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Title: The £1,000,000 bank-note, and other new stories

Author: Mark Twain

Release date: February 27, 2020 [eBook #61522]
Most recently updated: October 17, 2024

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE
£1,000,000 BANK-NOTE, AND OTHER NEW STORIES ***

THE
£1,000,000 BANK-NOTE
AND OTHER NEW STORIES

BY

MARK TWAIN

TORONTO
THE MUSSON BOOK COMPANY
LIMITED

CONTENTS
PAGE
The £1,000,000 Bank-note 1

Mental Telegraphy 41

A Cure for the Blues 77

The Enemy Conquered; or, Love Triumphant 114

About all Kinds of Ships 193

Playing Courier 225

The German Chicago 253

A Petition to the Queen of England 277

A Majestic Literary Fossil 287

THE £1,000,000 BANK-NOTE

When I was twenty-seven years old, I was a mining-broker’s
clerk in San Francisco, and an expert in all the details of
stock traffic. I was alone in the world, and had nothing to
depend upon but my wits and a clean reputation; but these
were setting my feet in the road to eventual fortune, and I
was content with the prospect.
My time was my own after the afternoon board,
Saturdays, and I was accustomed to put it in on a little sail-
boat on the bay. One day I ventured too far, and was carried
out to sea. Just at nightfall, when hope was about gone, I
was picked up by a small brig which was bound for London.
It was a long and stormy voyage, and they made me work
my passage without pay, as a common sailor. When I
stepped ashore in London my clothes were ragged and
shabby, and I had only a dollar in my pocket. This money
fed and sheltered me twenty-four hours. During the next
twenty-four I went without food and shelter.
About ten o’clock on the following morning, seedy and
hungry, I was dragging myself along Portland Place, when a
child that was passing, towed by a nursemaid, tossed a
luscious big pear—minus one bite—into the gutter. I
stopped, of course, and fastened my desiring eye on that
muddy treasure. My mouth watered for it, my stomach
craved it, my whole being begged for it. But every time I
made a move to get it some passing eye detected my
purpose, and of course I straightened up, then, and looked

indifferent, and pretended that I hadn’t been thinking
about the pear at all. This same thing kept happening and
happening, and I couldn’t get the pear. I was just getting
desperate enough to brave all the shame, and to seize it,
when a window behind me was raised, and a gentleman
spoke out of it, saying:
‘Step in here, please.’
I was admitted by a gorgeous flunkey, and shown into a
sumptuous room where a couple of elderly gentlemen were
sitting. They sent away the servant, and made me sit down.
They had just finished their breakfast, and the sight of the
remains of it almost overpowered me. I could hardly keep
my wits together in the presence of that food, but as I was
not asked to sample it, I had to bear my trouble as best I
could.
Now, something had been happening there a little
before, which I did not know anything about until a good
many days afterwards, but I will tell you about it now.
Those two old brothers had been having a pretty hot
argument a couple of days before, and had ended by
agreeing to decide it by a bet, which is the English way of
settling everything.
You will remember that the Bank of England once
issued two notes of a million pounds each, to be used for a
special purpose connected with some public transaction
with a foreign country. For some reason or other only one
of these had been used and cancelled; the other still lay in
the vaults of the Bank. Well, the brothers, chatting along,
happened to get to wondering what might be the fate of a
perfectly honest and intelligent stranger who should be
turned adrift in London without a friend, and with no
money but that million-pound bank-note, and no way to
account for his being in possession of it. Brother A said he
would starve to death; Brother B said he wouldn’t. Brother
A said he couldn’t offer it at a bank or anywhere else,

because he would be arrested on the spot. So they went on
disputing till Brother B said he would bet twenty thousand
pounds that the man would live thirty days, any way, on
that million, and keep out of jail, too. Brother A took him
up. Brother B went down to the Bank and bought that note.
Just like an Englishman, you see; pluck to the backbone.
Then he dictated a letter, which one of his clerks wrote out
in a beautiful round hand, and then the two brothers sat at
the window a whole day watching for the right man to give
it to.
They saw many honest faces go by that were not
intelligent enough; many that were intelligent but not
honest enough; many that were both, but the possessors
were not poor enough, or, if poor enough, were not
strangers. There was always a defect, until I came along;
but they agreed that I filled the bill all around; so they
elected me unanimously, and there I was, now, waiting to
know why I was called in. They began to ask me questions
about myself, and pretty soon they had my story. Finally
they told me I would answer their purpose. I said I was
sincerely glad, and asked what it was. Then one of them
handed me an envelope, and said I would find the
explanation inside. I was going to open it, but he said no;
take it to my lodgings, and look it over carefully, and not be
hasty or rash. I was puzzled, and wanted to discuss the
matter a little further, but they didn’t; so I took my leave,
feeling hurt and insulted to be made the butt of what was
apparently some kind of a practical joke, and yet obliged to
put up with it, not being in circumstances to resent affronts
from rich and strong folk.
I would have picked up the pear, now, and eaten it
before all the world, but it was gone; so I had lost that by
this unlucky business, and the thought of it did not soften
my feeling towards those men. As soon as I was out of sight
of that house I opened my envelope, and saw that it

contained money! My opinion of those people changed, I
can tell you! I lost not a moment, but shoved note and
money into my vest-pocket, and broke for the nearest
cheap eating-house. Well, how I did eat! When at last I
couldn’t hold any more, I took out my money and unfolded
it, took one glimpse and nearly fainted. Five millions of
dollars! Why, it made my head swim.
I must have sat there stunned and blinking at the note
as much as a minute before I came rightly to myself again.
The first thing I noticed, then, was the landlord. His eye
was on the note, and he was petrified. He was worshipping,
with all his body and soul, but he looked as if he couldn’t
stir hand or foot. I took my cue in a moment, and did the
only rational thing there was to do. I reached the note
towards him, and said carelessly:
‘Give me the change, please.’
Then he was restored to his normal condition, and
made a thousand apologies for not being able to break the
bill, and I couldn’t get him to touch it. He wanted to look at
it, and keep on looking at it; he couldn’t seem to get
enough of it to quench the thirst of his eye, but he shrank
from touching it as if it had been something too sacred for
poor common clay to handle. I said:
‘I am sorry if it is an inconvenience, but I must insist.
Please change it; I haven’t anything else.’
But he said that wasn’t any matter; he was quite willing
to let the trifle stand over till another time. I said I might
not be in his neighbourhood again for a good while; but he
said it was of no consequence, he could wait, and,
moreover, I could have anything I wanted, any time I chose,
and let the account run as long as I pleased. He said he
hoped he wasn’t afraid to trust as rich a gentleman as I
was, merely because I was of a merry disposition, and
chose to play larks on the public in the matter of dress. By

this time another customer was entering, and the landlord
hinted to me to put the monster out of sight; then he bowed
me all the way to the door, and I started straight for that
house and those brothers, to correct the mistake which had
been made before the police should hunt me up, and help
me do it. I was pretty nervous, in fact pretty badly
frightened, though, of course, I was no way in fault; but I
knew men well enough to know that when they find they’ve
given a tramp a million-pound bill when they thought it was
a one-pounder, they are in a frantic rage against him
instead of quarrelling with their own near-sightedness, as
they ought. As I approached the house my excitement
began to abate, for all was quiet there, which made me feel
pretty sure the blunder was not discovered yet. I rang. The
same servant appeared. I asked for those gentlemen.
‘They are gone.’ This in the lofty, cold way of that
fellow’s tribe.
‘Gone? Gone where?’
‘On a journey.’
‘But whereabouts?’
‘To the Continent, I think.’
‘The Continent?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Which way—by what route?’
‘I can’t say, sir.’
‘When will they be back?’
‘In a month, they said.’
‘A month! Oh, this is awful! Give me some sort of idea
of how to get a word to them. It’s of the last importance.’
‘I can’t, indeed. I’ve no idea where they’ve gone, sir.’
‘Then I must see some member of the family.’

‘Family’s away too; been abroad months—in Egypt and
India, I think.’
‘Man, there’s been an immense mistake made. They’ll
be back before night. Will you tell them I’ve been here, and
that I will keep coming till it’s all made right, and they
needn’t be afraid?’
‘I’ll tell them, if they come back, but I am not expecting
them. They said you would be here in an hour to make
inquiries, but I must tell you it’s all right, they’ll be here on
time and expect you.’
So I had to give it up and go away. What a riddle it all
was! I was like to lose my mind. They would be here ‘on
time.’ What could that mean? Oh, the letter would explain,
maybe. I had forgotten the letter; I got it out and read it.
This is what it said:
‘You are an intelligent and honest man, as one may see
by your face. We conceive you to be poor and a stranger.
Enclosed you will find a sum of money. It is lent to you for
thirty days, without interest. Report at this house at the
end of that time. I have a bet on you. If I win it you shall
have any situation that is in my gift—any, that is, that you
shall be able to prove yourself familiar with and competent
to fill.’
No signature, no address, no date.
Well, here was a coil to be in! You are posted on what
had preceded all this, but I was not. It was just a deep, dark
puzzle to me. I hadn’t the least idea what the game was,
nor whether harm was meant me or a kindness. I went into
a park, and sat down to try to think it out, and to consider
what I had best do.
At the end of an hour, my reasonings had crystallised
into this verdict.
Maybe those men mean me well, maybe they mean me
ill; no way to decide that—let it go. They’ve got a game, or

a scheme, or an experiment of some kind on hand; no way
to determine what it is—let it go. There’s a bet on me; no
way to find out what it is—let it go. That disposes of the
indeterminable quantities; the remainder of the matter is
tangible, solid, and may be classed and labelled with
certainty. If I ask the Bank of England to place this bill to
the credit of the man it belongs to, they’ll do it, for they
know him, although I don’t; but they will ask me how I
came in possession of it, and if I tell the truth, they’ll put
me in the asylum, naturally, and a lie will land me in jail.
The same result would follow if I tried to bank the bill
anywhere or to borrow money on it. I have got to carry this
immense burden around until those men come back,
whether I want to or not. It is useless to me, as useless as a
handful of ashes, and yet I must take care of it, and watch
over it, while I beg my living. I couldn’t give it away, if I
should try, for neither honest citizen nor highwayman
would accept it or meddle with it for anything. Those
brothers are safe. Even if I lose their bill, or burn it, they
are still safe, because they can stop payment, and the Bank
will make them whole; but meantime, I’ve got to do a
month’s suffering without wages or profit—unless I help
win that bet, whatever it may be, and get that situation that
I am promised. I should like to get that; men of their sort
have situations in their gift that are worth having.
I got to thinking a good deal about that situation. My
hopes began to rise high. Without doubt the salary would
be large. It would begin in a month; after that I should be
all right. Pretty soon I was feeling first-rate. By this time I
was tramping the streets again. The sight of a tailor-shop
gave me a sharp longing to shed my rags, and to clothe
myself decently once more. Could I afford it? No; I had
nothing in the world but a million pounds. So I forced
myself to go on by. But soon I was drifting back again. The
temptation persecuted me cruelly. I must have passed that

shop back and forth six times during that manful struggle.
At last I gave in; I had to. I asked if they had a misfit suit
that had been thrown on their hands. The fellow I spoke to
nodded his head towards another fellow, and gave me no
answer. I went to the indicated fellow, and he indicated
another fellow with his head, and no words. I went to him,
and he said:
‘’Tend to you presently.’
I waited till he was done with what he was at, then he
took me into a back room, and overhauled a pile of rejected
suits, and selected the rattiest one for me. I put it on. It
didn’t fit, and wasn’t in any way attractive, but it was new,
and I was anxious to have it; so I didn’t find any fault, but
said with some diffidence:
‘It would be an accommodation to me if you could wait
some days for the money. I haven’t any small change about
me.’
The fellow worked up a most sarcastic expression of
countenance, and said:
‘Oh, you haven’t? Well, of course, I didn’t expect it. I’d
only expect gentlemen like you to carry large change.’
I was nettled, and said:
‘My friend, you shouldn’t judge a stranger always by
the clothes he wears. I am quite able to pay for this suit; I
simply didn’t wish to put you to the trouble of changing a
large note.’
He modified his style a little at that, and said, though
still with something of an air:
‘I didn’t mean any particular harm, but as long as
rebukes are going, I might say it wasn’t quite your affair to
jump to the conclusion that we couldn’t change any note
that you might happen to be carrying around. On the
contrary, we can.’

I handed the note to him, and said:
‘Oh, very well; I apologise.’
He received it with a smile, one of those large smiles
which goes all around over, and has folds in it, and
wrinkles, and spirals, and looks like the place where you
have thrown a brick in a pond; and then in the act of his
taking a glimpse of the bill this smile froze solid, and
turned yellow, and looked like those wavy, wormy spreads
of lava which you find hardened on little levels on the side
of Vesuvius. I never before saw a smile caught like that,
and perpetuated. The man stood there holding the bill, and
looking like that, and the proprietor hustled up to see what
was the matter, and said briskly:
‘Well, what’s up? what’s the trouble? what’s wanting?’
I said, ‘There isn’t any trouble. I’m waiting for my
change.’
‘Come, come; get him his change, Tod; get him his
change.’
Tod retorted: ‘Get him his change! It’s easy to say, sir;
but look at the bill yourself.’
The proprietor took a look, gave a low, eloquent
whistle, then made a dive for the pile of rejected clothing,
and began to snatch it this way and that, talking all the
time excitedly, and as if to himself:
‘Sell an eccentric millionaire such an unspeakable suit
as that! Tod’s a fool—a born fool. Always doing something
like this. Drives every millionaire away from this place,
because he can’t tell a millionaire from a tramp, and never
could. Ah, here’s the thing I’m after. Please get those things
off, sir, and throw them in the fire. Do me the favour to put
on this shirt and this suit; it’s just the thing, the very thing
—plain, rich, modest, and just ducally nobby; made to order
for a foreign prince—you may know him, sir, his Serene
Highness the Hospodar of Halifax; had to leave it with us

and take a mourning-suit because his mother was going to
die—which she didn’t. But that’s all right; we can’t always
have things the way we—that is, the way they—there!
trousers all right, they fit you to a charm, sir; now the
waistcoat: aha, right again! now the coat—lord! look at
that, now! Perfect, the whole thing! I never saw such a
triumph in all my experience.’
I expressed my satisfaction.
‘Quite right, sir, quite right; it’ll do for a makeshift, I’m
bound to say. But wait till you see what we’ll get up for you
on your own measure. Come, Tod, book and pen; get at it.
Length of leg, 32’—and so on. Before I could get in a word
he had measured me, and was giving orders for dress-suits,
morning suits, shirts, and all sorts of things. When I got a
chance I said:
‘But, my dear sir, I can’t give these orders, unless you
can wait indefinitely, or change the bill.’
‘Indefinitely! It’s a weak word, sir, a weak word.
Eternally—that’s the word, sir. Tod, rush these things
through, and send them to the gentleman’s address without
any waste of time. Let the minor customers wait. Set down
the gentleman’s address and——’
‘I’m changing my quarters. I will drop in and leave the
new address.’
‘Quite right, sir, quite right. One moment—let me show
you out, sir. There—good day, sir, good day.’
Well, don’t you see what was bound to happen? I
drifted naturally into buying whatever I wanted, and asking
for change. Within a week I was sumptuously equipped
with all needful comforts and luxuries, and was housed in
an expensive private hotel in Hanover Square. I took my
dinners there, but for breakfast I stuck by Harris’s humble
feeding-house, where I had got my first meal on my million-
pound bill. I was the making of Harris. The fact had gone

all abroad that the foreign crank who carried million-pound
bills in his vest-pocket was the patron saint of the place.
That was enough. From being a poor, struggling, little
hand-to-mouth enterprise, it had become celebrated, and
overcrowded with customers. Harris was so grateful that
he forced loans upon me, and would not be denied; and so,
pauper as I was, I had money to spend, and was living like
the rich and the great. I judged that there was going to be
a crash by and by, but I was in, now, and must swim across
or drown. You see there was just that element of impending
disaster to give a serious side, a sober side, yes, a tragic
side, to a state of things which would otherwise have been
purely ridiculous. In the night, in the dark, the tragedy part
was always to the front, and always warning, always
threatening; and so I moaned and tossed, and sleep was
hard to find. But in the cheerful daylight the tragedy
element faded out and disappeared, and I walked on air,
and was happy to giddiness, to intoxication, you may say.
And it was natural; for I had become one of the
notorieties of the metropolis of the world, and it turned my
head, not just a little, but a good deal. You could not take
up a newspaper, English, Scotch, or Irish, without finding
in it one or more references to the ‘vest-pocket million-
pounder’ and his latest doings and sayings. At first, in these
mentions, I was at the bottom of the personal gossip
column; next, I was listed above the knights, next above the
baronets, next above the barons, and so on, and so on,
climbing steadily, as my notoriety augmented, until I
reached the highest altitude possible, and there I remained,
taking precedence of all dukes not royal, and of all
ecclesiastics except the Primate of all England. But, mind,
this was not fame; as yet I had achieved only notoriety.
Then came the climaxing stroke—the accolade, so to speak
—which in a single instance transmuted the perishable
dross of notoriety into the enduring gold of fame: ‘Punch’

caricatured me! Yes, I was a made man, now: my place was
established. I might be joked about still, but reverently, not
hilariously, not rudely; I could be smiled at, but not laughed
at. The time for that had gone by. ‘Punch’ pictured me all a-
flutter with rags, dickering with a beefeater for the Tower
of London. Well, you can imagine how it was with a young
fellow who had never been taken notice of before, and now
all of a sudden couldn’t say a thing that wasn’t taken up
and repeated everywhere; couldn’t stir abroad without
constantly overhearing the remark flying from lip to lip,
‘There he goes; that’s him!’ couldn’t take his breakfast
without a crowd to look on; couldn’t appear in an opera-box
without concentrating there the fire of a thousand
lorgnettes. Why, I just swam in glory all day long—that is
the amount of it.
You know, I even kept my old suit of rags, and every
now and then appeared in them, so as to have the old
pleasure of buying trifles, and being insulted, and then
shooting the scoffer dead with the million-pound bill. But I
couldn’t keep that up. The illustrated papers made the
outfit so familiar that when I went out in it I was at once
recognised and followed by a crowd, and if I attempted a
purchase the man would offer me his whole shop on credit
before I could pull my note on him.
About the tenth day of my fame I went to fulfil my duty
to my flag by paying my respects to the American minister.
He received me with the enthusiasm proper in my case,
upbraided me for being so tardy in my duty, and said that
there was only one way to get his forgiveness, and that was
to take the seat at his dinner-party that night made vacant
by the illness of one of his guests. I said I would, and we
got to talking. It turned out that he and my father had been
schoolmates in boyhood, Yale students together later, and
always warm friends up to my father’s death. So then he

required me to put in at his house all the odd time I might
have to spare, and I was very willing, of course.
In fact I was more than willing; I was glad. When the
crash should come, he might somehow be able to save me
from total destruction; I didn’t know how, but he might
think of a way, maybe. I couldn’t venture to unbosom
myself to him at this late date, a thing which I would have
been quick to do in the beginning of this awful career of
mine in London. No, I couldn’t venture it now; I was in too
deep; that is, too deep for me to be risking revelations to so
new a friend, though not clear beyond my depth, as I
looked at it. Because, you see, with all my borrowing, I was
carefully keeping within my means—I mean within my
salary. Of course I couldn’t know what my salary was going
to be, but I had a good enough basis for an estimate in the
fact that, if I won the bet, I was to have choice of any
situation in that rich old gentleman’s gift provided I was
competent—and I should certainly prove competent; I
hadn’t any doubt about that. And as to the bet, I wasn’t
worrying about that; I had always been lucky. Now, my
estimate of the salary was six hundred to a thousand a
year; say, six hundred for the first year, and so on up year
by year, till I struck the upper figure by proved merit. At
present I was only in debt for my first year’s salary.
Everybody had been trying to lend me money, but I had
fought off the most of them on one pretext or another; so
this indebtedness represented only £300 borrowed money,
the other £300 represented my keep and my purchases. I
believed my second year’s salary would carry me through
the rest of the month if I went on being cautious and
economical, and I intended to look sharply out for that. My
month ended, my employer back from his journey, I should
be all right once more, for I should at once divide the two
years’ salary among my creditors by assignment, and get
right down to my work.

It was a lovely dinner party of fourteen. The Duke and
Duchess of Shoreditch, and their daughter the Lady Anne-
Grace-Eleanor-Celeste-and-so-forth-and-so-forth-de-Bohun,
the Earl and Countess of Newgate, Viscount Cheapside,
Lord and Lady Blatherskite, some untitled people of both
sexes, the minister and his wife and daughter, and his
daughter’s visiting friend, an English girl of twenty-two,
named Portia Langham, whom I fell in love with in two
minutes, and she with me—I could see it without glasses.
There was still another guest, an American—but I am a
little ahead of my story. While the people were still in the
drawing-room, whetting up for dinner, and coldly
inspecting the late comers, the servant announced:
‘Mr. Lloyd Hastings.’
The moment the usual civilities were over, Hastings
caught sight of me, and came straight with cordially
outstretched hand; then stopped short when about to
shake, and said with an embarrassed look:
‘I beg your pardon, sir, I thought I knew you.’
‘Why, you do know me, old fellow.’
‘No! Are you the—the——?’
‘Vest-pocket monster? I am, indeed. Don’t be afraid to
call me by my nickname; I’m used to it.’
‘Well, well, well, this is a surprise. Once or twice I’ve
seen your own name coupled with the nickname, but it
never occurred to me that you could be the Henry Adams
referred to. Why, it isn’t six months since you were clerking
away for Blake Hopkins in Frisco on a salary, and sitting up
nights on an extra allowance, helping me arrange and
verify the Gould and Curry Extension papers and statistics.
The idea of your being in London, and a vast millionaire,
and a colossal celebrity! Why, it’s the Arabian Nights come
again. Man, I can’t take it in at all; can’t realise it; give me
time to settle the whirl in my head.’

‘The fact is, Lloyd, you are no worse off than I am. I
can’t realise it myself.’
‘Dear me, it is stunning, now, isn’t it? Why, it’s just
three months to-day since we went to the Miners’
restaurant——’
‘No; the What Cheer.’
‘Right, it was the What Cheer; went there at two in the
morning, and had a chop and coffee after a hard six hours’
grind over those Extension papers, and I tried to persuade
you to come to London with me, and offered to get leave of
absence for you and pay all your expenses, and give you
something over if I succeeded in making the sale; and you
would not listen to me, said I wouldn’t succeed, and you
couldn’t afford to lose the run of business and be no end of
time getting the hang of things again when you got back
home. And yet here you are. How odd it all is! How did you
happen to come, and whatever did give you this incredible
start?’
‘Oh, just an accident. It’s a long story—a romance, a
body may say. I’ll tell you all about it, but not now.
‘When?’
‘The end of this month.’
‘That’s more than a fortnight yet. It’s too much of a
strain on a person’s curiosity. Make it a week.’
‘I can’t. You’ll know why, by and by. But how’s the trade
getting along?’
His cheerfulness vanished like a breath, and he said
with a sigh:
‘You were a true prophet, Hal, a true prophet. I wish I
hadn’t come. I don’t want to talk about it.’
‘But you must. You must come and stop with me to-
night, when we leave here, and tell me all about it.’

‘Oh, may I? Are you in earnest?’ and the water showed
in his eyes.
‘Yes; I want to hear the whole story, every word.’
‘I’m so grateful! Just to find a human interest once
more, in some voice and in some eye, in me and affairs of
mine, after what I’ve been through here—lord! I could go
down on my knees for it!’
He gripped my hand hard, and braced up, and was all
right and lively after that for the dinner—which didn’t come
off. No; the usual thing happened, the thing that is always
happening under that vicious and aggravating English
system—the matter of precedence couldn’t be settled, and
so there was no dinner. Englishmen always eat dinner
before they go out to dinner, because they know the risks
they are running; but nobody ever warns the stranger, and
so he walks placidly into the trap. Of course nobody was
hurt this time, because we had all been to dinner, none of
us being novices except Hastings, and he having been
informed by the minister at the time that he invited him
that in deference to the English custom he had not
provided any dinner. Everybody took a lady and
processioned down to the dining-room, because it is usual
to go through the motions; but there the dispute began.
The Duke of Shoreditch wanted to take precedence, and sit
at the head of the table, holding that he outranked a
minister who represented merely a nation and not a
monarch; but I stood for my rights, and refused to yield. In
the gossip column I ranked all dukes not royal, and said so,
and claimed precedence of this one. It couldn’t be settled,
of course, struggle as we might and did, he finally (and
injudiciously) trying to play birth and antiquity, and I
‘seeing’ his Conqueror and ‘raising’ him with Adam, whose
direct posterity I was, as shown by my name, while he was
of a collateral branch, as shown by his, and by his recent
Norman origin; so we all processioned back to the drawing-

room again and had a perpendicular lunch—plate of
sardines and a strawberry, and you group yourself and
stand up and eat it. Here the religion of precedence is not
so strenuous; the two persons of highest rank chuck up a
shilling, the one that wins has first go at his strawberry,
and the loser gets the shilling. The next two chuck up, then
the next two, and so on. After refreshment, tables were
brought, and we all played cribbage, sixpence a game. The
English never play any game for amusement. If they can’t
make something or lose something—they don’t care which
—they won’t play.
We had a lovely time; certainly two of us had, Miss
Langham and I. I was so bewitched with her that I couldn’t
count my hands if they went above a double sequence; and
when I struck home I never discovered it, and started up
the outside row again, and would have lost the game every
time, only the girl did the same, she being in just my
condition, you see; and consequently neither of us ever got
out, or cared to wonder why we didn’t; we only just knew
we were happy, and didn’t wish to know anything else, and
didn’t want to be interrupted. And I told her—I did indeed—
told her I loved her; and she—well, she blushed till her hair
turned red, but she liked it; she said she did. Oh, there was
never such an evening! Every time I pegged I put on a
postscript; every time she pegged she acknowledged
receipt of it, counting the hands the same. Why, I couldn’t
even say, ‘Two for his heels,’ without adding, ‘My, how
sweet you do look!’ And she would say, ‘Fifteen two, fifteen
four, fifteen six, and a pair are eight, and eight are sixteen
—do you think so?’ peeping out aslant from under her
lashes, you know, so sweet and cunning. Oh, it was just too-
too!
Well, I was perfectly honest and square with her; told
her I hadn’t a cent in the world but just the million-pound
note she’d heard so much talk about, and it didn’t belong to

me; and that started her curiosity, and then I talked low,
and told her the whole history right from the start, and it
nearly killed her, laughing. What in the nation she could
find to laugh about, I couldn’t see, but there it was; every
half minute some new detail would fetch her, and I would
have to stop as much as a minute and a half to give her a
chance to settle down again. Why, she laughed herself
lame, she did indeed; I never saw anything like it. I mean I
never saw a painful story—a story of a person’s troubles
and worries and fears—produce just that kind of effect
before. So I loved her all the more, seeing she could be so
cheerful when there wasn’t anything to be cheerful about;
for I might soon need that kind of wife, you know, the way
things looked. Of course I told her we should have to wait a
couple of years, till I could catch up on my salary; but she
didn’t mind that, only she hoped I would be as careful as
possible in the matter of expenses, and not let them run the
least risk of trenching on our third year’s pay. Then she
began to get a little worried, and wondered if we were
making any mistake, and starting the salary on a higher
figure for the first year than I would get. This was good
sense, and it made me feel a little less confident than I had
been feeling before; but it gave me a good business idea,
and I brought it frankly out.
‘Portia, dear, would you mind going with me that day,
when I confront those old gentlemen?’
She shrank a little, but said:
‘N-o; if my being with you would help hearten you. But
—would it be quite proper, do you think?’
‘No, I don’t know that it would; in fact, I’m afraid it
wouldn’t; but, you see, there’s so much dependent upon it
that——’
‘Then I’ll go anyway, proper or improper,’ she said, with
a beautiful and generous enthusiasm. ‘Oh, I shall be so

happy to think I’m helping.’
‘Helping, dear? Why, you’ll be doing it all. You’re so
beautiful, and so lovely, and so winning, that with you there
I can pile our salary up till I break those good old fellows,
and they’ll never have the heart to struggle.’
Sho! you should have seen the rich blood mount, and
her happy eyes shine!
‘You wicked flatterer! There isn’t a word of truth in
what you say, but still I’ll go with you. Maybe it will teach
you not to expect other people to look with your eyes.’
Were my doubts dissipated? Was my confidence
restored? You may judge by this fact: privately I raised my
salary to twelve hundred the first year on the spot. But I
didn’t tell her; I saved it for a surprise.
All the way home I was in the clouds, Hastings talking,
I not hearing a word. When he and I entered my parlour he
brought me to myself with his fervent appreciations of my
manifold comforts and luxuries.
‘Let me just stand here a little and look my fill! Dear
me, it’s a palace; it’s just a palace! And in it everything a
body could desire, including cozy coal fire and supper
standing ready. Henry, it doesn’t merely make me realise
how rich you are; it makes me realise to the bone, to the
marrow, how poor I am—how poor I am—and how
miserable, how defeated, routed, annihilated!’
Plague take it! this language gave me the cold
shudders. It scared me broad awake, and made me
comprehend that I was standing on a half-inch crust, with a
crater underneath. I didn’t know I had been dreaming—
that is, I hadn’t been allowing myself to know it for a while
back; but now—oh, dear! Deep in debt, not a cent in the
world, a lovely girl’s happiness or woe in my hands, and
nothing in front of me but a salary which might never—oh,

would never—materialise! Oh, oh, oh, I am ruined past
hope; nothing can save me!
‘Henry, the mere unconsidered drippings of your daily
income would——’
‘Oh, my daily income! Here, down with this hot Scotch,
and cheer up your soul. Here’s with you! Or, no—you’re
hungry; sit down and——’
‘Not a bite for me; I’m past it. I can’t eat, these days;
but I’ll drink with you till I drop. Come!’
‘Barrel for barrel, I’m with you! Ready! Here we go!
Now, then, Lloyd, unreel your story while I brew.’
‘Unreel it? What, again?’
‘Again? What do you mean by that?’
‘Why, I mean do you want to hear it over again?’
‘Do I want to hear it over again? This is a puzzler. Wait;
don’t take any more of that liquid. You don’t need it.’
‘Look here, Henry, you alarm me. Didn’t I tell you the
whole story on the way here?’
‘You?’
‘Yes, I.’
‘I’ll be hanged if I heard a word of it.’
‘Henry, this is a serious thing. It troubles me. What did
you take up yonder at the minister’s?’
Then it all flashed on me, and I owned up, like a man.
‘I took the dearest girl in this world—prisoner!’
So then he came with a rush, and we shook, and shook,
and shook till our hands ached; and he didn’t blame me for
not having heard a word of a story which had lasted while
we walked three miles. He just sat down then, like the
patient, good fellow he was, and told it all over again.
Synopsised, it amounted to this: He had come to England
with what he thought was a grand opportunity; he had an

‘option’ to sell the Gould and Curry Extension for the
‘locators’ of it, and keep all he could get over a million
dollars. He had worked hard, had pulled every wire he
knew of, had left no honest expedient untried, had spent
nearly all the money he had in the world, had not been able
to get a solitary capitalist to listen to him, and his option
would run out at the end of the month. In a word, he was
ruined. Then he jumped up and cried out:
‘Henry, you can save me! You can save me, and you’re
the only man in the universe that can. Will you do it? Won’t
you do it?’
‘Tell me how. Speak out, my boy.’
‘Give me a million and my passage home for my
‘option’! Don’t, don’t refuse!’
I was in a kind of agony. I was right on the point of
coming out with the words, ‘Lloyd, I’m a pauper myself—
absolutely penniless, and in debt!’ But a white-hot idea
came flaming through my head, and I gripped my jaws
together, and calmed myself down till I was as cold as a
capitalist. Then I said, in a commercial and self-possessed
way:
‘I will save you, Lloyd——’
‘Then I’m already saved! God be merciful to you for
ever! If ever I——’
‘Let me finish, Lloyd. I will save you, but not in that
way; for that would not be fair to you, after your hard work,
and the risks you’ve run. I don’t need to buy mines; I can
keep my capital moving, in a commercial centre like
London, without that; it’s what I’m at, all the time; but here
is what I’ll do. I know all about that mine, of course; I know
its immense value, and can swear to it if anybody wishes it.
You shall sell out inside of the fortnight for three millions
cash, using my name freely, and we’ll divide, share and
share alike.’

Do you know, he would have danced the furniture to
kindling-wood, in his insane joy, and broken everything on
the place, if I hadn’t tripped him up and tied him.
Then he lay there, perfectly happy, saying:
‘I may use your name! Your name—think of it! Man,
they’ll flock in droves, these rich Londoners; they’ll fight
for that stock! I’m a made man, I’m a made man for ever,
and I’ll never forget you as long as I live!’
In less than twenty-four hours London was abuzz! I
hadn’t anything to do, day after day, but sit at home, and
say to all comers:
‘Yes; I told him to refer to me. I know the man and I
know the mine. His character is above reproach, and the
mine is worth far more than he asks for it.’
Meantime I spent all my evenings at the minister’s with
Portia. I didn’t say a word to her about the mine; I saved it
for a surprise. We talked salary; never anything but salary
and love; sometimes love, sometimes salary, sometimes
love and salary together. And my! the interest the
minister’s wife and daughter took in our little affair, and
the endless ingenuities they invented to save us from
interruption, and to keep the minister in the dark and
unsuspicious—well, it was just lovely of them!
When the month was up, at last, I had a million dollars
to my credit in the London and County Bank, and Hastings
was fixed in the same way. Dressed at my level best, I drove
by the house in Portland Place, judged by the look of things
that my birds were home again, went on towards the
minister’s and got my precious, and we started back,
talking salary with all our might. She was so excited and
anxious that it made her just intolerably beautiful. I said:
‘Dearie, the way you’re looking it’s a crime to strike for
a salary a single penny under three thousand a year.’
‘Henry, Henry, you’ll ruin us!’

‘Don’t you be afraid. Just keep up those looks, and trust
to me. It’ll all come out right.’
So, as it turned out, I had to keep bolstering up her
courage all the way. She kept pleading with me, and saying:
‘Oh, please remember that if we ask for too much we
may get no salary at all; and then what will become of us,
with no way in the world to earn our living?’
We were ushered in by that same servant, and there
they were, the two old gentlemen. Of course they were
surprised to see that wonderful creature with me, but I
said:
‘It’s all right, gentlemen; she is my future stay and
helpmate.’
And I introduced them to her, and called them by name.
It didn’t surprise them; they knew I would know enough to
consult the directory. They seated us, and were very polite
to me, and very solicitous to relieve her from
embarrassment, and put her as much at her ease as they
could. Then I said:
‘Gentlemen, I am ready to report.’
‘We are glad to hear it,’ said my man, ‘for now we can
decide the bet which my brother Abel and I made. If you
have won for me, you shall have any situation in my gift.
Have you the million-pound note?’
‘Here it is, sir,’ and I handed it to him.
‘I’ve won!’ he shouted, and slapped Abel on the back.
‘Now what do you say, brother?’
‘I say he did survive, and I’ve lost twenty thousand
pounds. I never would have believed it.’
‘I’ve a further report to make,’ I said, ‘and a pretty long
one. I want you to let me come soon, and detail my whole
month’s history; and I promise you it’s worth hearing.
Meantime, take a look at that.’

