about sidesaddles. Does that distress you?
And she is a fine performer, without any saddle at
all. Does that discomfort you? Do not let it; she
is not in any danger, I give you my word.

You said that if my heart was old and tired she
would refresh it, and you said truly. I do not know

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A HORSE'S TALE

how I got along without her, before. I was a forlorn
old tree, but now that this blossoming vine has
wound itself about me and become the life of my
life, it is very different. As a furnisher of business
for me and for Mammy Dorcas she is exhaustlessly
competent, but I like my share of it and of course
Dorcas likes hers, for Dorcas " raised' ' George, and
Cathy is George over again in so many ways that
she brings back Dorcas's youth and the joys of that
long-vanished time. My father tried to set Dorcas
free twenty years ago, when we still lived in Virginia,
but without success ; she considered herself a member
of the family, and wouldn't go. And so, a member
of the family she remained, and has held that position
unchallenged ever since, and holds it now; for when
my mother sent her here from San Bernardino when
we learned that Cathy was coming, she only changed
from one division of the family to the other. She
has the warm heart of her race, and its lavish
affections, and when Cathy arrived the pair were
mother and child in five minutes, and that is what
they are to date and will continue. Dorcas really
thinks she raised George, and that is one of her
prides, but perhaps it was a mutual raising, for their
ages were the same — thirteen years short of mine.
But they were playmates, at any rate; as regards
that, there is no room for dispute.

Cathy thinks Dorcas is the best Catholic in
America except herself. She could not pay any one
a higher compliment than that, and Dorcas could
not receive one that would please her better. Dorcas
is satisfied that there has never been a more wonder-

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MARK TWAIN

ful child than Cathy. She has conceived the curious
idea that Cathy is twins, and that one of them is a
boy-twin and failed to get segregated — got sub-
merged, is the idea. To argue with her that this is
nonsense is a waste of breath — her mind is made up,
and arguments do not affect it. She says :

"Look at her; she loves dolls, and girl-plays, and
everything a girl loves, and she's gentle and sweet,
and ain't cruel to dumb brutes — now that's the girl-
twin, but she loves boy-plays, and drums and fifes
and soldiering, and rough-riding, and ain't afraid of
anybody or anything — and that's the boy-twin;
'deed you needn't tell me she's only one child; no,
sir, she's twins, and one of them got shet up out of
sight. Out of sight, but that don't make any
difference, that boy is in there, and you can see him
look out of her eyes when her temper is up."

Then Dorcas went on, in her simple and earnest
way, to furnish illustrations.

"Look at that raven, Marse Tom. Would any-
body befriend a raven but that child? Of course
they wouldn't; it ain't natural. Well, the Injun
boy had the raven tied up, and was all the time
plaguing it and starving it, and she pitied the po'
thing, and tried to buy it from the boy, and the
tears was in her eyes. That was the girl-twin, you
see. She offered him her thimble, and he flung it
down; she offered him all the doughnuts she had,
which was two, and he flung them down; she offered
him half a paper of pins, worth forty ravens, and he
made a mouth at her and jabbed one of them in
the raven's back. That was the limit, you know.

1 66

A HORSE'S TALE

It called for the other twin. Her eyes blazed up,
and she jumped for him like a wild-cat, and when
she was done with him she was rags and he wasn't
anything but an allegory. That was most undoubt-
edly the other twin, you see, coming to the front.
No, sir ; don't tell me he ain't in there. I've seen him
with my own eyes — and plenty of times, at that."

1 * Allegory ? What is an allegory ? ' '

"I don't know, Marse Tom, it's one of her words;
she loves the big ones, you know, and I pick them up
from her; they sound good and I can't help it."

"What happened after she had converted the boy
into an allegory?"

"Why, she untied the raven and confiscated him
by force and fetched him home, and left the dough-
nuts and things on the ground. Petted him, of
course, like she does with every creature. In two
days she had him so stuck after her that she — well,
you know how he follows her everywhere, and sets
on her shoulder often when she rides her breakneck
rampages — all of which is the girl-twin to the front,
you see — and he does what he pleases, and is up to
all kinds of devilment, and is a perfect nuisance
in the kitchen. Well, they all stand it, but they
wouldn't if it was another person's bird."

Here she began to chuckle comfortably, and
presently she said:

"Well, you know, she's a nuisance herself, Miss
Cathy is, she is so busy, and into everything, like
that bird. It's all just as innocent, you know, and
she don't mean any harm, and is so good and dear;
and it ain't her fault, it's her nature; her interest

167

MARK TWAIN

is always a-working and always red-hot, and she
can't keep quiet. Well, yesterday it was 'Please,
Miss Cathy, don't do that'; and, 'Please, Miss
Cathy, let that alone'; and, 'Please, Miss Cathy,
don't make so much noise'; and so on and so on,
till I reckon I had found fault fourteen times in
fifteen minutes; then she looked up at me with her
big brown eyes that can plead so, and said in that
odd little foreign way that goes to your heart,
'"Please, mammy, make me a compliment. ' "
"And of course you did it, you old fool?"
"Marse Tom, I just grabbed her up to my breast
and says, 'Oh, you po' dear little motherless thing,
you ain't got a fault in the world, and you can do
anything you want to, and tear the house down, and
yo' old black mammy won't say a word!' "

"Why, of course, of course — I knew you'd spoil
the child."

She brushed away her tears, and said with dignity:
"Spoil the child? spoil that child, Marse Tom?
There can't anybody spoil her. She's the king bee
of this post, and everybody pets her and is her slave,
and yet, as you know, your own self, she ain't the
least little bit spoiled." Then she eased her mind
with this retort: "Marse Tom, she makes you do
anything she wants to, and you can't deny it; so if
she could be spoilt, she'd been spoilt long ago,
because you are the very worst! Look at that pile
of cats in your chair, and you sitting on a candle-box,
just as patient; it's because they're her cats."

If Dorcas were a soldier, I could punish her for
such large frankness as that. I changed the subject,

168

A HORSE'S TALE

and made her resume her illustrations. She had
scored against me fairly, and I wasn't going to
cheapen her victory by disputing it. She proceeded
to offer this incident in evidence on her twin theory:

"Two weeks ago when she got her finger mashed
open, she turned pretty pale with the pain, but she
never said a word. I took her in my lap, and the
surgeon sponged off the blood and took a needle
and thread and began to sew it up; it had to have
a lot of stitches, and each one made her scrunch a
little, but she never let go a sound. At last the
surgeon was so full of admiration that he said, 'Well,
you are a brave little thing V and she said, just as
ca'm and simple as if she was talking about the
weather, 'There isn't anybody braver but the Cid!'
You see? it was the boy-twin that the surgeon was
a-dealingwith."

"Who is the Cid?"

"I don't know, sir — at least only what she says.
She's always talking about him, and says he was the
bravest hero Spain ever had, or any other country.
They have it up and down, the children do, she
standing up for the Cid, and they working George
Washington for all he is worth."

"Do they quarrel?"

"No; it's only disputing, and bragging, the way
children do. They want her to be an American,
but she can't be anything but a Spaniard, she says.
You see, her mother was always longing for home,
po' thing! and thinking about it, and so the child
is just as much a Spaniard as if she'd always lived
there. She thinks she remembers how Spain looked,

169

MARK TWAIN

but I reckon she don't, because she was only a baby
when they moved to France. She is very proud to
be a Spaniard.' *

Does that please you, Mercedes? Very well, be
content; your niece is loyal to her allegiance: her
mother laid deep the foundations of her love for
Spain, and she will go back to you as good a Spaniard
as you are yourself. She had made me promise to
take her to you for a long visit when the War Office
retires me.

I attend to her studies myself; has she told you
that? Yes, I am her school-master, and she makes
pretty good progress, I think, everything considered.
Everything considered — being translated — means
holidays. But the fact is, she was not born for
study, and it comes hard. Hard for me, too; it
hurts me like a physical pain to see that free spirit
of the air and the sunshine laboring and grieving
over a book; and sometimes when I find her gazing
far away towards the plains and the blue mountains
with the longing in her eyes, I have to throw open
the prison doors; I can't help it. A quaint little
scholar she is, and makes plenty of blunders. Once
I put the question :

"What does the Czar govern?''

She rested her elbow on her knee and her chin on
her hand and took that problem under deep consid-
eration. Presently she looked up and answered, with
a rising inflection implying a shade of uncertainty,

"The dative case?"

Here are a couple of her expositions which were
delivered with tranquil confidence :

170

A HORSE'S TALE

"Chaplain, diminutive of chap. Lass is masculine,
lassie is feminine.' '

She is not a genius, you see, but just a normal
child; they all make mistakes of that sort. There
is a glad light in her eye which is pretty to see when
she finds herself able to answer a question promptly
and accurately, without any hesitation; as, for in-
stance, this morning:

"Cathy dear, what is a cube?"

"Why, a native of Cuba/'

She still drops a foreign word into her talk now and
then, and there is still a subtle foreign flavor or
fragrance about even her exactest English — and long
may this abide! for it has for me a charm that is
very pleasant. Sometimes her English is daintily
prim and bookish and captivating. She has a child's
sweet tooth, but for her health's sake I try to keep
its inspirations under check. She is obedient — as is
proper for a titled and recognized military personage,
which she is — but the chain presses sometimes. For
instance, we were out for a walk, and passed by some
bushes that were freighted with wild gooseberries.
Her face brightened and she put her hands together
and delivered herself of this speech, most feelingly:

"Oh, if I was permitted a vice it would be the
gourntandise!"

Could I resist that? No. I gave her a gooseberry.

You ask about her languages. They take care of
themselves; they will not get rusty here; our regi-
ments are not made up of natives alone — far from
it. And she is picking up Indian tongues diligently.

171

CHAPTER VI

SOLDIER BOY AND THE MEXICAN PLUG

WHEN did you come?0
" Arrived at sundown."

"Where from?"

"Salt Lake."

"Are you in the service?"

"No. Trade."

"Pirate trade, I reckon."

"What do you know about it?"

"I saw you when you came. I recognized your
master. He is a bad sort. Trap-robber, horse-thief,
squaw-man, renegado — Hank Butters — I know him
very well. Stole you, didn't he?"

"Well, it amounted to that."

"I thought so. Where is his pard?"

"He stopped at White Cloud's camp."

"He is another of the same stripe, is Blake Has-
kins." (Aside.) They are laying for Buffalo Bill
again, I guess. (Aloud.) "What is your name?"

"Which one?"

"Have you got more than one?"

"I get a new one every time I'm stolen. I used
to have an honest name, but that was early; I've
forgotten it. Since then I've had thirteen aliases"

"Aliases? What is alias?"

"A false name."

"Alias. It's a fine large word, and is in my line;

172

A HORSE'S TALE

it has quite a learned and cerebrospinal incandescent
sound. Are you educated ?"

"Well, no, I can't claim it. I can take down bars,
I can distinguish oats from shoe-pegs, I can blas-
pheme a saddle-boil with the college-bred, and I
know a few other things — not many; I have had
no chance, I have always had to work; besides, I
am of low birth and no family. You speak my
dialect like a native, but you are not a Mexican
Plug, you are a gentleman, I can see that; and
educated, of course.' '

"Yes, I am of old family, and not illiterate. I
am a fossil.' '

"A which?"

"Fossil. The first horses were fossils. They date
back two million years."

"Gr-eat sand and sage-brush! do you mean it?"

"Yes, it is true. The bones of my ancestors are
held in reverence and worship, even by men. They
do not leave them exposed to the weather when
they find them, but carry them three thousand
miles and enshrine them in their temples of learning,
and worship them."

"It is wonderful! I knew you must be a person
of distinction, by your fine presence and courtly
address, and by the fact that you are not subjected
to the indignity of hobbles, like myself and the rest.
Would you tell me your name?"

"You have probably heard of it — Soldier Boy."

"What! — the renowned, the illustrious?"

"Even so."

"It takes my breath! Little did I dream that

i73

MARK TWAIN

ever I should stand face to face with the possessor
of that great name. Buffalo Bill's horse! Known
from the Canadian border to the deserts of Arizona,
and from the eastern marches of the Great Plains to
the foot-hills of the Sierra ! Truly this is a memorable
day. You still serve the celebrated Chief of Scouts ?"

"I am still his property, but he has lent me, for a
time, to the most noble, the most gracious, the most
excellent, her Excellency Catherine, Corporal-Gen-
eral Seventh Cavalry and Flag-Lieutenant Ninth
Dragoons, U. S. A., — on whom be peace !"

"Amen. Did you say her Excellency?"

"The same. A Spanish lady, sweet blossom of a
ducal house. And truly a wonder; knowing every-
thing, capable of everything; speaking all the
languages, master of all sciences, a mind without
horizons, a heart of gold, the glory of her race!
On whom be peace !"

"Amen. It is marvelous !"

"Verily. I knew many things, she has taught me
others. I am educated. I will tell you about her."

"I listen — I am enchanted/ '

1 ' I will tell a plain tale, calmly, without excitement,
without eloquence. When she had been here four
or five weeks she was already erudite in military
things, and they made her an officer — a double
officer. She rode the drill every day, like any soldier ;
and she could take the bugle and direct the evolu-
tions herself. Then, on a day, there was a grand
race, for prizes — none to enter but the children.
Seventeen children entered, and she was the youngest.
Three girls, fourteen boys — good riders all. It was

i74

A HORSE'S TALE

a steeplechase, with four hurdles, all pretty high.
The first prize was a most cunning half -grown silver
bugle, and mighty pretty, with red silk cord and
tassels. Buffalo Bill was very anxious; for he had
taught her to ride, and he did most dearly want her
to win that race, for the glory of it. So he wanted
her to ride me, but she wouldn't; and she reproached
him, and said it was unfair and unright, and taking
advantage; for what horse in this post or any other
could stand a chance against me? and she was very
severe with him, and said, 'You ought to be ashamed
— you are proposing to me conduct unbecoming an
officer and a gentleman/ So he just tossed her up
in the air about thirty feet and caught her as she
came down, and said he was ashamed; and put up
his handkerchief and pretended to cry, which nearly
broke her heart, and she petted him, and begged
him to forgive her, and said she would do anything
in the world he could ask but that; but he said
he ought to go hang himself, and he must, if he
could get a rope ; it was nothing but right he should,
for he never, never could forgive himself; and then
she began to cry, and they both sobbed, the way
you could hear him a mile, and she clinging around
his neck and pleading, till at last he was comforted
a little, and gave his solemn promise he wouldn't
hang himself till after the race; and wouldn't do it
at all if she won it, which made her happy, and she
said she would win it or die in the saddle; so then
everything was pleasant again and both of them
content. He can't help playing jokes on her, he is
so fond of her and she is so innocent and unsuspect-

i75

MARK TWAIN

ing; and when she finds it out she cuffs him and is in
a fury, but presently forgives him because it's him;
and maybe the very next day she's caught with
another joke; you see she can't learn any better,
because she hasn't any deceit in her, and that kind
aren't ever expecting it in another person.

"It was a* grand race. The whole post was there,
and there was such another whooping and shouting
when the seventeen kids came flying down the turf
and sailing over the hurdles — oh, beautiful to see!
Half-way down, it was kind of neck and neck, and
anybody's race and nobody's. Then, what should
happen but a cow steps out and puts her head down
to munch grass, with her broadside to the battalion,
and they a-coming like the wind; they split apart
to flank hei but. she? — why, she drove the spurs
home and soared over that cow like a bird! and on
she went, and cleared the last hurdle solitary and
alone, the army letting loose the grand yell, and she
skipped from the horse the same as if he^ had been
standing still, and made her bow, and everybody
crowded around to congratulate, and they gave her
the bugle, and she put it to her lips and blew 'boots
and saddles' to see how it would go, and BB was
as^' proud as you can't think! And he said, 'Take
Soldier Boy, and don't pass him back till I ask for
him!' and I can tell you he wouldn't have said that
to any other person on this planet. That was two
months and more ago, and nobody has been on
my back since but the Corporal-General Seventh
Cavalry and Flag-Lieutenant of the Ninth Dragoons,
U.S.A., — on whom be peace!'*

176

A HORSE'S TALE

"Amen. I listen — tell me more."

"She set to work and organized the Sixteen, and
called it the First Battalion Rocky Mountain
Rangers, U.S.A., and she wanted to be bugler, but
they elected her Lieutenant-General 'and Bugler. So
she ranks her uncle the commandant, who is only a
Brigadier. And doesn't she train those little people!
Ask the Indians, ask the traders, ask the soldiers;
they'll tell you. She has been at it from the first
day. Every morning they go clattering down into
the plain, and there she sits on my back with hep
bugle at her mouth and sounds the orders and puts
them through the evolutions for an hour or more;
and it is too beautiful for anything to see those
ponies dissolve from one formation into another, and
waltz about, and break, and scatter, and form again,
always moving, always graceful, now trotting, now
galloping, and so on, sometimes near by, sometimes
in the distance, all just like a state ball, you know,
and sometimes she can't hold herself any longer, but
sounds the charge,' and turns me loose! and you can
take my word for it, if the battalion hasn't too much
of a start we catch up and go over the breastworks
with the front line.

"Yes, they are soldiers, those little people; and
healthy, too, not ailing any more, the way they used
to be sometimes. It's because of her drill. She's
got a fort, now — Fort Fanny Marsh. Major-General
Tommy Drake planned it out, and the Seventh and
Dragoons built it. Tommy is the Colonel's son, and
is fifteen and the oldest in the Battalion; Fanny
Marsh is Brigadier-General, and is next oldest —

177

MARK TWAIN

over thirteen. She is daughter of Captain Marsh,
Company B, Seventh Cavalry. Lieutenant-General
Alison is the youngest by considerable; I think she
is about nine and a half or three-quarters. Her
military rig, as Lieutenant-General, isn't for business,
it's for dress parade, because the ladies made it.
They say they got it out of the Middle Ages — out
of a book — and it is all red and blue and white
silks and satins and velvets; tights, trunks, sword,
doublet with slashed sleeves, short cape, cap with
just one feather in it; I've heard them name these
things; they got them out of the book; she's dressed
like a page, of old times, they say. It's the daintiest
outfit that ever was — you will say so, when you see
it. She's lovely in it — oh, just a dream! In some
ways she is just her age, but in others she's as old
as her uncle, I think. She is very learned. She
teaches her uncle his book. I have seen her sitting
by with the book and reciting to him what is in it,
so that he can learn to do it himself.

"Every Saturday she hires little Injuns to garrison
her fort; then she lays siege to it, and makes mili-
tary approaches by make-believe trenches in make-
believe night, and finally at make-believe dawn she
draws her sword and sounds the assault and takes
it by storm. It is for practice. And she has invented
a bugle-call all by herself, out of her own head, and
it's a stirring one, and the prettiest in the service.
It's to call me — it's never used for anything else.
She taught it to me, and told me what it says:
'It is 7, Soldier — come!' and when those thrilling
notes come floating down the distance I hear them

178

A HORSE'S TALE

without fail, even if I am two miles away; and then
— oh, then you should see my heels get down to
business !

4 'And she has taught me how to say good-morning
and good-night to her, which is by lifting my right
hoof for her to shake; and also how to say good-by;
I do that with my left foot — but only for practice,
because there hasn't been any but make-believe
good-bying yet, and I hope there won't ever be. It
would make me cry if I ever had to put up my left
foot in earnest. She has taught me how to salute,
and I can do it as well as a soldier. I bow my head
low, and lay my right hoof against my cheek. She
taught me that because I got into disgrace once,
through ignorance. I am privileged, because I am
known to be honorable and /trustworthy, and because
I have a distinguished record in the service; so they
don't hobble me nor tie me to stakes or shut me tight
in stables, but let me wander around to suit myself.
Well, trooping the colors is a very solemn ceremony,
and everybody must stand uncovered when the flag
goes by, the commandant and all; and once I was
there, and ignorantly walked across right in front of
the band, which was an awful disgrace. Ah, the
Lieutenant-Generai was so ashamed, and so distressed
that I should have done such a thing before all the
world, that she couldn't keep the tears back; and
then she taught me the salute, so that if I ever did
any other unmilitary act through ignorance I could
do my salute and she believed everybody would
think it was apology enough and would not press
the matter. It is very nice and distinguished; no

179

MARK TWAIN

other horse can do it; often the men salute me, and
I return it. I am privileged to be present when the
Rocky Mountain Rangers troop the colors and I
stand solemn, like the children, and I salute when
the flag goes by. Of course when she goes to her
fort her sentries sing out 'Turn out the guard!' and
then . . . do you catch that refreshing early-morning
whiff from the mountain-pines and the wild flowers?
The night is far spent; well hear the bugles before
long. Dorcas, the black woman, is very good and
nice; she takes care of the Lieutenant-General, and
is Brigadier-General Alison's mother, which makes
her. mother-in-law to the Lieutenant-General. That
is what Shekels says. At least it is what I think
he says, though I never can understand him quite
clearly. He — "

"Who is Shekels?"

€ 'The Seventh Cavalry dog. I mean, if he is a dog.
His father was a coyote and his mother was a wild-cat.
It doesn't really make a dog out of him, does it?"

"Not a real dog, I should think. Only a kind of a
general dog, at most, I reckon. Though this is a
matter of ichthyology, I suppose; and if it is, it is
out of my depth, and so my opinion is not valuable,
and I don't claim much consideration for it."

"It isn't ichthyology; it is dogmatics, which is still
more difficult and tangled up. Dogmatics always are. ' '

"Dogmatics is quite beyond me, quite; so I am
not competing. But on general principles it is my
opinion that a colt out of a coyote and a wild-cat is no
square dog, but doubtful. That is my hand, and I
stand pat."

1 80

A HORSE'S TALE

"Well, it is as far as I can go myself, and be fair
and conscientious. I have always regarded him as
a doubtful dog, and so has Potter. Potter is the
great Dane. Potter says he is no dog, and not even
poultry — though I do not go quite so far as that."

"And I wouldn't, myself. Poultry is one of those
things which no person can get to the bottom of,
there is so much of it and such variety. It is just
wings, and wings, and wings, till you are weary:
turkeys, and geese, and bats, and butterflies, and
angels, and grasshoppers, and flying-fish, and — well,
there is really no end to the tribe; it gives me the
heaves just to think of it. But this one hasn't any
wings, has he?"

"No."

4 'Well, then, in my belief he is more likely to be
dog than poultry. I have not heard of poultry that
hadn't wings. Wings is the sign of poultry; it is
what you tell poultry by. Look at the mosquito."