‘What, man! Certificate of deposit for £200,000? Is it
yours?’
‘Mine! I earned it by thirty days’ judicious use of that
little loan you let me have. And the only use I made of it
was to buy trifles and offer the bill in change.’
‘Come, this is astonishing! It’s incredible, man!’
‘Never mind, I’ll prove it. Don’t take my word
unsupported.’
But now Portia’s turn was come to be surprised. Her
eyes were spread wide, and she said:
‘Henry, is that really your money? Have you been
fibbing to me?’
‘I have indeed, dearie. But you’ll forgive me, I know.’
She put up an arch pout, and said:
‘Don’t you be so sure. You are a naughty thing to
deceive me so!’
‘Oh, you’ll get over it, sweetheart, you’ll get over it; it
was only fun, you know. Come, let’s be going.’
‘But wait, wait! The situation, you know. I want to give
you the situation,’ said my man.
‘Well,’ I said, ‘I’m just as grateful as I can be, but really
I don’t want one.’
‘But you can have the very choicest one in my gift.’
‘Thanks again, with all my heart; but I don’t even want
that one.’
‘Henry, I’m ashamed of you. You don’t half thank the
good gentleman. May I do it for you?’
‘Indeed you shall, dear, if you can improve it. Let us see
you try.’
She walked to my man, got up in his lap, put her arm
round his neck, and kissed him right on the mouth. Then

the two old gentlemen shouted with laughter, but I was
dumfounded, just petrified, as you may say. Portia said:
‘Papa, he has said you haven’t a situation in your gift
that he’d take; and I feel just as hurt as——’
‘My darling! is that your papa?’
‘Yes; he’s my step-papa, and the dearest one that ever
was. You understand now, don’t you, why I was able to
laugh when you told me at the minister’s, not knowing my
relationships, what trouble and worry papa’s and Uncle
Abel’s scheme was giving you?’
Of course I spoke right up, now, without any fooling,
and went straight to the point.
‘Oh, my dearest dear sir, I want to take back what I
said. You have got a situation open that I want.’
‘Name it.’
‘Son-in-law.’
‘Well, well, well! But you know, if you haven’t ever
served in that capacity, you of course can’t furnish
recommendations of a sort to satisfy the conditions of the
contract, and so——’
‘Try me—oh, do, I beg of you! Only just try me thirty or
forty years, and if——’
‘Oh, well, all right; it’s but a little thing to ask. Take her
along.’
Happy, we too? There are not words enough in the
unabridged to describe it. And when London got the whole
history, a day or two later, of my month’s adventures with
that bank-note, and how they ended, did London talk, and
have a good time? Yes.
My Portia’s papa took that friendly and hospitable bill
back to the Bank of England and cashed it; then the Bank
cancelled it and made him a present of it, and he gave it to
us at our wedding, and it has always hung in its frame in

the sacredest place in our home, ever since. For it gave me
my Portia. But for it I could not have remained in London,
would not have appeared at the minister’s, never should
have met her. And so I always say, ‘Yes, it’s a million-
pounder, as you see; but it never made but one purchase in
its life, and then got the article for only about a tenth part
of its value.’

MENTAL TELEGRAPHY

A MANUSCRIPT WITH A HISTORY

Note to the Editor.—By glancing over the enclosed bundle of rusty old
manuscript, you will perceive that I once made a great discovery: the discovery
that certain sorts of things which, from the beginning of the world, had always
been regarded as merely ‘curious coincidences’—that is to say, accidents—were
no more accidental than is the sending and receiving of a telegram an accident.
I made this discovery sixteen or seventeen years ago, and gave it a name
—‘Mental Telegraphy.’ It is the same thing around the outer edges of which the
Psychical Society of England began to grope (and play with) four or five years
ago, and which they named ‘Telepathy.’ Within the last two or three years they
have penetrated towards the heart of the matter, however, and have found out
that mind can act upon mind in a quite detailed and elaborate way over vast
stretches of land and water. And they have succeeded in doing, by their great
credit and influence, what I could never have done—they have convinced the
world that mental telegraphy is not a jest, but a fact, and that it is a thing not
rare, but exceedingly common. They have done our age a service—and a very
great service, I think.
In this old manuscript you will find mention of an extraordinary experience
of mine in the mental telegraphic line, of date about the year 1874 or 1875—
the one concerning the Great Bonanza book. It was this experience that called
my attention to the matter under consideration. I began to keep a record, after
that, of such experiences of mine as seemed explicable by the theory that
minds telegraph thoughts to each other. In 1878 I went to Germany and began
to write the book called A Tramp Abroad. The bulk of this old batch of
manuscript was written at that time and for that book. But I removed it when I
came to revise the volume for the press; for I feared that the public would treat
the thing as a joke and throw it aside, whereas I was in earnest.
At home, eight or ten years ago, I tried to creep in under shelter of an
authority grave enough to protect the article from ridicule—the North
American Review. But Mr. Metcalf was too wary for me. He said that to treat
these mere ‘coincidences’ seriously was a thing which the Review couldn’t dare
to do; that I must put either my name or my nom de plume to the article, and
thus save the Review from harm. But I couldn’t consent to that; it would be the

surest possible way to defeat my desire that the public should receive the thing
seriously, and be willing to stop and give it some fair degree of attention. So I
pigeon-holed the MS., because I could not get it published anonymously.
Now see how the world has moved since then. These small experiences of
mine, which were too formidable at that time for admission to a grave
magazine—if the magazine must allow them to appear as something above and
beyond ‘accidents’ and ‘coincidences’—are trifling and commonplace now, since
the flood of light recently cast upon mental telegraphy by the intelligent
labours of the Psychical Society. But I think they are worth publishing, just to
show what harmless and ordinary matters were considered dangerous and
incredible eight or ten years ago.
As I have said, the bulk of this old manuscript was written in 1878; a later
part was written from time to time, two, three, and four years afterwards. The
‘Postscript’ I add to-day.
May, ‘78.—Another of those apparently trifling things
has happened to me which puzzle and perplex all men
every now and then, keep them thinking an hour or two,
and leave their minds barren of explanation or solution at
last. Here it is—and it looks inconsequential enough, I am
obliged to say. A few days ago I said: ‘It must be that Frank
Millet doesn’t know we are in Germany, or he would have
written long before this. I have been on the point of
dropping him a line at least a dozen times during the past
six weeks, but I always decided to wait a day or two longer,
and see if we shouldn’t hear from him. But now I will
write.’ And so I did. I directed the letter to Paris, and
thought, ‘Now we shall hear from him before this letter is
fifty miles from Heidelberg—it always happens so.’
True enough; but why should it? That is the puzzling
part of it. We are always talking about letters ‘crossing’
each other, for that is one of the very commonest accidents
of this life. We call it ‘accident,’ but perhaps we misname it.
We have the instinct a dozen times a year that the letter we
are writing is going to ‘cross’ the other person’s letter; and
if the reader will rack his memory a little he will recall the
fact that this presentiment had strength enough to it to
make him cut his letter down to a decided briefness,
because it would be a waste of time to write a letter which

was going to ‘cross,’ and hence be a useless letter. I think
that in my experience this instinct has generally come to
me in cases where I had put off my letter a good while in
the hope that the other person would write.
Yes, as I was saying, I had waited five or six weeks;
then I wrote but three lines, because I felt and seemed to
know that a letter from Millet would cross mine. And so it
did. He wrote the same day that I wrote. The letters
crossed each other. His letter went to Berlin, care of the
American minister, who sent it to me. In this letter Millet
said he had been trying for six weeks to stumble upon
somebody who knew my German address, and at last the
idea had occurred to him that a letter sent to the care of
the embassy at Berlin might possibly find me.
Maybe it was an ‘accident’ that he finally determined to
write me at the same moment that I finally determined to
write him, but I think not.
With me the most irritating thing has been to wait a
tedious time in a purely business matter, hoping that the
other party will do the writing, and then sit down and do it
myself, perfectly satisfied that that other man is sitting
down at the same moment to write a letter which will
‘cross’ mine. And yet one must go on writing, just the same;
because if you get up from your table and postpone, that
other man will do the same thing, exactly as if you two
were harnessed together like the Siamese twins, and must
duplicate each other’s movements.
Several months before I left home a New York firm did
some work about the house for me, and did not make a
success of it, as it seemed to me. When the bill came, I
wrote and said I wanted the work perfected before I paid.
They replied that they were very busy, but that as soon as
they could spare the proper man the thing should be done.
I waited more than two months, enduring as patiently as
possible the companionship of bells which would fire away

of their own accord sometimes when nobody was touching
them, and at other times wouldn’t ring though you struck
the button with a sledgehammer. Many a time I got ready
to write and then postponed it; but at last I sat down one
evening and poured out my grief to the extent of a page or
so, and then cut my letter suddenly short, because a strong
instinct told me that the firm had begun to move in the
matter. When I came down to breakfast next morning the
postman had not yet taken my letter away, but the
electrical man had been there, done his work, and was
gone again! He had received his orders the previous
evening from his employers, and had come up by the night
train.
If that was an ‘accident,’ it took about three months to
get it up in good shape.
One evening last summer I arrived in Washington,
registered at the Arlington Hotel, and went to my room. I
read and smoked until ten o’clock; then, finding I was not
yet sleepy, I thought I would take a breath of fresh air. So I
went forth in the rain, and tramped through one street
after another in an aimless and enjoyable way. I knew that
Mr. O——, a friend of mine, was in town, and I wished I
might run across him; but I did not propose to hunt for him
at midnight, especially as I did not know where he was
stopping. Towards twelve o’clock the streets had become so
deserted that I felt lonesome; so I stepped into a cigar shop
far up the Avenue, and remained there fifteen minutes
listening to some bummers discussing national politics.
Suddenly the spirit of prophecy came upon me, and I said
to myself, “Now I will go out at this door, turn to the left,
walk ten steps, and meet Mr. O—— face to face.’ I did it,
too! I could not see his face, because he had an umbrella
before it, and it was pretty dark, anyhow, but he
interrupted the man he was walking and talking with, and I
recognised his voice and stopped him.

That I should step out there and stumble upon Mr. O
—— was nothing, but that I should know beforehand that I
was going to do it was a good deal. It is a very curious
thing when you come to look at it. I stood far within the
cigar shop when I delivered my prophecy; I walked about
five steps to the door, opened it, closed it after me, walked
down a flight of three steps to the sidewalk, then turned to
the left and walked four or five more, and found my man. I
repeat that in itself the thing was nothing; but to know it
would happen so beforehand, wasn’t that really curious ?
I have criticised absent people so often, and then
discovered, to my humiliation, that I was talking with their
relatives, that I have grown superstitious about that sort of
thing and dropped it. How like an idiot one feels after a
blunder like that!
We are always mentioning people, and in that very
instant they appear before us. We laugh, and say, ‘Speak of
the devil,’ and so forth, and there we drop it, considering it
an ‘accident.’ It is a cheap and convenient way of disposing
of a grave and very puzzling mystery. The fact is, it does
seem to happen too often to be an accident.
Now I come to the oddest thing that ever happened to
me. Two or three years ago I was lying in bed, idly musing,
one morning—it was the 2nd of March—when suddenly a
red-hot new idea came whistling down into my camp, and
exploded with such comprehensive effectiveness as to
sweep the vicinity clean of rubbishy reflections, and fill the
air with their dust and flying fragments. This idea, stated in
simple phrase, was that the time was ripe and the market
ready for a certain book; a book which ought to be written
at once; a book which must command attention and be of
peculiar interest—to wit, a book about the Nevada silver
mines. The ‘Great Bonanza’ was a new wonder then, and
everybody was talking about it. It seemed to me that the
person best qualified to write this book was Mr. William H.

Wright, a journalist of Virginia, Nevada, by whose side I
had scribbled many months when I was a reporter there
ten or twelve years before. He might be alive still; he might
be dead; I could not tell; but I would write him, anyway. I
began by merely and modestly suggesting that he make
such a book; but my interest grew as I went on, and I
ventured to map out what I thought ought to be the plan of
the work, he being an old friend, and not given to taking
good intentions for ill. I even dealt with details, and
suggested the order and sequence which they should
follow. I was about to put the manuscript in an envelope,
when the thought occurred to me that if this book should
be written at my suggestion, and then no publisher
happened to want it, I should feel uncomfortable; so I
concluded to keep my letter back until I should have
secured a publisher. I pigeon-holed my document, and
dropped a note to my own publisher, asking him to name a
day for a business consultation. He was out of town on a far
journey. My note remained unanswered, and at the end of
three or four days the whole matter had passed out of my
mind. On the 9th of March the postman brought three or
four letters, and among them a thick one whose
superscription was in a hand which seemed dimly familiar
to me. I could not ‘place’ it at first, but presently I
succeeded. Then I said to a visiting relative who was
present:
‘Now I will do a miracle. I will tell you everything this
letter contains—date, signature, and all—without breaking
the seal. It is from a Mr. Wright, of Virginia, Nevada, and is
dated March 2,—seven days ago. Mr. Wright proposes to
make a book about the silver mines and the Great Bonanza,
and asks what I, as a friend, think of the idea. He says his
subjects are to be so-and-so, their order and sequence so-
and-so, and he will close with a history of the chief feature
of the book, the Great Bonanza.’

I opened the letter, and showed that I had stated the
date and the contents correctly. Mr. Wright’s letter simply
contained what my own letter, written on the same date,
contained, and mine still lay in its pigeon-hole, where it had
been lying during the seven days since it was written.
There was no clairvoyance about this, if I rightly
comprehend what clairvoyance is. I think the clairvoyant
professes to actually see concealed writing, and read it off
word for word. This was not my case. I only seemed to
know, and to know absolutely the contents of the letter in
detail and due order, but I had to word them myself. I
translated them, so to speak, out of Wright’s language into
my own.
Wright’s letter and the one which I had written to him
but never sent were in substance the same.
Necessarily this could not come by accident; such
elaborate accidents cannot happen. Chance might have
duplicated one or two of the details, but she would have
broken down on the rest. I could not doubt—there was no
tenable reason for doubting—that Mr. Wright’s mind and
mine had been in close and crystal-clear communication
with each other across three thousand miles of mountain
and desert on the morning of March 2. I did not consider
that both minds originated that succession of ideas, but
that one mind originated them, and simply telegraphed
them to the other. I was curious to know which brain was
the telegrapher and which the receiver, so I wrote and
asked for particulars. Mr. Wright’s reply showed that his
mind had done the originating and telegraphing and mine
the receiving. Mark that significant thing, now; consider for
a moment how many a splendid ‘original’ idea has been
unconsciously stolen from a man three thousand miles
away! If one should question that this is so, let him look
into the Cyclopædia, and con once more that curious thing
in the history of inventions which has puzzled everyone so

much—that is, the frequency with which the same machine
or other contrivance has been invented at the same time by
several persons in different quarters of the globe. The
world was without an electric telegraph for several
thousand years; then Professor Henry, the American,
Wheatstone in England, Morse on the sea, and a German in
Munich, all invented it at the same time. The discovery of
certain ways of applying steam was made in two or three
countries in the same year. Is it not possible that inventors
are constantly and unwittingly stealing each other’s ideas
whilst they stand thousands of miles asunder?
Last spring a literary friend of mine,[1] who lived a
hundred miles away, paid me a visit, and in the course of
our talk he said he had made a discovery—conceived an
entirely new idea—one which certainly had never been
used in literature. He told me what it was. I handed him a
manuscript, and said he would find substantially the same
idea in that—a manuscript which I had written a week
before. The idea had been in my mind since the previous
November; it had only entered his while I was putting it on
paper, a week gone by. He had not yet written his; so he left
it unwritten, and gracefully made over all his right and title
in the idea to me.
1. W. D. Howells.

The following statement, which I have clipped from a
newspaper, is true. I had the facts from Mr. Howells’s lips
when the episode was new:
‘A remarkable story of a literary coincidence is told of
Mr. Howells’s “Atlantic Monthly” serial, “Dr. Breen’s
Practice.” A lady of Rochester, New York, contributed to the
magazine, after “Dr. Breen’s Practice” was in type, a short
story which so much resembled Mr. Howells’s that he felt it
necessary to call upon her and explain the situation of
affairs in order that no charge of plagiarism might be

preferred against him. He showed her the proof-sheets of
his story, and satisfied her that the similarity between her
work and his was one of those strange coincidences which
have from time to time occurred in the literary world.’
I had read portions of Mr. Howells’s story, both in
manuscript and in proof, before the lady offered her
contribution to the magazine.
Here is another case. I clip it from a newspaper:
‘The republication of Miss Alcott’s novel “Moods”
recalls to a writer in the Boston Post a singular coincidence
which was brought to light before the book was first
published: “Miss Anna M. Crane, of Baltimore, published
‘Emily Chester,’ a novel which was pronounced a very
striking and strong story. A comparison of this book with
‘Moods’ showed that the two writers, though entire
strangers to each other, and living hundreds of miles apart,
had both chosen the same subject for their novels, had
followed almost the same line of treatment up to a certain
point, where the parallel ceased, and the dénouements
were entirely opposite. And even more curious, the leading
characters in both books had identically the same names,
so that the names in Miss Alcott’s novel had to be changed.
Then the book was published by Loring.”’
Four or five times within my recollection there has been
a lively newspaper war in this country over poems whose
authorship was claimed by two or three different people at
the same time. There was a war of this kind over ‘Nothing
to Wear,’ ‘Beautiful Snow,’ ‘Rock Me to Sleep, Mother,’ and
also over one of Mr. Will Carleton’s early ballads, I think.
These were all blameless cases of unintentional and
unwitting mental telegraphy, I judge.
A word more as to Mr. Wright. He had had his book in
his mind some time; consequently he, and not I, had
originated the idea of it. The subject was entirely foreign to

my thoughts; I was wholly absorbed in other things. Yet this
friend, whom I had not seen and had hardly thought of for
eleven years, was able to shoot his thoughts at me across
three thousand miles of country, and fill my head with
them, to the exclusion of every other interest, in a single
moment. He had begun his letter after finishing his work on
the morning paper—a little after three o’clock, he said.
When it was three in the morning in Nevada it was about
six in Hartford, where I lay awake thinking about nothing
in particular; and just about that time his ideas came
pouring into my head from across the continent, and I got
up and put them on paper, under the impression that they
were my own original thoughts.
I have never seen any mesmeric or clairvoyant
performances or spiritual manifestations which were in the
least degree convincing—a fact which is not of
consequence, since my opportunities have been meagre;
but I am forced to believe that one human mind (still
inhabiting the flesh) can communicate with another, over
any sort of a distance, and without any artificial
preparation of ‘sympathetic conditions’ to act as a
transmitting agent. I suppose that when the sympathetic
conditions happen to exist the two minds communicate
with each other, and that otherwise they don’t; and I
suppose that if the sympathetic conditions could be kept up
right along, the two minds would continue to correspond
without limit as to time.
Now there is that curious thing which happens to
everybody: suddenly a succession of thoughts or sensations
flock in upon you, which startles you with the weird idea
that you have ages ago experienced just this succession of
thoughts or sensations in a previous existence. The
previous existence is possible, no doubt, but I am
persuaded that the solution of this hoary mystery lies not
there, but in the fact that some far-off stranger has been

telegraphing his thoughts and sensations into your
consciousness, and that he stopped because some counter-
current or other obstruction intruded and broke the line of
communication. Perhaps they seem repetitions to you
because they are repetitions got at second hand from the
other man. Possibly Mr. Brown, the ‘mind-reader,’ reads
other people’s minds, possibly he does not; but I know of a
surety that I have read another man’s mind, and therefore I
do not see why Mr. Brown shouldn’t do the like also.
I wrote the foregoing about three years ago, in
Heidelberg, and laid the manuscript aside, purposing to
add to it instances of mind-telegraphing from time to time
as they should fall under my experience. Meantime the
‘crossing’ of letters has been so frequent as to become
monotonous. However, I have managed to get something
useful out of this hint; for now, when I get tired of waiting
upon a man whom I very much wish to hear from, I sit
down and compel him to write, whether he wants to or not;
that is to say, I sit down and write him, and then tear my
letter up, satisfied that my act has forced him to write me
at the same moment. I do not need to mail my letter—the
writing it is the only essential thing.
Of course I have grown superstitious about this letter-
crossing business—this was natural. We stayed awhile in
Venice after leaving Heidelberg. One day I was going down
the Grand Canal in a gondola, when I heard a shout behind
me, and looked around to see what the matter was; a
gondola was rapidly following, and the gondolier was
making signs to me to stop. I did so, and the pursuing boat
ranged up alongside. There was an American lady in it—a
resident of Venice. She was in a good deal of distress. She
said:
‘There’s a New York gentleman and his wife at the
Hotel Britannia who arrived a week ago, expecting to find
news of their son, whom they have heard nothing about

during eight months. There was no news. The lady is down
sick with despair; the gentleman can’t sleep or eat. Their
son arrived at San Francisco eight months ago, and
announced the fact in a letter to his parents the same day.
That is the last trace of him. The parents have been in
Europe ever since; but their trip has been spoiled, for they
have occupied their time simply in drifting restlessly from
place to place, and writing letters everywhere and to
everybody, begging for news of their son; but the mystery
remains as dense as ever. Now the gentleman wants to stop
writing and go to cabling. He wants to cable San Francisco.
He has never done it before, because he is afraid of—of he
doesn’t know what—death of his son, no doubt. But he
wants somebody to advise him to cable—wants me to do it.
Now I simply can’t; for if no news came that mother yonder
would die. So I have chased you up in order to get you to
support me in urging him to be patient, and put the thing
off a week or two longer; it may be the saving of this lady.
Come along; let’s not lose any time.’
So I went along, but I had a programme of my own.
When I was introduced to the gentleman I said: ‘I have
some superstitions, but they are worthy of respect. If you
will cable San Francisco immediately, you will hear news of
your son inside of twenty-four hours. I don’t know that you
will get the news from San Francisco, but you will get it
from somewhere. The only necessary thing is to cable—that
is all. The news will come within twenty-four hours. Cable
Pekin, if you prefer; there is no choice in this matter. This
delay is all occasioned by your not cabling long ago, when
you were first moved to do it.’
It seems absurd that this gentleman should have been
cheered up by this nonsense, but he was; he brightened up
at once, and sent his cablegram; and next day, at noon,
when a long letter arrived from his lost son, the man was as
grateful to me as if I had really had something to do with

the hurrying up of that letter. The son had shipped from
San Francisco in a sailing vessel, and his letter was written
from the first port he touched at, months afterwards.
This incident argues nothing, and is valueless. I insert
it only to show how strong is the superstition which ‘letter-
crossing’ has bred in me. I was so sure that a cablegram
sent to any place, no matter where, would defeat itself by
‘crossing’ the incoming news, that my confidence was able
to raise up a hopeless man, and make him cheery and
hopeful.
But here are two or three incidents which come strictly
under the head of mind-telegraphing. One Monday
morning, about a year ago, the mail came in, and I picked
up one of the letters, and said to a friend: ‘Without opening
this letter I will tell you what it says. It is from Mrs. ——,
and she says she was in New York last Saturday, and was
purposing to run up here in the afternoon train and
surprise us, but at the last moment changed her mind and
returned westward to her home.’
I was right; my details were exactly correct. Yet we had
had no suspicion that Mrs. —— was coming to New York, or
that she had even a remote intention of visiting us.
I smoke a good deal—that is to say, all the time—so,
during seven years, I have tried to keep a box of matches
handy, behind a picture on the mantelpiece; but I have had
to take it out in trying, because George (coloured), who
makes the fires and lights the gas, always uses my matches
and never replaces them. Commands and persuasions have
gone for nothing with him all these seven years. One day
last summer, when our family had been away from home
several months, I said to a member of the household:
‘Now, with all this long holiday, and nothing in the way
to interrupt——’

‘I can finish the sentence for you,’ said the member of
the household.
‘Do it, then,’ said I.
‘George ought to be able, by practising, to learn to let
those matches alone.’
It was correctly done. That was what I was going to say.
Yet until that moment George and the matches had not
been in my mind for three months, and it is plain that the
part of the sentence which I uttered offers not the least cue
or suggestion of what I was purposing to follow it with.
My mother[2] is descended from the younger of two
English brothers named Lambton, who settled in this
country a few generations ago. The tradition goes that the
elder of the two eventually fell heir to a certain estate in
England (now an earldom), and died right away. This has
always been the way with our family. They always die when
they could make anything by not doing it. The two
Lambtons left plenty of Lambtons behind them; and when
at last, about fifty years ago, the English baronetcy was
exalted to an earldom, the great tribe of American
Lambtons began to bestir themselves—that is, those
descended from the elder branch. Ever since that day one
or another of these has been fretting his life uselessly away
with schemes to get at his ‘rights.’ The present ‘rightful
earl’—I mean the American one—used to write me
occasionally, and try to interest me in his projected raids
upon the title and estates by offering me a share in the
latter portion of the spoil; but I have always managed to
resist his temptations.
2. She was still living when this was written.

Well, one day last summer I was lying under a tree,
thinking about nothing in particular, when an absurd idea
flashed into my head, and I said to a member of the
household, ‘Suppose I should live to be ninety-two, and

dumb and blind and toothless, and just as I was gasping out
what was left of me on my death-bed——’
‘Wait, I will finish the sentence,’ said the member of the
household.
‘Go on,’ said I.
‘Somebody should rush in with a document, and say,
“All the other heirs are dead, and you are the Earl of
Durham!”’
That is truly what I was going to say. Yet until that
moment the subject had not entered my mind or been
referred to in my hearing for months before. A few years
ago this thing would have astounded me, but the like could
not much surprise me now, though it happened every week;
for I think I know now that mind can communicate
accurately with mind without the aid of the slow and
clumsy vehicle of speech.
This age does seem to have exhausted invention nearly;
still, it has one important contract on its hands yet—the
invention of the phrenophone; that is to say, a method
whereby the communicating of mind with mind may be
brought under command and reduced to certainty and
system. The telegraph and the telephone are going to
become too slow and wordy for our needs. We must have
the thought itself shot into our minds from a distance; then,
if we need to put it into words, we can do that tedious work
at our leisure. Doubtless the something which conveys our
thoughts through the air from brain to brain is a finer and
subtler form of electricity, and all we need do is to find out
how to capture it and how to force it to do its work, as we
have had to do in the case of the electric currents. Before
the day of telegraphs neither one of these marvels would
have seemed any easier to achieve than the other.
While I am writing this, doubtless somebody on the
other side of the globe is writing it too. The question is, am

I inspiring him or is he inspiring me? I cannot answer that;
but that these thoughts have been passing through
somebody else’s mind all the time I have been setting them
down I have no sort of doubt.
I will close this paper with a remark which I found
some time ago in Boswell’s ‘Johnson’:
‘Voltaire’s “Candide” is wonderfully similar in its plan
and conduct to Johnson’s “Rasselas”; insomuch that I have
heard Johnson say that if they had not been published so
closely one after the other that there was not time for
imitation, it would have been in vain to deny that the
scheme of that which came latest was taken from the
other.’
The two men were widely separated from each other at
the time, and the sea lay between.

POSTSCRIPT

In the ‘Atlantic’ for June 1882, Mr. John Fiske refers to
the often-quoted Darwin-and-Wallace ‘coincidence’:
‘I alluded, just now, to the “unforeseen circumstance”
which led Mr. Darwin in 1859 to break his long silence, and
to write and publish the “Origin of Species.” This
circumstance served, no less than the extraordinary
success of his book, to show how ripe the minds of men had
become for entertaining such views as those which Mr.
Darwin propounded. In 1858 Mr. Wallace, who was then
engaged in studying the natural history of the Malay
Archipelago, sent to Mr. Darwin (as to the man most likely
to understand him) a paper in which he sketched the
outlines of a theory identical with that upon which Mr.
Darwin had so long been at work. The same sequence of
observed facts and inferences that had led Mr. Darwin to
the discovery of Natural Selection and its consequences
had led Mr. Wallace to the very threshold of the same
discovery; but in Mr. Wallace’s mind the theory had by no
means been wrought out to the same degree of
completeness to which it had been wrought in the mind of
Mr. Darwin. In the preface to his charming book on Natural
Selection, Mr. Wallace, with rare modesty and candour,
acknowledges that whatever value his speculations may
have had, they have been utterly surpassed in richness and
cogency of proof by those of Mr. Darwin. This is no doubt
true, and Mr. Wallace has done such good work in further
illustration of the theory that he can well afford to rest
content with the second place in the first announcement of
it.
‘The coincidence, however, between Mr. Wallace’s
conclusions and those of Mr. Darwin was very remarkable.

But, after all, coincidences of this sort have not been
uncommon in the history of scientific inquiry. Nor is it at all
surprising that they should occur now and then, when we
remember that a great and pregnant discovery must always
be concerned with some question which many of the
foremost minds in the world are busy thinking about. It was
so with the discovery of the differential calculus, and again
with the discovery of the planet Neptune. It was so with the
interpretation of the Egyptian hieroglyphics, and with the
establishment of the undulatory theory of light. It was so,
to a considerable extent, with the introduction of the new
chemistry, with the discovery of the mechanical equivalent
of heat, and the whole doctrine of the correlation of forces.
It was so with the invention of the electric telegraph and
with the discovery of spectrum analysis. And it is not at all
strange that it should have been so with the doctrine of the
origin of species through natural selection.’
He thinks these ‘coincidences’ were apt to happen
because the matters from which they sprang were matters
which many of the foremost minds in the world were busy
thinking about. But perhaps one man in each case did the
telegraphing to the others. The aberrations which gave
Leverrier the idea that there must be a planet of such and
such mass and such and such an orbit hidden from sight
out yonder in the remote abysses of space were not new;
they had been noticed by astronomers for generations.
Then why should it happen to occur to three people, widely
separated—Leverrier, Mrs. Somerville, and Adams—to
suddenly go to worrying about those aberrations all at the
same time, and set themselves to work to find out what
caused them, and to measure and weigh an invisible planet,
and calculate its orbit, and hunt it down and catch it?—a
strange project which nobody but they had ever thought of
before. If one astronomer had invented that odd and happy

project fifty years before, don’t you think he would have
telegraphed it to several others without knowing it?
But now I come to a puzzler. How is it that inanimate
objects are able to affect the mind? They seem to do that.
However, I wish to throw in a parenthesis first—just a
reference to a thing everybody is familiar with—the
experience of receiving a clear and particular answer to
your telegram before your telegram has reached the sender
of the answer. That is a case where your telegram has gone
straight from your brain to the man it was meant for, far
outstripping the wire’s slow electricity, and it is an exercise
of mental telegraphy which is as common as dining. To
return to the influence of inanimate things. In the cases of
non-professional clairvoyance examined by the Psychical
Society the clairvoyant has usually been blindfolded, then
some object which has been touched or worn by a person is
placed in his hand; the clairvoyant immediately describes
that person, and goes on and gives a history of some event
with which the text object has been connected. If the
inanimate object is able to affect and inform the
clairvoyant’s mind, maybe it can do the same when it is
working in the interest of mental telegraphy. Once a lady in
the West wrote me that her son was coming to New York to
remain three weeks, and would pay me a visit if invited,
and she gave me his address. I mislaid the letter, and forgot
all about the matter till the three weeks were about up.
Then a sudden and fiery irruption of remorse burst up in
my brain that illuminated all the region round about, and I
sat down at once and wrote to the lady and asked for that
lost address. But, upon reflection, I judged that the stirring
up of my recollection had not been an accident, so I added
a postscript to say, never mind, I should get a letter from
her son before night. And I did get it; for the letter was
already in the town, although not delivered yet. It had
influenced me somehow. I have had so many experiences of

this sort—a dozen of them at least—that I am nearly
persuaded that inanimate objects do not confine their
activities to helping the clairvoyant, but do every now and
then give the mental telegraphist a lift.
The case of mental telegraphy which I am coming to
now comes under I don’t exactly know what head. I clipped
it from one of our local papers six or eight years ago. I
know the details to be right and true, for the story was told
to me in the same form by one of the two persons
concerned (a clergyman of Hartford) at the time that the
curious thing happened:
‘A Remarkable Coincidence.—Strange coincidences make
the most interesting of stories and most curious of studies.
Nobody can quite say how they come about, but everybody
appreciates the fact when they do come, and it is seldom
that any more complete and curious coincidence is
recorded of minor importance than the following, which is
absolutely true and occurred in this city:
‘At the time of the building of one of the finest
residences of Hartford, which is still a very new house, a
local firm supplied the wall-paper for certain rooms,
contracting both to furnish and to put on the paper. It
happened that they did not calculate the size of one room
exactly right, and the paper of the design selected for it fell
short just half a roll. They asked for delay enough to send
on to the manufacturers for what was needed, and were
told that there was no especial hurry. It happened that the
manufacturers had none on hand, and had destroyed the
blocks from which it was printed. They wrote that they had
a full list of the dealers to whom they had sold that paper,
and that they would write to each of these, and get from
some of them a roll. It might involve a delay of a couple of
weeks, but they would surely get it.
‘In the course of time came a letter saying that, to their
great surprise, they could not find a single roll. Such a

thing was very unusual, but in this case it had so happened.
Accordingly the local firm asked for further time, saying
they would write to their own customers who had bought of
that pattern, and would get the piece from them. But to
their surprise, this effort also failed. A long time had now
elapsed, and there was no use of delaying any longer. They
had contracted to paper the room, and their only course
was to take off that which was insufficient and put on some
other of which there was enough to go around. Accordingly,
at length a man was sent out to remove the paper. He got
his apparatus ready, and was about to begin work, under
the direction of the owner of the building, when the latter
was for the moment called away. The house was large and
very interesting, and so many people had rambled about it
that finally admission had been refused by a sign at the
door. On the occasion, however, when a gentleman had
knocked and asked for leave to look about, the owner,
being on the premises, had been sent for to reply to the
request in person. That was the call that for the moment
delayed the final preparations. The gentleman went to the
door and admitted the stranger, saying he would show him
about the house, but first must return for a moment to that
room to finish his directions there, and he told the curious
story about the paper as they went on. They entered the
room together, and the first thing the stranger, who lived
fifty miles away, said on looking about was, “Why, I have
that very paper on a room in my house, and I have an extra
roll of it laid away, which is at your service.” In a few days
the wall was papered according to the original contract.
Had not the owner been at the house, the stranger would
not have been admitted; had he called a day later, it would
have been too late; had not the facts been almost
accidentally told to him, he would probably have said
nothing of the paper, and so on. The exact fitting of all the
circumstances is something very remarkable, and makes

one of those stories that seem hardly accidental in their
nature.’
Something that happened the other day brought my
hoary MS. to mind, and that is how I came to dig it out from
its dusty pigeon-hole grave for publication. The thing that
happened was a question. A lady asked it: ‘Have you ever
had a vision—when awake?’ I was about to answer
promptly, when the last two words of the question began to
grow and spread and swell, and presently they attained to
vast dimensions. She did not know that they were
important; and I did not at first, but I soon saw that they
were putting me on the track of the solution of a mystery
which had perplexed me a good deal. You will see what I
mean when I get down to it. Ever since the English Society
for Psychical Research began its searching investigations of
ghost stories, haunted houses, and apparitions of the living
and the dead, I have read their pamphlets with avidity as
fast as they arrived. Now one of their commonest inquiries
of a dreamer or a vision-seer is, ‘Are you sure you were
awake at the time?’ If the man can’t say he is sure he was
awake, a doubt falls upon his tale right there. But if he is
positive he was awake, and offers reasonable evidence to
substantiate it, the fact counts largely for the credibility of
his story. It does with the Society, and it did with me until
that lady asked me the above question the other day.
The question set me to considering, and brought me to
the conclusion that you can be asleep—at least wholly
unconscious—for a time, and not suspect that it has
happened, and not have any way to prove that it has
happened. A memorable case was in my mind. About a year
ago I was standing on the porch one day, when I saw a man
coming up the walk. He was a stranger, and I hoped he
would ring and carry his business into the house without
stopping to argue with me; he would have to pass the front
door to get to me, and I hoped he wouldn’t take the

trouble; to help, I tried to look like a stranger myself—it
often works. I was looking straight at that man; he had got
to within ten feet of the door and within twenty-five feet of
me—and suddenly he disappeared. It was as astounding as
if a church should vanish from before your face and leave
nothing behind it but a vacant lot. I was unspeakably
delighted. I had seen an apparition at last, with my own
eyes, in broad daylight. I made up my mind to write an
account of it to the Society. I ran to where the spectre had
been, to make sure he was playing fair, then I ran to the
other end of the porch, scanning the open grounds as I
went. No, everything was perfect; he couldn’t have escaped
without my seeing him; he was an apparition, without the
slightest doubt, and I would write him up before he was
cold. I ran, hot with excitement, and let myself in with a
latch-key. When I stepped into the hall my lungs collapsed
and my heart stood still. For there sat that same apparition
in a chair, all alone, and as quiet and reposeful as if he had
come to stay a year! The shock kept me dumb for a moment
or two, then I said, ‘Did you come in at that door?’
‘Yes.’
‘Did you open it, or did you ring?’
‘I rang, and the coloured man opened it.’
I said to myself: ‘This is astonishing. It takes George all
of two minutes to answer the doorbell when he is in a
hurry, and I have never seen him in a hurry. How did this
man stand two minutes at that door, within five steps of me,
and I did not see him?’
I should have gone to my grave puzzling over that
riddle but for that lady’s chance question last week: ‘Have
you ever had a vision—when awake?’ It stands explained
now. During at least sixty seconds that day I was asleep, or
at least totally unconscious, without suspecting it. In that
interval the man came to my immediate vicinity, rang, stood

there and waited, then entered and closed the door, and I
did not see him and did not hear the door slam.
If he had slipped around the house in that interval and
gone into the cellar—he had time enough—I should have
written him up for the Society, and magnified him, and
gloated over him, and hurrahed about him, and thirty yoke
of oxen could not have pulled the belief out of me that I was
of the favoured ones of the earth, and had seen a vision—
while wide awake.
Now, how are you to tell when you are awake? What
are you to go by? People bite their fingers to find out. Why,
you can do that in a dream.

A CURE FOR THE BLUES

By courtesy of Mr. Cable I came into possession of a
singular book eight or ten years ago. It is likely that mine is
now the only copy in existence. Its title-page,
unabbreviated, reads as follows:
‘The Enemy Conquered; or, Love Triumphant. By G.
Ragsdale McClintock,[3] author of “An Address,” etc.,
delivered at Sunflower Hill, South Carolina, and member of
the Yale Law School, New Haven: published by T. H. Pease,
83 Chapel Street, 1845.’
3. The name here given is a substitute for the one actually attached to the
pamphlet.
No one can take up this book, and lay it down again
unread. Whoever reads one line of it is caught, is chained;
he has become the contented slave of its fascinations; and
he will read and read, devour and devour, and will not let it
go out of his hand till it is finished to the last line, though
the house be on fire over his head. And after a first reading,
he will not throw it aside, but will keep it by him, with his
Shakspeare and his Homer, and will take it up many and
many a time, when the world is dark, and his spirits are
low, and be straightway cheered and refreshed. Yet this
work has been allowed to lie wholly neglected,
unmentioned, and apparently unregretted, for nearly half a
century.
The reader must not imagine that he is to find in it
wisdom, brilliancy, fertility of invention, ingenuity of

construction, excellence of form, purity of style, perfection
of imagery, truth to nature, clearness of statement,
humanly possible situations, humanly possible people,
fluent narrative, connected sequence of events—or
philosophy, or logic, or sense. No; the rich, deep, beguiling
charm of the book lies in the total and miraculous absence
from it of all these qualities—a charm which is completed
and perfected by the evident fact that the author, whose
naïve innocence easily and surely wins our regard, and
almost our worship, does not know that they are absent,
does not even suspect that they are absent. When read by
the light of these helps to an understanding of the
situation, the book is delicious—profoundly and satisfyingly
delicious.
I call it a book because the author calls it a book; I call
it a work because he calls it a work; but in truth it is merely
a duodecimo pamphlet of thirty-one pages. It was written
for fame and money, as the author very frankly—yes, and
very hopefully, too, poor fellow—says in his preface. The
money never came; no penny of it ever came; and how
long, how pathetically long, the fame has been deferred—
forty-seven years! He was young then, it would have been
so much to him then; but will he care for it now?
As time is measured in America, McClintock’s epoch is
antiquity. In his long-vanished day the Southern author had
a passion for ‘eloquence’; it was his pet, his darling. He
would be eloquent, or perish. And he recognised only one
kind of eloquence, the lurid, the tempestuous, the volcanic.
He liked words; big words, fine words, grand words,
rumbling, thundering, reverberating words—with sense
attaching if it could be got in without marring the sound,
but not otherwise. He loved to stand up before a dazed
world, and pour forth flame, and smoke, and lava, and
pumicestone, into the skies, and work his subterranean
thunders, and shake himself with earthquakes, and stench

himself with sulphur fumes. If he consumed his own fields
and vineyards, that was a pity, yes; but he would have his
eruption at any cost. Mr. McClintock’s eloquence—and he
is always eloquent, his crater is always spouting—is of the
pattern common to his day, but he departs from the custom
of the time in one respect: his brethren allowed sense to
intrude when it did not mar the sound, but he does not
allow it to intrude at all. For example, consider this figure,
which he uses in the village ‘Address’ referred to with such
candid complacency in the title-page above quoted—‘like
the topmost topaz of an ancient tower.’ Please read it
again; contemplate it; measure it; walk around it; climb up
it; try to get at an approximate realisation of the size of it.
Is the fellow to that to be found in literature, ancient or
modern, foreign or domestic, living or dead, drunk or
sober? One notices how fine and grand it sounds. We know
that if it was loftily uttered, it got a noble burst of applause
from the villagers; yet there isn’t a ray of sense in it, or
meaning to it.
McClintock finished his education at Yale in 1843, and
came to Hartford on a visit that same year. I have talked
with men who at that time talked with him, and felt of him,
and knew he was real. One needs to remember that fact,
and to keep fast hold of it; it is the only way to keep
McClintock’s book from undermining one’s faith in
McClintock’s actuality.
As to the book. The first four pages are devoted to an
inflamed eulogy of Woman—simply Woman in general, or
perhaps as an Institution—wherein, among other
compliments to her details, he pays a unique one to her
voice. He says it ‘fills the breast with fond alarms, echoed
by every rill.’ It sounds well enough, but it is not true. After
the eulogy he takes up his real work, and the novel begins.
It begins in the woods, near the village of Sunflower Hill.

‘Brightening clouds seemed to rise from the mist of the
fair Chattahoochee, to spread their beauty over the thick
forest, to guide the hero whose bosom beats with
aspirations to conquer the enemy that would tarnish his
name and to win back the admiration of his long-tried
friend.’
It seems a general remark, but it is not general; the
hero mentioned is the to-be hero of the book; and in this
abrupt fashion, and without name or description, he is
shovelled into the tale. ‘With aspirations to conquer the
enemy that would tarnish his name’ is merely a phrase
flung in for the sake of the sound—let it not mislead the
reader. No one is trying to tarnish this person; no one has
thought of it. The rest of the sentence is also merely a
phrase; the man has no friend as yet, and of course has had
no chance to try him, or win back his admiration, or disturb
him in any other way.
The hero climbs up over ‘Sawney’s Mountain,’ and
down the other side, making for an old Indian ‘castle’—
which becomes ‘the red man’s hut’ in the next sentence;
and when he gets there at last, he ‘surveys with wonder
and astonishment’ the invisible structure, ‘which time had
buried in the dust; and thought to himself his happiness
was not yet complete.’ One doesn’t know why it wasn’t, nor
how near it came to being complete, nor what was still
wanting to round it up and make it so. Maybe it was the
Indian; but the book does not say. At this point we have an
episode:
‘Beside the shore of the brook sat a young man, about
eighteen or twenty, who seemed to be reading some
favourite book, and who had a remarkably noble
countenance—eyes which betrayed more than a common
mind. This, of course, made the youth a welcome guest, and
gained him friends in whatever condition of life he might be
placed. The traveller observed that he was a well-built

figure which showed strength and grace in every
movement. He accordingly addressed him in quite a
gentlemanly manner, and inquired of him the way to the
village. After he had received the desired information, and
was about taking his leave, the youth said, “Are you not
Major Elfonzo, the great musician[4]—the champion of a
noble cause—the modern Achilles, who gained so many
victories in the Florida War?” “I bear that name,” said the
Major, “and those titles, trusting at the same time that the
ministers of grace will carry me triumphantly through all
my laudable undertakings, and if,” continued the Major,
“you, sir, are the patroniser of noble deeds, I should like to
make you my confidant, and learn your address.” The youth
looked somewhat amazed, bowed low, mused for a moment,
and began: “My name is Roswell. I have been recently
admitted to the bar, and can only give a faint outline of my
future success in that honourable profession; but I trust,
sir, like the Eagle, I shall look down from lofty rocks upon
the dwellings of man, and shall ever be ready to give you
any assistance in my official capacity, and whatever this
muscular arm of mine can do, whenever it shall be called
from its buried greatness.” The Major grasped him by the
hand, and exclaimed: “O! thou exalted spirit of inspiration
—thou flame of burning prosperity, may the Heaven-
directed blaze be the glare of thy soul, and battle down
every rampart that seems to impede your progress!”’
4. Further on it will be seen that he is a country expert on the fiddle, and
has a three-township fame.

There is a strange sort of originality about McClintock;
he imitates other people’s styles, but nobody can imitate
his, not even an idiot. Other people can be windy, but
McClintock blows a gale; other people can blubber
sentiment, but McClintock spews it; other people can
mishandle metaphors, but only McClintock knows how to
make a business of it. McClintock is always McClintock, he

is always consistent, his style is always his own style. He
does not make the mistake of being relevant on one page
and irrelevant on another; he is irrelevant on all of them.
He does not make the mistake of being lucid in one place
and obscure in another; he is obscure all the time. He does
not make the mistake of slipping in a name here and there
that is out of character with his work; he always uses
names that exactly and fantastically fit his lunatics. In the
matter of undeviating consistency he stands alone in
authorship. It is this that makes his style unique, and
entitles it to a name of its own—McClintockian. It is this
that protects it from being mistaken for anybody else’s.
Uncredited quotations from other writers often leave a
reader in doubt as to their authorship, but McClintock is
safe from that accident; an uncredited quotation from him
would always be recognisable. When a boy nineteen years
old, who had just been admitted to the bar, says, ‘I trust,
sir, like the Eagle, I shall look down from lofty rocks upon
the dwellings of man,’ we know who is speaking through
that boy; we should recognise that note anywhere. There
be myriads of instruments in this world’s literary orchestra,
and a multitudinous confusion of sounds that they make,
wherein fiddles are drowned, and guitars smothered, and
one sort of drum mistaken for another sort; but whensoever
the brazen note of the McClintockian trombone breaks
through that fog of music, that note is recognisable, and
about it there can be no blur of doubt.
The novel now arrives at the point where the Major
goes home to see his father. When McClintock wrote this
interview, he probably believed it was pathetic.
‘The road which led to the town presented many
attractions. Elfonzo had bid farewell to the youth of deep
feeling, and was now wending his way to the dreaming spot
of his fondness. The south winds whistled through the
woods, as the waters dashed against the banks, as rapid

fire in the pent furnace roars. This brought him to
remember while alone that he quietly left behind the
hospitality of a father’s house, and gladly entered the
world, with higher hopes than are often realised. But as he
journeyed onward he was mindful of the advice of his
father, who had often looked sadly on the ground, when
tears of cruelly deceived hope moistened his eyes. Elfonzo
had been somewhat of a dutiful son, yet fond of the
amusements of life—had been in distant lands, had enjoyed
the pleasure of the world, and had frequently returned to
the scenes of his boyhood almost destitute of many of the
comforts of life. In this condition he would frequently say to
his father, “Have I offended you, that you look upon me as a
stranger, and frown upon me with stinging looks? Will you
not favour me with the sound of your voice? If I have
trampled upon your veneration, or have spread a humid
veil of darkness around your expectations, send me back
into the world, where no heart beats for me—where the
foot of man has never yet trod; but give me at least one
kind word—allow me to come into the presence sometimes
of thy winter-worn locks.” “Forbid it, Heaven, that I should
be angry with thee,” answered the father, “my son, and yet
I send thee back to the children of the world—to the cold
charity of the combat, and to a land of victory. I read
another destiny in thy countenance—I learn thy inclinations
from the flame that has already kindled in my soul a
strange sensation. It will seek thee, my dear Elfonzo, it will
find thee—thou canst not escape that lighted torch, which
shall blot out from the remembrance of men a long train of
prophecies which they have foretold against thee. I once
thought not so. Once, I was blind; but now the path of life is
plain before me, and my sight is clear; yet, Elfonzo, return
to thy worldly occupation—take again in thy hand that
chord of sweet sounds—struggle with the civilised world,
and with your own heart; fly swiftly to the enchanted
ground—let the night-owl send forth its screams from the

stubborn oak—let the sea sport upon the beach, and the
stars sing together; but learn of these, Elfonzo, thy doom,
and thy hiding-place. Our most innocent as well as our
most lawful desires must often be denied us, that we may
learn to sacrifice them to a Higher will.”
‘Remembering such admonitions with gratitude,
Elfonzo was immediately urged by the recollection of his
father’s family to keep moving.’
McClintock has a fine gift in the matter of surprises;
but as a rule they are not pleasant ones, they jar upon the
feelings. His closing sentence in the last quotation is of that
sort. It brings one down out of the tinted clouds in too
sudden and collapsed a fashion. It incenses one against the
author for a moment. It makes the reader want to take him
by his winter-worn locks, and trample on his veneration,
and deliver him over to the cold charity of combat, and blot
him out with his own lighted torch. But the feeling does not
last. The master takes again in his hand that concord of
sweet sounds of his, and one is reconciled, pacified.
‘His steps became quicker and quicker—he hastened
through the piny woods, dark as the forest was, and with
joy he very soon reached the little village of repose, in
whose bosom rested the boldest chivalry. His close
attention to every important object—his modest questions
about whatever was new to him—his reverence for wise old
age, and his ardent desire to learn many of the fine arts,
soon brought him into respectable notice.
‘One mild winter day, as he walked along the streets
towards the Academy, which stood upon a small eminence,
surrounded by native growth—some venerable in its
appearance, others young and prosperous—all seemed
inviting, and seemed to be the very place for learning as
well as for genius to spend its research beneath its
spreading shades. He entered its classic walls in the usual
mode of Southern manners.’

The artfulness of this man! None knows so well as he
how to pique the curiosity of the reader—and how to
disappoint it. He raises the hope, here, that he is going to
tell all about how one enters a classic wall in the usual
mode of Southern manners; but does he? No; he smiles in
his sleeve, and turns aside to other matters.
‘The principal of the Institution begged him to be
seated, and listen to the recitations that were going on. He
accordingly obeyed the request, and seemed to be much
pleased. After the school was dismissed, and the young
hearts regained their freedom, with the songs of the
evening, laughing at the anticipated pleasures of a happy
home, while others tittered at the actions of the past day,
he addressed the teacher in a tone that indicated a
resolution—with an undaunted mind. He said he had
determined to become a student, if he could meet with his
approbation. “Sir,” said he, “I have spent much time in the
world. I have travelled among the uncivilised inhabitants of
America. I have met with friends, and combated with foes;
but none of these gratify my ambition, or decide what is to
be my destiny. I see the learned world have an influence
with the voice of the people themselves. The despoilers of
the remotest kingdoms of the earth refer their differences
to this class of persons. This the illiterate and
inexperienced little dream of; and now, if you will receive
me as I am, with these deficiencies—with all my misguided
opinions, I will give you my honour, sir, that I will never
disgrace the Institution or those who have placed you in
this honourable station.” The instructor, who had met with
many disappointments, knew how to feel for a stranger who
had been thus turned upon the charities of an unfeeling
community. He looked at him earnestly, and said: “Be of
good cheer—look forward, sir, to the high destination you
may attain. Remember, the more elevated the mark at
which you aim, the more sure, the more glorious, the more

magnificent the prize.” From wonder to wonder, his
encouragement led the impatient listener. A strange nature
bloomed before him—giant streams promised him success
—gardens of hidden treasures opened to his view. All this,
so vividly described, seemed to gain a new witchery from
his glowing fancy.’
It seems to me that this situation is new in romance. I
feel sure it has not been attempted before. Military
celebrities have been disguised and set at lowly
occupations for dramatic effect, but I think McClintock is
the first to send one of them to school. Thus, in this book,
you pass from wonder to wonder, through gardens of
hidden treasure, where giant streams bloom before you,
and behind you, and all around, and you feel as happy, and
groggy, and satisfied, with your quart of mixed metaphor
aboard, as you would if it had been mixed in a sample-
room, and delivered from a jug.
Now we come upon some more McClintockian
surprises—a sweetheart who is sprung upon us without any
preparation, along with a name for her which is even a
little more of a surprise than she herself is.
‘In 1842 he entered the class, and made rapid progress
in the English and Latin departments. Indeed, he continued
advancing with such rapidity that he was like to become
the first in his class, and made such unexpected progress,
and was so studious, that he had almost forgotten the
pictured saint of his affections. The fresh wreaths of the
pine and cypress had waited anxiously to drop once more
the dews of Heaven upon the heads of those who had so
often poured forth the tender emotions of their souls under
its boughs. He was aware of the pleasure that he had seen
there. So one evening, as he was returning from his
reading, he concluded he would pay a visit to this
enchanting spot. Little did he think of witnessing a shadow
of his former happiness, though no doubt he wished it

might be so. He continued sauntering by the road-side,
meditating on the past. The nearer he approached the spot,
the more anxious he became. At that moment a tall female
figure flitted across his path, with a bunch of roses in her
hand; her countenance showed uncommon vivacity, with a
resolute spirit; her ivory teeth already appeared as she
smiled beautifully, promenading, while her ringlets of hair
dangled unconsciously around her snowy neck. Nothing
was wanting to complete her beauty. The tinge of the rose
was in full bloom upon her cheek; the charms of sensibility
and tenderness were always her associates. In Ambulinia’s
bosom dwelt a noble soul—one that never faded—one that
never was conquered.’
Ambulinia! It can hardly be matched in fiction. The full
name is Ambulinia Valeer. Marriage will presently round it
out and perfect it. Then it will be Mrs. Ambulinia Valeer
Elfonzo. It takes the chromo.
‘Her heart yielded to no feeling but the love of Elfonzo,
on whom she gazed with intense delight, and to whom she
felt herself more closely bound, because he sought the
hand of no other. Elfonzo was roused from his apparent
reverie. His books no longer were his inseparable
companions—his thoughts arrayed themselves to
encourage him to the field of victory. He endeavoured to
speak to his supposed Ambulinia, but his speech appeared
not in words. No, his effort was a stream of fire that kindled
his soul into a flame of admiration and carried his senses
away captive. Ambulinia had disappeared, to make him
more mindful of his duty. As she walked speedily away
through the piny woods she calmly echoed: “O! Elfonzo,
thou wilt now look from thy sunbeams. Thou shalt now walk
in a new path—perhaps thy way leads through darkness;
but fear not, the stars foretell happiness.”’
To McClintock that jingling jumble of fine words meant
something, no doubt, or seemed to mean something; but it

is useless for us to try to divine what it was. Ambulinia
comes—we don’t know whence nor why; she mysteriously
intimates—we don’t know what; and then she goes echoing
away—we don’t know whither; and down comes the
curtain. McClintock’s art is subtle; McClintock’s art is
deep.
‘Not many days afterwards, as surrounded by fragrant
flowers, she sat one evening at twilight to enjoy the cool
breeze that whispered notes of melody along the distant
groves, the little birds perched on every side, as if to watch
the movements of their new visitor. The bells were tolling,
when Elfonzo silently stole along by the wild wood flowers,
holding in his hand his favourite instrument of music—his
eye continually searching for Ambulinia, who hardly
seemed to perceive him as she played carelessly with the
songsters that hopped from branch to branch. Nothing
could be more striking than the difference between the
two. Nature seemed to have given the more tender soul to
Elfonzo, and the stronger and more courageous to
Ambulinia. A deep feeling spoke from the eyes of Elfonzo—
such a feeling as can only be expressed by those who are
blessed as admirers, and by those who are able to return
the same with sincerity of heart. He was a few years older
than Ambulinia: she had turned a little into her
seventeenth. He had almost grown up in the Cherokee
country, with the same equal proportions as one of the
natives. But little intimacy had existed between them until
the year forty-one—because the youth felt that the
character of such a lovely girl was too exalted to inspire
any other feeling than that of quiet reverence. But as lovers
will not always be insulted, at all times and under all
circumstances, by the frowns and cold looks of crabbed old
age, which should continually reflect dignity upon those
around, and treat the unfortunate as well as the fortunate

with a graceful mien, he continued to use diligence and
perseverance.
‘All this lighted a spark in his heart that changed his
whole character, and, like the unyielding Deity that follows
the storm to check its rage in the forest, he resolves for the
first time to shake off his embarrassment, and return where
he had before only worshipped.’
At last we begin to get the Major’s measure. We are
able to put this and that casual fact together, and build the
man up before our eyes, and look at him. And after we have
got him built, we find him worth the trouble. By the above
comparison between his age and Ambulinia’s, we guess the
war-worn veteran to be twenty-two; and the other facts
stand thus: he had grown up in the Cherokee country with
the same equal proportions as one of the natives—how
flowing and graceful the language, and yet how tantalising
as to meaning!—he had been turned adrift by his father, to
whom he had been ‘somewhat of a dutiful son’; he
wandered in distant lands; came back frequently ‘to the
scenes of his boyhood, almost destitute of many of the
comforts of life,’ in order to get into the presence of his
father’s winter-worn locks, and spread a humid veil of
darkness around his expectations; but he was always
promptly sent back to the cold charity of the combat again;
he learned to play the fiddle, and made a name for himself
in that line; he had dwelt among the wild tribes; he had
philosophised about the despoilers of the kingdoms of the
earth, and found out—the cunning creature—that they refer
their differences to the learned for settlement; he had
achieved a vast fame as a military chieftain, the Achilles of
the Florida campaigns, and then had got him a spelling-
book and started to school; he had fallen in love with
Ambulinia Valeer while she was teething, but had kept it to
himself awhile, out of the reverential awe which he felt for
the child; but now at last, like the unyielding deity who

follows the storm to check its rage in the forest, he resolves
to shake off his embarrassment, and to return where before
he had only worshipped. The Major, indeed, has made up
his mind to rise up and shake his faculties together, and to
see if he can’t do that thing himself. This is not clear. But
no matter about that: there stands the hero, compact and
visible; and he is no mean structure, considering that his
creator had never created anything before, and hadn’t
anything but rags and wind to build with this time. It seems
to me that no one can contemplate this odd creature, this
quaint and curious blatherskite, without admiring
McClintock, or, at any rate, loving him and feeling grateful
to him; for McClintock made him; he gave him to us;
without McClintock we could not have had him, and would
now be poor.
But we must come to the feast again. Here is a
courtship scene, down there in the romantic glades among
the raccoons, alligators, and things, that has merit, peculiar
literary merit. See how Achilles wooes. Dwell upon the
second sentence (particularly the close of it), and the
beginning of the third. Never mind the new personage,
Leos, who is intruded upon us unheralded and unexplained.
That is McClintock’s way; it is his habit; it is a part of his
genius; he cannot help it; he never interrupts the rush of
his narrative to make introductions:
‘It could not escape Ambulinia’s penetrating eye that he
sought an interview with her, which she as anxiously
avoided, and assumed a more distant calmness than before,
seemingly to destroy all hope. After many efforts and
struggles with his own person, with timid steps the Major
approached the damsel, with the same caution as he would
have done in a field of battle. “Lady Ambulinia,” said he,
trembling, “I have long desired a moment like this. I dare
not let it escape. I fear the consequences; yet I hope your
indulgence will at least hear my petition. Can you not

anticipate what I would say, and what I am about to
express? Will you not, like Minerva, who sprung from the
brain of Jupiter, release me from thy winding chains or cure
me——” “Say no more, Elfonzo,” answered Ambulinia, with
a serious look, raising her hand as if she intended to swear
eternal hatred against the whole world; “another lady in my
place would have perhaps answered your question in bitter
coldness. I know not the little arts of my sex. I care but
little for the vanity of those who would chide me, and am
unwilling as well as ashamed to be guilty of anything that
would lead you to think ‘all is not gold that glitters’; so be
not rash in your resolution. It is better to repent now, than
to do it in a more solemn hour. Yes, I know what you would
say. I know you have a costly gift for me—the noblest that
man can make—your heart! You should not offer it to one so
unworthy. Heaven, you know, has allowed my father’s
house to be made a house of solitude, a home of silent
obedience, which my parents say is more to be admired
than big names and high-sounding titles. Notwithstanding
all this, let me speak the emotions of an honest heart—
allow me to say in the fulness of my hopes that I anticipate
better days. The bird may stretch its wings towards the sun
which it can never reach; and flowers of the field appear to
ascend in the same direction, because they cannot do
otherwise: but man confides his complaints to the saints in
whom he believes; for in their abodes of light they know no
more sorrow. From your confession and indicative looks, I
must be that person: if so, deceive not yourself.”
‘Elfonzo replied, “Pardon me, my dear madam, for my
frankness. I have loved you from my earliest days—
everything grand and beautiful hath borne the image of
Ambulinia: while precipices on every hand surrounded me,
your guardian angel stood and beckoned me away from the
deep abyss. In every trial—in every misfortune, I have met
with your helping hand; yet I never dreamed or dared to

cherish thy love, till a voice impaired with age encouraged
the cause, and declared they who acquired thy favour
should win a victory. I saw how Leos worshipped thee. I felt
my own unworthiness. I began to know jealousy, a strong
guest indeed, in my bosom, yet I could see if I gained your
admiration, Leos was to be my rival. I was aware that he
had the influence of your parents, and the wealth of a
deceased relative, which is too often mistaken for
permanent and regular tranquillity; yet I have determined
by your permission to beg an interest in your prayers—to
ask you to animate my drooping spirits by your smiles and
your winning looks; for, if you but speak, I shall be
conqueror, my enemies shall stagger like Olympus shakes.
And though earth and sea may tremble, and the charioteer
of the sun may forget his dashing steed; yet I am assured
that it is only to arm me with divine weapons, which will
enable me to complete my long-tried intention.” “Return to
yourself, Elfonzo,” said Ambulinia, pleasantly, “a dream of
vision has disturbed your intellect—you are above the
atmosphere, dwelling in the celestial regions, nothing is
there that urges or hinders, nothing that brings discord
into our present litigation. I entreat you to condescend a
little, and be a man, and forget it all. When Homer
describes the battle of the gods and noble men, fighting
with giants and dragons, they represent under this image
our struggles with the delusions of our passions. You have
exalted me, an unhappy girl, to the skies; you have called
me a saint, and portrayed in your imagination an angel in
human form. Let her remain such to you—let her continue
to be as you have supposed, and be assured that she will
consider a share in your esteem as her highest treasure.
Think not that I would allure you from the path in which
your conscience leads you; for you know I respect the
conscience of others, as I would die for my own. Elfonzo, if
I am worthy of thy love, let such conversation never again
pass between us. Go, seek a nobler theme! we will seek it

in the stream of time as the sunset in the Tigris.” As she
spake these words she grasped the hand of Elfonzo, saying
at the same time—“Peace and prosperity attend you, my
hero: be up and doing.” Closing her remarks with this
expression, she walked slowly away, leaving Elfonzo
astonished and amazed. He ventured not to follow, or
detain her. Here he stood alone, gazing at the stars—
confounded as he was, here he stood.’
Yes; there he stood. There seems to be no doubt about
that. Nearly half of this delirious story has now been
delivered to the reader. It seems a pity to reduce the other
half to a cold synopsis. Pity! it is more than a pity, it is a
crime; for, to synopsise McClintock is to reduce a sky-
flushing conflagration to dull embers, it is to reduce
barbaric splendour to ragged poverty. McClintock never
wrote a line that was not precious; he never wrote one that
could be spared; he never framed one from which a word
could be removed without damage. Every sentence that
this master has produced may be likened to a perfect set of
teeth—white, uniform, beautiful. If you pull one, the charm
is gone. Still, it is now necessary to begin to pull, and to
keep it up; for lack of space requires us to synopsise.
We left Elfonzo standing there, amazed. At what, we do
not know. Not at the girl’s speech. No; we ourselves should
have been amazed at it, of course, for none of us has ever
heard anything resembling it: but Elfonzo was used to
speeches made up of noise and vacancy, and could listen to
them with undaunted mind like the ‘topmost topaz of an
ancient tower’; he was used to making them himself; he—
but let it go, it cannot be guessed out; we shall never know
what it was that astonished him. He stood there awhile;
then he said, ‘Alas! am I now Grief’s disappointed son at
last.’ He did not stop to examine his mind, and to try to find
out what he probably meant by that, because, for one
reason, ‘a mixture of ambition and greatness of soul moved

upon his young heart,’ and started him for the village. He
resumed his bench in school, ‘and reasonably progressed in
his education.’ His heart was heavy, but he went into
society, and sought surcease of sorrow in its light
distractions. He made himself popular with his violin,
‘which seemed to have a thousand chords—more
symphonious than the Muses of Apollo, and more
enchanting than the ghost of the Hills.’ This is obscure, but
let it go.
During this interval Leos did some unencouraged
courting, but at last, ‘choked by his undertaking,’ he
desisted.
Presently ‘Elfonzo again wends his way to the stately
walls and new-built village.’ He goes to the house of his
beloved; she opens the door herself. To my surprise—for
Ambulinia’s heart had still seemed free at the time of their
last interview—love beamed from the girl’s eyes. One sees
that Elfonzo was surprised, too; for when he caught that
light ‘a halloo of smothered shouts ran through every vein.’
A neat figure—a very neat figure, indeed! Then he kissed
her. ‘The scene was overwhelming.’ They went into the
parlour. The girl said it was safe, for her parents were abed
and would never know. Then we have this fine picture—
flung upon the canvas with hardly an effort, as you will
notice.
‘Advancing towards him she gave a bright display of her
rosy neck, and from her head the ambrosial locks breathed
divine fragrance; her robe hung waving to his view, while
she stood like a goddess confessed before him.’
There is nothing of interest in the couple’s interview.
Now, at this point the girl invites Elfonzo to a village show,
where jealousy is the motive of the play, for she wants to
teach him a wholesome lesson if he is a jealous person. But
this is a sham, and pretty shallow. McClintock merely wants

a pretext to drag in a plagiarism of his upon a scene or two
in ‘Othello.’
The lovers went to the play. Elfonzo was one of the
fiddlers. He and Ambulinia must not be seen together, lest
trouble follow with the girl’s malignant father; we are made
to understand that clearly. So the two sit together in the
orchestra, in the midst of the musicians. This does not
seem to be good art. In the first place, the girl would be in
the way, for orchestras are always packed closely together,
and there is no room to spare for people’s girls; in the next
place, one cannot conceal a girl in an orchestra without
everybody taking notice of it. There can be no doubt, it
seems to me, that this is bad art.
Leos is present. Of course one of the first things that
catches his eye is the maddening spectacle of Ambulinia
‘leaning upon Elfonzo’s chair.’ This poor girl does not seem
to understand even the rudiments of concealment. But she
is ‘in her seventeenth,’ as the author phrases it, and that is
her justification.
Leos meditates, constructs a plan—with personal
violence as a basis, of course. It was their way, down there.
It is a good plain plan, without any imagination in it. He
will go out and stand at the front door, and when these two
come out he will ‘arrest Ambulinia from the hands of the
insolent Elfonzo,’ and thus make for himself a ‘more
prosperous field of immortality than ever was decreed by
Omnipotence, or ever pencil drew, or artist imagined.’ But,
dear me, while he is waiting there the couple climb out at
the back window and scurry home! This is romantic
enough, but there is a lack of dignity in the situation.
At this point McClintock puts in the whole of his
curious play—which we skip.
Some correspondence follows now. The bitter father
and the distressed lovers write the letters. Elopements are

attempted. They are idiotically planned, and they fail. Then
we have several pages of romantic powwow and confusion
signifying nothing. Another elopement is planned; it is to
take place on Sunday, when everybody is at church. But the
‘hero’ cannot keep the secret; he tells everybody. Another
author would have found another instrument when he
decided to defeat this elopement; but that is not
McClintock’s way. He uses the person that is nearest at
hand.
The evasion failed, of course. Ambulinia, in her flight,
takes refuge in a neighbour’s house. Her father drags her
home. The villagers gather, attracted by the racket.
‘Elfonzo was moved at this sight. The people followed
on to see what was going to become of Ambulinia, while he,
with downcast looks, kept at a distance, until he saw them
enter the abode of the father, thrusting her, that was the
sigh of his soul, out of his presence into a solitary
apartment, when she exclaimed, “Elfonzo! Elfonzo! oh!
Elfonzo! where art thou, with all thy heroes? haste, oh!
haste, come thou to my relief. Ride on the wings of the
wind! Turn thy force loose like a tempest, and roll on thy
army like a whirlwind, over this mountain of trouble and
confusion. Oh, friends! if any pity me, let your last efforts
throng upon the green hills, and come to the relief of
Ambulinia, who is guilty of nothing but innocent love.”
Elfonzo called out with a loud voice, “My God, can I stand
this! arouse up, I beseech you, and put an end to this
tyranny. Come, my brave boys,” said he, “are you ready to
go forth to your duty?” They stood around him. “Who,” said
he, “will call us to arms? Where are my thunderbolts of
war? Speak ye, the first who will meet the foe! Who will go
forth with me in this ocean of grievous temptation? If there
is one who desires to go, let him come and shake hands
upon the altar of devotion, and swear that he will be a hero;
yes, a Hector in a cause like this, which calls aloud for a

speedy remedy.” “Mine be the deed,” said a young lawyer,
“and mine alone; Venus alone shall quit her station before I
will forsake one jot or tittle of my promise to you; what is
death to me? what is all this warlike army, if it is not to win
a victory? I love the sleep of the lover and the mighty; nor
would I give it over till the blood of my enemies should
wreak with that of my own. But God forbid that our fame
should soar on the blood of the slumberer.” Mr. Valeer
stands at his door with the frown of a demon upon his brow,
with his dangerous weapon[5] ready to strike the first man
who should enter his door. “Who will arise and go forward
through blood and carnage to the rescue of my Ambulinia?”
said Elfonzo. “All,” exclaimed the multitude; and onward
they went, with their implements of battle. Others, of a
more timid nature, stood among the distant hills to see the
result of the contest.’
5. It is a crowbar.

It will hardly be believed that after all this thunder and
lightning not a drop of rain fell; but such is the fact. Elfonzo
and his gang stood up and blackguarded Mr. Valeer with
vigour all night, getting their outlay back with interest;
then in the early morning the army and its general retired
from the field, leaving the victory with their solitary
adversary and his crowbar. This is the first time this has
happened in romantic literature. The invention is original.
Everything in this book is original; there is nothing
hackneyed about it anywhere. Always, in other romances,
when you find the author leading up to a climax, you know
what is going to happen. But in this book it is different; the
thing which seems inevitable and unavoidable never
happens; it is circumvented by the art of the author every
time.
Another elopement was attempted. It failed.