"What do you reckon he is, then? He must be
something."

"Why, he could be a reptile; anything that hasn't
wings is a reptile."

"Who told you that?"

"Nobody told me, but I overheard it."

"Where did you overhear it?"

"Years ago. I was with the Philadelphia Institute
expedition in the Bad Lands under Professor Cope,
hunting mastodon bones, and I overheard him say,
his own self, that any plantigrade circumflex verte-
brate bacterium that hadn't wings and was uncertain
was a reptile. Well, then, has this dog any wings?

181

MARK TWAIN

No. Is he a plantigrade circumflex vertebrate bac-
terium? Maybe so, maybe not; but without ever
having seen him, and judging only by his illegal and
spectacular parentage, I will bet the odds of a bale
of hay to a bran mash that he looks it. Finally, is
he uncertain? That is the point — is he uncertain?
I will leave it to you if you have ever heard of a more
uncertainer dog than what this one is?"

"No, I never have."

" Well, then, he's a reptile. That's settled."

"Why, look here, whatsyourname — "

"Last alias, Mongrel."

"A good one, too. I was going to say, you are
better educated than you have been pretending to
be. I like cultured society, and I shall cultivate
your acquaintance. Now as to Shekels, whenever
you want to know about any private thing that is
going on at this post or in White Cloud's camp or
Thunder-Bird's, he can tell you; and if you make
friends with him he'll be glad to, for he is a born
gossip, and picks up all the tittle-tattle. Being the
whole Seventh Cavalry's reptile, he doesn't belong
to anybody in particular, and hasn't any military
duties; so he comes and goes as he pleases, and is
popular with all the house cats and other authentic
sources of private information. He understands
all the languages, and talks them all, too. With
an accent like gritting your teeth, it is true, and
with a grammar that is no improvement on blas-
phemy— still, with practice you get at the meat of
what he says, and it serves. . . . Hark! That's the
reveille. . . .

182

A HORSE'S TALE

THE REVEILLE *

Quick

•At West Point the bugle is supposed to be saying:

"I can't get 'em up,
I can't get 'em up,
I can't get 'em up in the morning!"

" Faint and far, but isn't it clear, isn't it sweet?
There's no music like the bugle to stir the blood, in
the still solemnity of the morning twilight, with the
dim plain stretching away to nothing and the spectral
mountains slumbering against the sky. You'll hear
another note in a minute — faint and far and clear,
like the other one, and sweeter still, you'll notice.
Wait . . . listen. There it goes! It says, 'It is I,
Soldier — come!' . . .

SOLDIER BOY S BUGLE CALL

P

Z2Z

/7\

5T-

W-

-$&

Z&IT-

m

£

s*

• . • Now then, watch me leave a blue streak
behind!"

183

CHAPTER VII

SOLDIER BOY AND SHEKELS

DID you do as I told you? Did you look up the
Mexican Plug?"

"Yes, I made his acquaintance before night and
got his friendship."

"I liked him. Did you?"

"Not at first. He took me for a reptile, and it
troubled me, because I didn't know whether it was
a compliment or not. I couldn't ask him, because
it would look ignorant. So I didn't say anything,
and soon I liked him very well indeed. Was it a
compliment, do you think?"

"Yes, that is what it was. They are very rare,
the reptiles; very few left, now-a-days."

"Is that so? What is a reptile?"

"It is a plantigrade circumflex vertebrate bac-
terium that hasn't any wings and is uncertain."

"Well, it — it sounds fine, it surely does."

"And it is fine. You may be thankful you are
one.

"I am. It seems wonderfully grand and elegant
for a person that is so humble as I am; but I am
thankful, I am indeed, and will try to live up to it.
It is hard to remember. Will you say it again,
please, and say it slow?"

"Plantigrade circumflex vertebrate bacterium that
hasn't any wings and is uncertain."

184

A HORSE'S TALE

"It is beautiful, anybody must grant it; beautiful,
and of a noble sound. I hope it will not make me
proud and stuck-up — I should not like to be that.
It is much more distinguished and honorable to be
a reptile than a dog, don't you think, Soldier?"

"Why, there's no comparison. It is awfully aristo-
cratic. Often a duke is called a reptile; it is set
down so, in history."

1 * Isn't that grand ! Potter wouldn't ever associate
with me, but I reckon he'll be glad to when he finds
out what I am."

"You can depend upon it."

"I will thank Mongrel for this. He is a very good
sort, for a Mexican Plug. Don't you think he is ?"

"It is my opinion of him; and as for his birth, he
cannot help that. We cannot all be reptiles, we can-
not all be fossils ; we have to take what comes and be
thankful it is no worse. It is the true philosophy."

"For those others?"

4 'Stick to the subject, please. Did it turn out that
my suspicions were right?"

"Yes, perfectly right. Mongrel has heard them
planning. They are after BB's life, for running them
out of Medicine Bow and taking their stolen horses
away from them."

Well, they'll get him yet, for sure."
Not if he keeps a sharp lookout."
'He keep a sharp lookout! He never does; he
despises them, and all their kind. His life is al-
ways being threatened, and so it has come to be
monotonous."

"Does he know they are here?"

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€i

MARK TWAIN

"Oh yes, he knows it. He is always the earliest
to know who comes and who goes. But he cares
nothing for them and their threats; he only laughs
when people warn him. They'll shoot him from
behind a tree the first he knows. Did Mongrel tell
you their plans ?"

"Yes. They have found out that he starts for
Fort Clayton day after to-morrow, with one of his
scouts; so they will leave to-morrow, letting on to
go south, but they will fetch around north all in
good time."

"Shekels, I don't like the look of it."

186

CHAPTER VIII

THE SCOUT-START. BB AND LIEUTENANT-
GENERAL ALISON

BB (saluting). "Good! handsomely done! The
Seventh couldn't beat it! You do certainly
handle your Rangers like an expert, General. And
where are you bound ?"

"Four miles on the trail to Fort Clayton.' '
Glad am I, dear! What's the idea of it?"
Guard of honor for you and Thorndike."
"Bless — your — heart! I'd rather have it from you
than from the Commander-in-Chief of the armies of
the United States, you incomparable little soldier! —
and I don't need to take any oath to that, for you
believe it."

"I thought you'd like it, BB."
"Like it? Well, I should say so! Now then — all
ready — sound the advance, and away we go!"

I87

CHAPTER IX

SOLDIER BOY AND SHEKELS AGAIN

WELL, this is the way it happened. We did
the escort duty; then we came back and
struck for the plain and put the Rangers through
a rousing drill — oh, for hours! Then we sent them
home under Brigadier-General Fanny Marsh; then
the Lieutenant-General and I went off on a gallop
over the plains for about three hours, and were
lazying along home in the middle of the afternoon,
when we met Jimmy Slade, the drummer-boy, and
he saluted and asked the Lieutenant-General if she
had heard the news, and she said no, and he said:

"'Buffalo Bill has been ambushed and badly shot
this side of Clayton, and Thorndike the scout, too;
Bill couldn't travel, but Thorndike could, and he
brought the news, and Sergeant Wilkes and six men
of Company B are gone, two hours ago, hotfoot, to
get Bill. And they say — 9

" 'Go!' she shouted to me — and I went."

"Fast?"

* ■ Don't ask foolish questions. It was an awful pace.
For four hours nothing happened, and not a word said,
except that now and then she said, 'Keep it up, Boy,
keep it up, sweetheart ; well save him !' I kept it up.
Well, when the dark shut down, in the rugged hills,
that poor little chap had been tearing around in the
saddle all day, and I noticed by the slack knee-

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A HORSE'S TALE

pressure that she was tired and tottery, and I got
dreadfully afraid ; but every time I tried to slow down
and let her go to sleep, so I could stop, she hurried me
up again; and so, sure enough, at last over she went !

"Ah, that was a fix to be in ! for she lay there and
didn't stir, and what was I to do? I couldn't leave
her to fetch help, on account of the wolves. There was
nothing to do but stand by. It was dreadful. I was
afraid she was killed, poor little thing ! But she wasn't.
She came to, by and by, and said, 'Kiss me, Soldier/
and those were blessed words. I kissed her — often ; I
am used to that, and we like it. But she didn't get
up, and I was worried. She fondled my nose with
her hand, and talked to me, and called me endearing
names — which is her way — but she caressed with the
same hand all the time. The other arm was broken,
you see, but I didn't know it, and she didn't mention
it. She didn't want to distress me, you know.

"Soon the big gray wolves came, and hung around,
and you could hear them snarl, and snap at each
other, but you couldn't see anything of them except
their eyes, which shone in the dark like sparks and
stars. The Lieutenant-General said, 'If I had the
Rocky Mountain Rangers here, we would make those
creatures climb a tree.' Then she made believe that
the Rangers were in hearing, and put up her bugle and
blew the 'assembly'; and then, 'boots and saddles';
then the 'trot'; 'gallop'; 'charge!9 Then she blew
the 'retreat,' and said, 'That's for you, you rebels;
the Rangers don't ever retreat !'

"The music frightened them away, but they were
hungry, and kept coming back. And of course they

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MARK TWAIN

got bolder and bolder, which is their way. It went
on for an hour, then the tired child went to sleep,
and it was pitiful to hear her moan and nestle,
and I couldn't do anything for her. All the time I
was laying for the wolves. They are in my line; I
have had experience. At last the boldest one ven-
tured within my lines, and I landed him among his
friends with some of his skull still on him, and they
did the rest. In the next hour I got a couple more,
and they went the way of the first one, down the
throats of the detachment. That satisfied the sur-
vivors, and they went away and left us in peace.

"We hadn't any more adventures, though I kept
awake all night and was ready. From midnight on
the child got very restless, and out of her head, and
moaned, and said, 'Water, water — thirsty'; and
now and then, 'Kiss me, Soldier'; and sometimes
she was in her fort and giving orders to her garrison;
and once she was in Spain, and thought her mother
was with her. People say a horse can't cry; but
they don't know, because we cry inside.

"It was an hour after sunup that I heard the boys
coming, and recognized the hoof -beats of Pomp and
Caesar and Jerry, old mates of mine; and a welcomer
sound there couldn't ever be.

"Buffalo Bill was in a horse-litter, with his leg
broken by a bullet, and Mongrel and Blake Haskins's
horse were doing the work. Buffalo Bill and Thorn-
dike had killed both of those toughs.

"When they got to us, and Buffalo Bill saw the
child lying there so white, he said, 'My God!' and
the sound of his voice brought her to herself, and

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A HORSE'S TALE

she gave a little cry of pleasure and struggled to
get up, but couldn't, and the soldiers gathered her
up like the tenderest women, and their eyes were
wet and they were not ashamed, when they saw her
arm dangling; and so were Buffalo Bill's, and when
they laid her in his arms he said, 'My darling, how
does this come?' and she said, 'We came to save
you, but I was tired, and couldn't keep awake, and
fell off and hurt myself, and couldn't get on again.'
'You came to save me, you dear little rat? It was
too lovely of you!' "Yes, and Soldier stood by me,
which you know he would, and protected me from
the wolves; and if he got a chance he kicked the life
out of some of them — for you know he would, BB.'
The sergeant said, 'He laid out three of them, sir,
and here's the bones to show for it.' 'He's a grand
horse,' said BB; 'he's the grandest horse that ever
was! and has saved your life, Lieutenant-General
Alison, and shall protect it the rest of his life — he's
yours for a kiss!' He got it, along with a passion of
delight, and he said, 'You are feeling better now,
little Spaniard — do you think you could blow the
advance?' She put up the bugle to do it, but he said
wait a minute first. Then he and the sergeant set
her arm and put it in splints, she wincing but not
whimpering; then we took up the march for home,
and that's the end of the tale; and I'm her horse.
Isn't she a brick, Shekels?"

"Brick? She's more than a brick, more than a
thousand bricks — she's a reptile!"

"It's a compliment out of your heart, Shekels.
God bless you for it!"

191

CHAPTER X

GENERAL ALISON AND DORCAS

TOO much company for her, Marse Tom. Be-
twixt you, and Shekels, and the Colonel's wife,
and the Cid— "

"The Cid? Oh, I remember— the raven."

" — and Mrs. Captain Marsh and Famine and
Pestilence the baby coyotes, and Sour-Mash and her
pups, and Sardanapalus and her kittens — hang these
names she gives the creatures, they warp my jaw —
and Potter: you — all sitting around in the house,
and Soldier Boy at the window the entire time, it's
a wonder to me she comes along as well as she does.
She— "

"You want her all to yourself, you stingy old
thing!"

"Marse Tom, you know better. It's too much
company. And then the idea of her receiving reports
all the time from her officers, and acting upon them,
and giving orders, the same as if she was well! It
ain't good for her, and the surgeon don't like it,
and tried to persuade her not to and couldn't; and
when he ordered her, she was that outraged and
indignant, and was very severe on him, and accused
him of insubordination, and said it didn't become
him to give orders to an officer of her rank. Well,
he saw he had excited her more and done more harm
than all the rest put together, so he was vexed at

192

A HORSE'S TALE

himself and wished he had kept still. Doctors don't
know much, and that's a fact. She's too much
interested in things — she ought to rest more. She's
all the time sending messages to BB, and to soldiers
and Injuns and whatnot, and to the animals.,,

"To the animals?"

"Yes, sir."

"Who carries them?"

"Sometimes Potter, but mostly it's Shekels."

"Now come! who can find fault with such pretty
make-believe as that?"

"But it ain't make-believe, Marse Tom. She does
send them."

Yes, I don't doubt that part of it."
Do you doubt they get them, sir?"
Certainly. Don't you ?"

No, sir. Animals talk to one another. I know
it perfectly well, Marse Tom, and I ain't saying it
by guess."

"What a curious superstition!"

"It ain't a superstition, Marse Tom. Look at
that Shekels — look at him, now. Is he listening, or
ain't he? Now you see! he's turned his head away.
It's because he was caught — caught in the act. I'll
ask you — could a Christian look any more ashamed
than what he looks now? — lay down! You see? he
was going to sneak out. Don't tell me, Marse Tom!
If animals don't talk, I miss my guess. And Shekels
is the worst. He goes and tells the animals every-
thing that happens in the officers' quarters; and if
he's short of facts, he invents them. He hasn't any
more principle than a blue jay; and as for morals,

i93

MARK TWAIN

he's empty. Look at him now; look at him grovel.
He knows what I am saying, and he knows it's the
truth. You see, yourself, that he can feel shame; it's
the only virtue he's got. It's wonderful how they find
out everything that's going on — the animals. They — ' '

"Do you really believe they do, Dorcas?''

"I don't only just believe it, Marse Tom, I know
it. Day before yesterday they knew something was
going to happen. They were that excited, and
whispering around together; why, anybody could see
that they — But my! I must get back to her, and
I haven't got to my errand yet."

"What is it, Dorcas?"

"Well, it's two or three things. One is, the doctor
don't salute when he comes . . . Now, Marse Tom,
it ain't anything to laugh at, and so —

"Well, then, forgive me; I didn't mean to laugh —
I got caught unprepared."

"You see, she don't want to hurt the doctor's
feelings, so she don't say anything to him about it;
but she is always polite, herself, and it hurts that
kind for people to be rude to them."

"I'll have that doctor hanged."

g ' Marse Tom, she don't want him hanged. She — "

"Well, then, I'll have him boiled in oil."

"But she don't want him boiled. I — "

"Oh, very well, very well, I only want to please
her; I'll have him skinned."

"Why, she don't want him skinned; it would
break her heart. Now—"

"Woman, this is perfectly unreasonable. What
in the nation does she want?"

194

A HORSE'S TALE

"Marse Tom, if you would only be a little patient,
and not fly off the handle at the least little thing.
Why, she only wants you to speak to him."

"Speak to him! Well, upon my word! All this
unseemly rage and row about such a — a — Dorcas,
I never saw you carry on like this before. You
have alarmed the sentry; he thinks I am being
assassinated; he thinks there's a mutiny, a revolt,
an insurrection; he—"

"Marse Tom, you are just putting on; you know
it perfectly well; I don't know what makes you act
like that — but you always did, even when you was
little, and you can't get over it, I reckon. Are you
over it now, Marse Tom?"

"Oh, well, yes; but it would try anybody to be
doing the best he could, offering every kindness he
could think of, only to have it rejected with con-
tumely and • . • Oh, well, let it go; it's no matter
— I'll talk to the doctor. Is that satisfactory, or
are you going to break out again?"

"Yes, sir, it is; and it's only right to talk to him,
too, because it's just as she says; she's trying to
keep up discipline in the Rangers, and this insubor-
dination of his is a bad example for them — now
ain't it so, Marse Tom?"

"Well, there is reason in it, I can't deny it; so
I will speak to him, though at bottom I think hang-
ing would be more lasting. What is the rest of your
errand, Dorcas?"

"Of course her room is Ranger headquarters now,
Marse Tom, while she's sick. Well, soldiers of the
cavalry and the dragoons that are off duty come

i9S

MARK TWAIN

and get her sentries to let them relieve them and
serve in their place. It's only out of affection, sir,
and because they know military honors please her,
and please the children too, for her sake; and they
don't bring their muskets; and so — "

"I've noticed them there, but didn't twig the idea.
They are standing guard, are they?"

"Yes, sir, and she is afraid you will reprove them
and hurt their feelings, if you see them there; so
she begs, if — if you don't mind coming in the back
way — "

"Bear me up, Dorcas; don't let me faint."

"There — sit up and behave, Marse Tom. You are
not going to faint; you are only pretending — you
used to act just so when you was little; it does seem
a long time for you to get grown up."

"Dorcas, the way the child is progressing, I shall
be out of my job before long — she'll have the whole
post in her hands. I must make a stand, I must
not go down without a struggle. These encroach-
ments. . . . Dorcas, what do you think she will
think of next?"

"Marse Tom, she don't mean any harm."

"Are you sure of it?"

"Yes, Marse Tom."

"You feel sure she has no ulterior designs?"

"I don't know what that is, Marse Tom, but I
know she hasn't."

"Very well, then, for the present I am satisfied.
What else have you come about?"

"I reckon I better tell you the whole thing first,
Marse Tom, then tell you what she wants. There's

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A HORSE'S TALE

been an emeute, as she calls it. It was before she
got back with BB. The officer of the day reported
it to her this morning. It happened at her fort.
There was a fuss betwixt Major-General Tommy
Drake and Lieutenant-Colonel Agnes Frisbie, and
he snatched her doll away, which is made of white
kid stuffed with sawdust, and tore every rag of its
clothes off, right before them all, and is under arrest,
and the charge is conduct un — "

4 'Yes, I know — conduct unbecoming an officer and
a gentleman — a plain case, too, it seems to me. This
is a serious matter. Well, what is her pleasure?"

"Well, Marse Tom, she has summoned a court-
martial, but the doctor don't think she is well enough
to preside over it, and she says there ain't anybody
competent but her, because there's a major-general
concerned; and so she — she — well, she says, would
you preside over it for her? . . . Marse Tom, sit up !
You ain't any more going to faint than Shekels is."

"Look here, Dorcas, go along back, and be tactful.
Be persuasive; don't fret her; tell her it's all right,
the matter is in my hands, but it isn't good form to
hurry so grave a matter as this. Explain to her that
we have to go by precedent, and that I believe this
one to be new. In fact, you can say I know that
nothing just like it has happened in our army, there-
fore I must be guided by European precedents, and
must go cautiously and examine them carefully. Tell
her not to be impatient, it will take me several days,
but it will all come out right, and I will come over
and report progress as I go along. Do you get the
idea, Dorcas?"

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MARK TWAIN

"I don't know as I do, sir."

"Well, it's this. You see, it won't ever do for me,
a brigadier in the regular army, to preside over that
infant court-martial — there isn't any precedent for
it, don't you see. Very well. I will go on examining
authorities and reporting progress until she is well
enough to get me out of this scrape by presiding
herself. Do you get it now?"

"Oh, yes, sir, I get it, and it's good, I'll go and fix
it with her. Lay down! and stay where you are."

"Why, what harm is he doing?"

"Oh, it ain't any harm, but it just vexes me to
see him act so."

"What was he doing?"

"Can't you see, and him in such a sweat? He
was starting out to spread it all over the post. Now
I reckon you won't deny, any more, that they go and
tell everything they hear, now that you've seen it
with yo' own eyes."

"Well, I don't like to acknowledge it, Dorcas, but
I don't see how I can consistently stick to my doubts
in the face of such overwhelming proof as this dog
is furnishing."

"There, now, you've got in yo' right mind at last!
I wonder you can be so stubborn, Marse Tom. But
you always was, even when you was little. I'm
going now."

"Look here; tell her that in view of the delay,
it is my judgment that she ought to enlarge the
accused on his parole."

"Yes, sir, I'll tell her. Marse Tom?"

"Well?"

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A HORSE'S TALE

"She can't get to Soldier Boy, and he stands there
all the time, down in the mouth and lonesome; and
she says will you shake hands with him and comfort
him ? Everybody does. ' '

"It's a curious kind of lonesomeness; but, all
right, I will."

199

CHAPTER XI

SEVERAL MONTHS LATER. ANTONIO AND THORNDIKE

THORNDIKE, isn't that Plug you're riding
an asset of the scrap you and Buffalo Bill
had with the late Blake Haskins and his pal a few
months back ?"

"Yes, this is Mongrel — and not a half -bad horse,
either.' '

"I've noticed he keeps up his lick first-rate. Say
— isn't it a gaudy morning?"

"Right you are!"

"Thorndike, it's Andalusian! and when that's said,
all's said."

"Andalusian and Oregonian, Antonio! Put it that
way, and you have my vote. Being a native up
there, I know. You being Andalusian-born — "

"Can speak with authority for that patch of para-
dise? Well, I can. Like the Don! like Sancho!
This is the correct Andalusian dawn now — crisp,
fresh, dewy, fragrant, pungent — '

>>

" 'What though the spicy breezes
Blow soft o'er Ceylon's isle — ■

— git up, you old cow! stumbling like that when
we've just been praising you! out on a scout and
can't live up to the honor any better than that?
Antonio, how long have you been out here in the
Plains and the Rockies?"

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A HORSE'S TALE

"More than thirteen years."

"It's a long time. Don't you ever get homesick?"

"Not till now."

"Why now? — after such a long cure."

"These preparations of the retiring commandant's
have started it up."

1 ' Of course. It 's natural. ' '

"It keeps me thinking about Spain. I know the
region where the Seventh's child's aunt lives; I
know all the lovely country for miles around; I'll
bet I've seen her aunt's villa many a time; I'll bet
I've been in it in those pleasant old times when I
was a Spanish gentleman."

"They say the child is wild to see Spain."

"It's so; I know it from what I hear."

"Haven't you talked with her about it?"

"No. I've avoided it. I should soon be as wild
as she is. That would not be comfortable."

"I wish I was going, Antonio. There's two things
I'd give a lot to see. One's a railroad."

"She'll see one when she strikes Missouri."

"The other's a bull-fight."

"I've seen lots of them ; I wish I could see another. "

"I don't know anything about it, except in a
mixed-up, foggy way, Antonio, but I know enough
to know it's grand sport."

' ' The grandest in the world ! There's no other sport
that begins with it. I'll tell you what I've seen, then
you can judge. It was my first, and it's as vivid to
me now as it was when I saw it. It was a Sunday
afternoon, and beautiful weather, and my uncle, the
priest, took me as a reward for being a good boy and

201

MARK TWAIN

because of my own accord and without anybody ask-
ing me I had bankrupted my savings-box and given
the money to a mission that was civilizing the Chinese
and sweetening their lives and softening their hearts
with the gentle teachings of our religion, and I wish
you could have seen what we saw that day, Thorndike*

"The amphitheater was packed, from the bull-ring
to the highest row — twelve thousand people in one cir-
cling mass, one slanting, solid mass — royalties, nobles,
clergy, ladies, gentlemen, state officials, generals,
admirals, soldiers, sailors, lawyers, thieves, merchants,
brokers, cooks, housemaids, scullery-maids, doubtful
women, dudes, gamblers, beggars, loafers, tramps,
American ladies, gentlemen, preachers, English ladies,
gentlemen, preachers, German ditto, French ditto, and
so on and so on, all the world represented: Spaniards
to admire and praise, foreigners to enjoy and go home
and find fault — there they were, one solid, sloping,
circling sweep of rippling and flashing color under
the downpour of the summer sun — just a garden, a
gaudy, gorgeous flower-garden ! Children munching
oranges, six thousand fans fluttering and glimmer-
ing, everybody happy, everybody chatting gayly
with their intimates, lovely girl-faces smiling recog-
nition and salutation to other lovely girl-faces, gray
old ladies and gentlemen dealing in the like exchanges
with each other — ah, such a picture of cheery con-
tentment and glad anticipation! not a mean spirit,
nor a sordid soul, nor a sad heart there — ah, Thorn-
dike, I wish I could see it again.

"Suddenly, the martial note of a bugle cleaves
the hum and murmur — clear the ring!

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A HORSE'S TALE

"They clear it. The great gate is flung open, and
the procession marches in, splendidly costumed and
glittering : the marshals of the day, then the picadores
on horseback, then the matadores on foot, each
surrounded by his quadrille of chulos. They march
to the box of the city fathers, and formally salute.
The key is thrown, the bull-gate is unlocked. An-
other bugle blast — the gate flies open, the bull
plunges in, furious, trembling, blinking in the blind-
ing light, and stands there, a magnificent creature,
center of those multitudinous and admiring eyes,
brave, ready for battle, his attitude a challenge. He
sees his enemy: horsemen sitting motionless, with
long spears in rest, upon blindfolded broken-down
nags, lean and starved, fit only for sport and
sacrifice, then the carrion-heap.

"The bull makes a rush, with murder in his eye,
but a picador meets him with a spear-thrust in the
shoulder. He flinches with the pain, and the picador
skips out of danger. A burst of applause for the
picador, hisses for the bull. Some shout "Cow!"
at the bull, and call him offensive names. But he
is not listening to them, he is there for business; he
is not minding the cloak-bearers that come fluttering
around to confuse him; he chases this way, he chases
that way, and hither and yon, scattering the nimble
banderillos in every direction like a spray, and
receiving their maddening darts in his neck as they
dodge and fly — oh, but it's a lively spectacle, and
brings down the house! Ah, you should hear the
thundering roar that goes up when the game is at
its wildest and brilliant things are done !

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MARK TWAIN

"Oh, that first bull, that day, was great f From
the moment the spirit of war rose to flood-tide in
him and he got down to his work, he began to do
wonders. He tore his way through his persecutors,
flinging one of them clear over the parapet; he
bowled a horse and his rider down, and plunged
straight for the next, got home with his horns,
wounding both horse and man; on again, here and
there and this way and that; and one after another
he tore the bowels out of two horses so that they
gushed to the ground, and ripped a third one so
badly that although they rushed him to cover and
shoved his bowels back and stuffed the rents with
tow and rode him against the bull again, he couldn't
make the trip; he tried to gallop, under the spur,
but soon reeled and tottered and fell, all in a heap.
For a while, that bull-ring was the most thrilling and
glorious and inspiring sight that ever was seen. The
bull absolutely cleared it, and stood there alone!
monarch of the place. The people went mad for
pride in him, and joy and delight, and you couldn't
hear yourself think, for the roar and boom and crash
of applause."

"Antonio, it carries me clear out of myself just
to hear you tell it; it must have been perfectly
splendid. If I live, I'll see a bull-fight yet before I
die. Did they kill him?"

"Oh yes; that is what the bull is for. They tired
him out, and got him at last. He kept rushing the
matador, who always slipped smartly and gracefully
aside in time, waiting for a sure chance; and at last
it came; the bull made a deadly plunge for him —

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A HORSE'S TALE

was avoided neatly, and as he sped by, the long
sword glided silently into him, between left shoulder
and spine — in and in, to the hilt. He crumpled
down, dying."

"Ah, Antonio, it is the noblest sport that ever
was. I would give a year of my life to see it. Is the
bull always killed ?"

"Yes. Sometimes a bull is timid, finding himself
in so strange a place, and he stands trembling, or
tries to retreat. Then everybody despises him for
his cowardice and wants him punished and made
ridiculous; so they hough him from behind, and it
is the funniest thing in the world to see him hobbling
around on his severed legs; the whole vast house
goes into hurricanes of laughter over it; I have
laughed till the tears ran down my cheeks to see it.
When he has furnished all the sport he can, he is
not any longer useful, and is killed."

"Well, it is perfectly grand, Antonio, perfectly
beautiful. Burning a nigger don't begin."

205

it
it
it-
it TK

CHAPTER XII

MONGREL AND THE OTHER HORSE

SAGE-BRUSH, you have been listening?"
"Yes."

Isn't it strange?"

Well, no, Mongrel, I don't know that it is."
Why don't you?"

I've seen a good many human beings in my time.
They are created as they are; they cannot help it.
They are only brutal because that is their make;
brutes would be brutal if it was their make."

"To me, Sage-Brush, man is most strange and
unaccountable. Why should he treat dumb animals
that way when they are not doing any harm?"

"Man is not always like that, Mongrel; he is
kind enough when he is not excited by religion."
"Is the bull-fight a religious service?"
"I think so. I have heard so. It is held on Sun-
day."

(A reflective pause, lasting some moments.) Then:
"When we die, Sage-Brush, do we go to heaven
and dwell with man?"

"My father thought not. He believed we do not
have to go there unless we deserve it."

206

Part II
IN SPAIN

CHAPTER XIII

GENERAL ALISON TO HIS MOTHER

IT was a prodigious trip, but delightful, of course,
through the Rockies and the Black Hills and the
mighty sweep of the Great Plains to civilization and
the Missouri border — where the railroading began and
the delightfulness ended. But no one is the worse
for the journey; certainly not Cathy, nor Dorcas,
nor Soldier Boy ; and as for me, I am not complaining.

Spain is all that Cathy had pictured it — and more,
she says. She is in a fury of delight, the maddest
little animal that ever was, and all for joy. She
thinks she remembers Spain, but that is not very
likely, I suppose. The two — Mercedes and Cathy —
devour each other. It is a rapture of love, and beau-
tiful to see. It is Spanish; that describes it. Will
this be a short visit?

No. It will be permanent. Cathy has elected to
abide with Spain and her aunt. Dorcas says she
(Dorcas) foresaw that this would happen; and also
says that she wanted it to happen, and says the
child's own country is the right place for her, and
that she ought not to have been sent to me, I ought
to have gone to her. I thought it insane to take
Soldier Boy to Spain, but it was well that I yielded
to Cathy's pleadings; if he had been left behind,
half of her heart would have remained with him, and
she would not have been contented. As it is, every-

209

MARK TWAIN

thing has fallen out for the best, and we are all
satisfied and comfortable. It may be that Dorcas
and I will see America again some day; but also it
is a case of maybe not.

We left the post in the early morning. It was an
affecting time. The women cried over Cathy, so did
even those stern warriors the Rocky Mountain
Rangers; Shekels was there, and the Cid, and Sar-
danapaius, and Potter, and Mongrel, and Sour-Mash,
Famine, and Pestilence, and Cathy kissed them all
and wept; details of the several arms of the garrison
were present to represent the rest, and say good-by
and God bless you for all the soldiery; and there
was a special squad from the Seventh, with the oldest
veteran at its head, to speed the Seventh's Child
with grand honors and impressive ceremonies; and
the veteran had a touching speech by heart, and put
up his hand in salute and tried to say it, but his lips
trembled and his voice broke, but Cathy bent down
from the saddle and kissed him on the mouth and
turned his defeat to victory, and a cheer went up.

The next act closed the ceremonies, and was a
moving surprise. It may be that you have dis-
covered, before this, that the rigors of military law
and custom melt insensibly away and disappear when
a soldier or a regiment or the garrison wants to do
something that will please Cathy. The bands con-
ceived the idea of stirring her soldierly heart with a
farewell which would remain in her memory always,
beautiful and unfading, and bring back the past and
its love for her whenever she should think of it ; so
they got their project placed before General Burnaby,

210

A HORSE'S TALE

my successor, who is Cathy's newest slave, and in
spite of poverty of precedents they got his per-
mission. The bands knew the child's favorite
military airs. By this hint you know what is coming,
but Cathy didn't. She was asked to sound the
"reveille," which she did.

REVEILLE

Quick.

With the last note the bands burst out with a
crash: and woke the mountains with the "Star-
Spangled Banner" in a way to make a body's heart
swell and thump and his hair rise ! It was enough to
break a person all up, to see Cathy's radiant face
shining out through her gladness and tears. By
request she blew the "assembly," now. . . .

THE ASSEMBLY

. . . Then the bands thundered in, with "Rally
round the flag, boys, rally once again!" Next, she
blew another call ("to the Standard") . . .

211

Quick time.

MARK TWAIN

TO THE STANDARD

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. . . and the bands responded with "When we
were marching through Georgia/' Straightway she
sounded "boots and saddles,' ' that thrilling and
most expediting call. . . .

BOOTS AND SADDLES

Quick.

i

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gz^ar— F=B

. . . and the bands could hardly hold in for the
final note; then they turned their whole strength
loose on "Tramp, tramp, tramp, the boys are march-
ing, " and everybody's excitement rose to blood-heat.

Now an impressive pause — then the bugle sang
"Taps" — translatable, this time, into "Good-by,
and God keep us all!" for taps is the soldier's nightly
release from duty, and farewell: plaintive, sweet,
pathetic, for the morning is never sure, for him;
always it is possible that he is hearing it for the last

time

• • • •

212

A HORSE'S TALE

TAPS

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. . . Then the bands turned their instruments
towards Cathy and burst in with that rollicking
frenzy of a tune, "Oh, we'll all get blind drunk
when Johnny comes marching home — yes, well all
get blind drunk when Johnny comes marching home I"
and followed it instantly with " Dixie/ ' that anti-
dote for melancholy, merriest and gladdest of all
military music on any side of the ocean — and that
was the end. And so — farewell !

I wish you could have been there to see it all, hear
it all, and feel it : and get yourself blown away with
the hurricane huzza that swept the place as a finish.

When we rode away, our main body had already
been on the road an hour or two — I speak of our
camp equipage; but we didn't move off alone: when
Cathy blew the " advance' ' the Rangers cantered
out in column of fours, and gave us escort, and were
joined by White Cloud and Thunder-Bird in all then-
gaudy bravery, and by Buffalo Bill and four subor-
dinate scouts. Three miles away, in the Plains, the
Lieutenant-General halted, sat her horse like a
military statue, the bugle at her lips, and put the
Rangers through the evolutions for half an hour;
and finally, when she blew the "charge," she led
it herself. "Not for the last time," she said, and
got a cheer, and we said good-by all around, and
faced eastward and rode away.

213

MARK TWAIN

Postscript. A Day Later. Soldier Boy was stolen
last night. Cathy is almost beside herself, and we
cannot comfort her. Mercedes and I are not much
alarmed about the horse, although this part of Spain
is in something of a turmoil, politically, at present,
and there is a good deal of lawlessness. In ordinary
times the thief and the horse would soon be captured.
We shall have them before long, I think.

214

CHAPTER XIV

SOLDIER BOY — TO HIMSELF

IT is five months. Or is it six? My troubles have
clouded my memory. I think I have been all
over this land, from end to end, and now I am back
again since day before yesterday, to that city which
we passed through, that last day of our long journey,
and which is near her country home. I am a totter-
ing ruin and my eyes are dim, but I recognized it.
If she could see me she would know me and sound my
call. I wish I could hear it once more; it would
revive me, it would bring back her face and the
mountains and the free life, and I would come — if I
were dying I would come! She would not know me,
looking as I do, but she would know me by my
star. But she will never see me, for they do not
let me out of this shabby stable — a foul and mis-
erable place, with most two wrecks like myself for
company.

How many times have I changed hands? I think
it is twelve times — I cannot remember; and each
time it was down a step lower, and each time I got
a harder master. They have been cruel, every one;
they have worked me night and day in degraded
employments, and beaten me; they have fed me ill
and some days not at all. And so I am but bones,
now, with a rough and frowsy skin humped and
cornered upon my shrunken body — that skin which

215

MARK TWAIN

was once so glossy, that skin which she loved to
stroke with her hand. I was the pride of the moun-
tains and the Great Plains; now I am a scarecrow
and despised. These piteous wrecks that are my
comrades here say we have reached the bottom of
the scale, the final humiliation; they say that when
a horse is no longer worth the weeds and discarded
rubbish they feed to him, they sell him to the bull-
ring for a glass of brandy, to make sport for the
people and perish for their pleasure.

To die — that does not disturb me; we of the service
never care for death. But if I could see her once
more! if I could hear her bugle sing again and say,
"It is I, Soldier— comer

216

CHAPTER XV

GENERAL ALISON TO MRS. DRAKE, THE

colonel's WIFE

TO return, now, to where I was, and tell you the
rest. We shall never know how she came to be
there; there is no way to account for it. She was
always watching for black and shiny and spirited
horses — watching, hoping, despairing, hoping again;
always giving chase and sounding her call, upon the
meagerest chance of a response, and breaking her
heart over the disappointment; always inquiring,
always interested in sales-stables and horse accumu-
lations in general. How she got there must remain
a mystery.

At the point which I had reached in a preceding
paragraph of this account, the situation was as fol-
lows: two horses lay dying; the bull had scattered
his persecutors for the moment, and stood raging,
panting, pawing the dust in clouds over his back,
when the man that had been wounded returned to
the ring on a remount, a poor blindfolded wreck
that yet had something ironically military about his
bearing — and the next moment the bull had ripped
him open and his bowels were dragging upon the
ground and the bull was charging his swarm of pests
again. Then came pealing through the air a bugle-
call that froze my blood — "It is I, Soldier — comer9
I turned; Cathy was flying down through the massed

217

MARK TWAIN

people; she cleared the parapet at a bound, and sped
towards that riderless horse, who staggered forward
towards the remembered sound; but his strength
failed, and he fell at her feet, she lavishing kisses
upon him and sobbing, the house rising with one
impulse, and white with horror! Before help could
reach her the bull was back again —

She was never conscious again in life. We bore
her home, all mangled and drenched in blood, and
knelt by her and listened to her broken and wander-
ing words, and prayed for her passing spirit, and there
was no comfort — nor ever will be, I think. But she
was happy, for she was far away under another sky,
and comrading again with her Rangers, and her
animal friends, and the soldiers. Their names fell
softly and caressingly from her lips, one by one, with
pauses between. She was not in pain, but lay with
closed eyes, vacantly murmuring, as one who dreams.
Sometimes she smiled, saying nothing; sometimes
she smiled when she uttered a name — such as Shekels,
or BB, or Potter. Sometimes she was at her fort,
issuing commands ; sometimes she was careering over
the plains at the head of her men; sometimes she
was training her horse; once she said, reprovingly,
"You are giving me the wrong foot; give me the
left — don't you know it is good-by?"

After this, she lay silent some time; the end was
near. By and by she murmured, "Tired • • . sleepy
. . • take Cathy, mamma." Then, "Kiss me,
Soldier." For a little time she lay so still that
we were doubtful if she breathed. Then she put
out her hand and began to feel gropingly about;

218

A HORSE'S TALE

then said, "I cannot find it; blow 'taps.'"* It
was the end.

TAPS

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2I<5

EXTRACT FROM

CAPTAIN STORMFIELD'S

VISIT TO HEAVEN

EXTRACT FROM

CAPTAIN STORMFIELD'S

VISIT TO HEAVEN*

CHAPTER I

WELL, when I had been dead about thirty years,
I begun to get a little anxious. Mind you, I
had been whizzing through space all that time, like
a comet. Like a comet ! Why, Peters, I laid over the
lot of them! Of course there warn't any of them
going my way, as a steady thing, you know, because
they travel in a long circle like the loop of a lasso,
whereas I was pointed as straight as a dart for the
Hereafter; but I happened on one every now and
then that was going my way for an hour or so, and
then we had a bit of a brush together. But it was
generally pretty one-sided, because I sailed by them
the same as if they were standing still. An ordinary
comet don't make more than about 200,000 miles
a minute. Of course when I came across one of that
sort — like Encke's and Halley's comets, for instance
— it warn't anything but just a flash and a vanish,
you see. You couldn't rightly call it a race. It was
as if the comet was a gravel-train and I was a tele-
graph despatch. But after I got outside of our

• Copyright, 1909, by Harper & Brothers.

223

MARK TWAIN

astronomical system, I used to flush a comet occasion-
ally that was something like. We haven't got any
such comets — ours don't begin. One night I was
swinging along at a good round gait, everything
taut and trim, and the wind in my favor — I judged
I was going about a million miles a minute — it might
have been more, it couldn't have been less — when I
flushed a most uncommonly big one about three
points off my starboard bow. By his stern lights I
judged he was bearing about northeast-and-by-north-
half-east. Well, it was so near my course that I
wouldn't throw away the chance; so I fell off a
point, steadied my helm, and went for him. You
should have heard me whiz, and seen the electric
fur fly!' In about a minute and a half I was fringed
out with an electrical nimbus that flamed around
for miles and miles and lit up all space like broad
day. The comet was burning blue in the distance,
like a sickly torch, when I first sighted him, but he
begun to grow bigger and bigger as I crept up on
him. I slipped up on him so fast that when I had
gone about 150,000,000 miles I was close enough to
be swallowed up in the phosphorescent glory of his
wake, and I couldn't see anything for the glare.
Thinks I, it won't do to run into him, so I shunted
to one side and tore along. By and by I closed up
abreast of his tail. Do you know what it was like?
It was like a gnat closing up on the continent of
America. I forged along. By and by I had sailed
along his coast for a little upwards of a hundred and
fifty million miles, and then I could see by the shape
of him that I hadn't even got up to his waistband

224

CAPTAIN STORMFIELD'S VISIT TO HEAVEN

yet. Why, Peters, we don't know anything about
comets, down. here. If you want to see comets that
are comets, you've got to go outside of our solar
system — where there's room for them, you under-
stand. My friend, I've seen comets out there that
couldn't even lay down inside the orbits of our
noblest comets without their tails hanging over.

Well, I boomed along another hundred and fifty
million miles, and got up abreast his shoulder, as
you may say. I was feeling pretty fine, I tell you;
but just then I noticed the officer of the deck come
to the side and hoist his glass in my direction.
Straight off I heard him sing out —

"Below there, ahoy! Shake her up, shake her
up! Heave on a hundred million billion tons of
brimstone !"

"Ay— ay, sir!"

"Pipe the stabboard watch! All hands on deck!"

"Ay— ay, sir I"'

"Send two hundred thousand million men aloft
to shake out royals and sky-scrapers !"

"Ay— ay, sirr

"Hand the stunsls! Hang out every rag youVe
got! Clothe her from stem to rudder-post!"

"Ay— ay, sir!"

In about a second I begun to see I'd woke up a
pretty ugly customer, Peters. In less than ten
seconds that comet was just a blazing cloud of red-
hot canvas. It was piled up into the heavens clean
out of sight — the old thing seemed to swell out and
occupy all space; the sulphur smoke from the fur-
naces— oh, well, nobody can describe the way it

225

MARK TWAIN

rolled and tumbled up into the skies, and nobody-
can half describe the way it smelt. Neither can
anybody begin to describe the way that monstrous
craft begun to crash along. And such another
powwow — thousands of bo's'n's whistles screaming
at once, and a crew like the populations of a hundred
thousand worlds like ours all swearing at once.
Well, I never heard the like of it before.

We roared and thundered along side by side, both
doing our level best, because I'd never struck a
comet before that could lay over me, and so I was
bound to beat this one or break something. I judged
I had some reputation in space, and I calculated to
keep it. I noticed I wasn't gaining as fast, now,
as I was before, but still I was gaining. There was
a power of excitement on board the comet. Upwards
of a hundred billion passengers swarmed up from
below and rushed to the side and begun to bet on
the race. Of course this careened her and damaged
her speed. My, but wasn't the mate mad! He
jumped at that crowd, with his trumpet in his hand,
and sung out —

"Amidships! amidships, you !* or I'll brain

the last idiot of you!"

Well, sir, I gained and gained, little by little, till
at last I went skimming sweetly by the magnificent
old conflagration's nose. By this time the captain
of the comet had been rousted out, and he stood
there in the red glare for'ard, by the mate, in his
shirtsleeves and slippers, his hair all rats' nests

* The captain could not remember what this word was. He said
it was in a foreign tongue.