We have now arrived at the end. But it is not exciting.
McClintock thinks it is; but it isn’t. One day Elfonzo sends
Ambulinia another note—a note proposing elopement No.
16. This time the plan is admirable; admirable, sagacious,
ingenious, imaginative, deep—oh, everything, and perfectly
easy. One wonders why it was never thought of before. This
is the scheme. Ambulinia is to leave the breakfast table,
ostensibly to ‘attend to the placing of those flowers, which
ought to have been done a week ago’—artificial ones, of
course; the others wouldn’t keep so long—and then, instead
of fixing the flowers, she is to walk out to the grove, and go
off with Elfonzo. The invention of this plan overstrained the
author, that is plain, for he straightway shows failing
powers. The details of the plan are not many or elaborate.
The author shall state them himself—this good soul, whose
intentions are always better than his English:
‘“You walk carelessly towards the academy grove,
where you will find me with a lightning steed, elegantly
equipped to bear you off where we shall be joined in
wedlock with the first connubial rights.”’
Last scene of all, which the author, now much
enfeebled, tries to smarten up and make acceptable to his
spectacular heart by introducing some new properties—
silver bow, golden harp, olive branch,—things that can all
come good in an elopement, no doubt, yet are not to be
compared to an umbrella for real handiness and reliability
in an excursion of that kind.
‘And away she ran to the sacred grove, surrounded with
glittering pearls, that indicated her coming. Elfonzo hails
her with his silver bow and his golden harp. They meet—
Ambulinia’s countenance brightens—Elfonzo leads up his
winged steed. “Mount,” said he, “ye true-hearted, ye
fearless soul—the day is ours.” She sprang upon the back
of the young thunderbolt; a brilliant star sparkles upon her
head, with one hand she grasps the reins, and with the

other she holds an olive branch. “Lend thy aid, ye strong
winds,” they exclaimed, “ye moon, ye sun, and all ye fair
host of heaven, witness the enemy conquered.” “Hold,” said
Elfonzo, “thy dashing steed.” “Ride on,” said Ambulinia,
“the voice of thunder is behind us.” And onward they went
with such rapidity that they very soon arrived at Rural
Retreat, where they dismounted, and were united with all
the solemnities that usually attend such divine operations.’
There is but one Homer, there was but one Shakspeare,
there is but one McClintock—and his immortal book is
before you. Homer could not have written this book,
Shakspeare could not have written it, I could not have done
it myself. There is nothing just like it in the literature of any
country or of any epoch. It stands alone, it is monumental.
It adds G. Ragsdale McClintock’s to the sum of the
republic’s imperishable names.

THE
CURIOUS BOOK

COMPLETE

[The foregoing review of the great work of G. Ragsdale McClintock is
liberally illuminated with sample extracts, but these cannot appease the
appetite. Only the complete book, unabridged, can do that. Therefore it is here
printed.—M. T.]

THE ENEMY CONQUERED; OR, LOVE
TRIUMPHANT
Sweet girl, thy smiles are full of charms,
Thy voice is sweeter still,
It fills the breast with fond alarms,
Echoed by every rill.

I begin this little work with an eulogy upon woman, who
has ever been distinguished for her perseverance, her
constancy, and her devoted attention to those upon whom
she has been pleased to place her affections. Many have
been the themes upon which writers and public speakers
have dwelt with intense and increasing interest. Among
these delightful themes stands that of woman, the balm to
all our sighs and disappointments, and the most pre-
eminent of all other topics. Here the poet and orator have
stood and gazed with wonder and with admiration; they
have dwelt upon her innocence, the ornament of all her
virtues. First viewing her external charms, such as are set
forth in her form and her benevolent countenance, and
then passing to the deep hidden springs of loveliness and
disinterested devotion. In every clime, and in every age,
she has been the pride of her nation. Her watchfulness is
untiring; she who guarded the sepulchre was the first to
approach it, and the last to depart from its awful yet
sublime scene. Even here, in this highly-favoured land, we
look to her for the security of our institutions, and for our

future greatness as a nation. But, strange as it may appear,
woman’s charms and virtues are but slightly appreciated by
thousands. Those who should raise the standard of female
worth, and paint her value with her virtues, in living
colours, upon the banners that are fanned by the zephyrs of
heaven, and hand them down to posterity as emblematical
of a rich inheritance, do not properly estimate them.
Man is not sensible, at all times, of the nature and the
emotions which bear that name; he does not understand,
he will not comprehend; his intelligence has not expanded
to that degree of glory which drinks in the vast revolution
of humanity, its end, its mighty destination, and the causes
which operated, and are still operating, to produce a more
elevated station, and the objects which energise and
enliven its consummation. This he is a stranger to; he is not
aware that woman is the recipient of celestial love, and that
man is dependent upon her to perfect his character; that
without her, philosophically and truly speaking, the
brightest of his intelligence is but the coldness of a winter
moon, whose beams can produce no fruit, whose solar light
is not its own, but borrowed from the great dispenser of
effulgent beauty. We have no disposition in the world to
flatter the fair sex; we would raise them above those
dastardly principles which only exist in little souls,
contracted hearts, and a distracted brain. Often does she
unfold herself in all her fascinating loveliness, presenting
the most captivating charms; yet we find man frequently
treats such purity of purpose with indifference. Why does
he do it? Why does he baffle that which is inevitably the
source of his better days? Is he so much of a stranger to
those excellent qualities, as not to appreciate woman, as
not to have respect to her dignity? Since her art and beauty
first captivated man, she has been his delight and his
comfort; she has shared alike in his misfortunes and in his
prosperity.

Whenever the billows of adversity and the tumultuous
waves of trouble beat high, her smiles subdue their fury.
Should the tear of sorrow and the mournful sigh of grief
interrupt the peace of his mind, her voice removes them all,
and she bends from her circle to encourage him onward.
When darkness would obscure his mind, and a thick cloud
of gloom would bewilder its operations, her intelligent eye
darts a ray of streaming light into his heart. Mighty and
charming is that disinterested devotion which she is ever
ready to exercise towards man, not waiting till the last
moment of his danger, but seeks to relieve him in his early
afflictions. It gushes forth from the expansive fulness of a
tender and devoted heart, where the noblest, the purest,
and the most elevated and refined feelings are matured,
and developed in those many kind offices which invariably
make her character.
In the room of sorrow and sickness, this unequalled
characteristic may always be seen, in the performance of
the most charitable acts; nothing that she can do to
promote the happiness of him who she claims to be her
protector will be omitted; all is invigorated by the
animating sunbeams which awaken the heart to songs of
gaiety. Leaving this point, to notice another prominent
consideration, which is generally one of great moment and
of vital importance. Invariably she is firm and steady in all
her pursuits and aims. There is required a combination of
forces and extreme opposition to drive her from her
position; she takes her stand, not to be moved by the sound
of Apollo’s lyre, or the curved bow of pleasure.
Firm and true to what she undertakes, and that which
she requires by her own aggrandisement, and regards as
being within the strict rules of propriety, she will remain
stable and unflinching to the last. A more genuine principle
is not to be found in the most determined, resolute heart of
man. For this she deserves to be held in the highest

commendation, for this she deserves the purest of all other
blessings, and for this she deserves the most laudable
reward of all others. It is a noble characteristic, and is
worthy the imitation of any age. And when we look at it in
one particular aspect, it is still magnified, and grows
brighter and brighter the more we reflect upon its eternal
duration. What will she not do, when her word as well as
her affections and love are pledged to her lover?
Everything that is dear to her on earth, all the hospitalities
of kind and loving parents, all the sincerity and loveliness
of sisters, and the benevolent devotion of brothers, who
have surrounded her with every comfort; she will forsake
them all, quit the harmony and sweet sound of the lute and
the harp, and throw herself upon the affections of some
devoted admirer, in whom she fondly hopes to find more
than she has left behind, which is not often realised by
many. Truth and virtue all combined! How deserving our
admiration and love! Ah! cruel would it be in man, after she
has thus manifested such an unshaken confidence in him,
and said by her determination to abandon all the
endearments and blandishments of home, to act a
villainous part, and prove a traitor in the revolution of his
mission, and then turn Hector over the innocent victim
whom he swore to protect, in the presence of Heaven,
recorded by the pen of an angel.
Striking as this trait may unfold itself in her character,
and as pre-eminent as it may stand among the fair display
of her other qualities, yet there is another, which struggles
into existence, and adds an additional lustre to what she
already possesses. I mean that disposition in woman which
enables her, in sorrow, in grief, and in distress, to bear all
with enduring patience. This she has done, and can and will
do, amid the din of war and clash of arms. Scenes and
occurrences which, to every appearance, are calculated to
rend the heart with the profoundest emotions of trouble, do

not fetter that exalted principle imbued in her very nature.
It is true, her tender and feeling heart may often be moved
(as she is thus constituted), but still she is not conquered,
she has not given up to the harlequin of disappointments,
her energies have not become clouded in the last moment
of misfortune, but she is continually invigorated by the
archetype of her affections. She may bury her face in her
hands, and let the tear of anguish roll, she may promenade
the delightful walks of some garden, decorated with all the
flowers of nature, or she may steal out along some gently
rippling stream, and there, as the silver waters
uninterruptedly move forward, sheds her silent tears, they
mingle with the waves, and take a last farewell of their
agitated home, to seek a peaceful dwelling among the
rolling floods; yet there is a voice rushing from her breast,
that proclaims victory along the whole line and battlement
of her affections. That voice is the voice of patience and
resignation; that voice is one that bears everything calmly
and dispassionately; amid the most distressing scenes,
when the fates are arrayed against her peace, and
apparently plotting for her destruction, still she is resigned.
Woman’s affections are deep, consequently her troubles
may be made to sink deep. Although you may not be able to
mark the traces of her grief and the furrowings of her
anguish upon her winning countenance, yet be assured
they are nevertheless preying upon her inward person,
sapping the very foundation of that heart which alone was
made for the weal and not the woe of man. The deep
recesses of the soul are fields for their operation. But they
are not destined simply to take the regions of the heart for
their dominion, they are not satisfied merely with
interrupting her better feelings; but after a while you may
see the blooming cheek beginning to droop and fade, her
intelligent eye no longer sparkles with the starry light of
heaven, her vibrating pulse long since changed its regular
motion, and her palpitating bosom beats once more for the

mid-day of her glory. Anxiety and care ultimately throw her
into the arms of the haggard and grim monster, Death. But,
oh, how patient, under every pining influence! Let us view
the matter in bolder colours; see her when the dearest
object of her affections recklessly seeks every bacchanalian
pleasure, contents himself with the last rubbish of creation.
With what solicitude she awaits his return! Sleep fails to
perform its office—she weeps while the nocturnal shades of
the night triumph in the stillness. Bending over some
favourite book, whilst the author throws before her mind
the most beautiful imagery, she startles at every sound. The
midnight silence is broken by the solemn announcement of
the return of another morning. He is still absent: she listens
for that voice which has so often been greeted by the
melodies of her own; but, alas! stern silence is all that she
receives for her vigilance.
Mark her unwearied watchfulness, as the night passes
away. At last, brutalised by the accursed thing, he staggers
along with rage, and, shivering with cold, he makes his
appearance. Not a murmur is heard from her lips. On the
contrary, she meets him with a smile—she caresses him
with her tender arms, with all the gentleness and softness
of her sex. Here, then, is seen her disposition, beautifully
arrayed. Woman, thou art more to be admired than the
spicy gales of Arabia, and more sought for than the gold of
Golconda. We believe that woman should associate freely
with man, and we believe that it is for the preservation of
her rights. She should become acquainted with the
metaphysical designs of those who condescend to sing the
siren song of flattery. This, we think, should be according to
the unwritten law of decorum, which is stamped upon every
innocent heart. The precepts of prudery are often steeped
in the guilt of contamination, which blasts the expectations
of better moments. Truth, and beautiful dreams—
loveliness, and delicacy of character, with cherished

affections of the ideal woman—gentle hopes and
aspirations, are enough to uphold her in the storms of
darkness, without the transferred colourings of a stained
sufferer. How often have we seen it in our public prints,
that woman occupies a false station in the world! and some
have gone so far as to say it was an unnatural one. So long
has she been regarded a weak creature, by the rabble and
illiterate—they have looked upon her as an insufficient
actress on the great stage of human life—a mere puppet, to
fill up the drama of human existence—a thoughtless
inactive being,—that she has too often come to the same
conclusion herself, and has sometimes forgotten her high
destination, in the meridian of her glory. We have but little
sympathy or patience for those who treat her as a mere
Rosy Melinda—who are always fishing for pretty
compliments—who are satisfied by the gossamer of
romance, and who can be allured by the verbosity of high-
flown words, rich in language, but poor and barren in
sentiment. Beset, as she has been, by the intellectual
vulgar, the selfish, the designing, the cunning, the hidden,
and the artful—no wonder she has sometimes folded her
wings in despair, and forgotten her heavenly mission in the
delirium of imagination; no wonder she searches out some
wild desert, to find a peaceful home. But this cannot always
continue. A new era is moving gently onward, old things
are rapidly passing away; old superstitions, old prejudices,
and old notions are now bidding farewell to their old
associates and companions, and giving way to one whose
wings are plumed with the light of heaven, and tinged by
the dews of the morning. There is a remnant of blessedness
that clings to her in spite of all evil influence—there is
enough of the Divine Master left, to accomplish the noblest
work ever achieved under the canopy of the vaulted skies;
and that time is fast approaching, when the picture of the
true woman will shine from its frame of glory, to captivate,

to win back, to restore, and to call into being once more,
the object of her mission.
Star of the brave! thy glory shed,
O’er all the earth, thy army led—
Bold meteor of immortal birth!
Why come from Heaven to dwell on earth?

Mighty and glorious are the days of youth; happy the
moments of the lover, mingled with smiles and tears of his
devoted, and long to be remembered are the achievements
which he gains with a palpitating heart and a trembling
hand. A bright and lovely dawn, the harbinger of a fair and
prosperous day, had arisen over the beautiful little village
of Cumming, which is surrounded by the most romantic
scenery in the Cherokee country. Brightening clouds
seemed to rise from the mist of the fair Chattahoochee, to
spread their beauty over the thick forest, to guide the hero
whose bosom beats with aspirations to conquer the enemy
that would tarnish his name, and to win back the
admiration of his long-tried friend. He endeavoured to
make his way through Sawney’s Mountain, where many
meet to catch the gales that are continually blowing for the
refreshment of the stranger and the traveller. Surrounded
as he was, by hills on every side, naked rocks dared the
efforts of his energies. Soon the sky became overcast, the
sun buried itself in the clouds, and the fair day gave place
to gloomy twilight, which lay heavily on the Indian Plains.
He remembered an old Indian Castle, that once stood at the
foot of the mountain. He thought if he could make his way
to this, he would rest contented for a short time. The
mountain air breathed fragrance—a rosy tinge rested on
the glassy waters that murmured at its base. His resolution
soon brought him to the remains of the red man’s hut: he
surveyed with wonder and astonishment the decayed
building, which time had buried in the dust, and thought to
himself, his happiness was not yet complete. Beside the

shore of the brook sat a young man, about eighteen or
twenty, who seemed to be reading some favourite book, and
who had a remarkably noble countenance—eyes which
betrayed more than a common mind. This of course made
the youth a welcome guest, and gained him friends in
whatever condition of life he might be placed. The traveller
observed that he was a well-built figure which showed
strength and grace in every movement. He accordingly
addressed him in quite a gentlemanly manner, and inquired
of him the way to the village. After he had received the
desired information, and was about taking his leave, the
youth said, ‘Are you not Major Elfonzo, the great musician
—the champion of a noble cause—the modern Achilles, who
gained so many victories in the Florida War?’ ‘I bear that
name,’ said the Major, ‘and those titles, trusting at the
same time, that the ministers of grace will carry me
triumphantly through all my laudable undertakings, and if,’
continued the Major, ‘you, sir, are the patroniser of noble
deeds, I should like to make you my confidant, and learn
your address.’ The youth looked somewhat amazed, bowed
low, mused for a moment, and began: ‘My name is Roswell.
I have been recently admitted to the bar, and can only give
a faint outline of my future success in that honourable
profession; but I trust, sir, like the Eagle, I shall look down
from lofty rocks upon the dwellings of man, and shall ever
be ready to give you any assistance in my official capacity,
and whatever this muscular arm of mine can do, whenever
it shall be called from its buried greatness.’ The Major
grasped him by the hand, and exclaimed: ‘O! thou exalted
spirit of inspiration—thou flame of burning prosperity, may
the Heaven-directed blaze be the glare of thy soul, and
battle down every rampart that seems to impede your
progress!’
The road which led to the town presented many
attractions. Elfonzo had bid farewell to the youth of deep

feeling, and was now wending his way to the dreaming spot
of his fondness. The south winds whistled through the
woods, as the waters dashed against the banks, as rapid
fire in the pent furnace roars. This brought him to
remember while alone, that he quietly left behind the
hospitality of a father’s house, and gladly entered the
world, with higher hopes than are often realised. But as he
journeyed onward, he was mindful of the advice of his
father, who had often looked sadly on the ground, when
tears of cruelly deceived hope moistened his eye. Elfonzo
had been somewhat of a dutiful son; yet fond of the
amusements of life—had been in distant lands—had
enjoyed the pleasure of the world, and had frequently
returned to the scenes of his boyhood, almost destitute of
many of the comforts of life. In this condition he would
frequently say to his father, ‘Have I offended you, that you
look upon me as a stranger, and frown upon me with
stinging looks? Will you not favour me with the sound of
your voice? If I have trampled upon your veneration, or
have spread a humid veil of darkness around your
expectations, send me back into the world where no heart
beats for me—where the foot of man has never yet trod; but
give me at least one kind word—allow me to come into the
presence sometimes of thy winter-worn locks.’ ‘Forbid it,
Heaven, that I should be angry with thee,’ answered the
father, ‘my son, and yet I send thee back to the children of
the world—to the cold charity of the combat, and to a land
of victory. I read another destiny in thy countenance—I
learn thy inclinations from the flame that has already
kindled in my soul a strange sensation. It will seek thee, my
dear Elfonzo, it will find thee—thou canst not escape that
lighted torch which shall blot out from the remembrance of
men a long train of prophecies which they have foretold
against thee. I once thought not so. Once I was blind; but
now the path of life is plain before me, and my sight is
clear; yet, Elfonzo, return to thy worldly occupation—take

again in thy hand that chord of sweet sounds—struggle
with the civilised world, and with your own heart; fly swiftly
to the enchanted ground—let the night-owl send forth its
screams from the stubborn oak—let the sea sport upon the
beach, and the stars sing together; but learn of these,
Elfonzo, thy doom, and thy hiding-place. Our most innocent
as well as our most lawful desires must often be denied us,
that we may learn to sacrifice them to a Higher will.’
Remembering such admonitions with gratitude, Elfonzo
was immediately urged by the recollection of his father’s
family to keep moving. His steps became quicker and
quicker—he hastened through the piny woods, dark as the
forest was, and with joy he very soon reached the little
village of repose, in whose bosom rested the boldest
chivalry. His close attention to every important object—his
modest questions about whatever was new to him—his
reverence for wise old age, and his ardent desire to learn
many of the fine arts, soon brought him into respectable
notice.
One mild winter day, as he walked along the streets
towards the Academy, which stood upon a small eminence,
surrounded by native growth—some venerable in its
appearance, others young and prosperous—all seemed
inviting, and seemed to be the very place for learning as
well as for genius to spend its research beneath its
spreading shades. He entered its classic walls in the usual
mode of Southern manners. The principal of the Institution
begged him to be seated, and listen to the recitations that
were going on. He accordingly obeyed the request, and
seemed to be much pleased. After the school was
dismissed, and the young hearts regained their freedom,
with the songs of the evening, laughing at the anticipated
pleasures of a happy home, while others tittered at the
actions of the past day, he addressed the teacher in a tone
that indicated a resolution—with an undaunted mind. He

said he had determined to become a student, if he could
meet with his approbation. ‘Sir,’ said he, ‘I have spent
much time in the world. I have travelled among the
uncivilised inhabitants of America. I have met with friends,
and combated with foes; but none of these gratify my
ambition, or decide what is to be my destiny. I see the
learned world have an influence with the voice of the
people themselves. The despoilers of the remotest
kingdoms of the earth refer their differences to this class of
persons. This the illiterate and inexperienced little dream
of; and now if you will receive me as I am, with these
deficiencies—with all my misguided opinions, I will give you
my honour, sir, that I will never disgrace the Institution, or
those who have placed you in this honourable station.’ The
instructor, who had met with many disappointments, knew
how to feel for a stranger who had been thus turned upon
the charities of an unfeeling community. He looked at him
earnestly, and said: ‘Be of good cheer—look forward, sir, to
the high destination you may attain. Remember, the more
elevated the mark at which you aim, the more sure, the
more glorious, the more magnificent the prize.’ From
wonder to wonder, his encouragement led the impatient
listener. A strange nature bloomed before him—giant
streams promised him success—gardens of hidden
treasures opened to his view. All this, so vividly described,
seemed to gain a new witchery from his glowing fancy.
In 1842 he entered the class, and made rapid progress
in the English and Latin departments. Indeed, he continued
advancing with such rapidity, that he was like to become
the first in his class, and made such unexpected progress,
and was so studious, that he had almost forgotten the
pictured saint of his affections. The fresh wreaths of the
pine and cypress had waited anxiously to drop once more
the dews of Heaven upon the heads of those who had so
often poured forth the tender emotions of their souls under

its boughs. He was aware of the pleasure that he had seen
there. So one evening, as he was returning from his
reading, he concluded he would pay a visit to this
enchanting spot. Little did he think of witnessing a shadow
of his former happiness, though no doubt he wished it
might be so. He continued sauntering by the road-side,
meditating on the past. The nearer he approached the spot,
the more anxious he became. At that moment, a tall female
figure flitted across his path, with a bunch of roses in her
hand; her countenance showed uncommon vivacity, with a
resolute spirit; her ivory teeth already appeared as she
smiled beautifully promenading, while her ringlets of hair
dangled unconsciously around her snowy neck. Nothing
was wanting to complete her beauty. The tinge of the rose
was in full bloom upon her cheek; the charms of sensibility
and tenderness were always her associates. In Ambulinia’s
bosom dwelt a noble soul—one that never faded—one that
never was conquered. Her heart yielded to no feeling but
the love of Elfonzo, on whom she gazed with intense
delight, and to whom she felt herself more closely bound
because he sought the hand of no other. Elfonzo was roused
from his apparent reverie. His books no longer were his
inseparable companions—his thoughts arrayed themselves
to encourage him to the field of victory. He endeavoured to
speak to his supposed Ambulinia, but his speech appeared
not in words. No, his effort was a stream of fire, that
kindled his soul into a flame of admiration, and carried his
senses away captive. Ambulinia had disappeared, to make
him more mindful of his duty. As she walked speedily away
through the piny woods, she calmly echoed: ‘O! Elfonzo,
thou wilt now look from thy sunbeams. Thou shalt now walk
in a new path—perhaps thy way leads through darkness;
but fear not, the stars foretell happiness.’
Not many days afterwards, as surrounded by fragrant
flowers, she sat one evening at twilight, to enjoy the cool

breeze that whispered notes of melody along the distant
groves, the little birds perched on every side, as if to watch
the movements of their new visitor. The bells were tolling,
when Elfonzo silently stole along by the wild wood flowers,
holding in his hand his favourite instrument of music—his
eye continually searching for Ambulinia, who hardly
seemed to perceive him, as she played carelessly with the
songsters that hopped from branch to branch. Nothing
could be more striking than the difference between the
two. Nature seemed to have given the more tender soul to
Elfonzo, and the stronger and more courageous to
Ambulinia. A deep feeling spoke from the eyes of Elfonzo—
such a feeling as can only be expressed by those who are
blessed as admirers, and by those who are able to return
the same with sincerity of heart. He was a few years older
than Ambulinia, she had turned a little into her
seventeenth. He had almost grown up in the Cherokee
country, with the same equal proportions as one of the
natives. But little intimacy had existed between them until
the year forty-one—because the youth felt that the
character of such a lovely girl was too exalted to inspire
any other feeling than that of quiet reverence. But as lovers
will not always be insulted, at all times and under all
circumstances, by the frowns and cold looks of crabbed old
age, which should continually reflect dignity upon those
around, and treat the unfortunate as well as the fortunate
with a graceful mien, he continued to use diligence and
perseverance. All this lighted a spark in his heart that
changed his whole character, and like the unyielding Deity
that follows the storm to check its rage in the forest, he
resolves for the first time to shake off his embarrassment,
and return where he had before only worshipped.
It could not escape Ambulinia’s penetrating eye, that he
sought an interview with her, which she as anxiously
avoided, and assumed a more distant calmness than before,

seemingly to destroy all hope. After many efforts and
struggles with his own person, with timid steps the Major
approached the damsel, with the same caution as he would
have done in a field of battle. ‘Lady Ambulinia,’ said he,
trembling, ‘I have long desired a moment like this. I dare
not let it escape. I fear the consequences; yet I hope your
indulgence will at least hear my petition. Can you not
anticipate what I would say, and what I am about to
express? Will you not, like Minerva, who sprung from the
brain of Jupiter, release me from thy winding chains, or
cure me——’ ‘Say no more, Elfonzo,’ answered Ambulinia,
with a serious look, raising her hand as if she intended to
swear eternal hatred against the whole world, ‘another lady
in my place would have perhaps answered your question in
bitter coldness. I know not the little arts of my sex. I care
but little for the vanity of those who would chide me, and
am unwilling, as well as ashamed to be guilty of anything
that would lead you to think “all is not gold that glitters:”
so be not rash in your resolution. It is better to repent now,
than to do it in a more solemn hour. Yes, I know what you
would say. I know you have a costly gift for me—the noblest
that man can make—your heart! you should not offer it to
one so unworthy. Heaven, you know, has allowed my
father’s house to be made a house of solitude, a home of
silent obedience, which, my parents say, is more to be
admired than big names and high-sounding titles.
Notwithstanding all this, let me speak the emotions of an
honest heart—allow me to say in the fulness of my hopes
that I anticipate better days. The bird may stretch its wings
towards the sun, which it can never reach; and flowers of
the field appear to ascend in the same direction, because
they cannot do otherwise: but man confides his complaints
to the saints in whom he believes: for in their abodes of
light they know no more sorrow. From your confession and
indicative looks, I must be that person: if so, deceive not
yourself.’

Elfonzo replied, ‘Pardon me, my dear madam, for my
frankness. I have loved you from my earliest days—
everything grand and beautiful hath borne the image of
Ambulinia: while precipices on every hand surrounded me,
your guardian angel stood and beckoned me away from the
deep abyss. In every trial—in every misfortune, I have met
with your helping hand; yet I never dreamed or dared to
cherish thy love, till a voice impaired with age encouraged
the cause, and declared they who acquired thy favour
should win a victory. I saw how Leos worshipped thee. I felt
my own unworthiness. I began to know jealousy, a strong
guest indeed, in my bosom; yet I could see, if I gained your
admiration, Leos was to be my rival. I was aware that he
had the influence of your parents, and the wealth of a
deceased relative, which is too often mistaken for
permanent and regular tranquillity; yet I have determined
by your permission to beg an interest in your prayers—to
ask you to animate my drooping spirits by your smiles and
your winning looks; for, if you but speak, I shall be
conqueror, my enemies shall stagger like Olympus shakes.
And though earth and sea may tremble, and the charioteer
of the sun may forget his dashing steed; yet I am assured
that it is only to arm me with divine weapons, which will
enable me to complete my long-tried intention.’ ‘Return to
yourself, Elfonzo,’ said Ambulinia, pleasantly, ‘a dream of
vision has disturbed your intellect—you are above the
atmosphere, dwelling in the celestial regions; nothing is
there that urges or hinders, nothing that brings discord
into our present litigation. I entreat you to condescend a
little, and be a man and forget it all. When Homer
describes the battle of the gods and noble men, fighting
with giants and dragons, they represent under this image
our struggles with the delusions of our passions. You have
exalted me, an unhappy girl, to the skies—you have called
me a saint, and portrayed in your imagination an angel in
human form. Let her remain such to you—let her continue

to be as you have supposed, and be assured that she will
consider a share in your esteem as her highest treasure.
Think not that I would allure you from the path in which
your conscience leads you; for you know I respect the
conscience of others, as I would die for my own. Elfonzo, if
I am worthy of thy love, let such conversation never again
pass between us. Go, seek a nobler theme; we will seek it in
the stream of time, as the sun set in the Tigris.’ As she
spake these words, she grasped the hand of Elfonzo, saying
at the same time, ‘Peace and prosperity attend you, my
hero; be up and doing.’ Closing her remarks with this
expression, she walked slowly away, leaving Elfonzo
astonished and amazed. He ventured not to follow or detain
her. Here he stood alone, gazing at the stars;—confounded
as he was, here he stood. The rippling stream rolled on at
his feet. Twilight had already begun to draw her sable
mantle over the earth, and now and then the fiery smoke
would ascend from the little town which lay spread out
before him. The citizens seemed to be full of life and good
humour; but poor Elfonzo saw not a brilliant scene. No, his
future life stood before him, stripped of the hopes that once
adorned all his sanguine desires. ‘Alas!’ said he, ‘am I now
Grief’s disappointed son at last!’ Ambulinia’s image rose
before his fancy. A mixture of ambition and greatness of
soul moved upon his young heart, and encouraged him to
bear all his crosses with the patience of a Job,
notwithstanding he had to encounter with so many
obstacles. He still endeavoured to prosecute his studies,
and reasonably progressed in his education. Still he was
not content; there was something yet to be done before his
happiness was complete. He would visit his friends and
acquaintances. They would invite him to social parties,
insisting that he should partake of the amusements that
were going on. This he enjoyed tolerably well. The ladies
and gentlemen were generally well pleased with the Major,
as he delighted all with his violin, which seemed to have a

thousand chords—more symphonious than the Muses of
Apollo, and more enchanting than the ghost of the Hills. He
passed some days in the country. During that time Leos had
made many calls upon Ambulinia, who was generally
received with a great deal of courtesy by the family. They
thought him to be a young man worthy of attention, though
he had but little in his soul to attract the attention, or even
win the affections of her whose graceful manners had
almost made him a slave to every bewitching look that fell
from her eyes. Leos made several attempts to tell her of his
fair prospects—how much he loved her, and how much it
would add to his bliss if he could but think she would be
willing to share these blessings with him; but, choked by
his undertaking, he made himself more like an inactive
drone than he did like one who bowed at beauty’s shrine.
Elfonzo again wends his way to the stately walls and
new-built village. He now determines to see the end of the
prophecy which had been foretold to him. The clouds burst
from his sight; he believes if he can but see his Ambulinia,
he can open to her view the bloody altars that have been
misrepresented to stigmatise his name. He knows that her
breast is transfixed with the sword of reason, and ready at
all times to detect the hidden villainy of her enemies. He
resolves to see her in her own home, with the consoling
theme: ‘I can but perish if I go. Let the consequences be
what they may,’ said he, ‘if I die, it shall be contending and
struggling for my own rights.’
Night had almost overtaken him when he arrived in
town. Colonel Elder, a noble-hearted, high-minded, and
independent man, met him at his door as usual, and seized
him by the hand. ‘Well, Elfonzo,’ said the Colonel, ‘how
does the world use you in your efforts?’ ‘I have no objection
to the world,’ said Elfonzo, ‘but the people are rather
singular in some of their opinions.’ ‘Aye, well,’ said the
Colonel, ‘you must remember that creation is made up of

many mysteries: just take things by the right handle—be
always sure you know which is the smooth side before you
attempt your polish—be reconciled to your fate, be it what
it may, and never find fault with your condition, unless your
complaining will benefit it. Perseverance is a principle that
should be commendable in those who have judgment to
govern it. I should never have been so successful in my
hunting excursions, had I waited till the deer by some
magic dream had been drawn to the muzzle of the gun,
before I made an attempt to fire at the game that dared my
boldness in the wild forest. The great mystery in hunting
seems to be—a good marksman, a resolute mind, a fixed
determination, and my word for it, you will never return
home without sounding your horn with the breath of a new
victory. And so with every other undertaking. Be confident
that your ammunition is of the right kind—always pull your
trigger with a steady hand, and so soon as you perceive a
calm, touch her off, and the spoils are yours.’
This filled him with redoubled vigour, and he set out
with a stronger anxiety than ever to the home of Ambulinia.
A few short steps soon brought him to the door, half out of
breath. He rapped gently. Ambulinia, who sat in the parlour
alone, suspecting Elfonzo was near, ventured to the door,
opened it, and beheld the hero, who stood in an humble
attitude, bowed gracefully, and as they caught each other’s
looks, the light of peace beamed from the eyes of
Ambulinia. Elfonzo caught the expression; a halloo of
smothered shouts ran through every vein, and for the first
time he dared to impress a kiss upon her cheek. The scene
was overwhelming; had the temptation been less
animating, he would not have ventured to have acted so
contrary to the desired wish of his Ambulinia; but who
could have withstood the irresistible temptation? What
society condemns the practice, but a cold, heartless,
uncivilised people, that know nothing of the warm

attachments of refined society? Here the dead was raised
to his long-cherished hopes, and the lost was found. Here
all doubt and danger were buried in the vortex of oblivion;
sectional differences no longer disunited their opinions;
like the freed bird from the cage, sportive claps its rustling
wings, wheels about to Heaven in a joyful strain, and raises
its notes to the upper sky. Ambulinia insisted upon Elfonzo
to be seated, and give her a history of his unnecessary
absence; assuring him the family had retired, consequently
they would ever remain ignorant of his visit. Advancing
towards him, she gave a bright display of her rosy neck,
and from her head the ambrosial locks breathed divine
fragrance; her robe hung waving to his view, while she
stood like a goddess confessed before him.
‘It does seem to me, my dear sir,’ said Ambulinia, ‘that
you have been gone an age. Oh, the restless hours I have
spent since I last saw you, in yon beautiful grove! There is
where I trifled with your feelings for the express purpose of
trying your attachment for me. I now find you are devoted;
but ah! I trust you live not unguarded by the powers of
Heaven. Though oft did I refuse to join my hand with thine,
and as oft did I cruelly mock thy entreaties with borrowed
shapes: yes, I feared to answer thee by terms, in words
sincere and undissembled. O! could I pursue, and you had
leisure to hear the annals of my woes, the evening star
would shut Heaven’s gates upon the impending day, before
my tale would be finished, and this night would find me
soliciting your forgiveness. ‘Dismiss thy fears and thy
doubts,’ replied Elfonzo. ‘Look O! look: that angelic look of
thine—bathe not thy visage in tears; banish those floods
that are gathering; let my confession and my presence
bring thee some relief.’ ‘Then, indeed, I will be cheerful,’
said Ambulinia; ‘and I think, if we will go to the exhibition
this evening, we certainly will see something worthy of our
attention. One of the most tragical scenes is to be acted

that has ever been witnessed, and one that every jealous-
hearted person should learn a lesson from. It cannot fail to
have a good effect, as it will be performed by those who are
young and vigorous, and learned as well as enticing. You
are aware, Major Elfonzo, who are to appear on the stage,
and what the characters are to represent.’ ‘I am acquainted
with the circumstances,’ replied Elfonzo, ‘and as I am to be
one of the musicians upon that interesting occasion, I
should be much gratified if you would favour me with your
company during the hours of the exercises.’
‘What strange notions are in your mind?’ inquired
Ambulinia. ‘Now I know you have something in view, and I
desire you to tell me why it is that you are so anxious that I
should continue with you while the exercises are going on;
though, if you think I can add to your happiness and
predilections, I have no particular objection to acquiesce in
your request. Oh, I think I foresee, now, what you
anticipate.’ ‘And will you have the goodness to tell me what
you think it to be?’ inquired Elfonzo. ‘By all means,’
answered Ambulinia; ‘a rival, sir, you would fancy in your
own mind; but let me say to you, fear not! fear not! I will be
one of the last persons to disgrace my sex, by thus
encouraging every one who may feel disposed to visit me,
who may honour me with their graceful bows and their
choicest compliments. It is true that young men too often
mistake civil politeness for the finer emotions of the heart,
which is tantamount to courtship; but, ah! how often are
they deceived when they come to test the weight of
sunbeams, with those on whose strength hangs the future
happiness of an untried life.’
The people were now rushing to the Academy with
impatient anxiety; the band of music was closely followed
by the students; then the parents and guardians; nothing
interrupted the glow of spirits which ran through every
bosom, tinged with the songs of a Virgil and the tide of a

Homer. Elfonzo and Ambulinia soon repaired to the scene,
and, fortunately for them both, the house was so crowded
that they took their seats together in the music
department, which was not in view of the auditory. This
fortuitous circumstance added more to the bliss of the
Major than a thousand such exhibitions would have done.
He forgot that he was man; music had lost its charms for
him; whenever he attempted to carry his part, the string of
the instrument would break, the bow became stubborn, and
refused to obey the loud calls of the audience. Here, he
said, was the paradise of his home, the long-sought-for
opportunity; he felt as though he could send a million
supplications to the throne of heaven for such an exalted
privilege. Poor Leos, who was somewhere in the crowd,
looking as attentively as if he was searching for a needle in
a haystack; here he stood, wondering to himself why
Ambulinia was not there. ‘Where can she be? Oh! if she was
only here, how I could relish the scene! Elfonzo is certainly
not in town; but what if he is? I have got the wealth, if I
have not the dignity, and I am sure that the squire and his
lady have always been particular friends of mine, and I
think with this assurance I shall be able to get upon the
blind side of the rest of the family, and make the heaven-
born Ambulinia the mistress of all I possess.’ Then, again,
he would drop his head, as if attempting to solve the most
difficult problem in Euclid. While he was thus conjecturing
in his own mind, a very interesting part of the exhibition
was going on, which called the attention of all present. The
curtains of the stage waved continually by the repelled
forces that were given to them, which caused Leos to
behold Ambulinia leaning upon the chair of Elfonzo. Her
lofty beauty, seen by the glimmering of the chandelier, filled
his heart with rapture, he knew not how to contain himself;
to go where they were would expose him to ridicule; to
continue where he was, with such an object before him,
without being allowed an explanation in that trying hour,

would be to the great injury of his mental as well as of his
physical powers; and, in the name of high heaven, what
must he do? Finally, he resolved to contain himself as well
as he conveniently could, until the scene was over, and then
he would plant himself at the door, to arrest Ambulinia
from the hands of the insolent Elfonzo, and thus make for
himself a more prosperous field of immortality than ever
was decreed by Omnipotence, or ever pencil drew or artist
imagined. Accordingly he made himself sentinel,
immediately after the performance of the evening—
retained his position apparently in defiance of all the world,
he waited, he gazed at every lady, his whole frame
trembled; here he stood until everything like human shape
had disappeared from the Institution, and he had done
nothing; he had failed to accomplish that which he so
eagerly sought for. Poor, unfortunate creature! he had not
the eyes of an Argus, or he might have seen his Juno and
Elfonzo, assisted by his friend Sigma, make their escape
from the window, and, with the rapidity of a racehorse,
hurry through the blast of the storm, to the residence of
her father, without being recognised. He did not tarry long,
but assured Ambulinia the endless chain of their existence
was more closely connected than ever, since he had seen
the virtuous, innocent, imploring, and the constant Amelia
murdered by the jealous-hearted Farcillo, the accursed of
the land.
The following is the tragical scene, which is only
introduced to show the subject matter that enabled Elfonzo
to come to such a determinate resolution, that nothing of
the kind should ever dispossess him of his true character,
should he be so fortunate as to succeed in his present
undertaking.
Amelia was the wife of Farcillo, and a virtuous woman;
Gracia, a young lady, was her particular friend and
confidant. Farcillo grew jealous of Amelia, murders her,

finds out that he was deceived, and stabs himself. Amelia
appears alone, talking to herself.
A. Hail, ye solitary ruins of antiquity, ye sacred tombs
and silent walks! it is your aid I invoke; it is to you, my soul,
wrapt in deep meditation, pours forth its prayer. Here I
wander upon the stage of mortality, since the world hath
turned against me. Those whom I believed to be my friends,
alas! are now my enemies, planting thorns in all my paths,
poisoning all my pleasures, and turning the past to pain.
What a lingering catalogue of sighs and tears lies just
before me, crowding my aching bosom with the fleeting
dream of humanity, which must shortly terminate! And to
what purpose will all this bustle of life, these agitations and
emotions of the heart, have conduced, if it leave behind it
nothing of utility, if it leave no traces of improvement? Can
it be that I am deceived in my conclusion? No, I see that I
have nothing to hope for, but everything to fear, which
tends to drive me from the walks of time.
Oh! in this dead night, if loud winds arise,
To lash the surge and bluster in the skies,
May the west its furious rage display,
Toss me with storms in the watery way.