226

CAPTAIN STORMFIELD'S VISIT TO HEAVEN

and one suspender hanging, and how sick those two
men did look! I just simply couldn't help putting
my thumb to my nose as I glided away and singing
out:

"Ta-ta! ta-ta! Any word to send to your family ?"
Peters, it was a mistake. Yes, sir, I've often
regretted that — it was a mistake. You see, the
captain had given up the race, but that remark
was too tedious for him — he couldn't stand it. He
turned to the mate, and says he —

Have we got brimstone enough of our own to
make the trip?
"Yes, sir.

"nave we {
"Sure?"

"Yes, sir — more than enough."

"How much have we got in cargo for Satan?"

"Eighteen hundred thousand billion quintillions
of kazarks."

"Very well, then, let his boarders freeze till the
next comet comes. Lighten ship! Lively, now,
lively, men ! Heave the whole cargo overboard!"

Peters, look me in the eye, and be calm. I found
out, over there, that a kazark is exactly the bulk
of a hundred and sixty-nine worlds like ours! They
hove all that load overboard. When it fell it wiped
out a considerable raft of stars just as clean as if
they'd been candles and somebody blowed them out.
As for the race, that was at an end. The minute
she was lightened the comet swung along by me the
same as if I was anchored. The captain stood on
the stern, by the after-davits, and put his thumb to
his nose and sung out —

227

MARK TWAIN

"Ta-ta! ta-ta! Maybe you've got some message
to send your friends in the Everlasting Tropics !"

Then he hove up his other suspender and started
for'ard, and inside of three-quarters of an hour his
craft was only a pale torch again in the distance.
Yes, it was a mistake, Peters — that remark of mine.
I don't reckon 111 ever get over being sorry about it.
I'd V beat the bully of the firmament if I'd kept
my mouth shut.

But I've wandered a little off the track of my tale;
I'll get back on my course again. Now you see
what kind of speed I was making. So, as I said,
when I had been tearing along this way about thirty
years I begun to get uneasy. Oh, it was pleasant
enough, with a good deal to find out, but then it was
kind of lonesome, you know. Besides, I wanted to
get somewhere. I hadn't shipped with the idea of
cruising forever. First off, I liked the delay, because
I judged I was going to fetch up in pretty warm
quarters when I got through; but towards the last
I begun to feel that I'd rather go to — well, most
any place, so as to finish up the uncertainty.

Well, one night — it was always night, except when
I was rushing by some star that was occupying the
whole universe with its fire and its glare — light
enough then, of course, but I necessarily left it behind
in a minute or two and plunged into a solid week of
darkness again. The stars ain't so close together as
they look to be. Where was I? Oh yes; one night
I was sailing along, when I discovered a tremendous
long row of blinking lights away on the horizon ahead.

228

CAPTAIN STORMFIELD'S VISIT TO HEAVEN

As I approached, they begun to tower and swell and
look like mighty furnaces. Says I to myself —

"By George, I've arrived at last — and at the wrong
place, just as I expected !"

Then I fainted. I don't know how long I was
insensible, but it must have been a good while, for,
when I came to, the darkness was all gone and there
was the loveliest sunshine and the balmiest, fra-
grantest air in its place. And there was such a mar-
velous world spread out before me — such a glowing,
beautiful, bewitching country. The things I took
for furnaces were gates, miles high, made all of flash-
ing jewels, and they pierced a wall of solid gold that
you couldn't see the top of, nor yet the end of, in
either direction. I was pointed straight for one of
these gates, and a-coming like a house afire. Now
I noticed that the skies were black with millions of
people, pointed for those gates. What a roar they
made, rushing through the air! The ground was as
thick as ants with people, too — billions of them,
I judge.

I lit. I drifted up to a gate with a swarm of people,
and when it was my turn the head clerk says, in a
businesslike way —

4 'Well, quick! Where are you from?"

4 'San Francisco," says I.
* ' ' San Fran — what?79 says he.

4 'San Francisco."

He scratched his head and looked puzzled, then
he says —

"Is it a planet?"

By George, Peters, think of it! "Planet?" says

229

MARK TWAIN

I; "it's a city. And moreover, it's one of the
biggest and finest and — "

"There, there!" says he, "no time here for con-
versation. We don't deal in cities here. Where are
you from in a general way?"

"Oh," I says, "I beg your pardon. Put me down
for California."

I had him again, Peters! He puzzled a second,
then he says, sharp and irritable —

"I don't know any such planet — is it a constella-
tion?"

"Oh, my goodness!" says I. "Constellation, says
you? No— it's a State."

"Man, we don't deal in States here. Will you tell
me where you are from in general — at large, don't
you understand?"

"Oh, now I get your idea," I says. "I'm from
America, — the United States of America."

Peters, do you know I had him again? If I hadn't
I'm a clam! His face was as blank as a target after
a militia shooting-match. He turned to an under
clerk and says —

' ' Where is America ? What is America V *

The under clerk answered up prompt and says —

"There ain't any such orb."

"Orb?" says I. "Why, what are you talking
about, young man? It ain't an orb; it's a country;
it's a continent. Columbus discovered it; I reckon
likely you've heard of hint, anyway. America —
why, sir, America — "

"Silence!" says the head clerk. "Once for all,
where — are — yon— from?"

230

CAPTAIN STORMFIELD'S VISIT TO HEAVEN

"Well," says I, "I don't know anything more to
say — unless I lump things, and just say I'm from
the world."

"Ah," says he, brightening up, "now that's some-
thinglike! What world?"

Peters, he had me, that time. I looked at him,
puzzled, he looked at me, worried. Then he burst
out —

"Come, come, what world?"

Says I, "Why, the world, of course."

"The world!" he says. "H'm! there's billions of
them! . • . Next!"

That meant for me to stand aside. I done so, and
a sky-blue man with seven heads and only one leg
hopped into my place. I took a walk. It just
occurred to me, then, that all the myriads I had
seen swarming to that gate, up to this time, were
just like that creature. I tried to run across some-
body I was acquainted with, but they were out of
acquaintances of mine just then. So I thought
the thing all over and finally sidled back there
pretty meek and feeling rather stumped, as you may
say.

"Well?" said the head clerk.

"Well, sir," I says, pretty humble, "I don't seem
to make out which world it is I'm from. But you
may know it from this — it's the one the Saviour
saved."

He bent his head at the Name. Then he says,
gently —

"The worlds He has saved are like to the gates of
heaven in number — none can count them. What

231

MARK TWAIN

astronomical system is your world in? — perhaps that
may assist."

"It's the one that has the sun in it — and the moon
— and Mars" — he shook his head at each name —
hadn't ever heard of them, you see — "and Neptune
— and Uranus — and Jupiter — "

4 1 Hold on !" says he — ' ' hold on a minute ! Jupiter
. . . Jupiter . . . Seems to me we had a man from
there eight or nine hundred years ago — but people
from that system very seldom enter by this gate."
All of a sudden he begun to look me so straight in the
eye that I thought he was going to bore through me.
Then he says, very deliberate, "Did you come
straight here from your system?"

"Yes, sir," I says — but I blushed the least little
bit in the world when I said it.

He looked at me very stern, and says —

"That is not true; and this is not the place for
prevarication. You wandered from your course.
How did that happen?"

Says I, blushing again —

"I'm sorry, and I take back what I said, and
confess. I raced a little with a comet one day — only
just the least little bit — only the tiniest lit — "

"So — so," says he — and without any sugar in
his voice to speak of.

I went on, and says —

"But I only fell off just a bare point, and I went
right back on my course again the minute the race
was over."

"No matter — that divergence has made all this
trouble. It has brought you to a gate that is billions

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CAPTAIN STORMFIELD'S VISIT TO HEAVEN

of leagues from the right one. If you had gone to
your own gate they would have known all about
your world at once and there would have been no
delay. But we will try to accommodate you." He
turned to an under clerk and says —

"What system is Jupiter in?"

"I don't remember, sir, but I think there is such
a planet in one of the little new systems away out
in one of the thinly worlded corners of the universe.
I will see."

He got a balloon and sailed up and up and up, in
front of a map that was as big as Rhode Island. He
went on up till he was out of sight, and by and by
he came down and got something to eat and went
up again. To cut a long story short, he kept on
doing this for a day or two, and finally he came down
and said he thought he had found that solar system,
but it might be fly-specks. So he got a microscope
and went back. It turned out better than he feared.
He had rousted out our system, sure enough. He
got me to describe our planet and its distance from
the sun, and then he says to his chief —

"Oh, I know the one he means, now, sir. It is on
the map. It is called the Wart."

"Says I to myself, "Young man, it wouldn't be
wholesome for you to go down there and call it the
Wart."

Well, they let me in, then, and told me I was safe
forever and wouldn't have any more trouble.

Then they turned from me and went on with their
work, the same as if they considered my case all
complete and shipshape. I was a good deal surprised

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MARK TWAIN

at this, but I was diffident about speaking up and
reminding them. I did so hate to do it, you know;
it seemed a pity to bother them, they had so much
on their hands. Twice I thought I would give up
and let the thing go; so twice I started to leave, but
immediately I thought what a figure I should cut
stepping out amongst the redeemed in such a rig,
and that made me hang back and come to anchor
again. People got to eying me — clerks, you know —
wondering why I didn't get under way. I couldn't
stand this long — it was too uncomfortable. So at
last I plucked up courage and tipped the head clerk
a signal. He says —

1 ■ What ! you here yet ? What's wanting ?"

Says I, in a low voice and very confidential, making
a trumpet with my hands at his ear —

"I beg pardon, and you mustn't mind my remind-
ing you, and seeming to meddle, but hain't you for-
got something?"

He studied a second, and says —

"Forgot something? . . . No, not that I know of. "

"Think," says I.

He thought. Then he says —

"No, I can't seem to have forgot anything. What
is it?"

"Look at me," says I, "look me all over."

He done it.

"Well?" says he.

"Well," says I, "you don't notice anything? If
I branched out amongst the elect looking like this,
wouldn't I attract considerable attention? — wouldn't
I be a little conspicuous?"

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CAPTAIN STORMFIELD'S VISIT TO HEAVEN

"Well," he says, "I don't see anything the mat-
ter. What do you lack?"

"Lack! Why, I lack my harp, and my wreath,
and my halo, and my hymn-book, and my palm
branch — I lack everything that a body naturally
requires up here, my friend."

Puzzled? Peters, he was the worst puzzled man
you ever saw. Finally he says —

"Well, you seem to be a curiosity every way a
body takes you. I never heard of these things before. ' '

I looked at the man awhile in solid astonishment;
then I says —

"Now, I hope you don't take it as an offence, for
I don't mean any, but really, for a man that has been
in the Kingdom as long as I reckon you have, you
do seem to know powerful little about its customs."

"Its customs!" says he. "Heaven is a large place,
good friend. Large empires have many and diverse
customs. Even small dominions have, as you doubt-
less know by what you have seen of the matter on a
small scale in the Wart. How can you imagine I
could ever learn the varied customs of the countless
kingdoms of heaven? It makes my head ache to
think of it. I know the customs that prevail in
those portions inhabited by peoples that are ap-
pointed to enter by my own gate — and hark ye,
that is quite enough knowledge for one individual
to try to pack into his head in the thirty-seven
millions of years I have devoted night and day to
that study. But the idea of learning the customs of
the whole appalling expanse of heaven — O man, how
insanely you talk! Now I don't doubt that this

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MARK TWAIN

odd costume you talk about is the fashion in that
district of heaven you belong to, but you won't be
conspicuous in this section without it."

I felt all right, if that was the case, so I bade
him good-day and left. All day I walked towards
the far end of a prodigious hall of the office, hoping
to come out into heaven any moment, but it was a
mistake. That hall was built on the general heavenly
plan — it naturally couldn't be small. At last I got
so tired I couldn't go any farther; so I sat down
to rest, and begun to tackle the queerest sort of
strangers and ask for information, but I didn't get
any; they couldn't understand my language, and I
could not understand theirs. I got dreadfully lone-
some. I was so downhearted and homesick I wished
a hundred times I never had died. I turned back,
of course. About noon next day, I got back at last
and was on hand at the booking-office once more.
Says I to the head clerk —

"I begin to see that a man's got to be in his own
heaven to be happy."

"Perfectly correct," says he. "Did you imagine
the same heaven would suit all sorts of men?"

"Well, I had that idea — but I see the foolishness
of it. Which way am I to go to get to my district?"

He called the under clerk that had examined the
map, and he gave me general directions. I thanked
him and started; but he says —

"Wait a minute; it is millions of leagues from here.
Go outside and stand on that red wishing-carpet;
shut your eyes, hold your breath, and wish yourself
there."

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CAPTAIN STORMFIELD'S VISIT TO HEAVEN

"I'm much obliged," says I; "why didn't you
dart me through when I first arrived?"

"We have a good deal to think of here; it was
your place to think of it and ask for it. Good-by;
we probably sha'n't see you in this region for a
thousand centuries or so."

"In that case, o rewor" says I.

I hopped onto the carpet and held my breath and
shut my eyes and wished I was in the booking-office
of my own section. The very next instant a voice I
knew sung out in a business kind of a way —

"A harp and a hymn-book, pair of wings and a halo,
size 13, for Cap'n Eli Stormfield, of San Francisco! —
make him out a clean bill of health, and let him in."

I opened my eyes. Sure enough, it was a Pi Ute
Injun I used to know in Tulare County; mighty good
fellow — I remembered being at his funeral, which
consisted of him being burnt and the other Injuns
gauming their faces with his ashes and howling like
wild-cats. He was powerful glad to see me, and you
may make up your mind I was just as glad to see him,
and felt that I was in the right kind of a heaven at last.

Just as far as your eye could reach, there was
swarms of clerks, running and bustling around,
tricking out thousands of Yanks and Mexicans and
English and Arabs, and all sorts of people in their
new outfits; and when they gave me my kit and I
put on my halo and I took a look in the glass, I could
have jumped over a house for joy, I was so happy.
"Now this is something like!" says I. "Now,"
says I, "I'm all right — show me a cloud."

Inside of fifteen minutes I was a mile on my way

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MARK TWAIN

towards the cloud-banks and about a million people
along with me. Most of us tried to fly, but some
got crippled and nobody made a success of it. So we
concluded to walk, for the present, till we had had
some wing practice.

We begun to meet swarms of folks who were com-
ing back. Some had harps and nothing else; some
had hymn-books and nothing else ; some had nothing
at all; all of them looked meek and uncomfortable;
one young fellow hadn't anything left but his halo,
and he was carrying that in his hand ; all of a sudden
he offered it to me and says —

"Will you hold it for me a minute ?"

Then he disappeared in the crowd. I went on.
A woman asked me to hold her palm branch, and
then she disappeared. A girl got me to hold her
harp for her, and by George, she disappeared; and
so on and so on, till I was about loaded down to the
guards. Then comes a smiling old gentleman and
asked me to hold his things. I swabbed off the
perspiration and says, pretty tart —

"I'll have to get you to excuse me, my friend, — I
ain't no hat-rack/'

About this time I begun to run across piles of
those traps, lying in the road. I just quietly dumped
my extra cargo along with them. I looked around,
and, Peters, that whole nation that was following me
were loaded down the same as I'd been. The return
crowd had got them to hold their things a minute,
you see. They all dumped their loads, too, and we
went on.

When I found myself perched on a cloud, with a

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CAPTAIN STORMFIELD'S VISIT TO HEAVEN

million other people, I never felt so good in my life.
Says I, "Now this is according to the promises; I've
been having my doubts, but now I am hi heaven,
sure enough." I gave my palm branch a wave or
two, for luck, and then I tautened up my harp-strings
and struck in. Well, Peters, you can't imagine any-
thing like the row we made. It was grand to listen
to, and made a body thrill all over, but there was
considerable many tunes going on at once, and that
was a drawback to the harmony, you understand;
and then there was a lot of Injun tribes, and they
kept up such another war-whooping that they kind
of took the tuck out of the music. By and by I
quit performing, and judged I'd take a rest. There
was quite a nice mild old gentleman sitting next
me, and I noticed he didn't take a hand ; I encouraged
him, but he said he was naturally bashful, and was
afraid to try before so many people. By and by
the old gentleman said he never could seem to enjoy
music somehow. The fact was, I was beginning to
feel the same way; but I didn't say anything.
Him and I had a considerable long silence, then,
but of course it warn't noticeable in that place.
After about sixteen or seventeen hours, during which
I played and sung a little, now and then — always
the same tune, because I didn't know any other — I
laid down my harp and begun to fan myself with
my palm branch. Then we both got to sighing
pretty regular. Finally, says he —

"Don't you know any tune but the one you've
been pegging at all day?"

"Not another blessed one," says I.

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MARK TWAIN

" Don't you reckon you could learn another one?"
says he.

1 'Never," says I; "I've tried to, but I couldn't
manage it."

"It's a long time to hang to the one — eternity,
you know."

"Don't break my heart," says I; "I'm getting
low-spirited enough already."

After another long silence, says he —

"Are you glad to be here?"

Says I, "Old man, I'll be frank with you. This
ain't just as near my idea of bliss as I thought it was
going to be, when I used to go to church."

Says he, "What do you say to knocking off and
calling it half a day?"

"That's me," says I. "I never wanted to get off
watch so bad in my life."

So we started. Millions were coming to the cloud-
bank all the time, happy and hosannahing; millions
were leaving it all the time, looking mighty quiet,
I tell you. We laid for the new-comers, and pretty
soon I'd got them to hold all my things a minute,
and then I was a free man again and most out-
rageously happy. Just then I ran across old Sam
Bartlett, who had been dead a long time, and stopped
to have a talk with him. Says I —

"Now tell me — is this to go on forever? Ain't
there anything else for a change?"

Says he —

"I'll set you right on that point very quick.
People take the figurative language of the Bible and
the allegories for literal, and the first thing they ask

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CAPTAIN STORMFIELD'S VISIT TO HEAVEN

for when they get here is a halo and a harp, and so
on. Nothing that's harmless and reasonable is
refused a body here, if he asks it in the right spirit.
So they are outfitted with these things without a
word. They go and sing and play just about one
day, and that's the last you'll ever see them in the
choir. They don't need anybody to tell them that
that sort of thing wouldn't make a heaven — at least
not a heaven that a sane man could stand a week
and remain sane. That cloud-bank is placed where
the noise can't disturb the old inhabitants, and so
there ain't any harm in letting everybody get up
there and cure himself as soon as he comes.

* Now you just remember this — heaven is as bliss-
ful and lovely as it can be; but it's just the busiest
place you ever heard of. There ain't any idle people
here after the first day. Singing hymns and waving
palm branches through all eternity is pretty when
you hear about it in the pulpit, but it's as poor a
way to put in valuable time as a body could contrive.
It would just make a heaven of warbling igno-
ramuses, don't you see? Eternal Rest sounds com-
forting in the pulpit, too. Well, you try it once,
and see how heavy time will hang on your hands.
Why, Stormfield, a man like you, that had been active
and stirring all his life, would go mad in six months in
a heaven where he hadn't anything to do. Heaven
is the very last place to come to rest in, — and don't
you be afraid to bet on that!"

Says I —

"Sam, I'm as glad to hear it as I thought I'd be
sorry. I'm glad I come, now."

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MARK TWAIN

Says he —

"Cap'n, ain't you pretty physically tired?"

Says I —

"Sam, it ain't any name for it ! I'm dog-tired."

"Just so — just so. You've earned a good sleep,
and you'll get it. You've earned a good appetite,
and you'll enjoy your dinner. It's the same here as
it is on earth — you've got to earn a thing, square
and honest, before you enjoy it. You can't enjoy
first and earn afterwards. But there's this difference,
here: you can choose your own occupation, and aH
the powers of heaven will be put forth to help you
make a success of it, if you do your level best. The
shoemaker on earth that had the soul of a poet in
him won't have to make shoes here."

"Now that's all reasonable and right," says I.
"Plenty of work, and the kind you hanker after;
no more pain, no more suffering — "

"Oh, hold on; there's plenty of pain here — but
it don't kill. There's plenty of suffering here, but
it don't last. You see, happiness ain't a thing in
itself — it's only a contrast with something that ain't
pleasant. That's all it is. There ain't a thing you
can mention that is happiness in its own self — it's
only so by contrast with the other thing. And so, as
soon as the novelty is over and the force of the con-
trast dulled, it ain't happiness any longer, and you
have to get something fresh. Well, there's plenty of
pain and suffering in heaven — consequently there's
plenty of contrasts, and just no end of happiness."

Says I, "It's the sensiblest heaven I've heard of
yet, Sam, though it's about as different from the

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CAPTAIN STORMFIELD'S VISIT TO HEAVEN

one I was brought up on as a live princess is different
from her own wax figger."

Along in the first months I knocked around about
the Kingdom, making friends and looking at the
country, and finally settled down in a pretty likely
region, to have a rest before taking another start.
I went on making acquaintances and gathering up
information. I had a good deal of talk with an old
bald-headed angel by the name of Sandy McWilliams.
He was from somewhere in New Jersey. I went
about with him, considerable. We used to lay
around, warm afternoons, in the shade of a rock, on
some meadow-ground that was pretty high and out
of the marshy slush of his cranberry-farm, and there
we used to talk about all kinds of things, and smoke
pipes. One day, says I —

"About how old might you be, Sandy?"

"Seventy-two."

"I judged so. How long you been in heaven?"

"Twenty-seven years, come Christmas."

"How old was you when you come up?"

"Why, seventy-two, of course."

"You can't mean it!"

"Why can't I mean it?"

"Because, if you was seventy-two then, you are
naturally ninety-nine now."

"No, but I ain't. I stay the same age I was when
I come."

"Well," says I, "come to think, there's some-
thing just here that I want to ask about. Down
below, I always had an idea that in heaven we
would all be young, and bright, and spry."

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MARK TWAIN

"Well, you can be young if you want to, You've
only got to wish."

Well, then, why didn't you wish?"
I did. They all do. You'll try it, some day,
like enough; but you'll get tired of the change pretty
soon."

"Why?"

"Well, I'll tell you. Now you've always been a
sailor; did you ever try some other business?"

"Yes, I tried keeping grocery, once, up in the
mines; but I couldn't stand it; it was too dull — no
stir, no storm, no life about it; it was like being
part dead and part alive, both at the same time. I
wanted to be one thing or t'other. I shut up shop
pretty quick and went to sea."

"That's it. Grocery people like it, but you
couldn't. You see you wasn't used to it. Well, I
wasn't used to being young, and I couldn't seem to
take any interest in it. I was strong, and handsome,
and had curly hair, — yes, and wings, too! — gay
wings like a butterfly. I went to picnics and dances
and parties with the fellows, and tried to carry on
and talk nonsense with the girls, but it wasn't any
use; I couldn't take to it — fact is, it was an awful
bore. What I wanted was early to bed and early to
rise, and something to do; and when my work was
done, I wanted to sit quiet, and smoke and think —
not tear around with a parcel of giddy young kids.
You can't think what I suffered whilst I was young."

"How long was you young?"

4 ' Only two weeks. That was plenty for me. Laws,
I was so lonesome! You see, I was full of the

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CAPTAIN STORMFIELD'S VISIT TO HEAVEN

knowledge and experience of seventy-two years; the
deepest subject those young folks could strike was
only a-b-c to me. And to hear them argue — oh, my!
it would have been funny, if it hadn't been so pitiful.
Well, I was so hungry for the ways and the sober
talk I was used to, that I tried to ring in with the
old people, but they wouldn't have it. They con-
sidered me a conceited young upstart, and gave me
the cold shoulder. Two weeks was a-plenty for me.
I was glad to get back my bald head again, and my
pipe, and my old drowsy reflections in the shade of
a rock or a tree."

" Well," says I, "do you mean to say you're going
to stand still at seventy-two, forever?"

"I don't know, and I ain't particular. But I
ain't going to drop back to twenty-five any more — I
know that, mighty well. I know a sight more than
I did twenty-seven years ago, and I enjoy learning,
all the time, but I don't seem to get any older. That
is, bodily — my mind gets older, and stronger, and
better seasoned, and more satisfactory."

Says I, "If a man comes here at ninety, don't
he ever set himself back?"

"Of course he does. He sets himself back to
fourteen; tries it a couple of hours, and feels like a
fool; sets himself forward to twenty; it ain't much
improvement; tries thirty, fifty, eighty, and finally
ninety — finds he is more at home and comfortable
at the same old figure he is used to than any other
way. Or, if his mind begun to fail him on earth at
eighty, that's where he finally sticks up here. He
sticks at the place where his mind was last at its

245

MARK TWAIN

best, for there's where his enjoyment is best, and his
ways most set and established.' '

"Does a chap of twenty-five stay always twenty-
five, and look it?"

"If he is a fool, yes. But if he is bright, and
ambitious and industrious, the knowledge he gains
and the experience he has, change his ways and
thoughts and likings, and make him find his best
pleasure in the company of people above that age;
so he allows his body to take on that look of as many
added years as he needs to make him comfortable
and proper in that sort of society; he lets his body
go on taking the look of age, according as he pro-
gresses, and by and by he will be bald and wrinkled
outside, and wise and deep within."

"Babies the same?"

"Babies the same. Laws, what asses we used to
be, on earth, about these things! We said we'd be
always young in heaven. We didn't say how young
— we didn't think of that, perhaps — that is, we
didn't all think alike, anyway. When I was a boy
of seven, I suppose I thought we'd all be twelve, in
heaven; when I was twelve, I suppose I thought
we'd all be eighteen or twenty in heaven; when I
was forty, I begun to go back; I remember I hoped
we'd all be about thirty years old in heaven. Neither
a man nor a boy ever thinks the age he has is exactly
the best one — he puts the right age a few years older
or a few years younger than he is. Then he makes
the ideal age the general age of the heavenly people.
And he expects everybody to stick at that age —
stand stock-still — and expects them to enjoy it 5

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CAPTAIN STORMFIELD'S VISIT TO HEAVEN

Now just think of the idea of standing still in heaven !
Think of a heaven made up entirely of hoop-rolling,
marble-playing cubs of seven years! — or of awkward,
diffident, sentimental immaturities of nineteen! — or
of vigorous people of thirty, healthy-minded, brim-
ming with ambition, but chained hand and foot to
that one age and its limitations like so many helpless
galley-slaves ! Think of the dull sameness of a society
made up of people all of one age and one set of looks,
habits, tastes and feelings. Think how superior to
it earth would be, with its variety of types and faces
and ages, and the enlivening attrition of the myriad
interests that come into pleasant collision in such a
variegated society."

"Look here," says I, "do you know what you're
doing?"

"Well, what am I doing?"

"You are making heaven pretty comfortable in
one way, but you are playing the mischief with it
in another."

"How d'you mean?"

"Well," I says, "take a young mother that's lost
her child, and — "

"'Sh!" he says. "Look!"

It was a woman. Middle-aged, and had grizzled
hair. She was walking slow, and her head was bent
down, and her wings hanging limp and droopy; and
she looked ever so tired, and was crying, poor thing!
She passed along by, with her head down, that way,
and the tears running down her face, and didn't see
us. Then Sandy said, low and gentle, and full of pity :

"She's hunting for her child! No, found it, I

247

MARK TWAIN

reckon. Lord, how she's changed! But I recognized
her in a minute, though it's twenty-seven years since
I saw her. A young mother she was, about twenty-
two or four, or along there; and blooming and lovely
and sweet? oh, just a flower! And all her heart and
all her soul was wrapped up in her child, her little girl,
two years old. And it died, and she went wild with
grief, just wild ! Well, the only comfort she had was
that she'd see her child again, in heaven — 'never
more to part,' she said, and kept on saying it over
and over, 'never more to part.' And the words made
her happy; yes, they did; they made her joyful;
and when I was dying, twenty-seven years ago, she
told me to find her child the first thing, and say she
was coming — 'soon, soon, very soon, she hoped and
believed !'"

"Why, it's pitiful, Sandy."

He didn't say anything for a while, but sat looking
at the ground, thinking. Then he says, kind of
mournful:

"And now she's come!"

"Well? Goon."

"Stormfield, maybe she hasn't found the child,
but I think she has. Looks so to me. I've seen
cases before. You see, she's kept that child in her
head just the same as it was when she jounced it in
her arms a little chubby thing. But here it didn't
elect to stay a child. No, it elected to grow up,
which it did. And in these twenty-seven years it
has learned all the deep scientific learning there is to
learn, and is studying and studying and learning and
learning more and more, all the time, and don't give

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CAPTAIN STORMFIELD'S VISIT TO HEAVEN

a damn for anything but learning; just learning, and
discussing gigantic problems with people like herself."

"Weil?"

"Stormfield, don't you see? Her mother knows
cranberries, and how to tend them, and pick them,
and put them up, and market them; and not another
blamed thing! Her and her daughter can't be any
more company for each other now than mud turtle
and bird o* paradise. Poor thing, she was looking
for a baby to jounce; I think she's struck a dis-
app'intment."

"Sandy, what will they do — stay unhappy forever
in heaven?"

"No, they'll come together and get adjusted by
and by. But not this year, and not next. By and
by."

249

CHAPTER II

I HAD been having considerable trouble with my
wings. The day after I helped the choir I made
a dash or two with them, but was not lucky. First
off, I flew thirty yards, and then fouled an Irishman
and brought him down — brought us both down, in
fact. Next, I had a collision with a Bishop — and
bowled him down, of course. We had some sharp
words, and I felt pretty cheap, to come banging
into a grave old person like that, with a million
strangers looking on and smiling to themselves.

I saw I hadn't got the hang of the steering, and so
couldn't rightly tell where I was going to bring up
when I started. I went afoot the rest of the day,
and let my wings hang. Early next morning I went
to a private place to have some practice. I got up
on a pretty high rock, and got a good start, and went
swooping down, aiming for a bush a little over three
hundred yards off; but I couldn't seem to calculate
for the wind, which was about two points abaft my
beam. I could see I was going considerable to
looard of the bush, so I worked my starboard wing
slow and went ahead strong on the port one, but it
wouldn't answer; I could see I was going to broach
to, so I slowed down on both, and lit. I went back
to the rock and took another chance at it. I aimed
two or three points to starboard of the bush — yes,
more than that — enough so as to make it nearly a
head-wind. I done well enough, but made pretty

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CAPTAIN STORMFIELD'S VISIT TO HEAVEN

poor time. I could see, plain enough, that on a head-
wind, wings was a mistake, I could see that a body
could sail pretty close to the wind, but he couldn't
go in the wind's eye. I could see that if I wanted
to go a-visiting any distance from home, and the
wind was ahead, I might have to wait days, maybe,
for a change; and I could see, too, that these things
could not be any use at all in a gale; if you tried to
run before the wind, you would make a mess of it,
for there isn't any way to shorten sail — like reefing,
you know — you have to take it all in — shut your
feathers down flat to your sides. That would land
you, of course. You could lay to, with your head to
the wind — that is the best you could do, and right
hard work you'd find it, too. If you tried any other
game, you would founder, sure.

I judge it was about a couple of weeks or so after
this that I dropped old Sandy McWilliams a note one
day — it was a Tuesday — and asked him to come over
and take his manna and quails with me next day;
and the first thing he did when he stepped in was to
twinkle his eye in a sly way, and say, —

"Well, Cap, what you done with your wings?"

I saw in a minute that there was some sarcasm
done up in that rag somewheres, but I never let on.
I only says, —

"Gone to the wash."

"Yes," he says, in a dry sort of way, "they
mostly go to the wash — about this time — I've often
noticed it. Fresh angels are powerful neat. When
do you look for 'em back?"

"Day after to-morrow," says I.

251

MARK TWAIN

He winked at me, and smiled.

Says I, —

11 Sandy, out with it. Come — no secrets among
friends. I notice you don't ever wear wings — and
plenty others don't. I've been making an ass of
myself — is that it?"

"That is about the size of it. But it is no harm.
We all do it at first. It's perfectly natural. You see,
on earth we jumped to such foolish conclusions as
to things up here. In the pictures we always saw
the angels with wings on — and that was all right;
but we jumped to the conclusion that that was their
way of getting around — and that was all wrong.
The wings ain't anything but a uniform, that's all.
When they are in the field — so to speak, — they always
wear them; you never see an angel going with a
message anywhere without his wings, any more than
you would see a military officer presiding at a court-
martial without his uniform, or a postman deliver-
ing letters, or a policeman walking his beat, in plain
clothes. But they ain't to fly with ! The wings are
for show, not for use. Old experienced angels are
like officers of the regular army — they dress plain,
when they are off duty. New angels are like the
militia — never shed the uniform — always fluttering
and floundering around in their wings, butting people
down, flapping here, and there, and everywhere,
always imagining they are attracting the admiring
eye — well, they just think they are the very most
important people in heaven. And when you see one
of them come sailing around with one wing tipped
up and t'other down, you make up your mind he is

252

CAPTAIN STORMFIELD'S VISIT TO HEAVEN

saying to himself: 'I wish Mary Ann in Arkansaw
could see me now. I reckon she'd wish she hadn't
shook me/ No, they're just for show, that's all —
only just for show."

"I judge you've got it about right, Sandy," says I.

"Why, look at it yourself," says he. "You ain't
built for wings — no man is. You know what a grist
of years it took you to come here from the earth —
and yet you were booming along faster than any
cannon-ball could go. Suppose you had to fly that
distance with your wings — wouldn't eternity have
been over before you got here? Certainly. Well,
angels have to go to the earth every day — millions
of them — to appear in visions to dying children and
good people, you know — it's the heft of their business.
They appear with their wings, of course, because
they are on official service, and because the dying
persons wouldn't know they were angels if they
hadn't wings — but do you reckon they fly with them?
It stands to reason they don't. The wings would
wear out before they got half-way; even the pin-
feathers would be gone; the wing frames would be
as bare as kite sticks before the paper is pasted on.
The distances in heaven are billions of times greater;
angels have to go all over heaven every day; could
they do it with their wings alone? No, indeed; they
wear the wings for style, but they travel any distance
in an instant by wishing. The wishing-carpet of the
Arabian Nights was a sensible idea — but our earthly
idea of angels flying these awful distances with their
clumsy wings was foolish.

"Our young saints, of both sexes, wear wings all

253

MARK TWAIN

the time — blazing red ones, and blue and green, and
gold, and variegated, and rainbowed, and ring-
streaked-and-striped ones — and nobody finds fault.
It is suitable to their time of life. The things are
beautiful, and they set the young people off. They
are the most striking and lovely part of their outfit
— a halo don't begin."

"Well," says I, "I've tucked mine away in the
cupboard, and I allow to let them lay there till
there's mud."

"Yes — or a reception."

"What's that?"

"Well, you can see one to-night if you want to.
There's a barkeeper from Jersey City going to be
received."

"Go on — tell me about it."

"This barkeeper got converted at a Moody and
Sankey meeting, in New York, and started home on
the ferryboat, and there was a collision and he got
drowned. He is of a class that think all heaven goes
wild with joy when a particularly hard lot like him
is saved; they think all heaven turns out hosannah-
ing to welcome them ; they think there isn't anything
talked about in the realms of the blest but their
case, for that day. This barkeeper thinks there
hasn't been such another stir here in years, as his
coming is going to raise. — And I've always noticed
this peculiarity about a dead barkeeper — he not only
expects all hands to turn out when he arrives, but
he expects to be received with a torchlight pro-

cession."

"I reckon he is disappointed, then.

254

>>

CAPTAIN STORMFIELD'S VISIT TO HEAVEN

''No, he isn't. No man is allowed to be dis-
appointed here. Whatever he wants, when he comes
— that is, any reasonable and unsacrilegious thing —
he can have. There's always a few millions or
billions of young folks around who don't want any
better entertainment than to fill up their lungs and
swarm out with their torches and have a high time
over a barkeeper. It tickles the barkeeper till he
can't rest, it makes a charming lark for the young
folks, it don't do anybody any harm, it don't cost
a rap, and it keeps up the place's reputation for
making all comers happy and content."

4 'Very good. I'll be on hand and see them land
the barkeeper."

"It is manners to go in full dress. You want to
wear your wings, you know, and your other things."

"Which ones?"

"Halo, and harp, and palm branch, and all that."

"Well," says I, "I reckon I ought to be ashamed
of myself, but the fact is I left them laying around
that day I resigned from the choir. I haven't got
a rag to wear but this robe and the wings."

"That's all right. You'll find they've been raked
up and saved for you. Send for them."

" I'll do it, Sandy. But what was it you was saying
about unsacrilegious things, which people expect to
get, and will be disappointed about?"

"Oh, there are a lot of such things that people
expect and don't get. For instance, there's a Brook-
lyn preacher by the name of Talmage, who is laying
up a considerable disappointment for himself. He
says, every now and then in his sermons, that the

255

MARK TWAIN

first thing he does when he gets to heaven, will be
to fling his arms around Abraham, Isaac and Jacob,
and kiss them and weep on them. There's millions
of people down there on earth that are promising
themselves the same thing. As many as sixty-
thousand people arrive here every single day, that
want to run straight to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob,
and hug them and weep on them. Now mind you,
sixty thousand a day is a pretty heavy contract for
those old people. If they were a mind to allow it,
they wouldn't ever have anything to do, year in and
year out, but stand up and be hugged and wept on
thirty-two hours in the twenty-four. They would
be tired out and as wet as muskrats all the time.
What would heaven be, to them? It would be a
mighty good place to get out of — you know that,
yourself. Those are kind and gentle old Jews, but
they ain't any fonder of kissing the emotional high-
lights of Brooklyn than you be. You mark my words,
Mr. T.'s endearments are going to be declined, with
thanks. There are limits to the privileges of the
elect, even in heaven. Why, if Adam was to show
himself to every new comer that wants to call and
gaze at him and strike him for his autograph, he
would never have time to do anything else but just
that. Talmage has said he is going to give Adam
some of his attentions, as well as A., I. and J. But
Jie will have to change his mind about that."
1 -Do you think Talmage will really come here?"
*'Why,^ certainly, he will; but don't you be
alarmed; he will run with his own kind, and there's
plenty of them. That is the main charm of heaven —

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CAPTAIN STORMFIELD'S VISIT TO HEAVEN

there's all kinds here — which wouldn't be the case
if you let the preachers tell it. Anybody can find
the sort he prefers, here, and he just lets the others
alone, and they let him alone. When the Deity
builds a heaven, it is built right, and on a liberal
plan."

Sandy sent home for his things, and I sent for
mine, and about nine in the evening we begun to
dress. Sandy says, —

"This is going to be a grand time for you, Stormy.
Like as not some of the patriarchs will turn out."

"No, but will they?"

1 ■ Like as not. Of course they are pretty exclusive.
They hardly ever show themselves to the common
public. I believe they never turn out except for an
eleventh-hour convert. They wouldn't do it then,
only earthly tradition makes a grand show pretty
necessary on that kind of an occasion."

"Do they all turn out, Sandy?"

1 * Who ? — all the patriarchs ? Oh, no — hardly ever
more than a couple. You will be here fifty thousand
years — maybe more — before you get a glimpse of all
the patriarchs and prophets. Since I have been here,
Job has been to the front once, and once Ham and
Jeremiah both at the same time. But the finest
thing that has happened in my day was a year or
so ago; that was Charles Peace's reception — him
they called ' the Bannercross Murderer ' — an English-
man. There were four patriarchs and two prophets
on the Grand Stand that time — there hasn't been
anything like it since Captain Kidd came; Abel was
there — the first time in twelve hundred years. A

257

MARK TWAIN

report got around that Adam was coming; well, of
course, Abel was enough to bring a crowd, all by
himself, but there is nobody that can draw like Adam.
It was a false report, but it got around, anyway, as
I say, and it will be a long day before I see the like
of it again. The reception was in the English depart-
ment, of course, which is eight hundred and eleven
million miles from the New Jersey line. I went,
along with a good many of my neighbors, and it
was a sight to see, I can tell you. Flocks came from
all the departments. I saw Esquimaux there, and
Tartars, Negroes, Chinamen — people from every-
where. You see a mixture like that in the Grand
Choir, the first day you land here, but you hardly
ever see it again. There were billions of people;
when they were singing or hosannahing, the noise
was wonderful; and even when their tongues were
still the drumming of the wings was nearly enough
to burst your head, for all the sky was as thick as if
it was snowing angels. Although Adam was not
there, it was a great time anyway, because we had
three archangels on the Grand Stand — it is a sel-
dom thing that even one comes out."

"What did they look like, Sandy?"

44 Well, they had shining faces, and shining robes,
and wonderful rainbow wings, and they stood eight-
een feet high, and wore swords, and held then-
heads up in a noble way, and looked like soldiers."

' * Did they have halos V ' '

"No — anyway, not the hoop kind. The arch-
angels and the upper-class patriarchs wear a finer
thing than that. It is a round, solid, splendid glory

258

CAPTAIN STORMFIELD'S VISIT TO HEAVEN

of gold, that is blinding to look at. You have often
seen a patriarch in a picture, on earth, with that
thing on — you remember it? — he looks as if he had
his head in a brass platter. That don't give you the
right idea of it at all — it is much more shining and
beautiful/ '

"Did you talk with those archangels and patri-
archs, Sandy ?"

"Who — If Why, what can you be thinking about,
Stormy? I ain't worthy to speak to such as they."

"IsTalmage?"

"Of course not. You have got the same mixed-up
idea about these things that everybody has down
there. I had it once, but I got over it. Down there
they talk of the heavenly King — and that is right —
but then they go right on speaking as if this was a
republic and everybody was on a dead level with
everybody else, and privileged to fling his arms
around anybody he comes across, and be hail-fellow-
well-met with all the elect, from the highest down.
How tangled up and absurd that is! How are you
going to have a republic under a king? How are
you going to have a republic at all, where the head
of the government is absolute, holds his place for-
ever, and has no parliament, no council to meddle
or make in his affairs, nobody voted for, nobody
elected, nobody in the whole universe with a voice
in the government, nobody asked to take a hand in
its matters, and nobody allowed to do it? Fine
republic, ain't it?"

"Well, yes — it is a little different from the idea I
had — but I thought I might go around and get

259

MARK TWAIN

acquainted with the grandees, anyway — not exactly
splice the main-brace with them, you know, but
shake hands and pass the time of day."

"Could Tom, Dick and Harry call on the Cabinet
of Russia and do that? — on Prince Gortschakoff, foi
instance?"

"I reckon not, Sandy."

"Well, this is Russia — only more so. There's not
the shadow of a republic about it anywhere. There
are ranks, here. There are viceroys, princes, gov-
ernors, sub-governors, sub-sub-governors, and a
hundred orders of nobility, grading along down from
grand-ducal archangels, stage by stage, till the
general level is struck, where there ain't any titles.
Do you know what a prince of the blood is, on
earth?"

"No."

"Well, a prince of the blood don't belong to the
royal family exactly, and he don't belong to the
mere nobility of the kingdom; he is lower than the
one, and higher than t'other. That's about the
position of the patriarchs and prophets here. There's
some mighty high/ nobility' here — people that you
and I ain't worthy to polish sandals for — and they
ain't worthy to polish sandals for the patriarchs and
prophets. That gives you a kind of an idea of theii
rank, don't it? You begin to see how high up they
are, don't you? Just to get a two-minute glimpse oi
one of them is a thing for a body to remember and
tell about for a thousand years. Why, Captain, just
think of this: if Abraham was to set his foot down
here by this door, there would be a railing set uj

260

CAPTAIN STORMFIELD'S VISIT TO HEAVEN

around that foot-track right away, and a shelter put
over it, and people would flock here from all over
heaven, for hundreds and hundreds of years, to look
at it. Abraham is one of the parties that Mr.
Talmage, of Brooklyn, is going to embrace, and kiss,
and weep on, when he comes. He wants to lay in a
good stock of tears, you know, or five to one he will
go dry before he gets a chance to do it."

" Sandy," says I, "I had an idea that I was going
to be equal with everybody here, too, but I will let
that drop. It don't matter, and I am plenty happy
enough anyway."

"Captain, you are happier than you would be,
the other way. These old patriarchs and prophets
have got ages the start of you; they know more in
two minutes than you know in a year. Did you ever
try to have a sociable improving-time discussing
winds, and currents and variations of compass with
an undertaker?"

"I get your idea, Sandy. He couldn't interest me.
He would be an ignoramus in such things — he would
bore me, and I would bore him."

"You have got it. You would bore the patriarchs
when you talked, and when they talked they would
shoot over your head. By and by you would say,
1 Good morning, your Eminence, I will call again' —
but you wouldn't. Did you ever ask the slush-boy
to come up in the cabin and take dinner with you?"

"I get your drift again, Sandy. I wouldn't be
used to such grand people as the patriarchs and
prophets, and I would be sheepish and tongue-tied
in their company, and mighty glad to get out of

261

MARK TWAIN

it. Sandy, which is the highest rank, patriarch
prophet ?"