(Enter Gracia.)
G. Oh, Amelia, is it you, the object of grief, the daughter
of opulence, of wisdom and philosophy, that thus
complaineth? It cannot be you are the child of misfortune,
speaking of the monuments of former ages, which were
allotted not for the reflection of the distressed, but for the
fearless and bold.
A. Not the child of poverty, Gracia, or the heir of glory
and peace, but of fate. Remember, I have wealth more than
wit can number; I have had power more than kings could
encompass; yet the world seems a desert; all nature
appears an afflictive spectacle of warring passions. This

blind fatality, that capriciously sports with the rules and
lives of mortals, tells me that the mountains will never
again send forth the water of their springs to my thirst. Oh,
that I might be freed and set at liberty from wretchedness!
But I fear, I fear this will never be.
G. Why, Amelia, this untimely grief? What has caused
the sorrows that bespeak better and happier days, to thus
lavish out such heaps of misery? You are aware that your
instructive lessons embellish the mind with holy truths, by
wedding its attention to none but great and noble
affections.
A. This, of course, is some consolation. I will ever love
my own species with feelings of a fond recollection, and
while I am studying to advance the universal philanthropy,
and the spotless name of my own sex, I will try to build my
own upon the pleasing belief that I have accelerated the
advancement of one who whispers of departed confidence.
And I, like some poor peasant fated to reside
Remote from friends, in a forest wide.
Oh, see what woman’s woes and human wants require,
Since that great day hath spread the seed of sinful fire.

G. Look up, thou poor disconsolate; you speak of
quitting earthly enjoyments. Unfold thy bosom to a friend,
who would be willing to sacrifice every enjoyment for the
restoration of that dignity and gentleness of mind which
used to grace your walks, and which is so natural to
yourself; not only that, but your paths were strewed with
flowers of every hue and of every order.
With verdant green the mountains glow,
For thee, for thee, the lilies grow;
Far stretched beneath the tented hills,
A fairer flower the valley fills.

A. Oh, would to heaven I could give you a short
narrative of my former prospects for happiness, since you

have acknowledged to be an unchangeable confidant—the
richest of all other blessings! Oh, ye names for ever
glorious, ye celebrated scenes, ye renowned spot of my
hymeneal moments; how replete is your chart with sublime
reflections! How many profound vows, decorated with
immaculate deeds, are written upon the surface of that
precious spot of earth, where I yielded up my life of
celibacy, bade youth with all its beauties a final adieu, took
a last farewell of the laurels that had accompanied me up
the hill of my juvenile career! It was then I began to
descend towards the valley of disappointment and sorrow;
it was then I cast my little bark upon a mysterious ocean of
wedlock, with him who then smiled and caressed me, but,
alas! now frowns with bitterness, and has grown jealous
and cold towards me, because the ring he gave me is
misplaced or lost. Oh, bear me, ye flowers of memory, softly
through the eventful history of past times; and ye places
that have witnessed the progression of man in the circle of
so many societies, aid, oh aid my recollection, while I
endeavour to trace the vicissitudes of a life devoted in
endeavouring to comfort him that I claim as the object of
my wishes!
Ah! ye mysterious men, of all the world, how few
Act just to Heaven and to your promise true!
But He who guides the stars with a watchful eye,
The deeds of men lay open without disguise;
Oh, this alone will avenge the wrongs I bear,
For all the oppressed are his peculiar care.

(F. makes a slight noise.)
A. “Who is there—Farcillo?
G. Then I must be gone. Heaven protect you. Oh,
Amelia, farewell, be of good cheer.

May you stand, like Olympus’ towers,
Against earth and all jealous powers!
May you, with loud shouts ascend on high,
Swift as an eagle in the upper sky.

A. Why so cold and distant to-night, Farcillo? Come, let
us each other greet, and forget all the past, and give
security for the future.
F. Security! talk to me about giving security for the
future—what an insulting requisition! Have you said your
prayers to-night, Madam Amelia?
A. Farcillo, we sometimes forget our duty, particularly
when we expect to be caressed by others.
F. If you bethink yourself of any crime, or of any fault,
that is yet concealed from the courts of Heaven and the
thrones of grace, I bid you ask and solicit forgiveness for it
now.
A. Oh, be kind, Farcillo, don’t treat me so! What do you
mean by all this?
F. Be kind, you say; you, madam, have forgot that
kindness you owe to me, and bestowed it upon another; you
shall suffer for your conduct when you make your peace
with your God. I would not slay thy unprotected spirit. I call
to Heaven to be my guard and my watch—I would not kill
thy soul, in which all once seemed just, right, and perfect;
but I must be brief, woman.
A. What, talk you of killing? Oh, Farcillo, Farcillo, what
is the matter?
F. Aye, I do, without doubt; mark what I say, Amelia.
A. Then, O God, O Heaven, and Angels, be propitious,
and have mercy upon me!
F. Amen to that, madam, with all my heart and with all
my soul.
A. Farcillo, listen to me one moment; I hope you will not
kill me.

F. Kill you, aye, that I will; attest it, ye fair host of light;
record it, ye dark imps of hell!
A. Oh, I fear you—you are fatal when darkness covers
your brow; yet I know not why I should fear, since I never
wronged you in all my life. I stand, sir, guiltless before you.
F. You pretend to say you are guiltless! Think of thy
sins, Amelia; think, oh think, hidden woman!
A. Wherein have I not been true to you? That death is
unkind, cruel, and unnatural, that kills for loving.
F. Peace, and be still while I unfold to thee.
A. I will, Farcillo, and while I am thus silent, tell me the
cause of such cruel coldness in an hour like this.
F. That ring, oh that ring I so loved, and gave thee as
the ring of my heart; the allegiance you took to be faithful,
when it was presented; the kisses and smiles with which
you honoured it. You became tired of the donor, despised it
as a plague, and finally gave it to Malos, the hidden, the
vile traitor!
A. No, upon my word and honour, I never did; I appeal
to the Most High to bear me out in this matter. Send for
Malos, and ask him.
F. Send for Malos, aye! Malos you wish to see; I thought
so. I knew you could not keep his name concealed. Amelia,
sweet Amelia, take heed, take heed of perjury; you are on
the stage of death, to suffer for your sins.
A. What, not to die I hope, my Farcillo, my ever
beloved?
F. Yes, madam, to die a traitor’s death. Shortly your
spirit shall take its exit; therefore confess freely thy sins,
for to deny tends only to make me groan under the bitter
cup thou hast made for me. Thou art to die with the name
of traitor on thy brow!

A. Then, O Lord, have mercy upon me; give me
courage, give me grace and fortitude to stand this hour of
trial!
F. Amen, I say, with all my heart.
A. And, oh, Farcillo, will you have mercy, too? I never
intentionally offended you in all my life; never loved Malos,
never gave him cause to think so, as the high court of
Justice will acquit me before its tribunal.
F. Oh, false, perjured woman, thou dost chill my blood,
and makest me a demon like thyself. I saw the ring.
A. He found it, then, or got it clandestinely; send for
him, and let him confess the truth; let his confession be
sifted.
F. And you still wish to see him! I tell you, madam, he
hath already confessed, and thou knowest the darkness of
thy heart.
A. What, my deceived Farcillo, that I gave him the ring,
in which all my affections were concentrated? Oh, surely
not.
F. Aye, he did. Ask thy conscience, and it will speak
with a voice of thunder to thy soul.
A. He will not say so, he dare not, he cannot.
F. No, he will not say so now, because his mouth, I
trust, is hushed in death, and his body stretched to the four
winds of heaven, to be torn to pieces by carnivorous birds.
A. What, is he dead, and gone to the world of spirits
with that declaration in his mouth? Oh, unhappy man! Oh,
insupportable hour!
F. Yes, and had all his sighs and looks and tears been
lives, my great revenge could have slain them all, without
the least condemnation.
A. Alas! he is ushered into eternity without testing the
matter for which I am abused and sentenced and

condemned to die.
F. Cursed, infernal woman! Weepest thou for him to my
face? He that hath robbed me of my peace, my energy, the
whole love of my life? Could I call the fabled Hydra, I would
have him live and perish, survive and die, until the sun
itself would grow dim with age. I would make him have the
thirst of a Tantalus, and roll the wheel of an Ixion, until the
stars of heaven should quit their brilliant stations.
A. Oh, invincible God, save me! Oh, unsupportable
moment! Oh, heavy hour! Banish me, Farcillo—send me
where no eye can ever see me, where no sound shall ever
greet my ear; but, oh, slay me not, Farcillo; vent thy rage
and thy spite upon this emaciated frame of mine, only spare
my life!
F. Your petitions avail nothing, cruel Amelia.
A. Oh, Farcillo, perpetrate the dark deed to-morrow; let
me live till then, for my past kindness to you, and it may be
some kind angel will show to you that I am not only the
object of innocence, but one who never loved another but
your noble self.
F. Amelia, the decree has gone forth, it is to be done,
and that quickly; thou art to die, madam.
A. But half an hour allow me, to see my father and my
only child, to tell her the treachery and vanity of this world.
F. There is no alternative, there is no pause; my
daughter shall not see its deceptive mother die; your father
shall not know that his daughter fell disgraced, despised by
all but her enchanting Malos.
A. Oh, Farcillo, put up thy threatening dagger into its
scabbard; let it rest and be still, just while I say one prayer
for thee and for my child.
F. It is too late, thy doom is fixed, thou hast not
confessed to Heaven or to me, my child’s protector—thou
art to die. Ye powers of earth and heaven, protect and

defend me in this alone. (Stabs her, while imploring for
mercy.)
A. Oh, Farcillo, Farcillo, a guiltless death I die.
F. Die! die! die!

(Gracia enters running, falls to her knees weeping, and
kisses Amelia.)

G. Oh, Farcillo, Farcillo! oh, Farcillo!
F. I am here, the genius of the age, and the avenger of
my wrongs.
G. Oh, lady, speak once more; sweet Amelia, oh, speak
again! Gone, gone—yes, for ever gone! Farcillo, oh, cold-
hearted Farcillo, some evil fiend hath urged you to do this,
Farcillo.
F. Say you not so again, or you shall receive the same
fate. I did the glorious deed, madam—beware, then, how
you talk.
G. I fear not your implements of war; I will let you know
you have not the power to do me harm. If you have a heart
of triple brass, it shall be reached and melted, and thy
blood shall chill thy veins and grow stiff in thy arteries.
Here is the ring of the virtuous and innocent murdered
Amelia; I obtained it from Malos, who yet lives, in hopes
that he will survive the wound given him, and says he got it
clandestinely—declares Amelia to be the princess of truth
and virtue, invulnerable to anything like forgetting her first
devotion to thee. The world has heard of your conduct and
your jealousy, and with one universal voice declares her to
be the best of all in piety; that she is the star of this great
universe, and a more virtuous woman never lived since the
wheels of time began. Oh, had you waited till to-morrow, or
until I had returned, some kind window would have been

opened to her relief. But, alas! she is gone—yes, for ever
gone, to try the realities of an unknown world!

(Farcillo leaning over the body of Amelia.)

F. Malos not dead, and here is my ring! Oh, Amelia!
falsely, falsely murdered! Oh, bloody deed! Oh, wretch that
I am! Oh, angels, forgive me! Oh, God, withhold Thy
vengeance! Oh, Amelia, if Heaven would make a thousand
worlds like this, set with diamonds, and all of one perfect
chrysolite, I would not have done this for them all, I would
not have frowned and cursed as I did. Oh, she was heavenly
true, nursed in the very lap of bright angels! Cursed slave
that I am! Jealousy, oh! thou infernal demon! Lost, lost to
every sense of honour! Oh! Amelia—heaven-born Amelia—
dead, dead! Oh! oh! oh!—then let me die with thee.
Farewell! farewell! ye world that deceived me! (Stabs
himself.)

Soon after the excitement of this tragical scene was
over, and the enlisted feeling for Amelia had grown more
buoyant with Elfonzo and Ambulinia, he determined to visit
his retired home, and make the necessary improvements to
enjoy a better day; consequently he conveyed the following
lines to Ambulinia:
Go tell the world that hope is glowing,
Go bid the rocks their silence break,
Go tell the stars that love is glowing,
Then bid the hero his lover take.

In the region where scarcely the foot of man hath ever
trod, where the woodman hath not found his way, lies a
blooming grove, seen only by the sun when he mounts his
lofty throne, visited only by the light of the stars, to whom

are entrusted the guardianship of earth, before the sun
sinks to rest in his rosy bed. High cliffs of rock surround
the romantic place, and in the small cavity of the rocky wall
grows the daffodil clear and pure; and as the wind blows
along the enchanting little mountain which surrounds the
lonely spot, it nourishes the flowers with the dewdrops of
heaven. Here is the seat of Elfonzo; Darkness claims but
little victory over this dominion, and in vain does she
spread out her gloomy wings. Here the waters flow
perpetually, and the trees lash their tops together to bid the
welcome visitor a happy muse. Elfonzo, during his short
stay in the country, had fully persuaded himself that it was
his duty to bring this solemn matter to an issue. A duty that
he individually owed, as a gentleman, to the parents of
Ambulinia, a duty in itself involving not only his own
happiness and his own standing in society, but one that
called aloud the act of the parties to make it perfect and
complete. How he should communicate his intentions to get
a favourable reply, he was at a loss to know; he knew not
whether to address Squire Valeer in prose or in poetry, in a
jocular or an argumentative manner, or whether he should
use moral suasion, legal injunction, or seize and take by
reprisal; if it was to do the latter, he would have no
difficulty in deciding in his own mind, but his gentlemanly
honour was at stake; so he concluded to address the
following letter to the father and mother of Ambulinia, as
his address in person he knew would only aggravate the old
gentleman, and perhaps his lady.
‘Cumming, Ga., January 22, 1844.

‘Mr. and Mrs. Valeer,—

‘Again I resume the pleasing task of addressing you, and once more beg an
immediate answer to my many salutations. From every circumstance that has
taken place, I feel in duty bound to comply with my obligations; to forfeit my
word would be more than I dare do: to break my pledge, and my vows that have
been witnessed, sealed, and delivered in the presence of an unseen Deity,
would be disgraceful on my part, as well as ruinous to Ambulinia. I wish no

longer to be kept in suspense about this matter. I wish to act gentlemanly in
every particular. It is true the promises I have made are unknown to any but
Ambulinia, and I think it unnecessary to here enumerate them, as they who
promise the most generally perform the least. Can you for a moment doubt my
sincerity or my character? My only wish is, sir, that you may calmly and
dispassionately look at the situation of the case, and if your better judgment
should dictate otherwise, my obligations may induce me to pluck the flower
that you so diametrically opposed. We have sworn by the saints—by the gods of
battle, and by that faith whereby just men are made perfect, to be united. I
hope, my dear sir, you will find it convenient as well as agreeable to give me a
favourable answer, with the signature of Mrs. Valeer as well as yourself.
‘With very great esteem,
Your humble servant,
J. I. Elfonzo.’

The moon and stars had grown pale when Ambulinia
had retired to rest. A crowd of unpleasant thoughts passed
through her bosom. Solitude dwelt in her chamber—no
sound from the neighbouring world penetrated its stillness;
it appeared a temple of silence, of repose, and of mystery.
At that moment she heard a still voice calling her father. In
an instant, like a flash of lightning, a thought ran through
her mind, that it must be the bearer of Elfonzo’s
communication. ‘It is not a dream!’ she said, ‘no, I cannot
read dreams. Oh! I would to Heaven I was near that
glowing eloquence—that poetical language,—it charms the
mind in an inexpressible manner, and warms the coldest
heart.’ While consoling herself with this strain, her father
rushed into her room almost frantic with rage, exclaiming:
‘O, Ambulinia! Ambulinia!! undutiful, ungrateful daughter!
What does this mean? Why does this letter bear such
heartrending intelligence? Will you quit a father’s house
with this debased wretch, without a place to lay his
distracted head; going up and down the country, with every
novel object that may chance to wander through this
region? He is a pretty man to make love known to his
superiors, and you, Ambulinia, have done but little credit to
yourself by honouring his visits. O wretchedness! can it be
that my hopes of happiness are for ever blasted? Will you

not listen to a father’s entreaties, and pay some regard to a
mother’s tears? I know, and I do pray that God will give me
fortitude to bear with this sea of troubles, and rescue my
daughter, my Ambulinia, as a brand from the eternal
burning.’ ‘Forgive me, father. Oh! forgive thy child,’ replied
Ambulinia. ‘My heart is ready to break, when I see you in
this grieved state of agitation. Oh! think not so meanly of
me, as that I mourn for my own danger. Father, I am only
woman. Mother, I am only the templement of thy youthful
years; but will suffer courageously whatever punishment
you think proper to inflict upon me, if you will but allow me
to comply with my most sacred promises—if you will but
give me my personal right, and my personal liberty. Oh,
father! if your generosity will but give me these, I ask
nothing more. When Elfonzo offered me his heart, I gave
him my hand, never to forsake him; and now may the
mighty God banish me before I leave him in adversity!
What a heart must I have to rejoice in prosperity with him
whose offers I have accepted, and then, when poverty
comes, haggard as it may be,—for me to trifle with the
oracles of Heaven, and change with every fluctuation that
may interrupt our happiness,—like the politician who runs
the political gauntlet for office one day, and the next day,
because the horizon is darkened a little, he is seen running
for his life, for fear he might perish in its ruins. Where is
the philosophy; where is the consistency; where is the
charity; in conduct like this? Be happy, then, my beloved
father, and forget me; let the sorrow of parting break down
the wall of separation and make us equal in our feeling; let
me now say how ardently I love you; let me kiss that age-
worn cheek, and should my tears bedew thy face, I will
wipe them away. Oh, I never can forget you; no, never,
never!’
‘Weep not,’ said the father, ‘Ambulinia. I will forbid
Elfonzo my house, and desire that you may keep retired a

few days. I will let him know that my friendship for my
family is not linked together by cankered chains; and if he
ever enters upon my premises again, I will send him to his
long home.’ ‘Oh, father! let me entreat you to be calm upon
this occasion; and though Elfonzo may be the sport of the
clouds and winds, yet I feel assured that no fate will send
him to the silent tomb until the God of the Universe calls
him hence with a triumphant voice.’
Here the father turned away, exclaiming: ‘I will answer
his letter in a very few words, and you, madam, will have
the goodness to stay at home with your mother: and
remember, I am determined to protect you from the
consuming fire that looks so fair to your view.’
‘Cumming: January 22, 1844.

‘Sir,—In regard to your request, I am as I ever have been, utterly opposed
to your marrying into my family; and if you have any regard for yourself, or any
gentlemanly feeling, I hope you will mention it to me no more; but seek some
other one who is not so far superior to you in standing.
‘W. W. Valeer.’

When Elfonzo read the above letter, he became so
much depressed in spirits, that many of his friends thought
it advisable to use other means to bring about the happy
union. ‘Strange,’ said he, ‘that the contents of this
diminutive letter should cause me to have such depressed
feelings; but there is a nobler theme than this. I know not
why my military title is not as great as that of Squire
Valeer. For my life I cannot see that my ancestors are
inferior to those who are so bitterly opposed to my
marriage with Ambulinia. I know I have seen huge
mountains before me; yet, when I think that I know
gentlemen will insult me upon this delicate matter, should I
become angry at fools and babblers who pride themselves
in their impudence and ignorance? No. My equals! I know
not where to find them. My inferiors! I think it beneath me:
and my superiors! I think it presumption: therefore, if this

youthful heart is protected by any of the divine rights, I
never will betray my trust.’
He was aware that Ambulinia had a confidence that
was, indeed, as firm and as resolute as she was beautiful
and interesting. He hastened to the cottage of Louisa, who
received him in her usual mode of pleasantness, and
informed him that Ambulinia had just that moment left. ‘Is
it possible?’ said Elfonzo. ‘Oh, murdered hour! Why did she
not remain and be the guardian of my secrets? But hasten
and tell me how she has stood this trying scene, and what
are her future determinations.’ ‘You know,’ said Louisa,
‘Major Elfonzo, that you have Ambulinia’s first love, which
is of no small consequence. She came here about twilight,
and shed many precious tears in consequence of her own
fate with yours. We walked silently in yon little valley, you
see, where we spent a momentary repose. She seemed to
be quite as determined as ever, and before we left that
beautiful spot she offered up a prayer to Heaven for thee.’
‘I will see her, then,’ replied Elfonzo, ‘though legions of
enemies may oppose. She is mine by foreordination—she is
mine by prophecy—she is mine by her own free will, and I
will rescue her from the hands of her oppressors. Will you
not, Miss Louisa, assist me in my capture?’ ‘I will certainly,
by the aid of Divine Providence,’ answered Louisa,
‘endeavour to break those slavish chains that bind the
richest of prizes; though allow me, Major, to entreat you to
use no harsh means on this important occasion; take a
decided stand, and write freely to Ambulinia upon this
subject, and I will see that no intervening cause hinders its
passage to her. God alone will save a mourning people.
Now is the day, and now is the hour to obey a command of
such valuable worth.’ The Major felt himself grow stronger
after this short interview with Louisa. He felt as if he could
whip his weight in wild-cats—he knew he was master of his

own feelings, and could now write a letter that would bring
this litigation to an issue.
‘Cumming, January 24, 1844.

‘Dear Ambulinia,—

‘We have now reached the most trying moment of our lives; we are pledged
not to forsake our trust; we have waited for a favourable hour to come, thinking
your friends would settle the matter agreeably among themselves, and finally
be reconciled to our marriage; but as I have waited in vain, and looked in vain,
I have determined in my own mind to make a proposition to you, though you
may think it not in accordance with your station, or compatible with your rank;
yet, “sub hoc signo vinces.” You know I cannot resume my visits, in
consequence of the utter hostility that your father has to me; therefore the
consummation of our union will have to be sought for in a more sublime sphere,
at the residence of a respectable friend of this village. You cannot have any
scruples upon this mode of proceeding, if you will but remember it emanates
from one who loves you better than his own life—who is more than anxious to
bid you welcome to a new and a happy home. Your warmest associates say,
come; the talented, the learned, the wise and the experienced say, come;—all
these with their friends say, come. Viewing these, with many other
inducements, I flatter myself that you will come to the embraces of your
Elfonzo; for now is the time of your acceptance and the day of your liberation.
You cannot be ignorant, Ambulinia, that thou art the desire of my heart; its
thoughts are too noble, and too pure, to conceal themselves from you. I shall
wait for your answer to this impatiently, expecting that you will set the time to
make your departure, and to be in readiness at a moment’s warning to share
the joys of a more preferable life. This will be handed you by Louisa, who will
take a pleasure in communicating anything to you that may relieve your
dejected spirits, and will assure you that I now stand ready, willing and waiting
to make good my vows.
‘I am, dear Ambulinia,
‘Yours truly and for ever,
‘J. I. Elfonzo.’

Louisa made it convenient to visit Mr. Valeer’s, though
they did not suspect her in the least the bearer of love
epistles: consequently, she was invited in the room to
console Ambulinia, where they were left alone. Ambulinia
was seated by a small table—her head resting on her hand
—her brilliant eyes were bathed in tears. Louisa handed
her the letter of Elfonzo, when another spirit animated her
features—the spirit of renewed confidence that never fails

to strengthen the female character in an hour of grief and
sorrow like this; and as she pronounced the last accent of
his name, she exclaimed, ‘And does he love me yet? I never
will forget your generosity, Louisa. Oh, unhappy and yet
blessed Louisa! may you never feel what I have felt—may
you never know the pangs of love! Had I never loved, I
never would have been unhappy; but I turn to Him who can
save, and if His wisdom does not will my expected union, I
know He will give me strength to bear my lot. Amuse
yourself with this little book, and take it as an apology for
my silence,’ said Ambulinia, ‘while I attempt to answer this
volume of consolation.’ ‘Thank you,’ said Louisa, ‘you are
excusable upon this occasion; but I pray you, Ambulinia, to
be expert upon this momentous subject, that there may be
nothing mistrustful upon my part.’ ‘I will,’ said Ambulinia,
and immediately resumed her seat and addressed the
following to Elfonzo:—
‘Cumming, Ga., January 28,1844.

‘Devoted Elfonzo,—

‘I hail your letter as a welcome messenger of faith, and can now say truly
and firmly, that my feelings correspond with yours. Nothing shall be wanting on
my part to make my obedience your fidelity. Courage and perseverance will
accomplish success. Receive this as my oath, that while I grasp your hand in
my own imagination, we stand united before a higher tribunal than any on
earth. All the powers of my life, soul, and body, I devote to thee. Whatever
dangers may threaten me, I fear not to encounter them. Perhaps I have
determined upon my own destruction, by leaving the house of the best of
parents; be it so, I flee to you, I share your destiny, faithful to the end. The day
that I have concluded upon for this task is Sabbath next, when the family with
the citizens are generally at church. For Heaven’s sake let not that day pass
unimproved: trust not till to-morrow, it is the cheat of life—the future that
never comes—the grave of many noble births—the cavern of ruined enterprise:
which like the lightning’s flash is born, and dies, and perishes, ere the voice of
him who sees can cry, Behold! behold!! You may trust to what I say; no power
shall tempt me to betray confidence. Suffer me to add one word more.

I will soothe thee, in all thy grief,
Beside the gloomy river:
And though thy love may yet be brief,
Mine is fixed for ever.

Receive the deepest emotions of my heart for thy constant love, and may
the power of inspiration be thy guide, thy portion, and thy all. In great haste,
‘Yours faithfully,
‘Ambulinia.’

‘I now take my leave of you, sweet girl,’ said Louisa,
‘sincerely wishing you success on Sabbath next.’ When
Ambulinia’s letter was handed to Elfonzo, he perused it
without doubting its contents. Louisa charged him to make
but few confidants; but, like most young men who
happened to win the heart of a beautiful girl, he was so
elated with the idea, that he felt as a commanding general
on parade, who had confidence in all, consequently gave
orders to all. The appointed Sabbath, with a delicious
breeze and cloudless sky, made its appearance. The people
gathered in crowds to the church—the streets were filled
with the neighbouring citizens, all marching to the house of
worship. It is entirely useless for me to attempt to describe
the feelings of Elfonzo and Ambulinia, who were silently
watching the movements of the multitude, apparently
counting them as they entered the house of God, looking
for the last one to darken the door. The impatience and
anxiety with which they waited, and the bliss they
anticipated on the eventful day, is altogether indescribable.
Those that have been so fortunate as to embark in such a
noble enterprise, know all its realities; and those who have
not had this inestimable privilege, will have to taste its
sweets, before they can tell to others its joys, its comforts,
and its Heaven-born worth. Immediately after Ambulinia
had assisted the family off to church, she took the
advantage of that opportunity to make good her promises.
She left a home of enjoyment to be wedded to one whose
love had been justifiable. A few short steps brought her to

the presence of Louisa, who urged her to make good use of
her time, and not to delay a moment, but to go with her to
her brother’s house, where Elfonzo would for ever make
her happy. With lively speed, and yet a graceful air, she
entered the door and found herself protected by the
champion of her confidence. The necessary arrangements
were fast making to have the two lovers united—everything
was in readiness except the Parson; and as they are
generally very sanctimonious on such occasions, the news
got to the parents of Ambulinia before the everlasting knot
was tied, and they both came running, with uplifted hands
and injured feelings, to arrest their daughter from an
unguarded and hasty resolution. Elfonzo desired to
maintain his ground, but Ambulinia thought it best for him
to leave, to prepare for a greater contest. He accordingly
obeyed, as it would have been a vain endeavour for him to
have battled against a man who was armed with deadly
weapons; and, besides, he could not resist the request of
such a pure heart. Ambulinia concealed herself in the
upper story of the house, fearing the rebuke of her father;
the door was locked, and no chastisement was now
expected. Squire Valeer, whose pride was already touched,
resolved to preserve the dignity of his family. He entered
the house almost exhausted, looking wildly for Ambulinia.
‘Amazed and astonished indeed I am,’ said he, ‘at a people
who call themselves civilised, to allow such behaviour as
this. Ambulinia, Ambulinia!’ he cried, ‘come to the calls of
your first, your best, and your only friend. I appeal to you,
sir,’ turning to the gentleman of the house, ‘to know where
Ambulinia has gone, or where is she?’ ‘Do you mean to
insult me, sir, in my own house?’ inquired the confounded
gentleman. ‘I will burst,’ said Mr. V., ‘asunder every door in
your dwelling, in search of my daughter, if you do not speak
quickly, and tell me where she is. I care nothing about that
outcast rubbish of creation, that mean, low-lived Elfonzo, if
I can but obtain Ambulinia! Are you not going to open this

door?’ said he. ‘By the Eternal that made heaven and earth!
I will go about the work instantly, if it is not done.’ The
confused citizens gathered from all parts of the village to
know the cause of this commotion. Some rushed into the
house; the door that was locked flew open, and there stood
Ambulinia, weeping. ‘Father, be still,’ said she, ‘and I will
follow thee home.’ But the agitated man seized her, and
bore her off through the gazing multitude. ‘Father,’ she
exclaimed, ‘I humbly beg your pardon—I will be dutiful—I
will obey thy commands. Let the sixteen years I have lived
in obedience to thee be my future security.’ ‘I don’t like to
be always giving credit, when the old score is not paid up,
madam,’ said the father. The mother followed almost in a
state of derangement, crying and imploring her to think
beforehand, and ask advice from experienced persons, and
they would tell her it was a rash undertaking. ‘Oh!’ said
she, ‘Ambulinia, my daughter, did you know what I have
suffered—did you know how many nights I have whiled
away in agony, in pain, and in fear, you would pity the
sorrows of a heartbroken mother.’
‘Well, mother,’ replied Ambulinia, ‘I know I have been
disobedient; I am aware that what I have done might have
been done much better; but oh! what shall I do with my
honour? it is so dear to me; I am pledged to Elfonzo. His
high moral worth is certainly worth some attention;
moreover, my vows, I have no doubt, are recorded in the
book of life, and must I give these all up? must my fair
hopes be for ever blasted? Forbid it, father; oh! forbid it,
mother; forbid it, heaven.’ ‘I have seen so many beautiful
skies overclouded,’ replied the mother, ‘so many blossoms
nipped by the frost, that I am afraid to trust you to the care
of those fair days, which may be interrupted by thundering
and tempestuous nights. You no doubt think as I did—life’s
devious ways were strewed with sweet-scented flowers; but
ah! how long they have lingered around me and took their

flight in the vivid hope that laughs at the drooping victims
it has murdered.’ Elfonzo was moved at this sight. The
people followed on to see what was going to become of
Ambulinia, while he, with downcast looks, kept at a
distance, until he saw them enter the abode of the father,
thrusting her, that was the sigh of his soul, out of his
presence into a solitary apartment, when she exclaimed,
‘Elfonzo! Elfonzo! oh, Elfonzo! where art thou, with all thy
heroes? haste, oh! haste, come thou to my relief. Ride on
the wings of the wind! Turn thy force loose like a tempest,
and roll on thy army like a whirlwind over this mountain of
trouble and confusion. Oh, friends! if any pity me, let your
last efforts throng upon the green hills, and come to the
relief of Ambulinia, who is guilty of nothing but innocent
love.’ Elfonzo called out with a loud voice, ‘My God, can I
stand this? Arouse up, I beseech you, and put an end to this
tyranny. Come, my brave boys,’ said he, ‘are you ready to
go forth to your duty?’ They stood around him. ‘Who,’ said
he, ‘will call us to arms? Where are my thunderbolts of
war? Speak ye, the first who will meet the foe! Who will go
forward with me in this ocean of grievous temptation? If
there is one who desires to go, let him come and shake
hands upon the altar of devotion, and swear that he will be
a hero; yes, a Hector in a cause like this, which calls aloud
for a speedy remedy.’ ‘Mine be the deed,’ said a young
lawyer, ‘and mine alone; Venus alone shall quit her station
before I will forsake one jot or tittle of my promise to you;
what is death to me? what is all this warlike army, if it is
not to win a victory? I love the sleep of the lover and the
mighty; nor would I give it over till the blood of my enemies
should wreak with that of my own. But God forbid that our
fame should soar on the blood of the slumberer.’ Mr. Valeer
stands at his door with the frown of a demon upon his brow,
with his dangerous weapon ready to strike the first man
who should enter his door. ‘Who will arise and go forward
through blood and carnage to the rescue of my Ambulinia?’

said Elfonzo. ‘All,’ exclaimed the multitude; and onward
they went, with their implements of battle. Others, of a
more timid nature, stood among the distant hills to see the
result of the contest.
Elfonzo took the lead of his band. Night arose in clouds;
darkness concealed the heavens; but the blazing hopes that
stimulated them gleamed in every bosom. All approached
the anxious spot; they rushed to the front of the house, and
with one exclamation demanded Ambulinia. ‘Away, begone,
and disturb my peace no more,’ said Mr. Valeer. ‘You are a
set of base, insolent, and infernal rascals. Go, the northern
star points your path through the dim twilight of the night;
go, and vent your spite upon the lonely hills; pour forth
your love, you poor, weak-minded wretch, upon your
idleness and upon your guitar, and your fiddle; they are fit
subjects for your admiration, for, let me assure you, though
this sword and iron lever are cankered, yet they frown in
sleep, and let one of you dare to enter my house this night
and you shall have the contents and the weight of these
instruments.’ ‘Never yet did base dishonour blur my name,’
said Elfonzo; ‘mine is a cause of renown; here are my
warriors, fear and tremble, for this night, though hell itself
should oppose, I will endeavour to avenge her whom thou
hast banished in solitude. The voice of Ambulinia shall be
heard from that dark dungeon.’ At that moment Ambulinia
appeared at the window above, and with a tremulous voice
said, ‘Live, Elfonzo! oh! live to raise my stone of moss! why
should such language enter your heart? why should thy
voice rend the air with such agitation? I bid thee live, once
more remembering these tears of mine are shed alone for
thee, in this dark and gloomy vault, and should I perish
under this load of trouble, join the song of thrilling accents
with the raven above my grave, and lay this tattered frame
beside the banks of the Chattahoochee, or the stream of
Sawney’s brook; sweet will be the song of death to your

Ambulinia. My ghost shall visit you in the smiles of
Paradise, and tell your high fame to the minds of that
region, which is far more preferable than this lonely cell.
My heart shall speak for thee till the latest hour; I know
faint and broken are the sounds of sorrow, yet our souls,
Elfonzo, shall hear the peaceful songs together. One bright
name shall be ours on high, if we are not permitted to be
united here; bear in mind that I still cherish my old
sentiments, and the poet will mingle the names of Elfonzo
and Ambulinia in the tide of other days.’ ‘Fly, Elfonzo,’ said
the voices of his united band, ‘to the wounded heart of your
beloved. All enemies shall fall beneath thy sword. Fly
through the clefts, and the dim spark shall sleep in death.’
Elfonzo rushes forward and strikes his shield against the
door, which was barricaded, to prevent any intercourse. His
brave sons throng round him. The people pour along the
streets, both male and female, to prevent or witness the
melancholy scene.
‘To arms, to arms!’ cried Elfonzo, ‘here is a victory to
be won, a prize to be gained, that is more to me than the
whole world beside.’ ‘It cannot be done to-night,’ said Mr.
Valeer. ‘I bear the clang of death; my strength and armour
shall prevail. My Ambulinia shall rest in this hall until the
break of another day, and if we fall, we fall together. If we
die, we die clinging to our tattered rights, and our blood
alone shall tell the mournful tale of a murdered daughter
and a ruined father.’ Sure enough, he kept watch all night,
and was successful in defending his house and family. The
bright morning gleamed upon the hills, night vanished
away, the Major and his associates felt somewhat ashamed
that they had not been as fortunate as they expected to
have been; however, they still leaned upon their arms in
dispersed groups; some were walking the streets, others
were talking in the Major’s behalf. Many of the citizens
suspended business, as the town presented nothing but

consternation. A novelty that might end in the destruction
of some worthy and respectable citizens. Mr. Valeer
ventured in the streets, though not without being well
armed. Some of his friends congratulated him on the
decided stand he had taken, and hoped he would settle the
matter amicably with Elfonzo, without any serious injury.
‘Me,’ he replied, ‘what, me, condescend to fellowship
with a coward, and a low-lived, lazy, undermining villain?
No, gentlemen, this cannot be; I had rather be borne off,
like the bubble upon the dark blue ocean, with Ambulinia
by my side, than to have him in the ascending or
descending line of relationship. Gentlemen,’ continued he,
‘if Elfonzo is so much of a distinguished character, and is so
learned in the fine arts, why do you not patronise such
men? why not introduce him into your families as a
gentleman of taste and of unequalled magnanimity? why
are you so very anxious that he should become a relative of
mine? Oh, gentlemen, I fear you yet are tainted with the
curiosity of our first parents, who were beguiled by the
poisonous kiss of an old ugly serpent, and who, for one
apple, damned all mankind. I wish to divest myself, as far
as possible, of that untutored custom. I have long since
learned that the perfection of wisdom and the end of true
philosophy is to proportion our wants to our possessions,
our ambition to our capacities; we will then be a happy and
a virtuous people.’ Ambulinia was sent off to prepare for a
long and tedious journey. Her new acquaintances had been
instructed by her father how to treat her, and in what
manner, and to keep the anticipated visit entirely secret.
Elfonzo was watching the movements of everybody; some
friends had told him of the plot that was laid to carry off
Ambulinia. At night, he rallied some two or three of his
forces, and went silently along to the stately mansion; a
faint and glimmering light showed through the windows;
lightly he steps to the door, there were many voices rallying

fresh in fancy’s eye; he tapped the shutter, it was opened
instantly, and he beheld once more, seated beside several
ladies, the hope of all his toils; he rushed towards her, she
rose from her seat, rejoicing: he made one mighty grasp,
when Ambulinia exclaimed, ‘Huzza for Major Elfonzo! I will
defend myself and you, too, with this conquering
instrument I hold in my hand; huzza, I say, I now invoke
time’s broad wing to shed around us some dewdrops of
verdant spring.’
But the hour had not come for this joyous reunion; her
friends struggled with Elfonzo for some time, and finally
succeeded in arresting her from his hands. He dared not
injure them, because they were matrons whose courage
needed no spur; she was snatched from the arms of
Elfonzo, with so much eagerness and yet with such
expressive signification, that he calmly withdrew from this
lovely enterprise, with an ardent hope that he should be
lulled to repose by the zephyrs which whispered peace to
his soul. Several long days and nights passed unmolested,
all seemed to have grounded their arms of rebellion, and no
callidity appeared to be going on with any of the parties.
Other arrangements were made by Ambulinia; she feigned
herself to be entirely the votary of a mother’s care, and
said, by her graceful smiles, that manhood might claim his
stern dominion in some other region, where such
boisterous love was not so prevalent. This gave the parents
a confidence that yielded some hours of sober joy; they
believed that Ambulinia would now cease to love Elfonzo,
and that her stolen affections would now expire with her
misguided opinions. They therefore declined the idea of
sending her to a distant land. But oh! they dreamed not of
the rapture that dazzled the fancy of Ambulinia, who would
say, when alone, youth should not fly away on his rosy
pinions, and leave her to grapple in the conflict with
unknown admirers.

No frowning age shall control
The constant current of my soul,
Nor a tear from pity’s eye
Shall check my sympathetic sigh.

With this resolution fixed in her mind, one dark and
dreary night, when the winds whistled and the tempest
roared, she received intelligence that Elfonzo was then
waiting, and every preparation was then ready, at the
residence of Dr. Tully, and for her to make a quick escape
while the family were reposing. Accordingly she gathered
her books, went to the wardrobe supplied with a variety of
ornamental dressing, and ventured alone in the streets to
make her way to Elfonzo, who was near at hand,
impatiently looking and watching her arrival. ‘What forms,’
said she, ‘are those rising before me? What is that dark
spot on the clouds? I do wonder what frightful ghost that is,
gleaming on the red tempest? Oh, be merciful and tell me
what region you are from. Oh tell me, ye strong spirits, or
ye dark and fleeting clouds, that I yet have a friend.’ ‘A
friend,’ said a low, whispering voice. ‘I am thy unchanging,
thy aged, and thy disappointed mother. Oh, Ambulinia, why
hast thou deceived me? Why brandish in that hand of thine
a javelin of pointed steel? Why suffer that lip I have kissed
a thousand times, to equivocate? My daughter, let these
tears sink deep into thy soul, and no longer persist in that
which may be your destruction and ruin. Come, my dear
child, retrace your steps, and bear me company to your
welcome home.’ Without one retorting word, or frown from
her brow, she yielded to the entreaties of her mother, and
with all the mildness of her former character she went
along with the silver lamp of age, to the home of candour
and benevolence. Her father received her with cold and
formal politeness—‘Where has Ambulinia been, this
blustering evening, Mrs. Valeer?’ inquired he. ‘Oh, she and
I have been taking a solitary walk,’ said the mother; ‘all
things, I presume, are now working for the best.’

Elfonzo heard this news shortly after it happened.
‘What,’ said he, ‘has heaven and earth turned against me? I
have been disappointed times without number. Shall I
despair? Must I give it over? Heaven’s decrees will not
fade; I will write again—I will try again; and if it traverses a
gory field, I pray forgiveness at the altar of justice.’
‘Desolate Hill, Cumming, Geo., 1844.

‘Unconquered and Beloved Ambulinia,—

‘I have only time to say to you, not to despair; thy fame shall not perish; my
visions are brightening before me. The whirlwind’s rage is past, and we now
shall subdue our enemies without doubt. On Monday morning, when your
friends are at breakfast, they will not suspect your departure, or even mistrust
me being in town, as it has been reported advantageously that I have left for
the west. You walk carelessly towards the academy grove, where you will find
me with a lightning steed, elegantly equipped to bear you off where we shall be
joined in wedlock with the first connubial rights. Fail not to do this—think not
of the tedious relations of our wrongs—be invincible. You alone occupy all my
ambition, and I alone will make you my happy spouse, with the same
unimpeached veracity. I remain, for ever, your devoted friend and admirer,
‘J. I. Elfonzo.’

The appointed day ushered in undisturbed by any
clouds; nothing disturbed Ambulinia’s soft beauty. With
serenity and loveliness she obeys the request of Elfonzo.
The moment the family seated themselves at the table
—‘Excuse my absence for a short time,’ said she, ‘while I
attend to the placing of those flowers which should have
been done a week ago.’ And away she ran to the sacred
grove, surrounded with glittering pearls that indicated her
coming. Elfonzo hails her with his silver bow and his golden
harp. They meet—Ambulinia’s countenance brightens—
Elfonzo leads up his winged steed. ‘Mount,’ said he, ‘ye
true-hearted, ye fearless soul—the day is ours.’ She sprang
upon the back of the young thunderbolt, a brilliant star
sparkles upon her head, with one hand she grasps the
reins, and with the other she holds an olive branch. ‘Lend
thy aid, ye strong winds,’ they exclaimed; ‘ye moon, ye sun,

and all ye fair host of heaven, witness the enemy
conquered.’ ‘Hold,’ said Elfonzo, ‘thy dashing steed.’ ‘Ride
on,’ said Ambulinia, ‘the voice of thunder is behind us.’ And
onward they went, with such rapidity that they very soon
arrived at Rural Retreat, where they dismounted, and were
united with all the solemnities that usually attend such
divine operations. They passed the day in thanksgiving and
great rejoicing, and on that evening they visited their
uncle, where many of their friends and acquaintances had
gathered to congratulate them in the field of untainted
bliss. The kind old gentleman met them in the yard: ‘Well,’
said he, ‘I wish I may die, Elfonzo, if you and Ambulinia
haven’t tied a knot with your tongue that you can’t untie
with your teeth. But come in, come in; never mind, all is
right—the world still moves on, and no one has fallen in
this great battle.’
Happy now is their lot! Unmoved by misfortune, they
live among the fair beauties of the South. Heaven spreads
their peace and fame upon the arch of the rainbow, and
smiles propitiously at their triumph, through the tears of
the storm.

ABOUT ALL KINDS OF SHIPS

THE MODERN STEAMER AND THE OBSOLETE
STEAMER

We are victims of one common superstition—the
superstition that we realise the changes that are daily
taking place in the world because we read about them and
know what they are. I should not have supposed that the
modern ship could be a surprise to me, but it is. It seems to
be as much of a surprise to me as it could have been if I
had never read anything about it. I walk about this great
vessel, the ‘Havel,’ as she ploughs her way through the
Atlantic, and every detail that comes under my eye brings
up the miniature counterpart of it as it existed in the little
ships I crossed the ocean in, fourteen, seventeen, eighteen,
and twenty years ago.
In the ‘Havel’ one can be in several respects more
comfortable than he can be in the best hotels on the
Continent of Europe. For instance, she has several bath-
rooms, and they are as convenient and as nicely equipped
as the bath-rooms in a fine private house in America;
whereas in the hotels of the Continent one bath-room is
considered sufficient, and it is generally shabby and located
in some out-of-the-way corner of the house; moreover, you
need to give notice so long beforehand that you get over
wanting a bath by the time you get it. In the hotels there
are a good many different kinds of noises, and they spoil
sleep; in my room in the ship I hear no sounds. In the hotels
they usually shut off the electric light at midnight; in the
ship one may burn it in one’s room all night.
In the steamer ‘Batavia,’ twenty years ago, one candle
set in the bulkhead between two state-rooms was there to
light both rooms, but did not light either of them. It was
extinguished at eleven at night, and so were all the saloon

lamps, except one or two, which were left burning to help
the passenger see how to break his neck trying to get
around in the dark. The passengers sat at table on long
benches made of the hardest kind of wood; in the ‘Havel’
one sits on a swivel chair with a cushioned back to it. In
those old times the dinner bill of fare was always the same:
a pint of some simple, homely soup or other, boiled codfish
and potatoes, slab of boiled beef; stewed prunes for dessert
—on Sundays ‘dog in a blanket,’ on Thursdays ‘plum duff.’
In the modern ship the menu is choice and elaborate, and is
changed daily. In the old times dinner was a sad occasion;
in our day a concealed orchestra enlivens it with charming
music. In the old days the decks were always wet; in our
day they are usually dry, for the promenade-deck is roofed
over, and a sea seldom comes aboard. In a moderately
disturbed sea, in the old days, a landsman could hardly
keep his legs, but in such a sea in our day, the decks are as
level as a table. In the old days the inside of a ship was the
plainest and barrenest thing, and the most dismal and
uncomfortable, that ingenuity could devise; the modern
ship is a marvel of rich and costly decoration and
sumptuous appointment, and is equipped with every
comfort and convenience that money can buy. The old ships
had no place of assembly but the dining-room; the new
ones have several spacious and beautiful drawing-rooms.
The old ships offered the passenger no chance to smoke
except in the place that was called the ‘fiddle.’ It was a
repulsive den made of rough boards (full of cracks), and its
office was to protect the main hatch. It was grimy and
dirty; there were no seats; the only light was a lamp of the
rancid-oil-and-rag kind; the place was very cold, and never
dry, for the seas broke in through the cracks every little
while and drenched the cavern thoroughly. In the modern
ship there are three or four large smoking-rooms, and they
have card tables and cushioned sofas, and are heated by

steam and lighted by electricity. There are few European
hotels with such smoking-rooms.
The former ships were built of wood, and had two or
three water-tight compartments in the hold with doors in
them, which were often left open, particularly when the
ship was going to hit a rock. The modern leviathan is built
of steel, and the water-tight bulkheads have no doors in
them; they divide the ship into nine or ten water-tight
compartments and endow her with as many lives as a cat.
Their complete efficiency was established by the happy
results following the memorable accident to the ‘City of
Paris’ a year or two ago.
One curious thing which is at once noticeable in the
great modern ship is the absence of hubbub, clatter, rush of
feet, roaring of orders. That is all gone by. The elaborate
manœuvres necessary in working the vessel into her dock
are conducted without sound: one sees nothing of the
processes, hears no commands. A Sabbath stillness and
solemnity reign in place of the turmoil and racket of the
earlier days. The modern ship has a spacious bridge,
fenced chin-high with sail-cloth, and floored with wooden
gratings; and this bridge, with its fenced fore-and-aft
annexes, could accommodate a seated audience of a
hundred and fifty men. There are three steering
equipments, each competent if the others should break.
From the bridge the ship is steered, and also handled. The
handling is not done by shout or whistle, but by signalling
with patent automatic gongs. There are three tell-tales with
plainly lettered dials—for steering, handling the engines,
and for communicating orders to the invisible mates who
are conducting the landing of the ship or casting off. The
officer who is astern is out of sight, and too far away to
hear trumpet calls; but the gongs near him tell him to haul
in, pay out, make fast, let go, and so on; he hears, but the

passengers do not, and so the ship seems to land herself
without human help.
This great bridge is thirty or forty feet above the water,
but the sea climbs up there sometimes; so there is another
bridge twelve or fifteen feet higher still, for use in these
emergencies. The force of water is a strange thing. It slips
between one’s fingers like air, but upon occasion it acts like
a solid body, and will bend a thin iron rod. In the ‘Havel’ it
has splintered a heavy oaken rail into broom-straws,
instead of merely breaking it in two as would have been the
seemingly natural thing for it to do. At the time of the awful
Johnstown disaster, according to the testimony of several
witnesses, rocks were carried some distance on the surface
of the stupendous torrent; and at St. Helena, many years
ago, a vast sea-wave carried a battery of cannon forty feet
up a steep slope, and deposited the guns there in a row. But
the water has done a still stranger thing, and it is one
which is credibly vouched for. A marlinspike is an
implement about a foot long which tapers from its butt to
the other extremity, and ends in a sharp point. It is made of
iron, and is heavy. A wave came aboard a ship in a storm
and raged aft, breast high, carrying a marlinspike point-
first with it, and with such lightning-like swiftness and
force as to drive it three or four inches into a sailor’s body
and kill him.
In all ways the ocean greyhound of to-day is imposing
and impressive to one who carries in his head no ship-
pictures of a recent date. In bulk she comes near to
rivalling the Ark; yet this monstrous mass of steel is driven
five hundred miles through the waves in twenty-four hours.
I remember the brag run of a steamer which I travelled in
once on the Pacific—it was two hundred and nine miles in
twenty-four hours; a year or so later I was a passenger in
the excursion-tub ‘Quaker City,’ and on one occasion, in a
level and glassy sea, it was claimed that she reeled off two

hundred and eleven miles between noon and noon, but it
was probably a campaign lie. That little steamer had
seventy passengers and a crew of forty men, and seemed a
good deal of a beehive; but in this present ship we are
living in a sort of solitude, these soft summer days, with
sometimes a hundred passengers scattered about the
spacious distances, and sometimes nobody in sight at all;
yet, hidden somewhere in the vessel’s bulk, there are
(including crew) near eleven hundred people.
The stateliest lines in the literature of the sea are
these:
Britannia needs no bulwark, no towers along the steep—
Her march is o’er the mountain wave, her home is on the deep!

There it is. In those old times the little ships climbed
over the waves and wallowed down into the trough on the
other side; the giant ship of our day does not climb over the
waves, but crushes her way through them. Her formidable
weight and mass and impetus give her mastery over any
but extraordinary storm-waves.
The ingenuity of man! I mean in this passing
generation. To-day I found in the chart-room a frame of
removable wooden slats on the wall, and on the slats was
painted uninforming information like this:
Trim-Tank Empty
Double-Bottom No. 1 Full
Double-Bottom No. 2 Full
Double-Bottom No. 3 Full
Double-Bottom No. 4 Full

While I was trying to think out what kind of a game this
might be, and how a stranger might best go to work to beat
it, a sailor came in and pulled out the ‘Empty’ end of the
first slat and put it back with its reverse side to the front,
marked ‘Full.’ He made some other change, I did not notice
what. The slat-frame was soon explained. Its function was

to indicate how the ballast in the ship was distributed. The
striking thing was, that that ballast was water. I did not
knew that a ship had ever been ballasted with water. I had
merely read, some time or other, that such an experiment
was to be tried. But that is the modern way; between the
experimental trial of a new thing and its adoption there is
no wasted time, if the trial proves its value.
On the wall, near the slat-frame, there was an outline
drawing of the ship, and this betrayed the fact that this
vessel has twenty-two considerable lakes of water in her.
These lakes are in her bottom; they are imprisoned
between her real bottom and a false bottom. They are
separated from each other, thwartships, by water-tight
bulkheads, and separated down the middle by a bulkhead
running from the bow four-fifths of the way to the stern. It
is a chain of lakes four hundred feet long and from five to
seven feet deep. Fourteen of the lakes contain fresh water
brought from shore, and the aggregate weight of it is four
hundred tons. The rest of the lakes contain salt water—six
hundred and eighteen tons. Upwards of a thousand tons of
water altogether.
Think how handy this ballast is. The ship leaves port
with the lakes all full. As she lightens forward, through
consumption of coal, she loses trim—her head rises, her
stern sinks down. Then they spill one of the sternward
lakes into the sea, and the trim is restored. This can be
repeated right along as occasion may require. Also, a lake
at one end of the ship can be moved to the other end by
pipes and steam pumps. When the sailor changed the slat-
frame to-day, he was posting a transference of that kind.
The seas had been increasing, and the vessel’s head
needed more weighting, to keep it from rising on the waves
instead of ploughing through them; therefore, twenty-five
tons of water had been transferred to the bow from a lake
situated well towards the stern.

A water compartment is kept either full or empty. The
body of water must be compact, so that it cannot slosh
around. A shifting ballast would not do, of course.
The modern ship is full of beautiful ingenuities, but it
seems to me that this one is the king. I would rather be the
originator of that idea than of any of the others. Perhaps
the trim of a ship was never perfectly ordered and
preserved until now. A vessel out of trim will not steer, her
speed is maimed, she strains and labours in the seas. Poor
creature! for six thousand years she has had no comfort
until these latest days. For six thousand years she swam
through the best and cheapest ballast in the world, the only
perfect ballast, but she couldn’t tell her master, and he had
not the wit to find it out for himself. It is odd to reflect that
there is nearly as much water inside of this ship as there is
outside, and yet there is no danger.

NOAH’S ARK

The progress made in the great art of ship-building
since Noah’s time is quite noticeable. Also, the looseness of
the navigation laws in the time of Noah is in quite striking
contrast with the strictness of the navigation laws of our
time. It would not be possible for Noah to do in our day
what he was permitted to do in his own. Experience has
taught us the necessity of being more particular, more
conservative, more careful of human life. Noah would not
be allowed to sail from Bremen in our day. The inspectors
would come and examine the Ark, and make all sorts of
objections. A person who knows Germany can imagine the
scene and the conversation without difficulty and without
missing a detail. The inspector would be in a beautiful
military uniform; he would be respectful, dignified, kindly,
the perfect gentleman, but steady as the north star to the
last requirement of his duty. He would make Noah tell him
where he was born, and how old he was, and what religious
sect he belonged to, and the amount of his income, and the
grade and position he claimed socially, and the name and
style of his occupation, and how many wives and children
he had, and how many servants, and the name, sex, and
age of the whole of them; and if he hadn’t a passport he
would be courteously required to get one right away. Then
he would take up the matter of the Ark:
‘What is her length?’
‘Six hundred feet.’
‘Depth?’
‘Sixty-five.’
‘Beam?’
‘Fifty or sixty.’

‘Built of——’
‘Wood.’
‘What kind?’
‘Shittim and gopher.’
‘Interior and exterior decorations?’
‘Pitched within and without.’
‘Passengers?’
‘Eight.’
‘Sex?’
‘Half male, the others female.’
‘Ages?’
‘From a hundred years up.’
‘Up to where?’
‘Six hundred.’
‘Ah! going to Chicago; good idea, too. Surgeon’s name?’
‘We have no surgeon.’
‘Must provide a surgeon. Also an undertaker—
particularly the undertaker. These people must not be left
without the necessities of life at their age. Crew?’
‘The same eight.’
‘The same eight?’
‘The same eight.’
‘And half of them women?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Have they ever served as seamen?’
‘No, sir.’
‘Have the men?’
‘No, sir.’
‘Have any of you ever been to sea?’
‘No, sir.’

‘Where were you reared?’
‘On a farm—all of us.’
‘This vessel requires a crew of eight hundred men, she
not being a steamer. You must provide them. She must have
four mates and nine cooks. Who is captain?’
‘I am, sir.’
‘You must get a captain. Also a chambermaid. Also sick
nurses for the old people. Who designed this vessel?’
‘I did, sir.’
‘Is it your first attempt?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘I partly suspected it. Cargo?’
‘Animals.’
‘Kind?’
‘All kinds.’
‘Wild or tame?’
‘Mainly wild.’
‘Foreign or domestic?’
‘Mainly foreign.’
‘Principal wild ones?’
‘Megatherium, elephant, rhinoceros, lion, tiger, wolf,
snakes—all the wild things of all climes—two of each.’
‘Securely caged?’
‘No, not caged.’
‘They must have iron cages. Who feeds and waters the
menagerie?’
‘We do.’
‘The old people?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘It is dangerous—for both. The animals must be cared
for by a competent force. How many animals are there?’

‘Big ones, seven thousand; big and little together,
ninety-eight thousand.’
‘You must provide twelve hundred keepers. How is the
vessel lighted?’
‘By two windows.’
‘Where are they?’
‘Up under the eaves.’
‘Two windows for a tunnel six hundred feet long and
sixty-five feet deep? You must put in the electric light—a
few arc lights and fifteen hundred incandescents. What do
you do in case of leaks? How many pumps have you?’
‘None, sir.’
‘You must provide pumps. How do you get water for the
passengers and the animals?’
‘We let down the buckets from the windows.’
‘It is inadequate. What is your motive power?’
‘What is my which?’
‘Motive power. What power do you use in driving the
ship?’
‘None.’
‘You must provide sails or steam. What is the nature of
your steering apparatus?’
‘We haven’t any.’
‘Haven’t you a rudder?’
‘No, sir.’
‘How do you steer the vessel?’
‘We don’t.’
‘You must provide a rudder, and properly equip it. How
many anchors have you?’
‘None.’

‘You must provide six. One is not permitted to sail a
vessel like this without that protection. How many life-
boats have you?’
‘None, sir.’
‘Provide twenty-five. How many life-preservers?’
‘None.’
‘You will provide two thousand. How long are you
expecting your voyage to last?’
‘Eleven or twelve months.’
‘Eleven or twelve months. Pretty slow—but you will be
in time for the Exposition. What is your ship sheathed with
—copper?’
‘Her hull is bare—not sheathed at all.’
‘Dear man, the wood-boring creatures of the sea would
riddle her like a sieve and send her to the bottom in three
months. She cannot be allowed to go away in this
condition; she must be sheathed. Just a word more: Have
you reflected that Chicago is an inland city, and not
reachable with a vessel like this?’
‘Shecargo? What is Shecargo? I am not going to
Shecargo.’
‘Indeed? Then may I ask what the animals are for?’
‘Just to breed others from.’
‘Others? Is it possible that you haven’t enough?’
‘For the present needs of civilisation, yes; but the rest
are going to be drowned in a flood, and these are to renew
the supply.’
‘A flood?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Are you sure of that?’
‘Perfectly sure. It is going to rain forty days and forty
nights.’

‘Give yourself no concern about that, dear sir, it often
does that here.’
‘Not this kind of rain. This is going to cover the
mountain-tops, and the earth will pass from sight.’
‘Privately—but of course not officially—I am sorry you
revealed this, for it compels me to withdraw the option I
gave you as to sails or steam. I must require you to use
steam. Your ship cannot carry the hundredth part of an
eleven-months’ water-supply for the animals. You will have
to have condensed water.’
‘But I tell you I am going to dip water from outside with
buckets.’
‘It will not answer. Before the flood reaches the
mountain-tops the fresh waters will have joined the salt
seas, and it will all be salt. You must put in steam and
condense your water. I will now bid you good-day, sir. Did I
understand you to say that this was your very first attempt
at ship-building?’
‘My very first, sir, I give you the honest truth. I built
this Ark without having ever had the slightest training or
experience or instruction in marine architecture.’
‘It is a remarkable work, sir, a most remarkable work. I
consider that it contains more features that are new—
absolutely new and unhackneyed—than are to be found in
any other vessel that swims the seas.’
‘This compliment does me infinite honour, dear sir,
infinite; and I shall cherish the memory of it while life shall
last. Sir, I offer my duty, and most grateful thanks. Adieu.’
No, the German inspector would be limitlessly
courteous to Noah, and would make him feel that he was
among friends, but he wouldn’t let him go to sea with that
Ark.

COLUMBUS’S CRAFT

Between Noah’s time and the time of Columbus naval
architecture underwent some changes, and from being
unspeakably bad was improved to a point which may be
described as less unspeakably bad. I have read somewhere,
some time or other, that one of Columbus’s ships was a
ninety-ton vessel. By comparing that ship with the ocean
greyhounds of our time one is able to get down to a
comprehension of how small that Spanish bark was, and
how little fitted she would be to run opposition in the
Atlantic passenger trade to-day. It would take seventy-four
of her to match the tonnage of the ‘Havel’ and carry the
‘Havel’s’ trip. If I remember rightly, it took her ten weeks to
make the passage. With our ideas this would now be
considered an objectionable gait. She probably had a
captain, a mate, and a crew consisting of four seamen and
a boy. The crew of a modern greyhound numbers two
hundred and fifty persons.
Columbus’s ship being small and very old, we know
that we may draw from these two facts several absolute
certainties in the way of minor details which history has
left unrecorded. For instance, being small, we know that
she rolled and pitched and tumbled in any ordinary sea,
and stood on her head or her tail, or lay down with her ear
in the water, when storm-seas ran high; also, that she was
used to having billows plunge aboard and wash her decks
from stem to stern; also, that the storm-racks were on the
table all the way over, and that, nevertheless, a man’s soup
was oftener landed in his lap than in his stomach; also, that
the dining-saloon was about ten feet by seven, dark, airless,
and suffocating with oil-stench; also, that there was only
about one state-room—the size of a grave—with a tier of

two or three berths in it, of the dimensions and
comfortableness of coffins, and that when the light was out,
the darkness in there was so thick and real that you could
bite into it and chew it like gum; also, that the only
promenade was on the lofty poop-deck astern (for the ship
was shaped like a high-quarter shoe)—a streak sixteen feet
long by three feet wide, all the rest of the vessel being
littered with ropes and flooded by the seas.
We know all these things to be true, from the mere fact
that we know the vessel was small. As the vessel was old,
certain other truths follow as matters of course. For
instance, she was full of rats, she was full of cockroaches,
the heavy seas made her seams open and shut like your
fingers, and she leaked like a basket; where leakage is,
there also, of necessity, is bilgewater; and where
bilgewater is, only the dead can enjoy life. This is on
account of the smell. In the presence of bilgewater,
Limburger cheese becomes odourless and ashamed.
From these absolutely sure data we can competently
picture the daily life of the great discoverer. In the early
morning he paid his devotions at the shrine of the Virgin. At
eight bells he appeared on the poop-deck promenade. If the
weather was chilly, he came up clad from plumed helmet to
spurred heel in magnificent plate armour inlaid with
arabesques of gold, having previously warmed it at the
galley fire. If the weather was warm, he came up in the
ordinary sailor toggery of the time: great slouch hat of blue
velvet, with a flowing brush of snowy ostrich plumes,
fastened on with a flashing cluster of diamonds and
emeralds; gold-embroidered doublet of green velvet, with
slashed sleeves exposing under-sleeves of crimson satin;
deep collar and cuff-ruffles of rich limp lace; trunk hose of
pink velvet, with big knee knots of brocaded yellow ribbon;
pearl-tinted silk stockings, clocked and daintily
embroidered; lemon-coloured buskins of unborn kid,

funnel-topped, and drooping low to expose the pretty
stockings; deep gauntlets of finest white heretic skin, from
the factory of the Holy Inquisition, formerly part of the
person of a lady of rank; rapier with sheath crusted with
jewels, and hanging from a broad baldric upholstered with
rubies and sapphires.
He walked the promenade thoughtfully; he noted the
aspects of the sky and the course of the wind; he kept an
eye out for drifting vegetation and other signs of land; he
jawed the man at the wheel for pastime; he got out an
imitation egg and kept himself in practice on his old trick of
making it stand on its end; now and then he hove a life-line
below and fished up a sailor who was drowning on the
quarter-deck; the rest of his watch he gaped and yawned
and stretched and said he wouldn’t make the trip again to
discover six Americas. For that was the kind of natural
human person Columbus was when not posing for posterity.
At noon he took the sun and ascertained that the good
ship had made three hundred yards in twenty-four hours,
and this enabled him to win the pool. Anybody can win the
pool when nobody but himself has the privilege of
straightening out the ship’s run and getting it right.
The Admiral has breakfasted alone, in state: bacon,
beans, and gin; at noon he dines alone in state: bacon,
beans, and gin; at six he sups alone in state: bacon, beans,
and gin; at 11 P.M. he takes a night relish, alone, in state:
bacon, beans, and gin. At none of these orgies is there any
music; the ship-orchestra is modern. After his final meal he
returned thanks for his many blessings, a little over-rating
their value, perhaps, and then he laid off his silken
splendours or his gilded hardware, and turned in, in his
little coffin-bunk, and blew out his flickering stencher, and
began to refresh his lungs with inverted sighs freighted
with the rich odours of rancid oil and bilgewater. The sighs
returned as snores, and then the rats and the cockroaches

swarmed out in brigades and divisions and army corps and
had a circus all over him.
Such was the daily life of the great discoverer in his
marine basket during several historic weeks; and the
difference between his ship and his comforts and ours is
visible almost at a glance.
When he returned, the King of Spain, marvelling, said—
as history records:
‘This ship seems to be leaky. Did she leak badly?’
‘You shall judge for yourself, sire. I pumped the Atlantic
Ocean through her sixteen times on the passage.’
This is General Horace Porter’s account. Other
authorities say fifteen.
It can be shown that the differences between that ship
and the one I am writing these historical contributions in,
are in several respects remarkable. Take the matter of
decoration, for instance. I have been looking around again,
yesterday and to-day, and have noted several details which
I conceive to have been absent from Columbus’s ship, or at
least slurred over and not elaborated and perfected. I
observe state-room doors three inches thick, of solid oak,
and polished. I note companionway vestibules with walls,
doors, and ceilings panelled in polished hard-woods, some
light, some dark, all dainty and delicate joiner-work, and
yet every joint compact and tight; with beautiful pictures
inserted, composed of blue tiles—some of the pictures
containing as many as sixty tiles—and the joinings of those
tiles perfect. These are daring experiments. One would
have said that the first time the ship went straining and
labouring through a storm-tumbled sea those tiles would
gape apart and drop out. That they have not done so is
evidence that the joiner’s art has advanced a good deal
since the days when ships were so shackly that when a
giant sea gave them a wrench the doors came unbolted. I

find the walls of the dining-saloon upholstered with mellow
pictures wrought in tapestry, and the ceiling aglow with
pictures done in oil. In other places of assembly I find great
panels filled with embossed Spanish leather, the figures
rich with gilding and bronze. Everywhere I find sumptuous
masses of colour—colour, colour, colour—colour all about,
colour of every shade and tint and variety; and as a result,
the ship is bright and cheery to the eye, and this cheeriness
invades one’s spirit and contents it. To fully appreciate the
force and spiritual value of this radiant and opulent dream
of colour, one must stand outside at night in the pitch dark
and the rain, and look in through a port, and observe it in
the lavish splendour of the electric lights. The old-time
ships were dull, plain, graceless, gloomy, and horribly
depressing. They compelled the blues; one could not
escape the blues in them. The modern idea is right: to
surround the passenger with conveniences, luxuries, and
abundance of inspiriting colour. As a result, the ship is the
pleasantest place one can be in, except, perhaps, one’s
home.