"Oh, the prophets hold over the patriarchs. T
newest prophet, even, is of a sight more consequen
than the oldest patriarch. Yes, sir, Adam hims<
has to walk behind Shakespeare."

"Was Shakespeare a prophet?"

"Of course he was; and so was Homer, and hea
more. But Shakespeare and the rest have to wa
behind a common tailor from Tennessee, by t
name of Billings; and behind a horse-doctor nam
Sakka, from Afghanistan. Jeremiah, and Billin
and Buddha walk together, side by side, right behi
a crowd from planets not in our astronomy; ne
come a dozen or two from Jupiter and other work
next come Daniel, and Sakka and Confucius; ne
a lot from systems outside of ours; next coi
Ezekiel, and Mahomet, Zoroaster, and a kni
grinder from ancient Egypt; then there is a lo
string, and after them, away down toward the b(
torn, come Shakespeare and Homer, and a shoemai
named Marais, from the back settlements of France

"Have they really rung in Mahomet and all the
other heathens?"

"Yes — they all had their message, and they ;
get their reward. The man who don't get his rewa
on earth, needn't bother — he will get it here, sure

"But why did they throw off on Sheakespeaj
that way, and put him away down there below the
shoemakers and horse-doctors and knife-grinders-
lot of people nobody ever heard of ?"
^'That is the heavenly justice of it — they wan

262

CAPTAIN STORMFIELD'S VISIT TO HEAVEN

rewarded according to their deserts, on earth, but
here they get their rightful rank. That tailor Billings,
from Tennessee, wrote poetry that Homer and
Shakespeare couldn't begin to come up to; but
nobody would print it, nobody read it but his neigh-
bors, an ignorant lot, and they laughed at it.
Whenever the village had a drunken frolic and a
dance, they would drag him in and crown him with
cabbage leaves, and pretend to bow down to him;
and one night when he was sick and nearly starved
to death, they had him out and crowned him, and
then they rode him on a rail about the village, and
everybody followed along, beating tin pans and
yelling. Well, he died before morning. He wasn't
ever expecting to go to heaven, much less that there
was going to be any fuss made over him, so I reckon
he was a good deal surprised when the reception
broke on him."

"Was you there, Sandy?"

"Bless you, no!"

"Why? Didn't you know it was going to come
off?"

"Well, I judge I did. It was the talk of these
realms — not for a day, like this barkeeper business,
but for twenty years before the man died."

"Why the mischief didn't you go, then?"

"Now how you talk! The like of me go meddling
around at the reception of a prophet? A mudsill
like me trying to push in and help receive an awful
grandee like Edward J. Billings? Why, I should
have been laughed at for a billion miles around. I
shouldn't ever heard the last of it."

263

MARK TWAIN

"Well, who did go, then?"

" Mighty few people that you and I will ever get
a chance to see, Captain. Not a solitary commoner
ever has the luck to see a reception of a prophet,
I can tell you. All the nobility, and all the patriarchs
and prophets — every last one of them — and all the
archangels, and all the princes and governors and
viceroys, were there, — and no small fry — not a single
one. And mind you, I'm not talking about only the
grandees from our world, but the princes and pa-
triarchs and so on from all the worlds that shine
in our sky, and from billions more that belong in
systems upon systems away outside of the one our
sun is in. There were some prophets and patriarchs
there that ours ain't a circumstance to, for rank and
illustriousness and all that. Some were from Jupiter
and other worlds in our own system, but the most
celebrated were three poets, Saa, Bo and Soof , from
great planets in three different and very remote
systems. These three names are common and
familiar in every nook and corner of heaven, clear
from one end of it to the other — fully as well known
as the eighty Supreme Archangels, in fact — whereas
our Moses, and Adam, and the rest, have not been
heard of outside of our world's little corner of heaven,
except by a few very learned men scattered here and
there — and they always spell their names wrong, and
get the performances of one mixed up with the doings
of another, and they almost always locate them
simply in our solar system, and think that is enough
without going into little details such as naming the
particular world they are from. It is like a learned

264

CAPTAIN STORMFIELD'S VISIT TO HEAVEN

Hindoo showing off how much he knows by saying
Longfellow lived in the United States — as if he lived
all over the United States, and as if the country was
so small you couldn't throw a brick there without
hitting him. Between you and me, it does gravel
me, the cool way people from those monster worlds
outside our system snub our little world, and even
our system. Of course we think a good deal of
Jupiter, because our world is only a potato to it,
for size; but then there are worlds in other systems
that Jupiter isn't even a mustard-seed to — like the
planet Goobra, for instance, which you couldn't
squeeze inside the orbit of Halley's comet without
straining the rivets. Tourists from Goobra (I mean
parties that lived and died there — natives) come
here, now and then, and inquire about our world,
and when they find out it is so little that a streak
of lightning can flash clear around it in the eighth
of a second, they have to lean up against something
to laugh. Then they screw a glass into their eye
and go to examining us, as if we were a curious kind
of foreign bug, or something of that sort. One of
them asked me how long our day was; and when I
told him it was twelve hours long, as a general thing,
he asked me if people where I was from considered
it worth while to get up and wash for such a day as
that. That is the way with those Goobra people —
they can't seem to let a chance go by to throw it in
your face that their day is three hundred and twenty-
two of our years long. This young snob was just
of age — he was six or seven thousand of his days old
— say two million of our years — and he had all the

265

MARK TWAIN

puppy airs that belong to that time of life — that
turning-point when a person has got over being a
boy and yet ain't quite a man exactly* It if had
been anywhere else but in heaven, I would have
given him a piece of my mind. Well, anyway,
Billings had the grandest reception that has been
seen in thousands of centuries, and I think it will
have a good effect. His name will be carried pretty
far, and it will make our system talked about, and
maybe our world, too, and raise us in the respect of
the general public of heaven. Why, look here —
Shakespeare walked backwards before that tailor
from Tennessee, and scattered flowers for him to
walk on, and Homer stood behind his chair and
waited on him at the banquet. Of course that didn't
go for much there, amongst all those big foreigners
from other systems, as they hadn't heard of Shake-
speare or Homer either, but it would amount to
considerable down there on our little earth if they
could know about it. I wish there was something
in that miserable spiritualism, so we could send
them word. That Tennessee village would set up a
monument to Billings, then, and his autograph would
outsell Satan's. Well, they had grand times at that
reception — a small-fry noble from Hoboken told me
all about it — Sir Richard Duffer, Baronet."

"What, Sandy, a nobleman from Hoboken? How
is that?"

"Easy enough. Duffer kept a sausage-shop and
never saved a cent in his life because he used to give
all his spare meat to the poor, in a quiet way. Not
tramps, — no, the other sort — the sort that will starve

266

CAPTAIN STORMFIELD'S VISIT TO HEAVEN

before they will beg — honest square people out of
work. Dick used to watch hungry-looking men and
women and children, and track them home, and find
out all about them from the neighbors, and then feed
them and find them work. As nobody ever saw him
give anything to anybody, he had the reputation of
being mean; he died with it, too, and everybody said
it was a good riddance; but the minute he landed
here, they made him a baronet, and the very first
words Dick the sausage-maker of Hoboken heard
when he stepped upon the heavenly shore were,
* Welcome, Sir Richard Duffer!' It surprised him
some, because he thought he had reasons to believe
he was pointed for a warmer climate than this one."

All of a sudden the whole region fairly rocked
under the crash of eleven hundred and one thunder
blasts, all let off at once, and Sandy says, —

"There, that's for the barkeep."

I jumped up and says, —

"Then let's be moving along, Sandy; we don't
want to miss any of this thing, you know."

"Keep your seat," he says; "he is only just
telegraphed, that is all."

"How?"

"That blast only means that he has been sighted
from the signal-station. He is off Sandy Hook.
The committees will go down to meet him, now, and
escort him in. There will be ceremonies and delays;
they won't be coming up the Bay for a considerable
time, yet. It is several billion miles away, anyway."

"I could have been a barkeeper and a hard lot

267

MARK TWAIN

just as well as not," says I, remembering the lone-
some way I arrived, and how there wasn't any com-
mittee nor anything.

"I notice some regret in your voice," says Sandy,
"and it is natural enough; but let bygones be by-
gones; you went according to your lights, and it is
too late now to mend the thing."

"No, let it slide, Sandy, I don't mind. But you've
got a Sandy Hook here, too, have you?"

"We've got everything here, just as it is below.
All the States and Territories 6i the Union, and all
the kingdoms of the earth and the islands of the sea
are laid out here just as they are on the globe — all
the same shape they are down there, and all graded
to the relative size, only each State and realm and
island is a good many billion times bigger here than
it is below. There goes another blast."

"What is that one for?"

"That is only another fort answering the first one.
They each fire eleven hundred and one thunder
blasts at a single dash — it is the usual salute for an
eleventh-hour guest; a hundred for each hour and
an extra one for the guest's sex; if it was a woman
we would know it by their leaving off the extra gun."

"How do we know there's eleven hundred and one,
Sandy, when they all go off at once? — and yet we
certainly do know."

"Our intellects are a good deal sharpened up, here,
in some ways, and that is one of them. Numbers
and sizes and distances are so great, here, that we
have to be made so we can feel them — our old ways
of counting and measuring and ciphering wouldn't

268

CAPTAIN STORMFIELD'S VISIT TO HEAVEN

ever give us an idea of them, but would only confuse
us and oppress us and make our heads ache."

After some more talk about this, I says: "Sandy,
I notice that I hardly ever see a white angel; where
I run across one white angel, I strike as many as a
hundred million copper-colored ones — people that
can't speak English. How is that?"

"Well, you will find it the same in any State or
Territory of the American corner of heaven you
choose to go to. I have shot along, a whole week
on a stretch, and gone millions and millions of miles,
through perfect swarms of angels, without ever
seeing a single white one, or hearing a word I could
understand. You see, America was occupied a billion
years and more, by Injuns and Aztecs, and that sort
of folks, before a white man ever set his foot in it.
During the first three hundred years after Columbus's
discovery, there wasn't ever more than one good
lecture audience of white people, all put together, in
America — I mean the whole thing, British Possessions
and all; in the beginning of our century there were
only 6,000,000 or 7,000,000— say seven; 12,000,000
or 14,000,000 in 1825; say 23,000,000 in 1850;
40,000,000 in 1875. Our death-rate has always been
20 in 1000 per annum. Well, 140,000 died the first
year of the century; 280,000 the twenty-fifth year;
500,000 the fiftieth year ; about a million the seventy-
fifth year. Now I am going to be liberal about this
thing, and consider that fifty million whites have
died in America from the beginning up to to-day —
make it sixty, if you want to; make it a hundred
million — it's no difference about a few millions one

269

MARK TWAIN

way or t'other. Well, now, you can see, yourself,
that when you come to spread a little dab of people
like that over these hundreds of billions of miles of
American territory here in heaven, it is like scattering
a ten-cent box of homoeopathic pills over the Great
Sahara and expecting to find them again. You can't
expect us to amount to anything in heaven, and we
don't — now that is the simple fact, and we have got
to do the best we can with it. The learned men from
other planets and other systems come here and hang
around a while, when they are touring around the
Kingdom, and then go back to their own section of
heaven and write a book of travels, and they give
America about five lines in it. And what do they
say about us? They say this wilderness is populated
with a scattering few hundred thousand billions of
red angels, with now and then a curiously complected
diseased one. You see, they think we whites and the
occasional nigger are Injuns that have been bleached
out or blackened by some leprous disease or other —
for some peculiarly rascally sin, mind you. It is a
mighty sour pill for us all, my friend — even the
modestest of us, let alone the other kind, that think
they are going to be received like a long-lost govern-
ment bond, and hug Abraham into the bargain. I
haven't asked you any of the particulars, Captain,
but I judge it goes without saying — if my experience
is worth anything — that there wasn't much of a
hooraw made over you when you arrived — now was
there?"

"Don't mention it, Sandy," says I, coloring up a
little; "I wouldn't have had the family see it for

270

CAPTAIN STORMFIELD'S VISIT TO HEAVEN

any amount you are a mind to name. Change the
subject, Sandy, change the subject."

4 * Well, do you think of settling in the California
department of bliss?"

"I don't know. I wasn't calculating on doing
anything really definite in that direction till the
family come. I thought I would just look around,
meantime, in a quiet way, and make up my mind.
Besides, I know a good many dead people, and
I was calculating to hunt them up and swap a little
gossip with them about friends, and old times, and
one thing or another, and ask them how they like
it here, as far as they have got. I reckon my wife
will want to camp in the California range, though,
because most all her departed will be there, and she
likes to be with folks she knows."

11 Don't you let her. You see what the Jersey
district of heaven is, for whites; well, the California
district is a thousand times worse. It swarms with
a mean kind of leather-headed mud-colored angels
— and your nearest white neighbors is likely to be a
million miles away. What a man mostly misses, in
heaven, is company — company of his own sort and
color and language. I have come near settling in
the European part of heaven once or twice on that
account."

"Well, why didn't you, Sandy?"

"Oh, various reasons. For one thing, although
you see plenty of whites there, you can't understand
any of them hardly, and so you go about as hungry
for talk as you do here. I like to look at a Russian
or a German or an Italian — I even like to look at a

271

MARK TWAIN

Frenchman if I ever have the luck to catch him
engaged in anything that ain't indelicate — but look-
ing don't cure the hunger — what you want is talk."

" Well, there's England, Sandy — the English dis-
trict of heaven."

"Yes, but it is not so very much better than this
end of the heavenly domain. As long as you run
across Englishmen born this side of three hundred
years ago, you are all right; but the minute you get
back of Elizabeth's time the language begins to fog
up, and the further back you go the foggier it gets.
I had some talk with one Langland and a man by
the name of Chaucer — old-time poets — but it was
no use, I couldn't quite understand them and they
couldn't quite understand me. I have had letters
from them since, but it is such broken English I
can't make it out. Back of those men's time the
English are just simply foreigners, nothing more,
nothing less; they talk Danish, German, Norman
French, and sometimes a mixture of all three; back
of them, they talk Latin, and ancient British, Irish,
and Gaelic; and then back of these come billions
and billions of pure savages that talk a gibberish
that Satan himself couldn't understand. The fact
is, where you strike one man in the English settle-
ments that you can understand, you wade through
awful swarms that talk something you can't make
head nor tail of. You see, every country on earth
has been overlaid so often, in the course of a billion
years, with different kinds of people and different
sorts of languages, that this sort of mongrel business
was bound to be the result in heaven."

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CAPTAIN STORMFIELD'S VISIT TO HEAVEN

"Sandy," says I, "did you see a good many of
the great people history tells about ?"

"Yes — plenty. I saw kings and all sorts of dis-
tinguished people.' '

"Do the kings rank just as they did below ?"

"No; a body can't bring his rank up here with
him. Divine right is a good-enough earthly romance,
but it don't go, here. Kings drop down to the
general level as soon as they reach the realms of
grace. I knew Charles the Second very well — one of
the most popular comedians in the English section
— draws first rate. There are better, of course —
people that were never heard of on earth — but
Charles is making a very good reputation indeed,
and is considered a rising man. Richard the Lion-
hearted is in the prize-ring, and coming into con-
siderable favor. Henry the Eighth is a tragedian,
and the scenes where he kills people are done to
the very life. Henry the Sixth keeps a religious-
book stand."

"Did you ever see Napoleon, Sandy?"

"Often — sometimes in the Corsican range, some-
times in the French. He always hunts up a con-
spicuous place, and goes frowning around with his
arms folded and his field-glass under his arm, look-
ing as grand, gloomy and peculiar as his reputation
calls for, and very much bothered because he don't
stand as high, here, for a soldier, as he expected to."

"Why, who stands higher?"

"Oh, a lot of people we never heard of before — the
shoemaker and horse-doctor and knife-grinder kind,
you know — clodhoppers from goodness knows where,

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MARK TWAIN

that never handled a sword or fired a shot in their
lives — but the soldiership was in them, though they
never had a chance to show it. But here they take
their right place, and Caesar and Napoleon and
Alexander have to take a back seat. The greatest
military genius our world ever produced was a brick-
layer from somewhere back of Boston — died during
the Revolution — by the name of Absalom Jones.
Wherever he goes, crowds flock to see him. You
see, everybody knows that if he had had a chance
he would have shown the world some generalship
that would have made all generalship before look
like child's play and 'prentice work. But he never
got a chance; he tried heaps of times to enlist as a
private, but he had lost both thumbs and a couple
of front teeth, and the recruiting sergeant wouldn't
pass him. However, as I say, everybody knows,
now, what he would have been, and so they flock
by the million to get a glimpse of him whenever
they hear he is going to be anywhere. Caesar, and
Hannibal, and Alexander, and Napoleon are all on
his staff, and ever so many more great generals;
but the public hardly care to look at them when he
is around. Boom ! There goes another salute. The
barkeeper's off quarantine now."

Sandy and I put on our things. Then we made
a wish, and in a second we were at the reception-
place. We stood on the edge of the ocean of space,
and looked out over the dimness, but couldn't
make out anything. Close by us was the Grand
Stand — tier on tier of dim thrones rising up toward

274

CAPTAIN STORMFIELD'S VISIT TO HEAVEN

the zenith. From each side of it spread away the
tiers of seats for the general public. They spread
away for leagues and leagues — you couldn't see the
ends. They were empty and still, and hadn't a
cheerful look, but looked dreary, like a theater before
anybody comes — gas turned down. Sandy says, —

1 'We'll sit down here and wait. Well see the
head of the procession come in sight away off yonder
pretty soon, now."

Says I, —

"It's pretty lonesome, Sandy; I reckon there's a
hitch somewheres. Nobody but just you and me — it
ain't much of a display for the barkeeper."

"Don't you fret, it's all right. There'll be one
more gun-fire — then you'll see."

In a little while we noticed a sort of a lightish
flush, away off on the horizon.

"Head of the torchlight procession," says Sandy.

It spread, and got lighter and brighter; soon it
had a strong glare like a locomotive headlight; it
kept on getting brighter and brighter till it was like
the sun peeping above the horizon-line at sea — the
big red rays shot high up into the sky.

"Keep your eyes on the Grand Stand and the miles
of seats — sharp!" says Sandy, "and listen for the
gun-fire."

Just then it burst out, "Boom-boom-boom!" like
a million thunderstorms in one, and made the whole
heavens rock. Then there was a sudden and awful
glare of light all about us, and in that very instant
every one of the millions of seats was occupied, and
as far as you could see, in both directions, was just

275

MARK TWAIN

a solid pack of people, and the place was all splen-
didly lit up ! It was enough to take a body's breath
away. Sandy says, —

"That is the way we do it here. No time fooled
away; nobody straggling in after the curtain's up.
Wishing is quicker work than traveling. A quarter
of a second ago these folks were millions of miles
from here. When they heard the last signal, all
they had to do was to wish, and here they are."

The prodigious choir struck up, —

We long to hear thy voice,
To see thee face to face.

It was noble music, but the uneducated chipped in
and spoilt it, just as the congregations used to do on
earth.

The head of the procession began to pass, now, and
it was a wonderful sight. It swept along, thick and
solid, five hundred thousand angels abreast, and every
angel carrying a torch and singing — the whirring
thunder of the wings made a body's head ache.
You could follow the line of the procession back,
and slanting upward into the sky, far away in a
glittering snaky rope, till it was only a faint streak
in the distance. The rush went on and on, for a
long time, and at last, sure enough, along comes the
barkeeper, and then everybody rose, and a cheer
went up that made the heavens shake, I tell you!
He was all smiles, and had his halo tilted over one
ear in a cocky way, and was the most satisfied-
looking saint I ever saw. While he marched up the
steps of the Grand Stand, the choir struck up, —

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CAPTAIN STORMFIELD'S VISIT TO HEAVEN

The whole wide heaven groans,
And waits to hear that voice.

There were four gorgeous tents standing side by-
side in the place of honor, on a broad railed platform
in the center of the Grand Stand, with a shining
guard of honor round about them. The tents had
been shut up all this time. As the barkeeper climbed
along up, bowing and smiling to everybody, and at
last got to the platform, these tents were jerked up
aloft all of a sudden, and we saw four noble thrones
of gold, all caked with jewels, and in the two middle
ones sat old white-whiskered men, and in the two
others a couple of the most glorious and gaudy
giants, with platter halos and beautiful armor. All
the millions went down on their knees, and stared,
and looked glad, and burst out into a joyful kind of
murmurs. They said, —

"Two archangels! — that is splendid. Who can the
others be ?"

The archangels gave the barkeeper a stiff little
military bow; the two old men rose; one of them
said, "Moses and Esau welcome thee!" and then
all the four vanished, and the thrones were empty.

The barkeeper looked a little disappointed, for he
was calculating to hug those old people, I judge; but
it was the gladdest and proudest multitude you ever
saw — because they had seen Moses and Esau.
Everybody was saying, "Did you see them? — I
did — Esau's side face was to me, but I saw Moses
full in the face, just as plain as I see you this
minute !"

The procession took up the barkeeper and moved

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MARK TWAIN

on with him again, and the crowd broke up and
scattered. As we went along home, Sandy said it
was a great success, and the barkeeper would have
a right to be proud of it forever. And he said we
were in luck, too; said we might attend receptions
for forty thousand years to come, and not have a
chance to see a brace of such grand moguls as Moses
and Esau. We found afterwards that we had come
near seeing another patriarch, and likewise a genuine
prophet besides, but at the last moment they sent
regrets. Sandy said there would be a monument put
up there, where Moses and Esau had stood, with
the date and circumstances, and all about the whole
business, and travelers would come for thousands
of years and gawk at it, and climb over it, and scribble
their names on it.

278

A FABLE

A FABLE*

ONCE upon a time an artist who had painted a
small and very beautiful picture placed it so
that he could see it in the mirror. He said, "This
doubles the distance and softens it, and it is twice
as lovely as it was beforeo"

The animals out in the woods heard of this through
the housecat, who was greatly admired by them
because he was so learned, and so refined and
civilized, and so polite and high-bred, and could
tell them so much which they didn't know before,
and were not certain about afterwardo They were
much excited about this new piece of gossip, and they
asked questions, so as to get at a full understanding
of it. They asked what a picture was, and the cat
explained.

"It is a flat thing," he said; "wonderfully flat,
marvelously flat, enchantingly flat and elegant. And,
oh, so beautiful !"

That excited them almost to a frenzy, and they
said they would give the world to see it. Then the
bear asked:

"What is it that makes it so beautiful?"

"It is the looks of it," said the cat.

This filled them with admiration and uncertainty,
and they were more excited than ever. Then the
cow asked:

* Copyright, 1909, by Harper & Brothers.

28l

MARK TWAIN

"What is a mirror ?"

"It is a hole in the wall," said the cat, "You
look in it, and there you see the picture, and it is
so dainty and charming and ethereal and inspiring in
its unimaginable beauty that your head turns round
and round, and you almost swoon with ecstasy 0"

The ass had not said anything as yet; he now
began to throw doubts. He said there had never
been anything as beautiful as this before, and
probably wasn't now. He said that when it took a
whole basketful of sesquipedalian adjectives to whoop
up a thing of beauty, it was time for suspicion.

It was easy to see that these doubts were having
an effect upon the animals, so the cat went off
offended. The subject was dropped for a couple of
days, but in the meantime curiosity was taking a
fresh start, and there was a revival of interest per-
ceptible. Then the animals assailed the ass for
spoiling what could possibly have been a pleasure
to them, on a mere suspicion that the picture was
not beautiful, without any evidence that such was
the case0 The ass was not troubled; he was calm,
and said there was one way to find out who was in
the right, himself or the cat: he would go and look
in that hole, and come back and tell what he found
there. The animals felt relieved and grateful, and
asked him to go at once — which he did.

But he did not know where he ought to stand;
and so, through error, he stood between the picture
and the mirror. The result was that the picture had
no chance, and didn't show up. He returned home
and said:

282

A FABLE

" The cat lied0 There was nothing in that hole
but an ass. There wasn't a sign of a flat thing
visible. It was a handsome ass, and friendly, but
just an ass, and nothing more."

The elephant asked:

"Did you see it good and clear? Were you close
to it?"

"I saw it good and clear, O Hathi, King of Beasts.
I was so close that I touched noses with it."

"This is very strange," said the elephant; "the
cat was always truthful before — as far as we could
make out3 Let another witness try. Go, Baloo,
look in the hole, and come and report."

So the bear went. When he came back, he
said:

"Both the cat and the ass have lied; there was
nothing in the hole but a bean"

Great was the surprise and puzzlement of the
animalSo Each was now anxious to make the test
himself and get at the straight truth. The elephant
sent them one at a time.

First, the cow0 She found nothing in the hole but
a cow.

The tiger found nothing in it but a tiger.

The lion found nothing in it but a lion.

The leopard found nothing in it but a leopard.

The camel found a camel, and nothing more*

Then Hathi was wroth, and said he would have
the truth, if he had to go and fetch it himself. When
he returned, he abused his whole subjectry for liars,
and was in an unappeasable fury with the moral
and mental blindness of the cat. He said that any-

283

MARK TWAIN

body but a near-sighted fool could see that there
was nothing in the hole but an elephant.

MORAL, BY THE CAT

You can find in a text whatever you bring, if you
will stand between it and the mirror of your imagina-
tion. You may not see your ears, but they will be
there.

284

MY PLATONIC SWEETHEART

MY PLATONIC SWEETHEART*

Mark Twain was always interested in those psychic
phenomena which we call dreams* His own sleep fancies
were likely to be vivid, and it was his habit to recall them
and to find interest, and sometimes amusement, in their
detail. In the story which follows he set down, and not with'
out some fidelity to circumstance — dream circumstance — a
phase of what we call recurrent dreams. As the tale pro-
gressed he felt an inclination to treat the subject more fully —
more philosophically — and eventually he laid the manuscript
away. The time did not come when he was moved to rewrite
it; and for the pure enjoyment of it as a delicate fancy it
may be our good fortune that he left it unchanged, — Albert
Bigelow Paine0

I MET her first when I was seventeen and she
fifteen0 It was in a dream0 No, I did not meet
her; I overtook her. It was in a Missourian village
which I had never been in before, and was not in at
that time, except dreamwise; in the flesh I was on
the Atlantic seaboard ten or twelve hundred miles
away. The thing was sudden, and without prepara-
tion— after the custom of dreams. There I was,
crossing a wooden bridge that had a wooden rail
and was untidy with scattered wisps of hay, and
there she was, five steps in front of me; half a second
previously neither of us was there.. This was the
exit of the village, which lay immediately behind
us. Its last house was the blacksmith-shop; and

* Copyright, 1912, by Harper & Brothers.

287

MARK TWAIN

the peaceful clinking of the hammers — a sound which
nearly always seems remote, and is always touched
with a spirit of loneliness and a feeling of soft regret
for something, you don't know what — was wafted
to my ears over my shoulder; in front of us was the
winding country road, with woods on one side, and
on the other a rail fence, with blackberry vines and
hazel bushes crowding its angles; on an upper rail
a bluebird, and scurrying toward him along the same
rail a fox-squirrel with his tail bent high like a
shepherd's crook; beyond the fence a rich field of
grain, and far away a farmer in shirtsleeves and
straw hat wading knee-deep through it; no other
representatives of life, and no noise at all; every-
where a Sabbath stillness.

I remember it all — and the girl, too, and just how
she walked, and how she was dressedo In the first
moment I was five steps behind her;, in the next
one I was at her side — without either stepping or
gliding; it merely happened; the transfer ignored
space. I noticed that, but not with any surprise;
it seemed a natural process0

I was at her side. I put my arm around her waist
and drew her close to me, for I loved her; and
although I did not know her, my behavior seemed
to me quite natural and right, and I had no mis-
givings about it. She showed no surprise, no dis-
tress, no displeasure, but put an arm around my
waist, and turned up her face to mine with a happy
welcome in it, and when I bent down to kiss her she
received the kiss as if she was expecting it, and as if
it was quite natural for me to offer it and her to take

288

MY PLATONIC SWEETHEART

it and have pleasure in it. The affection which I
felt for her and which she manifestly felt for me was
a quite simple fact ; but the quality of it was another
matter. It was not the affection of brother and
sister — it was closer than that, more clinging, more
endearing, more reverent; and it was not the love
of sweethearts, for there was no fire in it. It was
somewhere between the two, and was finer than
either, and more exquisite, more profoundly content-
ing. We often experience this strange and gracious
thing in our dream-loves; and we remember it as
a feature of our childhood-loves, too.

We strolled along, across the bridge and down the
road, chatting like the oldest friends. She called me
George, and that seemed natural and right, though
it was not my name; and I called her Alice, and she
did not correct me, though without doubt it was not
her name. Everything that happened seemed just
natural and to be expected. Once I said, "What
a dear little hand it is!" and without any words
she laid it gracefully in mine for me to examine it.
I did it, remarking upon its littleness, its delicate
beauty, and its satin skin, then kissed it; she put
it up to her lips without saying anything and kissed
it in the same place.

Around a curve of the road, at the end of half a
mile, we came to a log house, and entered it and
found the table set and everything on it steaming
hot — a roast turkey, corn in the ear, butterbeans,
and the rest of the usual things — and a cat curled
up asleep in a splint-bottomed chair by the fireplace;
but no people; just emptiness and silence. She said

289

MARK TWAIN

she would look in the next room if I would wait for
her. So I sat down, and she passed through a door,
which closed behind her with a click of the latch.
I waited and waited. Then I got up and followed,
for I could not any longer bear to have her out of
my sight. I passed through the door, and found
myself in a strange sort of cemetery, a city of
innumerable tombs and monuments stretching far
and wide oh every hand, and flushed with pink and
gold lights flung from the sinking sun. I turned
around, and the log house was gone. I ran here and
there and yonder down the lanes between the rows
of tombs, calling Alice; and presently the night
closed down, and I could not find my way. Then
I woke, in deep distress over my loss, and was in
my bed in Philadelphia. And I was not seventeen,
now, but nineteen.

Ten years afterward, in another dream, I found
her. I was seventeen again, and she was still fifteen.
I was in a grassy place in the twilight deeps of a
magnolia forest some miles above Natchez, Missis-
sippi ; the trees were snowed over with great blossoms,
and the air was loaded with their rich and strenuous
fragrance; the ground was high, and through a rift
in the wood a burnished patch of the river was
visible in the distance. I was sitting on the grass,
absorbed in thinking, when an arm was laid around
my neck, and there was Alice sitting by my side and
looking into my face. A deep and satisfied happiness
and an unwordable gratitude rose in me, but with it
there was no feeling of surprise; and there was no
sense of a time-lapse; the ten years amounted to

290

MY PLATONIC SWEETHEART

hardly even a yesterday; indeed, to hardly even a
noticeable fraction of it. We dropped in the tran-
quilest way into affectionate caressings and pettings,
and chatted along without a reference to the separa-
tion; which was natural, for I think we did not
know there had been any that one might measure
with either clock or almanac. She called me Jack
and I called her Helen, and those seemed the right
and proper names, and perhaps neither of us sus-
pected that we had ever borne others; or, if we
did suspect it, it was probably not a matter of
consequence.

She had been beautiful ten years before; she was
just as beautiful still; girlishly young and sweet
and innocent, and she was still that now. She had
blue eyes, a hair of flossy gold before; she had black
hair now, and dark-brown eyes. I noted these
differences, but they did not suggest change; to me
she was the same girl she was before, absolutely.
It never occurred to me to ask what became of the
log house; I doubt if I even thought of it. We were
living in a simple and natural and beautiful world
where everything that happened was natural and
right, and was not perplexed with the unexpected
or with any forms of surprise, and so there was no
occasion for explanations and no interest attaching
to such things.

We had a dear and pleasant time together, and
were like a couple of ignorant and contented children.
Helen had a summer hat on. She took it off presently
and said, "It was in the way; now you can kiss me
better.' ' It seemed to me merely a bit of courteous

291

MARK TWAIN

and considerate wisdom, nothing more ; and a natural
thing for her to think of and do. We went wandering
through the woods, and came to a limpid and shallow
stream a matter of three yards wide. She said:
1 ' I must not get my feet wet, dear ; carry me over."
I took her in my arms and gave her my hat to
hold. This was to keep my own feet from getting
wet. I did not know why this should have that
effect; I merely knew it; and she knew it, too. I
crossed the stream, and said I would go on carrying
her, because it was so pleasant; and she said it was
pleasant to her, too, and wished we had thought of
it sooner. It seemed to me a pity that we should
have walked so far, both of us on foot, when we
could have been having this higher enjoyment; and
I spoke of it regretfully, as a something lost which
could never be got back. She was troubled about it,
too, and said there must be some way to get it back;
and she would think. After musing deeply a little
while she looked up radiant and proud, and said she
had found it.

" Carry me back and start over again."
I can see, now, that that was no solution, but at
the time it seemed luminous with intelligence, and I
believed that there was not another little head in
the world that could have worked out that difficult
problem with such swiftness and success. I told her
that, and it pleased her; and she said she was glad
it all happened, so that I could see how capable she
was. After thinking a moment she added that it
was "quite atreous." The words seemed to mean
something, I do not know why: in fact, it seemed

292

MY PLATONIC SWEETHEART

to cover the whole ground and leave nothing more to
say; I admired the nice aptness and the flashing
felicity of the phrase, and was filled with respect for
the marvelous mind that had been able to engender
it. I think less of it now. It is a noticeable fact
that the intellectual coinage of Dreamland often
passes for more there than it would fetch here.
Many a time in after years my dream-sweetheart
threw off golden sayings which crumbled to ashes
under my pencil when I was setting them down in
my note-book after breakfast.

I carried her back and started over again ; and all
the long afternoon I bore her in my arms, miles upon
miles, and it never occurred to either of us that
there was anything remarkable in a youth like me
being able to carry that sweet bundle around half
a day without some sense of fatigue or need of rest.
There are many dream-worlds, but none is so rightly
and reasonably and pleasantly arranged as that one.

After dark we reached a great plantation-house,
and it was her home. I carried her in, and the
family knew me and I knew them, although we had
not met before; and the mother asked me with
ill disguised anxiety how much twelve times fourteen
was, and I said a hundred and thirty-five, and she
put it down on a piece of paper, saying it was her
habit in the process of perfecting her education not
to trust important particulars to her memory; and
her husband was offering me a chair, but noticed
that Helen was asleep, so he said it would be best
not to disturb her; and he backed me softly against
a wardrobe and said I could stand more easily now;

293

MARK TWAIN

then a negro came in, bowing humbly, with his
slouch-hat in his hand, and asked me if I would
have my measure taken. The question did not
surprise me, but it confused me and worried me, and
I said I should like to have advice about it. He
started toward the door to call advisers; then he
and the family and the lights began to grow dim,
and in a few moments the place was pitch dark;
but straightway there came a flood of moonlight and
a gust of cold wind, and I found myself crossing a
frozen lake, and my arms were empty. The wave of
grief that swept through me woke me up, and I was
sitting at my desk in the newspaper office in San
Francisco, and I noticed by the clock that I had
been asleep less than two minutes. And what was
of more consequence, I was twenty-nine years old.

That was 1864. The next year and the year after
I had momentary glimpses of my dream-sweetheart,
but nothing more. These are set down in my note-
books under their proper dates, but with no talks
nor other particulars added; which is sufficient evi-
dence to me that there were none to add. In both
of these instances there was the sudden meeting and
recognition, the eager approach, then the instant
disappearance, leaving the world empty and of no
worth. I remember the two images quite well; in
fact, I remember all the images of that spirit, and
can bring them before me without help of my note-
book. The habit of writing down my dreams of all
sorts while they were fresh in my mind, and then
studying them and rehearsing them and trying to
find out what the source of dreams is, and which of

294

MY PLATONIC SWEETHEART

the two or three separate persons inhabiting us is
their architect, has given me a good dream-memory
— a thing which is not usual with people, for few
drill the dream-memory and, no memory can be
kept strong without that.

I spent a few months in the Hawaiian Islands in
1866, and in October of that year I delivered my
maiden lecture; it was in San Francisco. In the
following January I arrived in New York, and had
just completed my thirty-first year. In that year
I saw my platonic dream-sweetheart again. In this
dream I was again standing on the stage of the
Opera House in San Francisco, ready to lecture, and
with the audience vividly individualized before me
in the strong light. I began, spoke a few words,
and stopped, cold with fright; for I discovered that
I had no subject, no text, nothing to talk about. I
choked for a while, then got out a few words, a lame,
poor attempt at humor. The house made no
response. There was a miserable pause, then another
attempt, and another failure. There were a few
scornful laughs; otherwise the house was silent,
unsmilingly austere, deeply offended. I was con-
suming with shame. In my distress I tried to work
upon its pity. I began to make servile apologies,
mixed with gross and ill-timed flatteries, and to beg
and plead for forgiveness; this was too much, and
the people broke into insulting cries, whistlings,
hootings, and cat-calls, and in the midst of this
they rose and began to struggle in a confused mass
toward the door. I stood dazed and helpless, looking
out over this spectacle, and thinking how everybody

295

MARK TWAIN

would be talking about it next day, and I could not
show myself in the streets. When the house was
become wholly empty and still, I sat down on the
only chair that was on the stage and bent my head
down on the reading-desk to shut out the look of
that place. Soon that familiar dream-voice spoke
my name, and swept all my troubles away:

" Robert !"

I answered:

"Agnes !"

The next moment we two were lounging up the
blossomy gorge called the Iao Valley, in the Hawaiian
Islands. I recognized, without any explanations,
that Robert was not my name, but only a pet name,
a common noun, and meant "dear"; and both of
us knew that Agnes was not a name, but only a pet
name, a common noun, whose spirit was affectionate,
but not conveyable with exactness in any but the
dream-language. It was about the equivalent of
"dear," but the dream-vocabulary shaves meanings
finer and closer than do the world's daytime diction-
aries. We did not know why those words should
have those meanings; we had used words which
had no existence in any known language, and had
expected them to be understood, and they were
understood. In my note-books there are several
letters from this dream-sweetheart, in some unknown
tongue — presumably dream-tongue — with transla-
tions added. I should like to be master of that
tongue, then I could talk in shorthand. Here is
one of those letters — the whole of it:

"Rax oha tal."

296

MY PLATONIC SWEETHEART

Translation. — "When you receive this it will
remind you that I long to see your face and touch
your hand, for the comfort of it and the peace.' '

It is swifter than waking thought; for thought is
not thought at all, but only a vague and formless
fog until it is articulated into words.

We wandered far up the fairy gorge, gathering the
beautiful flowers of the ginger-plant and talking
affectionate things, and tying and retying each other's
ribbons and cravats, which didn't need it ; and finally
sat down in the shade of a tree and climbed the vine-
hung precipices with our eyes, up and up and up
toward the sky to where the drifting scarfs of white
mist, clove them across and left the green summits
floating pale and remote, like spectral islands wander-
ing in the deeps of space; and then we descended to
earth and talked again.

4 'How still it is — and soft, and balmy, and reposeful !
I could never tire of it. You like it, don't you, Robert ?"

"Yes, and I like the whole region — all the islands.
Maui. It is a darling island. I have been here
before. Have you ?"

"Once, but it wasn't an island then."

"What was it?"

"It was asufa."

I understood. It was the dream-word for "part
of a continent."

"What were the people like?"

"They hadn't come yet. There weren't any.''

"Do you know, Agnes — that is Haleakala, the
dead volcano, over there across the valley; was it
here in your friend's time?"

297

it

MARK TWAIN

Yes, but it was burning."
Do you travel much?"

I think so. Not here much, but in the stars a
good deal."

"Is it pretty there?"

She used a couple of dream-words for "You will go
with me some time and you will see." Non-commit-
tal, as one perceives now, but I did not notice it then.

A man-of-war-bird lit on her shoulder; I put out
my hand and caught it. Its feathers began to fall
out, and it turned into a kitten; then the kitten's
body began to contract itself to a ball and put out
hairy, long legs, and soon it was a tarantula; I was
going to keep it, but it turned into a star-fish, and I
threw it away. Agnes said it was not worth while
to try to keep things; there was no stability about
them. I suggested rocks; but she said a rock was
like the rest; it wouldn't stay. She picked up a
stone, and it turned into a bat and flew away. These
curious matters interested me, but that was all;
they did not stir my wonder.

While we were sitting there in the Iao gorge
talking, a Kanaka came along who was wrinkled
and bent and white-headed, and he stopped and
talked to us in the native tongue, and we under-
stood him without trouble and answered him in his
own speech. He said he was a hundred and thirty
years old, and he remembered Captain Cook well,
and was present when he was murdered; saw it
with his own eyes, and also helped. Then he showed
us his gun, which was of strange make, and he said it
was his own invention and was to shoot arrows with,

298

MY PLATONIC SWEETHEART

though one loaded it with powder and it had a
percussioa lock. He said it would carry a hundred
miles. It seemed a reasonable statement; I had
no fault to find with it, and it did not in any way
surprise me. He loaded it and fired an arrow aloft,
and it darted into the sky and vanished. Then he
went his way, saying that the arrow would fall near
us in half an hour, and would go many yards into
the earth, not minding the rocks.

I took the time, and we waited, reclining upon
the mossy slant at the base of a tree, and gazing
into the sky. By and by there was a hissing sound,
followed by a dull impact, and Agnes uttered a groan.
She said, in a series of fainting gasps :

"Take me to your arms — it passed through me —
hold me to your heart — I am afraid to die — closer
— closer. It is growing dark — I cannot see you.
Don't leave me — where are you? You are not gone?
You will not leave me? I would not leave you."

Then her spirit passed; she was clay in my arms.

The scene changed in an instant and I was awake
and crossing Bond Street in New York with a friend,
and it was snowing hard. We had been talking, and
there had been no observable gaps in the conversa-
tion. I doubt if I had made any more than two
steps while I was asleep. I am satisfied that even
the most elaborate and incident-crowded dream is
seldom more than a few seconds in length. It
would not cost me very much of a strain to believe
in Mohammed's seventy-year dream, which began
when he knocked his glass over, and ended in time
for him to catch it before the water was spilled.

299

MARK TWAIN

Within a quarter of an hour I was in my quarters,
undressed, ready for bed, and was jotting down my
dream in my note-book. A striking thing happened
now. I finished my notes, and was just going to
turn out the gas when I was caught with a most
strenuous gape, for it was very late and I was very
drowsy. I fell asleep and dreamed again. What
now follows occurred while I was asleep; and when
I woke again the gape had completed itself, but not
long before, I think, for I was still on my feet. I was
in Athens — a city which I had not then seen, but I
recognized the Parthenon from the pictures, although
it had a fresh look and was in perfect repair. I
passed by it and climbed a grassy hill toward a
palatial sort of mansion which was built of red
terra-cotta and had a spacious portico, whose roof
was supported by a rank of fluted columns with
Corinthian capitals. It was noonday, but I met no
one. I passed into the house and entered the first
room. It was very large and light, its walls were of
polished and richly tinted and veined onyx, and its
floor was a pictured pattern in soft colors laid in
tiles. I noted the details of the furniture and the
ornaments — a thing which I should not have been
likely to do when awake — and they took sharp hold
and remained in my memory; they are not really
dim yet, and this was more than thirty years ago.

There was a person present — Agnes. I was not
surprised to see her, but only glad. She was in the
simple Greek costume, and her hair and eyes were
different as to color from those she had had when
she died in the Hawaiian Islands half an hour before,

300

MY PLATONIC SWEETHEART

but to me she was exactly her own beautiful little
self as I had always known her, and she was still
fifteen, and I was seventeen once more. She was
sitting on an ivory settee, crocheting something or
other, and had her crewels in a shallow willow work-
basket in her lap. I sat down by her and we began
to chat in the usual way. I remembered her death,
but the pain and the grief and the bitterness which
had been so sharp and so desolating to me at the
moment that it happened had wholly passed from
me now, and had left not a scar. I was grateful to
have her back, but there was no realizable sense
that she had ever been gone, and so it did not occur
to me to speak about it, and she made no reference
to it herself. It may be that she had often died
before, and knew that there was nothing lasting
about it, and consequently nothing important
enough in it to make conversation out of.