A VANISHED SENTIMENT

One thing is gone, to return no more for ever—the
romance of the sea. Soft sentimentality about the sea has
retired from the activities of this life, and is but a memory
of the past, already remote and much faded. But within the
recollection of men still living, it was in the breast of every
individual; and the further any individual lived from salt
water the more of it he kept in stock. It was as pervasive,
as universal, as the atmosphere itself. The mere mention of
the sea, the romantic sea, would make any company of
people sentimental and mawkish at once. The great
majority of the songs that were sung by the young people
of the back settlements had the melancholy wanderer for
subject, and his mouthings about the sea for refrain. Picnic
parties, paddling down a creek in a canoe when the twilight
shadows were gathering, always sang
Homeward bound, homeward bound
From a foreign shore;

and this was also a favourite in the West with the
passengers on sternwheel steamboats. There was another—
My boat is by the shore,
And my bark is on the sea,
But before I go, Tom Moore,
Here’s a double health to thee.

And this one, also—
Oh, pilot, ’tis a fearful night,
There’s danger on the deep.

And this—

A life on the ocean wave,
And a home on the rolling deep,
Where the scattered waters rave,
And the winds their revels keep!

And this—
A wet sheet and a flowing sea,
And a wind that follows fair.

And this—
My foot is on my gallant deck,
Once more the rover is free!

And the ‘Larboard Watch’—the person referred to below is
at the masthead, or somewhere up there—
Oh, who can tell what joy he feels,
As o’er the foam his vessel reels,
And his tired eyelids slumb’ring fall,
He rouses at the welcome call
Of ‘Larboard watch—ahoy!’

Yes, and there was for ever and always some jackass-
voiced person braying out—
Rocked in the cradle of the deep,
I lay me down in peace to sleep!

Other favourites had these suggestive titles: ‘The Storm
at Sea;’ ‘The Bird at Sea;’ ‘The Sailor Boy’s Dream;’ ‘The
Captive Pirate’s Lament;’ ‘We are far from Home on the
Stormy Main’—and so on, and so on, the list is endless.
Everybody on a farm lived chiefly amid the dangers of the
deep in those days, in fancy.
But all that is gone now. Not a vestige of it is left. The
iron-clad, with her unsentimental aspect and frigid
attention to business, banished romance from the war-
marine, and the unsentimental steamer has banished it
from the commercial marine. The dangers and

uncertainties which made sea life romantic have
disappeared and carried the poetic element along with
them. In our day the passengers never sing sea-songs on
board a ship, and the band never plays them. Pathetic
songs about the wanderer in strange lands far from home,
once so popular and contributing such fire and colour to
the imagination by reason of the rarity of that kind of
wanderer, have lost their charm and fallen silent, because
everybody is a wanderer in the far lands now, and the
interest in that detail is dead. Nobody is worried about the
wanderer; there are no perils of the sea for him, there are
no uncertainties. He is safer in the ship than he would
probably be at home, for there he is always liable to have to
attend some friend’s funeral, and stand over the grave in
the sleet, bareheaded—and that means pneumonia for him,
if he gets his deserts; and the uncertainties of his voyage
are reduced to whether he will arrive on the other side in
the appointed afternoon, or have to wait till morning.
The first ship I was ever in was a sailing vessel. She
was twenty-eight days going from San Francisco to the
Sandwich Islands. But the main reason for this particularly
slow passage was, that she got becalmed, and lay in one
spot fourteen days in the centre of the Pacific, two
thousand miles from land. I hear no sea-songs in this
present vessel, but I heard the entire layout in that one.
There were a dozen young people—they are pretty old now
I reckon—and they used to group themselves on the stern,
in the starlight or the moonlight, every evening, and sing
sea-songs till after midnight, in that hot, silent, motionless
calm. They had no sense of humour, and they always sang
‘Homeward Bound,’ without reflecting that that was
practically ridiculous, since they were standing still and not
proceeding in any direction at all; and they often followed
that song with ‘Are we almost there, are we almost there,
said the dying girl as she drew near home?’

It was a very pleasant company of young people, and I
wonder where they are now. Gone, oh, none knows whither;
and the bloom and grace and beauty of their youth, where
is that? Among them was a liar; all tried to reform him, but
none could do it. And so, gradually, he was left to himself,
none of us would associate with him. Many a time since I
have seen in fancy that forsaken figure, leaning forlorn
against the taffrail, and have reflected that perhaps if we
had tried harder, and been more patient, we might have
won him from his fault and persuaded him to relinquish it.
But it is hard to tell; with him the vice was extreme, and
was probably incurable. I like to think—and, indeed, I do
think—that I did the best that in me lay to lead him to
higher and better ways.
There was a singular circumstance. The ship lay
becalmed that entire fortnight in exactly the same spot.
Then a handsome breeze came fanning over the sea, and
we spread our white wings for flight. But the vessel did not
budge. The sails bellied out, the gale strained at the ropes,
but the vessel moved not a hair’s breadth from her place.
The captain was surprised. It was some hours before we
found out what the cause of the detention was. It was
barnacles. They collect very fast in that part of the Pacific.
They had fastened themselves to the ship’s bottom; then
others had fastened themselves to the first bunch, others to
these, and so on, down and down and down, and the last
bunch had glued the column hard and fast to the bottom of
the sea, which is five miles deep at that point. So the ship
was simply become the handle of a walking-cane five miles
long—yes, and no more movable by wind and sail than a
continent is. It was regarded by every one as remarkable.
Well, the next week—however, Sandy Hook is in sight.

PLAYING COURIER

A time would come when we must go from Aix-les-Bains to
Geneva, and from thence, by a series of day-long and
tangled journeys, to Bayreuth in Bavaria. I should have to
have a courier, of course, to take care of so considerable a
party as mine.
But I procrastinated. The time slipped along, and at last
I woke up one day to the fact that we were ready to move
and had no courier. I then resolved upon what I felt was a
foolhardy thing, but I was in the humour of it. I said I would
make the first stage without help—I did it.
I brought the party from Aix to Geneva by myself—four
people. The distance was two hours and more, and there
was one change of cars. There was not an accident of any
kind, except leaving a valise and some other matters on the
platform—a thing which can hardly be called an accident, it
is so common. So I offered to conduct the party all the way
to Bayreuth.
This was a blunder, though it did not seem so at the
time. There was more detail than I thought there would be:
1. Two persons whom we had left in a Genevan pension
some weeks before must be collected and brought to the
hotel. 2. I must notify the people on the Grand Quay who
store trunks to bring seven of our stored trunks to the hotel
and carry back seven which they would find piled in the
lobby. 3. I must find out what part of Europe Bayreuth was
in and buy seven railway tickets for that point. 4. I must

send a telegram to a friend in the Netherlands. 5. It was
now two in the afternoon, and we must look sharp and be
ready for the first night train, and make sure of sleeping-
car tickets. 6. I must draw money at the bank.
It seemed to me that the sleeping-car tickets must be
the most important thing, so I went to the station myself to
make sure; hotel messengers are not always brisk people.
It was a hot day and I ought to have driven, but it seemed
better economy to walk. It did not turn out so, because I
lost my way and trebled the distance. I applied for the
tickets, and they asked me which route I wanted to go by,
and that embarrassed me and made me lose my head, there
were so many people standing around, and I not knowing
anything about the routes, and not supposing there were
going to be two; so I judged it best to go back and map out
the road and come again.
I took a cab this time, but on my way upstairs at the
hotel I remembered that I was out of cigars, so I thought it
would be well to get some while the matter was in my
mind. It was only round the corner and I didn’t need the
cab. I asked the cabman to wait where he was. Thinking of
the telegram and trying to word it in my head, I forgot the
cigars and the cab, and walked on indefinitely. I was going
to have the hotel people send the telegram, but as I could
not be far from the Post Office by this time, I thought I
would do it myself. But it was further than I had supposed.
I found the place at last, and wrote the telegram and
handed it in. The clerk was a severe-looking, fidgety man,
and he began to fire French questions at me in such a
liquid form that I could not detect the joints between his
words, and this made me lose my head again. But an
Englishman stepped up and said the clerk wanted to know
where he was to send the telegram. I could not tell him,
because it was not my telegram, and I explained that I was
merely sending it for a member of my party. But nothing

would pacify the clerk but the address; so I said that if he
was so particular I would go back and get it.
However, I thought I would go and collect those lacking
two persons first, for it would be best to do everything
systematically and in order, and one detail at a time. Then I
remembered the cab was eating up my substance down at
the hotel yonder; so I called another cab, and told the man
to go down and fetch it to the Post Office and wait till I
came.
I had a long hot walk to collect those people, and when
I got there they couldn’t come with me because they had
heavy satchels, and must have a cab. I went away to find
one, but before I ran across any I noticed that I had
reached the neighbourhood of the Grand Quay—at least, I
thought I had—so I judged I could save time by stepping
around and arranging about the trunks. I stepped around
about a mile, and although I did not find the Grand Quay, I
found a cigar shop, and remembered about the cigars. I
said I was going to Bayreuth, and wanted enough for the
journey. The man asked me which route I was going to
take. I said I did not know. He said he would recommend
me to go by Zurich and various other places which he
named, and offered to sell me seven second-class through
tickets for $22 apiece, which would be throwing off the
discount which the railroads allowed him. I was already
tired of riding second class on first-class tickets, so I took
him up.
By-and-by I found Natural & Co.’s storage office, and
told them to send seven of our trunks to the hotel and pile
them up in the lobby. It seemed to me that I was not
delivering the whole of the message; still, it was all I could
find in my head.
Next I found the bank, and asked for some money, but I
had left my letter of credit somewhere and was not able to
draw. I remembered now that I must have left it lying on

the table where I wrote my telegram; so I got a cab and
drove to the Post Office and went upstairs, and they said
that a letter of credit had indeed been left on the table, but
that it was now in the hands of the police authorities, and it
would be necessary for me to go there and prove property.
They sent a boy with me, and we went out the back way
and walked a couple of miles and found the place; and then
I remembered about my cabs, and asked the boy to send
them to me when he got back to the Post Office. It was
nightfall now, and the Mayor had gone to dinner. I thought I
would go to dinner myself, but the officer on duty thought
differently, and I stayed. The Mayor dropped in at half past
ten, but said it was too late to do anything to-night—come
at 9.30 in the morning. The officer wanted to keep me all
night, and said I was a suspicious-looking person, and
probably did not own the letter of credit, and didn’t know
what a letter of credit was, but merely saw the real owner
leave it lying on the table, and wanted to get it because I
was probably a person that would want anything he could
get, whether it was valuable or not. But the Mayor said he
saw nothing suspicious about me, and that I seemed a
harmless person, and nothing the matter with me but a
wandering mind, and not much of that. So I thanked him
and he set me free, and I went home in my three cabs.
As I was dog-tired, and in no condition to answer
questions with discretion, I thought I would not disturb the
Expedition at that time of night, as there was a vacant
room I knew of at the other end of the hall; but I did not
quite arrive there, as a watch had been set, the Expedition
being anxious about me. I was placed in a galling situation.
The Expedition sat stiff and forbidding, on four chairs in a
row, with shawls and things all on, satchels and guide-
books in lap. They had been sitting like that for four hours,
and the glass going down all the time. Yes, and they were
waiting—waiting for me. It seemed to me that nothing but a

sudden, happily contrived, and brilliant tour de force could
break this iron front and make a diversion in my favour; so
I shied my hat into the arena, and followed it with a skip
and a jump, shouting blithely:
‘Ha, ha, here we all are, Mr. Merryman!’
Nothing could be deeper or stiller than the absence of
applause which followed. But I kept on; there seemed no
other way, though my confidence, poor enough before, had
got a deadly check, and was in effect gone.
I tried to be jocund out of a heavy heart; I tried to touch
the other hearts there and soften the bitter resentment in
those faces by throwing off bright and airy fun, and making
of the whole ghastly thing a joyously humorous incident;
but this idea was not well conceived. It was not the right
atmosphere for it. I got not one smile; not one line in those
offended faces relaxed; I thawed nothing of the winter that
looked out of those frosty eyes. I started one more breezy,
poor effort, but the head of the Expedition cut into the
centre of it, and said:
‘Where have you been?’
I saw by the manner of this that the idea was to get
down to cold business now. So I began my travels, but was
cut short again.
‘Where are the two others? We have been in frightful
anxiety about them.’
‘Oh, they’re all right. I was to fetch a cab. I will go
straight off, and——’
‘Sit down! Don’t you know it is 11 o’clock? Where did
you leave them?’
‘At the pension.’
‘Why didn’t you bring them?’
‘Because we couldn’t carry the satchels. And so I
thought——’

‘Thought! You should not try to think. One cannot think
without the proper machinery. It is two miles to that
pension. Did you go there without a cab?’
‘I—well, I didn’t intend to; it only happened so.’
‘How did it happen so?’
‘Because I was at the Post Office, and I remembered
that I had left a cab waiting here, and so, to stop the
expense, I sent another cab to—to——’
‘To what?’
‘Well, I don’t remember now, but I think the new cab
was to have the hotel pay the old cab, and send it away.’
‘What good would that do?’
‘What good would it do? It would stop the expense,
wouldn’t it?’
‘By putting the new cab in its place to continue the
expense?’
I didn’t say anything.
‘Why didn’t you have the new cab come back for you?’
‘Oh, that is what I did! I remember now. Yes, that is
what I did. Because I recollect that when I——’
‘Well, then, why didn’t it come back for you?’
‘To the Post Office? Why, it did.’
‘Very well, then, how did you come to walk to the
pension?’
‘I—I don’t quite remember how that happened. Oh, yes,
I do remember now. I wrote the despatch to send to the
Netherlands, and——’
‘Oh, thank goodness, you did accomplish something! I
wouldn’t have had you fail to send——What makes you look
like that? You are trying to avoid my eye. That despatch is
the most important thing that——You haven’t sent that
despatch!’

‘I haven’t said I didn’t send it.’
‘You don’t need to. Oh, dear, I wouldn’t have had that
telegram fail for anything. Why didn’t you send it?’
‘Well, you see, with so many things to do and think of, I
—they’re very particular there, and after I had written the
telegram——’
‘Oh, never mind, let it go, explanations can’t help the
matter now—what will he think of us?’
‘Oh, that’s all right, that’s all right! He’ll think we gave
the telegram to the hotel people, and that they——’
‘Why, certainly! Why didn’t you do that? There was no
other rational way.’
‘Yes, I know, but then I had it on my mind that I must be
sure and get to the bank and draw some money——’
‘Well, you are entitled to some credit, after all, for
thinking of that, and I don’t wish to be too hard on you,
though you must acknowledge yourself that you have cost
us all a good deal of trouble, and some of it not necessary.
How much did you draw?’
‘Well, I—I had an idea that—that——’
‘That what?’
‘That—well, it seems to me that in the circumstances—
so many of us, you know, and—and——’
‘What are you mooning about? Do turn your face this
way and let me——Why, you haven’t drawn any money!’
‘Well, the banker said——’
‘Never mind what the banker said. You must have had a
reason of your own. Not a reason, exactly, but something
which——’
‘Well, then, the simple fact was that I hadn’t my letter
of credit.’
‘Hadn’t your letter of credit?’

‘Hadn’t my letter of credit.’
‘Don’t repeat me like that. Where was it?’
‘At the Post Office.’
‘What was it doing there?’
‘Well, I forgot it, and left it there.’
‘Upon my word, I’ve seen a good many couriers, but of
all the couriers that ever I——’
‘I’ve done the best I could.’
‘Well, so you have, poor thing, and I’m wrong to abuse
you so when you’ve been working yourself to death while
we’ve been sitting here, only thinking of our vexations
instead of feeling grateful for what you were trying to do
for us. It will all come out right. We can take the 7.30 train
in the morning just as well. You’ve bought the tickets?’
‘I have—and it’s a bargain, too. Second class.’
‘I’m glad of it. Everybody else travels second class, and
we might just as well save that ruinous extra charge. What
did you pay?’
‘Twenty-two dollars apiece—through to Bayreuth.’
‘Why, I didn’t know you could buy through tickets
anywhere but in London and Paris.’
‘Some people can’t, maybe; but some people can—of
whom I am one of which, it appears.’
‘It seems a rather high price.’
‘On the contrary, the dealer knocked off his
commission.’
‘Dealer?’
‘Yes—I bought them at a cigar shop.’
‘That reminds me. We shall have to get up pretty early,
and so there should be no packing to do. Your umbrella,
your rubbers, your cigars——What is the matter?’
‘Hang it! I’ve left the cigars at the bank.’

‘Just think of it! Well, your umbrella?’
‘I’ll have that all right. There’s no hurry.’
‘What do you mean by that?’
‘Oh, that’s all right; I’ll take care of——’
‘Where is that umbrella?’
‘It’s just the merest step—it won’t take me——’
‘Where is it?’
‘Well, I think I left it at the cigar shop; but any way——’
‘Take your feet out from under that thing. It’s just as I
expected! Where are your rubbers?’
‘They—well——’
‘Where are your rubbers?’
‘It’s got so dry now—well, everybody says there’s not
going to be another drop of——’
‘Where—are—your—rubbers?’
‘Well, you see—well, it was this way. First, the officer
said——’
‘What officer?’
‘Police officer; but the Mayor, he——’
‘What Mayor?’
‘Mayor of Geneva; but I said——’
‘Wait. What is the matter with you?’
‘Who, me? Nothing. They both tried to persuade me to
stay, and——’
‘Stay where?’
‘Well—the fact is——’
‘Where have you been? What’s kept you out till half
past ten at night?’
‘Oh, you see, after I lost my letter of credit, I——’
‘You are beating around the bush a good deal. Now,
answer the question in just one straightforward word.

Where are those rubbers?’
‘They—well, they’re in the county jail.’
I started a placating smile, but it petrified. The climate
was unsuitable. Spending three or four hours in jail did not
seem to the Expedition humorous. Neither did it to me, at
bottom.
I had to explain the whole thing, and of course it came
out then that we couldn’t take the early train, because that
would leave my letter of credit in hock still. It did look as if
we had all got to go to bed estranged and unhappy, but by
good luck that was prevented. There happened to be
mention of the trunks, and I was able to say I had attended
to that feature.
‘There, you are just as good and thoughtful and
painstaking and intelligent as you can be, and it’s a shame
to find so much fault with you, and there shan’t be another
word of it! You’ve done beautifully, admirably, and I’m sorry
I ever said one ungrateful word to you.’
This hit deeper than some of the other things, and
made me uncomfortable, because I wasn’t feeling as solid
about that trunk errand as I wanted to. There seemed,
somehow, to be a defect about it somewhere, though I
couldn’t put my finger on it, and didn’t like to stir the
matter just now, it being late and maybe well enough to let
well enough alone.
Of course there was music in the morning, when it was
found that we couldn’t leave by the early train. But I had no
time to wait; I got only the opening bars of the overture,
and then started out to get my letter of credit.
It seemed a good time to look into the trunk business
and rectify it if it needed it, and I had a suspicion that it
did. I was too late. The concierge said he had shipped the
trunks to Zurich the evening before. I asked him how he
could do that without exhibiting passage tickets.

‘Not necessary in Switzerland. You pay for your trunks
and send them where you please. Nothing goes free but
your hand baggage.’
‘How much did you pay on them?’
‘A hundred and forty francs.’
‘Twenty-eight dollars. There’s something wrong about
that trunk business, sure.’
Next I met the porter. He said:
‘You have not slept well, is it not? You have the worn
look. If you would like a courier, a good one has arrived last
night, and is not engaged for five days already, by the name
of Ludi. We recommend him; “das heisst,” the Grande Hotel
Beau Rivage recommends him.’
I declined with coldness. My spirit was not broken yet.
And I did not like having my condition taken notice of in
this way. I was at the county jail by nine o’clock, hoping
that the Mayor might chance to come before his regular
hour; but he didn’t. It was dull there. Every time I offered
to touch anything, or look at anything, or do anything, or
refrain from doing anything, the policeman said it was
‘defendu.’ I thought I would practise my French on him, but
he wouldn’t have that either. It seemed to make him
particularly bitter to hear his own tongue.
The Mayor came at last, and then there was no trouble;
for the minute he had convened the Supreme Court—which
they always do whenever there is valuable property in
dispute—and got everything shipshape, and sentries
posted, and had prayer, by the chaplain, my unsealed letter
was brought and opened, and there wasn’t anything in it
but some photographs: because, as I remembered now, I
had taken out the letter of credit so as to make room for
the photographs, and had put the letter in my other pocket,
which I proved to everybody’s satisfaction by fetching it out
and showing it with a good deal of exultation. So then the

court looked at each other in a vacant kind of way, and then
at me, and then at each other again, and finally let me go,
but said it was imprudent for me to be at large, and asked
me what my profession was. I said I was a courier. They
lifted up their eyes in a kind of reverent way and said, ‘Du
lieber Gott!’ and I said a word of courteous thanks for their
apparent admiration and hurried off to the bank.
However, being a courier was already making me a
great stickler for order and system and one thing at a time
and each thing in its own proper turn; so I passed by the
bank and branched off and started for the two lacking
members of the Expedition. A cab lazied by and I took it
upon persuasion. I gained no speed by this, but it was a
reposeful turn out and I liked reposefulness. The week-long
jubilations over the six-hundredth anniversary of the birth
of Swiss liberty and the Signing of the Compact was at
flood tide, and all the streets were clothed in fluttering
flags.
The horse and the driver had been drunk three days
and nights, and had known no stall nor bed meantime. They
looked as I felt—dreamy and seedy. But we arrived in
course of time. I went in and rang, and asked a housemaid
to rush out the lacking members. She said something which
I did not understand, and I returned to the chariot. The girl
had probably told me that those people did not belong on
her floor, and that it would be judicious for me to go higher,
and ring from floor to floor till I found them; for in those
Swiss flats there does not seem to be any way to find the
right family but to be patient and guess your way along up.
I calculated that I must wait fifteen minutes, there being
three details inseparable from an occasion of this sort: 1,
put on hats and come down and climb in; 2, return of one to
get ‘my other glove’; 3, presently, return of the other one to
fetch ‘my French Verbs at a Glance.’ I would muse during
the fifteen minutes and take it easy.

A very still and blank interval ensued, and then I felt a
hand on my shoulder and started. The intruder was a
policeman. I glanced up and perceived that there was new
scenery. There was a good deal of a crowd, and they had
that pleased and interested look which such a crowd wears
when they see that somebody is out of luck. The horse was
asleep, and so was the driver, and some boys had hung
them and me full of gaudy decorations stolen from the
innumerable banner poles. It was a scandalous spectacle.
The officer said:
‘I’m sorry, but we can’t have you sleeping here all day.’
I was wounded, and said with dignity:
‘I beg your pardon, I was not sleeping; I was thinking.’
‘Well, you can think, if you want to, but you’ve got to
think to yourself; you disturb the whole neighbourhood.’
It was a poor joke, and it made the crowd laugh. I snore
at night sometimes, but it is not likely that I would do such
a thing in the daytime and in such a place. The officer
undecorated us, and seemed sorry for our friendlessness,
and really tried to be humane, but he said we mustn’t stop
there any longer or he would have to charge us rent—it was
the law, he said, and he went on to say in a sociable way
that I was looking pretty mouldy, and he wished he knew
——
I shut him off pretty austerely, and said I hoped one
might celebrate a little, these days, especially when one
was personally concerned.
‘Personally?’ he asked. ‘How?’
‘Because six hundred years ago an ancestor of mine
signed the Compact.’
He reflected a moment, than looked me over and said:
‘Ancestor! It’s my opinion you signed it yourself. For of
all the old ancient relics that ever I—but never mind about

that. What is it you are waiting here for so long?’
I said:
‘I’m not waiting here so long at all. I’m waiting fifteen
minutes till they forget a glove and a book and go back and
get them.’ Then I told him who they were that I had come
for.
He was very obliging, and began to shout inquiries to
the tiers of heads and shoulders projecting from the
windows above us. Then a woman away up there sang out:
‘Oh, they? Why, I got them a cab and they left here long
ago—half-past eight, I should say.’
It was annoying. I glanced at my watch, but didn’t say
anything. The officer said:
‘It is a quarter of twelve, you see. You should have
inquired better. You have been asleep three-quarters of an
hour, and in such a sun as this! You are baked—baked
black. It is wonderful. And you will miss your train,
perhaps. You interest me greatly. What is your occupation?’
I said I was a courier. It seemed to stun him, and before
he could come to we were gone.
When I arrived in the third story of the hotel I found
our quarters vacant. I was not surprised. The moment a
courier takes his eye off his tribe they go shopping. The
nearer it is to train time the surer they are to go. I sat down
to try and think out what I had best do next, but presently
the hall boy found me there, and said the Expedition had
gone to the station half an hour before. It was the first time
I had known them to do a rational thing, and it was very
confusing. This is one of the things that make a courier’s
life so difficult and uncertain. Just as matters are going the
smoothest, his people will strike a lucid interval, and down
go all his arrangements to wreck and ruin.
The train was to leave at twelve noon sharp. It was now
ten minutes after twelve. I could be at the station in ten

minutes. I saw I had no great amount of leeway, for this
was the lightning express, and on the Continent the
lightning expresses are pretty fastidious about getting
away some time during the advertised day. My people were
the only ones remaining in the waiting room; everybody
else had passed through and ‘mounted the train,’ as they
say in those regions. They were exhausted with
nervousness and fret, but I comforted them and heartened
them up, and we made our rush.
But no; we were out of luck again. The doorkeeper was
not satisfied with the tickets. He examined them cautiously,
deliberately, suspiciously: then glared at me awhile, and
after that he called another official. The two examined the
tickets and called another official. These called others, and
the convention discussed and discussed, and gesticulated
and carried on until I begged that they would consider how
time was flying, and just pass a few resolutions and let us
go. Then they said very courteously that there was a defect
in the tickets, and asked me where I got them.
I judged I saw what the trouble was, now. You see, I
had bought the tickets in a cigar shop, and of course the
tobacco smell was on them: without doubt the thing they
were up to was to work the tickets through the Custom
House and to collect duty on that smell. So I resolved to be
perfectly frank: it is sometimes the best way. I said:
‘Gentlemen, I will not deceive you. These railway
tickets——’
‘Ah! pardon, monsieur! These are not railway tickets.’
‘Oh,’ I said, ‘is that the defect?’
‘Ah, truly yes, monsieur. These are lottery tickets, yes;
and it is a lottery which has been drawn two years ago.’
I affected to be greatly amused; it is all one can do in
such circumstances; it is all one can do, and yet there is no
value in it; it deceives nobody, and you can see that

everybody around pities you and is ashamed of you. One of
the hardest situations in life, I think, is to be full of grief
and a sense of defeat and shabbiness that way, and yet
have to put on an outside of archness and gaiety, while all
the time you know that your own expedition, the treasures
of your heart, and whose love and reverence you are by the
custom of our civilisation entitled to, are being consumed
with humiliation before strangers to see you earning and
getting a compassion, which is a stigma, a brand—a brand
which certifies you to be—oh, anything and everything
which is fatal to human respect.
I said, cheerily, it was all right, just one of those little
accidents that was likely to happen to anybody—I would
have the right tickets in two minutes, and we would catch
the train yet, and, moreover, have something to laugh about
all through the journey. I did get the tickets in time, all
stamped and complete; but then it turned out that I
couldn’t take them, because, in taking so much pains about
the two missing members, I had skipped the bank and
hadn’t the money. So then the train left, and there didn’t
seem to be anything to do but go back to the hotel, which
we did; but it was kind of melancholy and not much said. I
tried to start a few subjects, like scenery and
transubstantiation, and those sorts of things, but they
didn’t seem to hit the weather right.
We had lost our good rooms, but we got some others
which were pretty scattering, but would answer. I judged
things would brighten now, but the Head of the Expedition
said, ‘Send up the trunks.’ It made me feel pretty cold.
There was a doubtful something about that trunk business.
I was almost sure of it. I was going to suggest——
But a wave of the hand sufficiently restrained me, and I
was informed that we would now camp for three days and
see if we could rest up.

I said all right, never mind ringing; I would go down
and attend to the trunks myself. I got a cab and went
straight to Mr. Charles Natural’s place, and asked what
order it was I had left there.
‘To send seven trunks to the hotel.’
‘And were you to bring any back?’
‘No.’
‘You are sure I didn’t tell you to bring back seven that
would be found piled in the lobby?’
‘Absolutely sure you didn’t.’
‘Then the whole fourteen are gone to Zurich or Jericho
or somewhere, and there is going to be more débris around
that hotel when the Expedition——’
I didn’t finish, because my mind was getting to be in a
good deal of a whirl, and when you are that way you think
you have finished a sentence when you haven’t, and you go
mooning and dreaming away, and the first thing you know
you get run over by a dray or a cow or something.
I left the cab there—I forgot it—and on my way back I
thought it all out and concluded to resign, because
otherwise I should be nearly sure to be discharged. But I
didn’t believe it would be a good idea to resign in person; I
could do it by message. So I sent for Mr. Ludi and explained
that there was a courier going to resign on account of
incompatibility or fatigue or something, and as he had four
or five vacant days, I would like to insert him into that
vacancy if he thought he could fill it. When everything was
arranged I got him to go up and say to the Expedition that,
owing to an error made by Mr. Natural’s people, we were
out of trunks here, but would have plenty in Zurich, and
we’d better take the first train, freight, gravel, or
construction, and move right along.
He attended to that and came down with an invitation
for me to go up—yes, certainly; and, while we walked along

over to the bank to get money, and collect my cigars and
tobacco, and to the cigar shop to trade back the lottery
tickets and get my umbrella, and to Mr. Natural’s to pay
that cab and send it away, and to the county jail to get my
rubbers and leave p. p. c. cards for the Mayor and Supreme
Court, he described the weather to me that was prevailing
on the upper levels there with the Expedition, and I saw
that I was doing very well where I was.
I stayed out in the woods till 4 P.M., to let the weather
moderate, and then turned up at the station just in time to
take the three o’clock express for Zurich along with the
Expedition, now in the hands of Ludi, who conducted its
complex affairs with little apparent effort or inconvenience.
Well, I had worked like a slave while I was in office, and
done the very best I knew how; yet all that these people
dwelt upon or seemed to care to remember was the defects
of my administration, not its creditable features. They
would skip over a thousand creditable features to remark
upon and reiterate and fuss about just one fact, till it
seemed to me they would wear it out; and not much of a
fact, either, taken by itself—the fact that I elected myself
courier in Geneva, and put in work enough to carry a circus
to Jerusalem, and yet never even got my gang out of the
town. I finally said I didn’t wish to hear any more about the
subject, it made me tired. And I told them to their faces
that I would never be a courier again to save anybody’s life.
And if I live long enough I’ll prove it. I think it’s a difficult,
brain-racking, overworked, and thoroughly ungrateful
office, and the main bulk of its wages is a sore heart and a
bruised spirit.

THE GERMAN CHICAGO

I feel lost, in Berlin. It has no resemblance to the city I had
supposed it was. There was once a Berlin, which I would
have known, from descriptions in books—the Berlin of the
last century and the beginning of the present one: a dingy
city in a marsh, with rough streets, muddy and lantern-
lighted, dividing straight rows of ugly houses all alike,
compacted into blocks as square and plain and uniform and
monotonous and serious as so many dry-goods boxes. But
that Berlin has disappeared. It seems to have disappeared
totally, and left no sign. The bulk of the Berlin of to-day has
about it no suggestion of a former period. The site it stands
on has traditions and a history, but the city itself has no
traditions and no history. It is a new city, the newest I have
ever seen. Chicago would seem venerable beside it; for
there are many old-looking districts in Chicago, but not
many in Berlin. The main mass of the city looks as if it had
been built last week; the rest of it has a just perceptibly
graver tone, and looks as if it might be six or even eight
months old.
The next feature that strikes one is the spaciousness,
the roominess of the city. There is no other city, in any
country, whose streets are so generally wide. Berlin is not
merely a city of wide streets, it is the city of wide streets.
As a wide-street city it has never had its equal, in any age
of the world. ‘Unter den Linden’ is three streets in one; the
Potsdamerstrasse is bordered on both sides by sidewalks

which are themselves wider than some of the historic
thoroughfares of the old European capitals; there seem to
be no lanes or alleys; there are no short-cuts; here and
there, where several important streets empty into a
common centre, that centre’s circumference is of a
magnitude calculated to bring that word spaciousness into
your mind again. The park in the middle of the city is so
huge that it calls up that expression once more.
The next feature that strikes one is the straightness of
the streets. The short ones haven’t so much as a waver in
them; the long ones stretch out to prodigious distances and
then tilt a little to the right or left, then stretch out on
another immense reach as straight as a ray of light. A
result of this arrangement is, that at night Berlin is an
inspiring sight to see. Gas and the electric light are
employed with a wasteful liberality, and so, wherever one
goes, he has always double ranks of brilliant lights
stretching far down into the night on every hand, with here
and there a wide and splendid constellation of them spread
out over an intervening ‘Platz’; and between the
interminable double procession of street lamps one has the
swarming and darting cab lamps, a lively and pretty
addition to the fine spectacle, for they counterfeit the rush
and confusion and sparkle of an invasion of fire-flies.
There is one other noticeable feature—the absolutely
level surface of the site of Berlin. Berlin—to capitulate—is
newer to the eye than is any other city, and also blonder of
complexion and tidier; no other city has such an air of
roominess, freedom from crowding; no other city has so
many straight streets; and with Chicago it contests the
chromo for flatness of surface and for phenomenal
swiftness of growth. Berlin is the European Chicago. The
two cities have about the same population—say a million
and a half. I cannot speak in exact terms, because I only
know what Chicago’s population was week before last; but

at that time it was about a million and a half. Fifteen years
ago Berlin and Chicago were large cities, of course, but
neither of them was the giant it now is.
But now the parallels fail. Only parts of Chicago are
stately and beautiful, whereas all of Berlin is stately and
substantial, and it is not merely in parts but uniformly
beautiful. There are buildings in Chicago that are
architecturally finer than any in Berlin, I think, but what I
have just said above is still true. These two flat cities would
lead the world for phenomenal good health if London were
out of the way. As it is, London leads, by a point or two.
Berlin’s death rate is only nineteen in the thousand.
Fourteen years ago the rate was a third higher.
Berlin is a surprise in a great many ways—in a
multitude of ways, to speak strongly and be exact. It seems
to be the most governed city in the world, but one must
admit that it also seems to be the best governed. Method
and system are observable on every hand—in great things,
in little things, in all details, of whatsoever size. And it is
not method and system on paper, and there an end—it is
method and system in practice. It has a rule for everything,
and puts the rule in force; puts it in force against the poor
and powerful alike, without favour or prejudice. It deals
with great matters and minute particulars with equal
faithfulness, and with a plodding and painstaking diligence
and persistency which compel admiration—and sometimes
regret. There are several taxes, and they are collected
quarterly. Collected is the word; they are not merely levied,
they are collected—every time. This makes light taxes. It is
in cities and countries where a considerable part of the
community shirk payment that taxes have to be lifted to a
burdensome rate. Here the police keep coming, calmly and
patiently, until you pay your tax. They charge you five or
ten cents per visit after the first call. By experiment you
will find that they will presently collect that money.