When I think of that house and its belongings, I
recognize what a master in taste and drawing and
color and arrangement is the dream-artist who resides
in us. In my waking hours, when the inferior artist
in me is in command, I cannot draw even the simplest
picture with a pencil, nor do anything with a brush
and colors; I cannot bring before my mind's eye the
detail image of any building known to me except
my own house at home; of St. Paul's, St. Peter's,
the Eiffel Tower, the Taj, the Capitol at Washington,
I can reproduce only portions, partial glimpses; the
same with Niagara Falls, the Matterhorn, and other
familiar things in nature; I cannot bring before my
mind's eye the face or figure of any human being

301

MARK TWAIN

known to me; I have seen my family at breakfast
within the past two hours; I cannot bring their
images before me, I do not know how they look;
before me, as I write, I see a little grove of young
trees in the garden; high above them projects the
slender lance of a young pine, beyond it is a glimpse
of the upper half of a dull-white chimney covered
by an A-shaped little roof shingled with brown-red
tiles, and half a mile away is a hill-top densely
wooded, and the red is cloven by a curved, wide
vacancy, which is smooth and grass-clad; I cannot
shut my eyes and reproduce that picture as a whole
at all, nor any single detail of it except the grassy
curve, and that but vaguely and fleetingly.

But my dream-artist can draw anything, and do
it perfectly; he can paint with all the colors and all
the shades, and do it with delicacy and truth; he
can place before me vivid images of palaces, cities,
hamlets, hovels, mountains, valleys, lakes, skies,
glowing in sunlight or moonlight, or veiled in driving
gusts of snow or rain, and he can set before me people
who are intensely alive, and who feel, and express
their feelings in their faces, and who also talk and
laugh, sing and swear. And when I wake I can shut
my eyes and bring back those people, and the
scenery and the buildings; and not only in general
view, but often in nice detail. While Agnes and I
sat talking in that grand Athens house, several
stately Greeks entered from another part of it, dis-
puting warmly about something or other, and passed
us by with courteous recognition; and among them
was Socrates. I recognized him by his nose. A

302

MY PLATONIC SWEETHEART

moment later the house and Agnes and Athens van-
ished away, and I was in my quarters in New York
again and reaching for my note-book.

In our dreams — I know it ! — we do make the jour-
neys we seem to make ; we do see the things we seem
to see; the people, the horses, the cats, the dogs, the
birds, the whales, are real, not chimeras; they are
living spirits, not shadows; and they are immortal
and indestructible. They go whither they will ; they
visit all resorts, all points of interest, even the twin-
kling suns that wander in the wastes of space. That
is where those strange mountains are which slide from
under our feet while we walk, and where those vast
caverns are whose bewildering avenues close behind
us and in front when we are lost, and shut us in. We
know this because there are no such things here, and
they must be there, because there is no other place.

This tale is long enough, and I will close it now.
In the forty-four years that I have known my Dream-
land sweetheart, I have seen her once in two years
on an average. Mainly these were glimpses, but she
was always immediately recognizable, notwithstand-
ing she was so given to repair herself and getting up
doubtful improvements in her hair and eyes. She
was always fifteen, and looked it and acted it; and
I was always seventeen, and never felt a day older.
To me she is a real person, not a fiction, and her
sweet and innocent society has been one of the
prettiest and pleasantest experiences of my life. I
know that to you her talk will not seem of the first
intellectual order ; but you should hear her in Dream-
land— then you would see!

303

MARK TWAIN

I saw her a week ago, just for a moment. Fifteen, as
usual, and I seventeen, instead of going on sixty-three,
as I was when I went to sleep. We were in India,
and Bombay was in sight; also Windsor Castle, its
towers and battlements veiled in a delicate haze, and
from it the Thames flowed, curving and winding
between its swarded banks, to our feet. I said:

"There is no question about it, England is the
most beautiful of all the countries.' *

Her. face lighted with approval, and she said, with
that sweet and earnest irrelevance of hers:

"It is, because it is so marginal."

Then she disappeared. It was just as well; she
could probably have added nothing to that rounded
and perfect statement without damaging its sym-
metry.

This glimpse of her carries me back to Maui, and
that time when I saw her gasp out her young life.
That was a terrible thing to me at the time. It was
preternaturally vivid; and the pain and the grief
and the misery of it to me transcended many suffer-
ings that I have known in waking life. For every-
thing in a dream is more deep and strong and sharp
and real than is ever its pale imitation in the unreal
life which is ours when we go about awake and
clothed with our artificial selves in this vague and
dull-tinted artificial world. When we die we shall
slough off this cheap intellect, perhaps, and go
abroad into Dreamland clothed in our real selves,
and aggrandized and enriched by the command over
the mysterious mental magician who is here not our
slave, but only our guest.

304

HUNTING THE
DECEITFUL TURKEY

HUNTING THE DECEITFUL
TURKEY*

WHEN I was a boy my uncle and his big boys
hunted with the rifle, the youngest boy Fred
and I with a shotgun — a small single-barrelled shot-
gun which was properly suited to our size and
strength; it was not much heavier than a broom.
We carried it turn about, half an hour at a time. I
was not able to hit anything with it, but I liked to
try. Fred and I hunted feathered small game, the
others hunted deer, squirrels, wild turkeys, and such
things. My uncle and the big boys were good shots.
They killed hawks and wild geese and such like on the
wing; and they didn't wound or kill squirrels, they
stunned them. When the dogs treed a squirrel, the
squirrel would scamper aloft and run out on a limb
and flatten himself along it, hoping to make himself
invisible in that way — and not quite succeeding.
You could see his wee little ears sticking up. You
couldn't see his nose, but you knew where it was.
Then the hunter, despising a "rest" for his rifle,
stood up and took offhand aim at the limb and sent
a bullet into it immediately under the squirrel's
nose, and down tumbled the animal, unwounded but
unconscious; the dogs gave him a shake and he was
dead. Sometimes when the distance was great and

* Copyright, 1906, by Harper & Brothers.

307

MARK TWAIN

the wind not accurately allowed for, the bullet
would hit the squirrel's head; the dogs could do as
they pleased with that one — the hunter's pride was
hurt, and he wouldn't allow it to go into the game-
bag.

In the first faint gray of the dawn the stately wild
turkeys would be stalking around in great flocks,
and ready to be sociable and answer invitations to
come and converse with other excursionists of their
kind* The hunter concealed himself and imitated the
turkey-call by sucking the air through the legbone of
a turkey which had previously answered a call like
that and lived only just long enough to regret it.
There is nothing that furnishes a perfect turkey-call
except that bone. Another of Nature's treacheries,
you see. She is full of them; half the time she
doesn't know which she likes best — to betray her
child or protect it. In the case of the turkey she is
badly mixed : she gives it a bone to be used in getting
it into trouble, and she also furnishes it with a trick
for getting itself out of the trouble again. When a
mamma-turkey answers an invitation and finds she
has made a mistake in accepting it, she does as the
mamma-partridge does — remembers a previous en-
gagement and goes limping and scrambling away,
pretending to be very lame; and at the same time
she is saying to her not-visible children, "Lie low,
keep still, don't expose yourselves; I shall be back
as soon as I have beguiled this shabby swindler out
of the country."

When a person is ignorant and confiding, this
immoral device can have tiresome results. I followed

308

HUNTING THE DECEITFUL TURKEY

an ostensibly lame turkey over a considerable part
of the United States one morning, because I believed
in her and could not think she would deceive a mere
boy, and one who was trusting her and considering
her honest. I had the single-barrelled shotgun, but
my idea was to catch her alive. I often got within
rushing distance of her, and then made my rush;
but always, just as I made my final plunge and put
my hand down where her back had been, it wasn't
there; it was only two or three inches from there
and I brushed the tail-feathers as I landed on my
stomach — a very close call, but still not quite close
enough; that is, not close enough for success, but
just close enough to convince me that I could do
it next time. She always waited for me, a little
piece away, and let on to be resting and greatly
fatigued; which was a lie, but I believed it, for I still
thought her honest long after I ought to have begun
to doubt her, suspecting that this was no way for a
high-minded bird to be acting. I followed, and fol-
lowed, and followed, making my periodical rushes,
and getting up and brushing the dust off, and resum-
ing the voyage with patient confidence; indeed, with
a confidence which grew, for I could see by the change
of climate and vegetation that we were getting up
into the high latitudes, and as she always looked a
little tireder and a little more discouraged after each
rush, I judged that I was safe to win, in the end, the
competition being purely a matter of staying power
and the advantage lying with me from the start
because she was lame.

Along in the afternoon I began to feel fatigued

309

MARK TWAIN

myself. Neither of us had had any rest since we
first started on the excursion, which was upwards of
ten hours before, though latterly we had paused
awhile after rushes, I letting on to be thinking
about something else; but neither of us sincere, and
both of us waiting for the other to call game but in
no real hurry about it, for indeed those little
evanescent snatches of rest were very grateful to
the feelings of us both; it would naturally be so,
skirmishing along like that ever since dawn and not
a bite in the meantime; at least for me, though
sometimes as she lay on her side fanning herself with
a wing and praying for strength to get out of this
difficulty a grasshopper happened along whose time
had come, and that was well for her, and fortunate,
but I had nothing — nothing the whole day.

More than once, after I was very tired, I gave up
taking her alive, and was going to shoot her, but I
never did it, although it was my right, for I did not
believe I could hit her; and besides, she always
stopped and posed, when I raised the gun, and this
made me suspicious that she knew about me and my
marksmanship, and so I did not care to expose myself
to remarks.

I did not get her, at all. When she got tired of the
game at last, she rose from almost tinder my hand
and flew aloft with the rush and whir of a shell and
lit on the highest limb of a great tree and sat down
and crossed her legs and smiled down at me, and
seemed gratified to see me so astonished.

I was ashamed, and also lost; and it was while
wandering the woods hunting for myself that I

310

HUNTING THE DECEITFUL TURKEY

found a deserted log cabin and had one of the best
meals there that in my life-days I have eaten. The
weed-grown garden was full of ripe tomatoes, and I
ate them ravenously, though I had never liked them
before. Not more than two or three times since
have I tasted anything that was so delicious as those
tomatoes. I surfeited myself with them, and did
not taste another one until I was in middle life. I
can eat them now, but I do not like the look of them.
I suppose we have all experienced a surfeit at one
time or another. Once, in stress of circumstances, I
ate part of a barrel of sardines, there being nothing
else at hand, but since then I have always been able
to get along without sardines.

3"

THE McWILLIAMSES

AND THE

BURGLAR ALARM

THE McWILLIAMSES AND THE
BURGLAR ALARM

THE conversation drifted smoothly and pleas-
antly along from weather to crops, from crops
to literature, from literature to scandal, from scandal
to religion; then took a random jump, and landed
on the subject of burglar alarms. And now for the
first time Mr. McWilliams showed feeling. When-
ever I perceive this sign on this man's dial, I com-
prehend it, and lapse into silence, and give him
opportunity to unload his heart. Said he, with but
ill-controlled emotion :

"I do not go one single cent on burglar alarms,
Mr. Twain — not a single cent — and I will tell you
why. When we were finishing our house, we found
we had a little cash left over, on account of the
plumber not knowing it. I was for enlightening the
heathen with it, for I was always unaccountably
down on the heathen somehow; but Mrs. McWilliams
said no, let's have a burglar alarm. I agreed to this
compromise. I will explain that whenever I want
a thing, and Mrs. McWilliams wants another thing,
and we decide upon the thing that Mrs. McWilliams
wants — as we always do — she calls that a com-
promise. Very well: the man came up from New
York and put in the alarm, and charged three
hundred and twenty-five dollars for it, and said we
could sleep without uneasiness now. So we did for

3*5

MARK TWAIN

awhile — say a month. Then one night we smelled
smoke, and I was advised to get up and see what
the matter was. I lit a candle, and started toward
the stairs, and met a burglar coming out of a room
with a basket of tinware, which he had mistaken
for solid silver in the dark. He was smoking a pipe.
I said, 'My friend, we do not allow smoking in
this room.' He said he was a stranger, and could
not be expected to know the rules of the house: said
he had been in many houses just as good as this one,
and it had never been objected to before. He added
that as far as his experience went, such rules had
never been considered to apply to burglars, anyway.

"I said: 'Smoke along, then, if it is the custom,
though I think that the conceding of a privilege to a
burglar which is denied to a bishop is a conspicuous
sign of the looseness of the times. But waiving all
that, what business have you to be entering this
house in this furtive and clandestine way, without
ringing the burglar alarm?'

"He looked confused and ashamed, and said, with
embarrassment: 'I beg a thousand pardons. I did
not know you had a burglar alarm, else I would have
rung it. I beg you will not mention it where my
parents may hear of it, for they are old and feeble,
and such a seemingly wanton breach of the hallowed
conventionalities of our Christian civilization might
all too rudely sunder the frail bridge which hangs
darkling between the pale and evanescent present
and the solemn great deeps of the eternities. May
I trouble you for a match?'

* * I said : ' Your sentiments do you honor, but if you

3*6

McWILLIAMSES AND THE BURGLAR ALARM

will allow me to say it, metaphor is not your best hold.
Spare your thigh ; this kind light only on the box, and
seldom there, in fact, if my experience may be trusted.
But to return to business: how did you get in here?'

'"Through a second-story window.*

"It was even so. I redeemed the tinware at
pawnbroker's rates, less cost of advertising, bade
the burglar good-night, closed the window after him,
and retired to headquarters to report. Next morning
we sent for the burglar-alarm man, and he came up
and explained that the reason the alarm did not
'go off' was that no part of the house but the first
floor was attached to the alarm. This was simply
idiotic; one might as well have no armor on at all
in battle as to have it only on his legs. The expert
now put the whole second story on the alarm,
charged three hundred dollars for it, and went his
way. By and by, one night, I found a burglar in
the third story, about to start down a ladder with a
lot of miscellaneous property. My first impulse was
to crack his head with a billiard cue; but my second
was to refrain from this attention, because he was
between me and the cue rack. The second impulse
was plainly the soundest, so I refrained, and pro-
ceeded to compromise. I redeemed the property at
former rates, after deducting ten per cent, for use of
ladder, it being my ladder, and next day we sent
down for the expert once more, and had the third
story attached to the alarm, for three hundred
dollars.

"By this time the 'annunciator* had grown to
formidable dimensions. It had forty-seven tags on

3i7

MARK TWAIN

it, marked with the names of the various rooms and
chimneys, and it occupied the space of an ordinary
wardrobe. The gong was the size of a wash-bowl,
and was placed above the head of our bed. There
was a wire from the house to the coachman's quarters
in the stable, and a noble gong alongside his pillow.
"We should have been comfortable now but for
one defect. Every morning at five the cook opened
the kitchen door, in the way of business, and rip
went that gong! The first time this happened I
thought the last day was come sure. I didn't think
it in bed — no, but out of it — for the first effect of
that frightful gong is to hurl you across the house,
and slam you against the wall, and then curl you
up, and squirm you like a spider on a stove lid, till
somebody shuts the kitchen door. In solid fact,
there is no clamor that is even remotely comparable
to the dire clamor which that gong makes. Well,
this catastrophe happened every morning regularly
at five o'clock, and lost us three hours sleep; for,
mind you, when that thing wakes you, it doesn't
merely wake you in spots; it wakes you all over,
conscience and all, and you are good for eighteen
hours of wide-awakeness subsequently — eighteen
hours of the very most inconceivable wide-awakeness
that you ever experienced in your life. A stranger
died on our hands one time, and we vacated and left
him in our room overnight. Did that stranger wait
for the general judgment? No, sir; he got up at
five the next morning in the most prompt and
unostentatious way. I knew he would; I knew it
mighty well. He collected his life-insurance, and

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McWILLIAMSES AND THE BURGLAR ALARM

lived happy ever after, for there was plenty of proof
as to the perfect squareness of his death.

"Well, we were gradually fading toward a better
land, on account of the daily loss of sleep; so we
finally had the expert up again, and he ran a wire to
the outside of the door, and placed a switch there,
whereby Thomas, the butler, always made one little
mistake — he switched the alarm off at night when
he went to bed, and switched it on again at daybreak
in the morning, just in time for the cook to open the
kitchen door, and enable that gong to slam us across
the house, sometimes breaking a window with one or
the other of us. At the end of a week we recognized
that this switch business was a delusion and a snare.
We also discovered that a band of burglars had been
lodging in the house the whole time — not exactly
to steal, for there wasn't much left now, but to hide
from the police, for they were hot pressed, and they
shrewdly judged that the detectives would never
think of a tribe of burglars taking sanctuary in a
house notoriously protected by the most imposing
and elaborate burglar alarm in America.

"Sent down for the expert again, and this time he
struck a most dazzling idea — he fixed the thing so that
opening the kitchen door would take off the alarm. It
was a noble idea, and he charged accordingly. But
you already foresee the result. I switched on the
alarm every night at bed-time, no longer trusting on
Thomas's frail memory ; and as soon as the lights were
out the burglars walked in at the kitchen door, thus
taking the alarm off without waiting for the cook to do
it in the morning. You see how aggravatingly we were

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MARK TWAIN

situated. For months we couldn't have any company.
Not a spare bed in the house ; all occupied by burglars.

"Finally, I got up a cure of my own. The expert
answered the call, and ran another ground wire to
the stable, and established a switch there, so that
the coachman could put on and take off the alarm.
That worked first rate, and a season of peace ensued,
during which we got to inviting company once more
and enjoying life.

"But by and by the irrepressible alarm invented
a new kink. One winter's night we were flung out
of bed by the sudden music of that awful gong, and
when we hobbled to the annunciator, turned up the
gas, and saw the word 'Nursery' exposed, Mrs.
McWilliams fainted dead away, and I came precious
near doing the same thing myself. I seized my
shotgun, and stood timing the coachman whilst
that appalling buzzing went on. I knew that his
gong had flung him out, too, and that he would be
along with his gun as soon as he could jump into
his clothes. When I judged that the time was ripe,
I crept to the room next the nursery, glanced through
the window, and saw the dim outline of the coach-
man in the yard below, standing at present-arms and
waiting for a chance. Then I hopped into the nursery
and fired, and in the same instant the coachman fired
at the red flash of my gun. Both of us were success-
ful; I crippled a nurse, and he shot off all my back
hair. We turned up the gas, and telephoned for a
surgeon. There was not a sign of a burglar, and no
window had been raised. One glass was absent, but
that was where the coachman's charge had come

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Mc WILLIAMSES AND THE BURGLAR ALARM

through. Here was a fine mystery — a burglar alarm
'going off' at midnight of its own accord, and not a
burglar in the neighborhood !

"The expert answered the usual call, and explained
that it was a 'False alarm/ Said it was easily fixed.
So he overhauled the nursery window, charged a
remunerative figure for it, and departed.

"What we suffered from false alarms for the next
three years no stylographic pen can describe. During
the next three months I always flew with my gun to
the room indicated, and the coachman always sallied
forth with his battery to support me. But there was
never anything to shoot at — windows all tight and
secure. We always sent dowa for the expert next
day, and he fixed those particular windows so they
would keep quiet a week or so, and always remem-
bered to send us a bill about like this:

Wire $2.15

Nipple 75

Two hours' labor 1.50

Wax 47

Tape 34

Screws 15

Recharging battery 98

Three hours' labor 2.25

String 02

Lard 66

Pond's Extract 1.25

Springs at 50 2.00

Railroad fares 7.25

wmmmmmmm—mm

$19.77
321

MARK TWAIN

"At length a perfectly natural thing came about —
after we had answered three or four hundred false
alarms — -to wit, we stopped answering them. Yes,
I simply rose up calmly, when slammed across the
house by the alarm, calmly inspected the annunciator,
took note of the room indicated, and then calmly
disconnected that room from the alarm, and went
back to bed as if nothing had happened. Moreover,
I left that room off permanently, and did not send
for the expert. Well, it goes without saying that in
the course of time all the rooms were taken off, and
the entire machine was out of service.

"It was at this unprotected time that the heaviest
calamity of all happened. The burglars walked in
one night and carried off the burglar alarm! yes,
sir, every hide and hair of it: ripped it out, tooth
and nail; springs, bells, gongs, battery, and all;
they took a hundred and fifty miles of copper wire;
they just cleaned her out, bag and baggage, and never
left us a vestige of her to swear at — swear by, I
mean.

"We had a time of it to get her back; but we
accomplished it finally, for money. The alarm firm
said that what we needed now was to have her put
in right — with their new patent springs in the win-
dows to make false alarms impossible, and their new
patent clock attached to take off and put on the
alarm morning and night without human assistance.
That seemed a good scheme. They promised to have
the whole thing finished in ten days. They began
work, and we left for the summer. They worked a
couple of days; then they left for the summer. After

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McWILLIAMSES AND THE BURGLAR ALARM

which the burglars moved in, and began their summer
vacation. When we returned in the fall, the house
was as empty as a beer closet in premises where
painters have been at work. We refurnished, and
then sent down to hurry up the expert. He came up
and finished the job, and said: 'Now this clock is
set to put on the alarm every night at 10, and take
it off every morning at 5:45. All you've got to do
is to wind her up every week, and then leave her
alone — she will take care of the alarm herself.*

"After that we had a most tranquil season during
three months. The bill was prodigious, of course,
and I had said I would not pay it until the new
machinery had proved itself to be flawless. The
time stipulated was three months. So I paid the
bill, and the very next day the alarm went to buzzing
like ten thousand bee swarms at ten o'clock in the
morning. I turned the hands around twelve hours,
according to instructions, and this took off the alarm;
but there was another hitch at night, and I had to
set her ahead twelve hours once more to get her to
put the alarm on again. That sort of nonsense
went on a week or two, then the expert came up and
put in a new clock. He came up every three months
during the next three years, and put in a new clock.
But it was always a failure. His clocks all had the
same perverse defect : they would put the alarm on
in the daytime, and they would not put it on at night;
and if you forced it on yourself, they would take it
off again the minute your back was turned.

"Now there is the history of that burglar alarm —
everything just as it happened; nothing extenuated;

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MARK TWAIN

and naught set down in malice. Yes, sir, — and when
I had slept nine years with burglars, and maintained
an expensive burglar alarm the whole time, for their
protection, not mine, and at my sole cost — for not

a d d cent could I ever get them to contribute — I

just said to Mrs. McWilliams that I had had enough
of that kind of pie; so with her full consent I took
the whole thing out and traded it off for a dog, and
shot the dog. I don't know what you think about
it, Mr. Twain; but / think those things are made
solely in the interest of the burglars. Yes, sir, a
burglar alarm combines in its person all that is
objectionable about a fire, a riot, and a harem, and
at the same time had none of the compensating
advantages, of one sort or another, that customarily
belong with that combination. Good-by: I get off
here."

THE END

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Brigham Young University

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