In one respect the million and a half of Berlin’s
population are like a family; the head of this large family
knows the names of its several members, and where the
said members are located, and when and where they were
born, and what they do for a living, and what their religious
brand is. Whoever comes to Berlin must furnish these
particulars to the police immediately; moreover, if he
knows how long he is going to stay, he must say so. If he
take a house he will be taxed on the rent and taxed also on
his income. He will not be asked what his income is, and so
he may save some lies for home consumption. The police
will estimate his income from the house-rent he pays, and
tax him on that basis.
Duties on imported articles are collected with inflexible
fidelity, be the sum large or little; but the methods are
gentle, prompt, and full of the spirit of accommodation. The
postman attends to the whole matter for you, in cases
where the article comes by mail, and you have no trouble,
and suffer no inconvenience. The other day a friend of mine
was informed that there was a package in the post-office
for him, containing a lady’s silk belt with gold clasp, and a
gold chain to hang a bunch of keys on. In his first agitation
he was going to try to bribe the postman to chalk it
through, but acted upon his sober second thought, and
allowed the matter to take its proper and regular course. In
a little while the postman brought the package and made
these several collections: duty on the silk belt, 7½ cents;
duty on the gold chain, 10 cents; charge for fetching the
package, 5 cents. These devastating imposts are exacted
for the protection of German home industries.
The calm, quiet, courteous, cussed persistence of the
police is the most admirable thing I have encountered on
this side. They undertook to persuade me to send and get a
passport for a Swiss maid whom we had brought with us,
and at the end of six weeks of patient, tranquil, angelic

daily effort they succeeded. I was not intending to give
them trouble, but I was lazy, and I thought they would get
tired. Meanwhile they probably thought I would be the one.
It turned out just so.
One is not allowed to build unstable, unsafe, or
unsightly houses in Berlin; the result is this comely and
conspicuously stately city, with its security from
conflagrations and break-downs. It is built of architectural
Gibraltars. The Building Commissioners inspect while the
building is going up. It has been found that this is better
than to wait till it falls down. These people are full of
whims.
One is not allowed to cram poor folk into cramped and
dirty tenement houses. Each individual must have just so
many cubic feet of room-space, and sanitary inspections
are systematic and frequent.
Everything is orderly. The fire brigade march in rank,
curiously uniformed, and so grave is their demeanour that
they look like a Salvation Army under conviction of sin.
People tell me that when a fire alarm is sounded, the
firemen assemble calmly, answer to their names when the
roll is called, then proceed to the fire. There they are
ranked up, military fashion, and told off in detachments by
the chief, who parcels out to the detachments the several
parts of the work which they are to undertake in putting
out that fire. This is all done with low-voiced propriety, and
strangers think these people are working a funeral. As a
rule the fire is confined to a single floor in these great
masses of bricks and masonry, and consequently there is
little or no interest attaching to a fire here for the rest of
the occupants of the house.
There are abundance of newspapers in Berlin, and
there was also a newsboy, but he died. At intervals of half a
mile on the thoroughfares there are booths, and it is at
these that you buy your papers. There are plenty of

theatres, but they do not advertise in a loud way. There are
no big posters of any kind, and the display of vast type and
of pictures of actors and performance, framed on a big
scale and done in rainbow colours, is a thing unknown. If
the big show-bills existed there would be no place to
exhibit them; for there are no poster-fences, and one would
not be allowed to disfigure dead walls with them. Unsightly
things are forbidden here; Berlin is a rest to the eye.
And yet the saunterer can easily find out what is going
on at the theatres. All over the city, at short distances
apart, there are neat round pillars eighteen feet high and
about as thick as a hogshead, and on these the little black-
and-white theatre bills and other notices are posted. One
generally finds a group around each pillar reading these
things. There are plenty of things in Berlin worth importing
to America. It is these that I have particularly wished to
make a note of. When Buffalo Bill was here his biggest
poster was probably not larger than the top of an ordinary
trunk.
There is a multiplicity of clean and comfortable horse-
cars, but whenever you think you know where a car is
going to, you would better stop ashore, because that car is
not going to that place at all. The car-routes are
marvellously intricate, and often the drivers get lost and
are not heard of for years. The signs on the cars furnish no
details as to the course of the journey; they name the end
of it, and then experiment around to see how much
territory they can cover before they get there. The
conductor will collect your fare over again, every few miles,
and give you a ticket which he hasn’t apparently kept any
record of, and you keep it till an inspector comes aboard
by-and-by and tears a corner off it (which he does not
keep), then you throw the ticket away and get ready to buy
another. Brains are of no value when you are trying to
navigate Berlin in a horse-car. When the ablest of

Brooklyn’s editors was here on a visit he took a horse-car in
the early morning and wore it out trying to go to a point in
the centre of the city. He was on board all day and spent
many dollars in fares, and then did not arrive at the place
which he had started to go to. This is the most thorough
way to see Berlin, but it is also the most expensive.
But there are excellent features about the car system,
nevertheless. The car will not stop for you to get on or off,
except at certain places a block or two apart, where there
is a sign to indicate that that is a halting station. This
system saves many bones. There are twenty places inside
the car; when these seats are filled, no more can enter.
Four or five persons may stand on each platform—the law
decrees the number—and when these standing places are
all occupied the next applicant is refused. As there is no
crowding, and as no rowdyism is allowed, women stand on
the platforms as well as men; they often stand there when
there are vacant seats inside, for these places are
comfortable, there being little or no jolting. A native tells
me that when the first car was put on, thirty or forty years
ago, the public had such a terror of it that they didn’t feel
safe inside of it, or outside either. They made the company
keep a man at every crossing with a red flag in his hand.
Nobody would travel in the car except convicts on the way
to the gallows. This made business in only one direction,
and the car had to go back light. To save the company, the
city government transferred the convict cemetery to the
other end of the line. This made traffic in both directions,
and kept the company from going under. This sounds like
some of the information which travelling foreigners are
furnished with in America. To my mind it has a doubtful
ring about it.
The first-class cab is neat and trim, and has leather-
cushion seats and a swift horse. The second-class cab is an
ugly and lubberly vehicle, and is always old. It seems a

strange thing that they have never built any new ones. Still,
if such a thing were done everybody that had time to flock
would flock to see it, and that would make a crowd, and the
police do not like crowds and disorder here. If there were
an earthquake in Berlin the police would take charge of it,
and conduct it in that sort of orderly way that would make
you think it was a prayer meeting. That is what an
earthquake generally ends in, but this one would be
different from those others; it would be kind of soft and
self-contained, like a republican praying for a mugwump.
For a course (a quarter of an hour or less), one pays
twenty-five cents in a first-class cab, and fifteen cents in a
second-class. The first-class will take you along faster, for
the second-class horse is old—always old—as old as his cab,
some authorities say—and ill-fed and weak. He has been a
first-class once, but has been degraded to second-class for
long and faithful service.
Still, he must take you as far for fifteen cents as the
other horse takes you for twenty-five. If he can’t do his
fifteen-minute distance in fifteen minutes, he must still do
the distance for the fifteen cents. Any stranger can check
the distance off—by means of the most curious map I am
acquainted with. It is issued by the city government and
can be bought in any shop for a trifle. In it every street is
sectioned off, like a string of long beads of different
colours. Each long bead represents a minute’s travel, and
when you have covered fifteen of the beads you have got
your money’s worth. This map of Berlin is a gay-coloured
maze, and looks like pictures of the circulation of the blood.
The streets are very clean. They are kept so—not by
prayer and talk, and the other New York methods, but by
daily and hourly work with scrapers and brooms; and when
an asphalted street has been tidily scraped after a rain or a
light snowfall, they scatter clean sand over it. This saves
some of the horses from falling down. In fact, this is a city

government which seems to stop at no expense where the
public convenience, comfort, and health are concerned—
except in one detail. That is the naming of the streets and
the numbering of the houses. Sometimes the name of a
street will change in the middle of a block. You will not find
it out till you get to the next corner and discover the new
name on the wall, and of course you don’t know just when
the change happened.
The names are plainly marked on the corners—on all
the corners—there are no exceptions. But the numbering of
the houses—there has never been anything like it since
original chaos. It is not possible that it was done by this
wise city government. At first one thinks it was done by an
idiot; but there is too much variety about it for that; an
idiot could not think of so many different ways of making
confusion and propagating blasphemy. The numbers run up
one side the street and down the other. That is endurable,
but the rest isn’t. They often use one number for three or
four houses—and sometimes they put the number on only
one of the houses, and let you guess at the others.
Sometimes they put a number on a house—4, for instance—
then put 4a, 4b, 4c, on the succeeding houses, and one
becomes old and decrepit before he finally arrives at 5. A
result of this systemless system is, that when you are at No.
1 in a street, you haven’t any idea how far it may be to No.
150; it may be only six or eight blocks, it may be a couple of
miles. Frederick Street is long, and is one of the great
thoroughfares. The other day a man put up his money
behind the assertion that there were more refreshment
places in that street than numbers on the houses—and he
won. There were 254 numbers and 257 refreshment places.
Yet, as I have said, it is a long street.
But the worst feature of all this complex business is,
that in Berlin the numbers do not travel in any one
direction; no, they travel along until they get to 50 or 60,

perhaps, then suddenly you find yourself up in the
hundreds—140, maybe; the next will be 139—then you
perceive by that sign that the numbers are now travelling
towards you from the opposite direction. They will keep
that sort of insanity up as long as you travel that street;
every now and then the numbers will turn and run the
other way. As a rule there is an arrow under the number, to
show by the direction of its flight which way the numbers
are proceeding. There are a good many suicides in Berlin—
I have seen six reported in a single day. There is always a
deal of learned and laborious arguing and ciphering going
on as to the cause of this state of things. If they will set to
work and number their houses in a rational way, perhaps
they will find out what was the matter.
More than a month ago Berlin began to prepare to
celebrate Professor Virchow’s seventieth birthday. When
the birthday arrived, the middle of October, it seemed to
me that all the world of science arrived with it; deputation
after deputation came, bringing the homage and reverence
of far cities and centres of learning, and during the whole
of a long day the hero of it sat and received such witness of
his greatness as has seldom been vouchsafed to any man in
any walk of life in any time ancient or modern. These
demonstrations were continued in one form or another day
after day, and were presently merged in similar
demonstrations to his twin in science and achievement,
Professor Helmholtz, whose seventieth birthday is
separated from Virchow’s by only about three weeks; so
nearly as this did these two extraordinary men come to
being born together. Two such births have seldom
signalised a single year in human history.
But perhaps the final and closing demonstration was
peculiarly grateful to them. This was a Commers given in
their honour the other night, by a thousand students. It was
held in a huge hall, very long and very lofty, which had five

galleries, far above everybody’s head, which were crowded
with ladies—four or five hundred, I judged.
It was beautifully decorated with clustered flags and
various ornamental devices, and was brilliantly lighted. On
the spacious floor of this place were ranged, in files,
innumerable tables, seating twenty-four persons each,
extending from one end of the great hall clear to the other,
and with narrow aisles between the files. In the centre, on
one side, was a high and tastefully decorated platform
twenty or thirty feet long, with a long table on it behind
which sat the half dozen chiefs of the givers of the
Commers in the rich mediæval costumes of as many
different college corps. Behind these youths a band of
musicians was concealed. On the floor, directly in front of
this platform, were half a dozen tables which were
distinguished from the outlying continent of tables by being
covered instead of left naked. Of these the central table
was reserved for the two heroes of the occasion and twenty
particularly eminent professors of the Berlin University,
and the other covered tables were for the occupancy of a
hundred less distinguished professors.
I was glad to be honoured with a place at the table of
the two heroes of the occasion, although I was not really
learned enough to deserve it. Indeed there was a pleasant
strangeness in being in such company; to be thus
associated with twenty-three men who forget more every
day than I ever knew. Yet there was nothing embarrassing
about it, because loaded men and empty ones look about
alike, and I knew that to that multitude there I was a
professor. It required but little art to catch the ways and
attitude of those men and imitate them, and I had no
difficulty in looking as much like a professor as anybody
there.
We arrived early; so early that only Professors Virchow
and Helmholtz and a dozen guests of the special tables

were ahead of us, and three or four hundred students. But
people were arriving in floods, now, and within fifteen
minutes all but the special tables were occupied, and the
great house was crammed, the aisles included. It was said
that there were four thousand men present. It was a most
animated scene, there is no doubt about that; it was a
stupendous beehive. At each end of each table stood a
corps student in the uniform of his corps. These quaint
costumes are of brilliant-coloured silks and velvets, with
sometimes a high plumed hat, sometimes a broad Scotch
cap, with a great plume wound about it, sometimes—
oftenest—a little shallow silk cap on the tip of the crown,
like an inverted saucer; sometimes the pantaloons are
snow-white, sometimes of other colours; the boots in all
cases come up well above the knee; and in all cases also
white gauntlets are worn; the sword is a rapier with a bowl-
shaped guard for the hand, painted in several colours. Each
corps has a uniform of its own, and all are of rich material,
brilliant in colour, and exceedingly picturesque; for they
are survivals of the vanished costumes of the Middle Ages,
and they reproduce for us the time when men were
beautiful to look at. The student who stood guard at our
end of the table was of grave countenance and great frame
and grace of form, and he was doubtless an accurate
reproduction, clothes and all, of some ancestor of his of two
or three centuries ago—a reproduction as far as the
outside, the animal man, goes, I mean.
As I say, the place was now crowded. The nearest aisle
was packed with students standing up, and they made a
fence which shut off the rest of the house from view. As far
down this fence as you could see, all these wholesome
young faces were turned in one direction, all these intent
and worshipping eyes were centred upon one spot—the
place where Virchow and Helmholtz sat. The boys seemed
lost to everything, unconscious of their own existence; they

devoured these two intellectual giants with their eyes, they
feasted upon them, and the worship that was in their hearts
shone in their faces. It seemed to me that I would rather be
flooded with a glory like that, instinct with sincerity,
innocent of self-seeking, than win a hundred battles and
break a million hearts.
There was a big mug of beer in front of each of us, and
more to come when wanted. There was also a quarto
pamphlet containing the words of the songs to be sung.
After the names of the officers of the feast were these
words in large type:
Während des Kommerses herrscht allgemeiner Burgfriede.
I was not able to translate this to my satisfaction, but a
professor helped me out. This was his explanation: The
students in uniform belong to different college corps; not
all students belong to corps; none join the corps except
those who enjoy fighting. The corps students fight duels
with swords every week, one corps challenging another
corps to furnish a certain number of duellists for the
occasion, and it is only on this battle-field that students of
different corps exchange courtesies. In common life they do
not drink with each other or speak. The above line now
translates itself: There is truce during the Commers, war is
laid aside, and fellowship takes its place.
Now the performance began. The concealed band
played a piece of martial music; then there was a pause.
The students on the platform rose to their feet, the middle
one gave a toast to the Emperor, then all the house rose,
mugs in hand. At the call ‘One-two-three!’ all glasses were
drained and then brought down with a slam on the tables in
unison. The result was as good an imitation of thunder as I
have ever heard. From now on, during an hour, there was
singing, in mighty chorus. During each interval between
songs a number of the special guests—the professors—
arrived. There seemed to be some signal whereby the

students on the platform were made aware that a professor
had arrived at the remote door of entrance; for you would
see them suddenly rise to their feet, strike an erect military
attitude, then draw their swords; the swords of all their
brethren standing guard at the innumerable tables would
flash from the scabbards and be held aloft—a handsome
spectacle. Three clear bugle notes would ring out, then all
these swords would come down with a crash, twice
repeated, on the tables, and be uplifted and held aloft
again; then in the distance you would see the gay uniforms
and uplifted swords of a guard of honour, clearing the way
and conducting the guest down to his place. The songs
were stirring; the immense outpour from young life and
young lungs, the crash of swords and the thunder of the
beer-mugs, gradually worked a body up to what seemed the
last possible summit of excitement. It surely seemed to me
that I had reached that summit, that I had reached my
limit, and that there was no higher lift desirable for me.
When apparently the last eminent guest had long ago taken
his place, again those three bugle blasts rang out, and once
more the swords leaped from their scabbards. Who might
this late comer be? Nobody was interested to inquire. Still,
indolent eyes were turned towards the distant entrance; we
saw the silken gleam and the lifted swords of a guard of
honour ploughing through the remote crowds. Then we saw
that end of the house rising to its feet; saw it rise abreast
the advancing guard all along, like a wave. This supreme
honour had been offered to no one before. Then there was
an excited whisper at our table—‘Mommsen!’ and the whole
house rose. Rose and shouted and stamped and clapped,
and banged the beer-mugs. Just simply a storm. Then the
little man with his long hair and Emersonian face edged his
way past us and took his seat. I could have touched him
with my hand—Mommsen!—think of it!

This was one of those immense surprises that can
happen only a few times in one’s life. I was not dreaming of
him, he was to me only a giant myth, a world-shadowing
spectre, not a reality. The surprise of it all can be only
comparable to a man’s suddenly coming upon Mont Blanc,
with its awful form towering into the sky, when he didn’t
suspect he was in its neighbourhood. I would have walked a
great many miles to get a sight of him, and here he was,
without trouble or tramp or cost of any kind. Here he was,
clothed in a Titanic, deceptive modesty which made him
look like other men. Here he was, carrying the Roman
world and all the Cæsars in his hospitable skull, and doing
it as easily as that other luminous vault, the skull of the
universe, carries the Milky Way and the constellations.
One of the professors said that once upon a time an
American young lady was introduced to Mommsen, and
found herself badly scared and speechless. She dreaded to
see his mouth unclose, for she was expecting him to choose
a subject several miles above her comprehension, and
didn’t suppose he could get down to the world that other
people lived in; but when his remark came, her terrors
disappeared:
‘Well, how do you do? Have you read Howells’s last
book? I think it’s his best.’
The active ceremonies of the evening closed with the
speeches of welcome, delivered by two students, and the
replies made by Professors Virchow and Helmholtz.
Virchow has long been a member of the city
government of Berlin. He works as hard for the city as does
any other Berlin alderman, and gets the same pay—
nothing. I don’t know that we in America could venture to
ask our most illustrious citizen to serve in a board of
aldermen, and if we might venture it I am not positively
sure that we could elect him. But here the municipal
system is such that the best men in the city consider it an

honour to serve gratis as aldermen, and the people have
the good sense to prefer these men, and to elect them year
after year. As a result, Berlin is a thoroughly well-governed
city. It is a free city; its affairs are not meddled with by the
State; they are managed by its own citizens, and after
methods of their own devising.

A PETITION TO THE QUEEN OF
ENGLAND

Hartford: Nov. 6, 1887.

Madam,—You will remember that last May Mr. Edward
Bright, the clerk of the Inland Revenue Office, wrote me
about a tax which he said was due from me to the
Government on books of mine published in London—that is
to say, an income tax on the royalties. I do not know Mr.
Bright, and it is embarrassing to me to correspond with
strangers; for I was raised in the country and have always
lived there, the early part in Marion county, Missouri,
before the war, and this part in Hartford county,
Connecticut, near Bloomfield, and about eight miles this
side of Farmington, though some call it nine, which it is
impossible to be, for I have walked it many and many a
time in considerably under three hours, and General
Hawley says he has done it in two and a quarter, which is
not likely; so it has seemed best that I write your Majesty. It
is true that I do not know your Majesty personally, but I
have met the Lord Mayor, and if the rest of the family are
like him, it is but just that it should be named royal; and
likewise plain that in a family matter like this, I cannot
better forward my case than to frankly carry it to the head
of the family itself. I have also met the Prince of Wales
once, in the fall of 1873, but it was not in any familiar way,
but in a quite informal way, being casual, and was, of

course, a surprise to us both. It was in Oxford Street, just
where you come out off Oxford into Regent Circus, and just
as he turned up one side of the circle at the head of a
procession, I went down the other side on the top of an
omnibus. He will remember me on account of a grey coat
with flap pockets that I wore, as I was the only person on
the omnibus that had on that kind of a coat; I remember
him, of course, as easy as I would a comet. He looked quite
proud and satisfied, but that is not to be wondered at, he
has a good situation. And once I called on your Majesty, but
you were out.
But that is no matter, it happens with everybody.
However, I have wandered a little away from what I started
about. It was this way. Young Bright wrote my London
publishers, Chatto and Windus—their place is the one on
the left as you come down Piccadilly, about a block and a
half above where the minstrel show is—he wrote them that
he wanted them to pay income tax on the royalties of some
foreign authors, namely, ‘Miss De La Ramé (Ouida), Dr.
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Mr. Francis Bret Harte, and Mr.
Mark Twain.’ Well, Mr. Chatto diverted him from the
others, and tried to divert him from me, but in this case he
failed. So then young Bright wrote me. And not only that,
but he sent me a printed document the size of a newspaper,
for me to sign, all over in different places. Well, it was that
kind of a document that the more you study it the more it
undermines you, and makes everything seem uncertain to
you; and so, while in that condition, and really not
responsible for my acts, I wrote Mr. Chatto to pay the tax,
and charge to me. Of course my idea was, that it was for
only one year, and that the tax would be only about one per
cent. or along there somewhere, but last night I met
Professor Sloane of Princeton—you may not know him, but
you have probably seen him every now and then, for he
goes to England a good deal; a large man and very

handsome, and absorbed in thought, and if you have
noticed such a man on platforms after the train is gone,
that is the one, he generally gets left, like all those
specialists and other scholars who know everything but
how to apply it—and he said it was a back tax for three
years, and not one per cent. but two and a half!
That gave what had seemed a little matter a new
aspect. I then began to study the printed document again,
to see if I could find anything in it that might modify my
case, and I had what seems to be a quite promising
success. For instance, it opens thus—polite and courteous,
the way those English Government documents always are—
I do not say that to hear myself talk, it is just the fact, and
it is a credit:
‘To Mr. Mark Twain: IN PURSUANCE of the Acts of
Parliament for granting to Her Majesty Duties and Profits,’
&c.
I had not noticed that before. My idea had been that it
was for the Government, and so I wrote to the Government;
but now I saw that it was a private matter, a family matter,
and that the proceeds went to yourself, not the
Government. I would always rather treat with principals,
and I am glad I noticed that clause. With a principal one
can always get at a fair and right understanding, whether it
is about potatoes, or continents, or any of those things, or
something entirely different; for the size or nature of the
thing does not affect the fact; whereas, as a rule, a
subordinate is more or less troublesome to satisfy. And yet
this is not against them, but the other way. They have their
duties to do, and must be harnessed to rules, and not
allowed any discretion. Why, if your Majesty should equip
young Bright with discretion—I mean his own discretion—it
is an even guess that he would discretion you out of house
and home in two or three years. He would not mean to get
the family into straits, but that would be the upshot, just

the same. Now then, with Bright out of the way, this is not
going to be any Irish question; it is going to be settled
pleasantly and satisfactorily for all of us, and when it is
finished your Majesty is going to stand with the American
people just as you have stood for fifty years, and surely no
monarch can require better than that of an alien nation.
They do not all pay a British income tax, but the most of
them will in time, for we have shoals of new authors
coming along every year; and of the population of your
Canada, upwards of four-fifths are wealthy Americans, and
more going there all the time.
Well, another thing which I noticed in the document
was an item about ‘Deductions.’ I will come to that
presently, your Majesty. And another thing was this: that
Authors are not mentioned in the document at all. No, we
have ‘Quarries, Mines, Iron Works, Salt Springs, Alum
Mines, Water Works, Canals, Docks, Drains, Levels,
Fishings, Fairs, Tolls, Bridges, Ferries,’ and so forth and so
forth and so on—well, as much as a yard or a yard and a
half of them, I should think—anyway a very large quantity
or number. I read along—down, and down, and down the
list, further, and further, and further, and as I approached
the bottom my hopes began to rise higher and higher,
because I saw that everything in England, that far, was
taxed by name and in detail, except, perhaps, the family,
and may be Parliament, and yet still no mention of Authors.
Apparently they were going to be overlooked. And sure
enough, they were! My heart gave a great bound. But I was
too soon. There was a footnote, in Mr. Bright’s hand, which
said: ‘You are taxed under Schedule D, Section 14.’ I turned
to that place, and found these three things: ‘Trades,
Offices, Gas Works.’
Of course, after a moment’s reflection, hope came up
again, and then certainty: Mr. Bright was in error, and clear
off the track; for Authorship is not a Trade, it is an

inspiration; Authorship does not keep an Office, its
habitation is all out under the sky, and everywhere where
the winds are blowing and the sun is shining and the
creatures of God are free. Now then, since I have no Trade
and keep no Office, I am not taxable under Schedule D,
Section 14. Your Majesty sees that; so I will go on to that
other thing that I spoke of, the ‘Deductions’—deductions
from my tax which I may get allowed, under conditions. Mr.
Bright says all deductions to be claimed by me must be
restricted to the provisions made in Paragraph No. 8,
entitled ‘Wear and Tear of Machinery or Plant.’ This is
curious, and shows how far he has gotten away on his
wrong course after once he has got started wrong; for
Offices and Trades do not have Plant, they do not have
Machinery, such a thing was never heard of; and, moreover,
they do not wear and tear. You see that, your Majesty, and
that it is true. Here is the Paragraph No. 8:
‘Amount claimed as a deduction for diminished value by
reason of Wear and Tear, where the Machinery or Plant
belongs to the Person or Company carrying on the Concern,
or is let to such Person or Company so that the Lessee is
bound to maintain and deliver over the same in good
condition:—
Amount £.......................’
There it is—the very words.
I could answer Mr. Bright thus:
It is my pride to say that my Brain is my Plant; and I do
not claim any deduction for diminished value by reason of
Wear and Tear, for the reason that it does not wear and
tear, but stays sound and whole all the time. Yes, I could
say to him, my Brain is my Plant, my Skull is my Workshop,
my Hand is my Machinery, and I am the Person carrying on
the Concern; it is not leased to anybody, and so there is no
Lessee bound to maintain and deliver over the same in
good condition. There! I do not wish to any way overrate

this argument and answer, dashed off just so, and not a
word of it altered from the way I first wrote it, your
Majesty, but, indeed, it does seem to pulverise that young
fellow, you can see that yourself. But that is all I say; I stop
there; I never pursue a person after I have got him down.
Having thus shown your Majesty that I am not taxable,
but am the victim of the error of a clerk who mistakes the
nature of my commerce, it only remains for me to beg that
you will of your justice annul my letter that I spoke of, so
that my publisher can keep back that tax-money which, in
the confusion and aberration caused by the document, I
ordered him to pay. You will not miss the sum, but this is a
hard year for authors; and as for lectures, I do not suppose
your Majesty ever saw such a dull season.
With always great, and ever increasing, respect, I beg
to sign myself your Majesty’s servant to command,
Mark Twain.

Her Majesty the Queen, London.

A MAJESTIC LITERARY FOSSIL

If I were required to guess off-hand, and without collusion
with higher minds, what is the bottom cause of the amazing
material and intellectual advancement of the last fifty
years, I should guess that it was the modern-born and
previously nonexistent disposition on the part of men to
believe that a new idea can have value. With the long roll of
the mighty names of history present in our minds, we are
not privileged to doubt that for the past twenty or thirty
centuries every conspicuous civilisation in the world has
produced intellects able to invent and create the things
which make our day a wonder; perhaps we may be justified
in inferring, then, that the reason they did not do it was
that the public reverence for old ideas and hostility to new
ones always stood in their way, and was a wall they could
not break down or climb over. The prevailing tone of old
books regarding new ideas is one of suspicion and
uneasiness at times, and at other times contempt. By
contrast, our day is indifferent to old ideas, and even
considers that their age makes their value questionable,
but jumps at a new idea with enthusiasm and high hope—a
hope which is high because it has not been accustomed to
being disappointed. I make no guess as to just when this
disposition was born to us, but it certainly is ours, was not
possessed by any century before us, is our peculiar mark
and badge, and is doubtless the bottom reason why we are
a race of lightning-shod Mercuries, and proud of it—instead

of being, like our ancestors, a race of plodding crabs, and
proud of that.
So recent is this change from a three or four thousand
year twilight to the flash and glare of open day that I have
walked in both, and yet am not old. Nothing is to-day as it
was when I was an urchin; but when I was an urchin,
nothing was much different from what it had always been
in this world. Take a single detail, for example—medicine.
Galen could have come into my sick-room at any time
during my first seven years—I mean any day when it wasn’t
fishing weather, and there wasn’t any choice but school or
sickness—and he could have sat down there and stood my
doctor’s watch without asking a question. He would have
smelt around among the wilderness of cups and bottles and
phials on the table and the shelves, and missed not a
stench that used to glad him two thousand years before,
nor discovered one that was of a later date. He would have
examined me, and run across only one disappointment—I
was already salivated; I would have him there; for I was
always salivated, calomel was so cheap. He would get out
his lancet then; but I would have him again; our family
doctor didn’t allow blood to accumulate in the system.
However, he could take dipper and ladle, and freight me up
with old familiar doses that had come down from Adam to
his time and mine; and he could go out with a wheelbarrow
and gather weeds and offal, and build some more, while
those others were getting in their work. And if our
reverend doctor came and found him there, he would be
dumb with awe, and would get down and worship him.
Whereas, if Galen should appear among us to-day, he could
not stand anybody’s watch; he would inspire no awe; he
would be told he was a back number, and it would surprise
him to see that that fact counted against him, instead of in
his favour. He wouldn’t know our medicines; he wouldn’t

know our practice; and the first time he tried to introduce
his own, we would hang him.
This introduction brings me to my literary relic. It is a
Dictionary of Medicine, by Dr. James, of London, assisted
by Mr. Boswell’s Doctor Samuel Johnson, and is a hundred
and fifty years old, it having been published at the time of
the rebellion of ‘45. If it had been sent against the
Pretender’s troops there probably wouldn’t have been a
survivor. In 1861 this deadly book was still working the
cemeteries—down in Virginia. For three generations and a
half it had been going quietly along, enriching the earth
with its slain. Up to its last free day it was trusted and
believed in, and its devastating advice taken, as was shown
by notes inserted between its leaves. But our troops
captured it and brought it home, and it has been out of
business since. These remarks from its preface are in the
true spirit of the olden time, sodden with worship of the
old, disdain of the new:
‘If we inquire into the Improvements which have been
made by the Moderns, we shall be forced to confess that we
have so little Reason to value ourselves beyond the
Antients, or to be tempted to contemn them, that we cannot
give stronger or more convincing Proofs of our own
Ignorance, as well as our Pride.
‘Among all the systematical Writers, I think there are
very few who refuse the Preference to Hieron, Fabricius ab
Aquapendente, as a Person of unquestion’d Learning and
Judgment; and yet is he not asham’d to let his Readers
know that Celsus among the Latins, Paulus Aegineta among
the Greeks, and Albucasis among the Arabians, whom I am
unwilling to place among the Moderns, tho’ he liv’d but six
hundred Years since, are the Triumvirate to whom he
principally stands indebted, for the Assistance he had
receiv’d from them in composing his excellent Book.

‘[In a previous paragraph are puffs of Galen,
Hippocrates, and other débris of the Old Silurian Period of
Medicine.] How many Operations are there now in Use
which were unknown to the Antients?’
That is true. The surest way for a nation’s scientific
men to prove that they were proud and ignorant was to
claim to have found out something fresh in the course of a
thousand years or so. Evidently the people of this book’s
day regarded themselves as children, and their remote
ancestors as the only grown-up people that had existed.
Consider the contrast: without offence, without over-
egotism, our own scientific men may and do regard
themselves as grown people and their grandfathers as
children. The change here presented is probably the most
sweeping that has ever come over mankind in the history of
the race. It is the utter reversal, in a couple of generations,
of an attitude which had been maintained without
challenge or interruption from the earliest antiquity. It
amounts to creating man over again on a new plan; he was
a canal boat before, he is an ocean greyhound to-day. The
change from reptile to bird was not more tremendous, and
it took longer.
It is curious. If you read between the lines what this
author says about Brer Albucasis, you detect that in
venturing to compliment him he has to whistle a little to
keep his courage up, because Albucasis ‘liv’d but six
hundred Years since,’ and therefore came so uncomfortably
near being a ‘modern’ that one couldn’t respect him
without risk.
Phlebotomy, Venesection—terms to signify bleeding—
are not often heard in our day, because we have ceased to
believe that the best way to make a bank or a body healthy
is to squander its capital; but in our author’s time the
physician went around with a hatful of lancets on his
person all the time, and took a hack at every patient whom

he found still alive. He robbed his man of pounds and
pounds of blood at a single operation. The details of this
sort in this book make terrific reading. Apparently even the
healthy did not escape, but were bled twelve times a year,
on a particular day of the month, and exhaustively purged
besides. Here is a specimen of the vigorous old-time
practice; it occurs in our author’s adoring biography of a
Doctor Aretæus, a licensed assassin of Homer’s time, or
thereabouts:
‘In a Quinsey he used Venesection, and allow’d the
Blood to flow till the Patient was ready to faint away.’
There is no harm in trying to cure a headache—in our
day. You can’t do it, but you get more or less entertainment
out of trying, and that is something; besides, you live to tell
about it, and that is more. A century or so ago you could
have had the first of these features in rich variety, but you
might fail of the other once—and once would do. I quote:
‘As Dissections of Persons who have died of severe
Headaches, which have been related by Authors, are too
numerous to be inserted in this Place, we shall here
abridge some of the most curious and important
Observations relating to this Subject, collected by the
celebrated Bonetus.’
The celebrated Bonetus’s ‘Observation No. 1’ seems to
me a sufficient sample, all by itself, of what people used to
have to stand any time between the creation of the world
and the birth of your father and mine when they had the
disastrous luck to get a ‘Head-ach’:
‘A certain Merchant, about forty Years of Age, of a
Melancholic Habit, and deeply involved in the Cares of the
World, was, during the Dog-days, seiz’d with a violent pain
of his Head, which some time after oblig’d him to keep his
Bed.

‘I, being call’d, order’d Venesection in the Arms, the
Application of Leeches to the Vessels of his Nostrils,
Forehead, and Temples, as also to those behind his Ears; I
likewise prescrib’d the Application of Cupping-glasses, with
Scarification, to his Back: But, notwithstanding these
Precautions, he dy’d. If any Surgeon, skill’d in Arteriotomy,
had been present, I should have also order’d that
Operation.’
I looked for ‘Arteriotomy’ in this same Dictionary, and
found this definition, ‘The opening of an Artery with a View
of taking away Blood.’ Here was a person who was being
bled in the arms, forehead, nostrils, back, temples, and
behind the ears, yet the celebrated Bonetus was not
satisfied, but wanted to open an artery, ‘with a View’ to
inserting a pump, probably. ‘Notwithstanding these
Precautions’—he dy’d. No art of speech could more
quaintly convey this butcher’s innocent surprise. Now that
we know what the celebrated Bonetus did when he wanted
to relieve a Head-ach, it is no trouble to infer that if he
wanted to comfort a man that had a Stomach-ach he
disembowelled him.
I have given one ‘Observation’—a single Head-ach case;
but the celebrated Bonetus follows it with eleven more.
Without enlarging upon the matter, I merely note this
coincidence—they all ‘dy’d.’ Not one of these people got
well; yet this obtuse hyena sets down every little gory
detail of the several assassinations as complacently as if he
imagined he was doing a useful and meritorious work in
perpetuating the methods of his crimes. ‘Observations,’
indeed! They are confessions.
According to this book, ‘the Ashes of an Ass’s hoof
mix’d with Woman’s milk cures chilblains.’ Length of time
required not stated. Another item: ‘The constant Use of
Milk is bad for the Teeth, and causes them to rot, and
loosens the Gums.’ Yet in our day babies use it constantly

without hurtful results. This author thinks you ought to
wash out your mouth with wine before venturing to drink
milk. Presently, when we come to notice what fiendish
decoctions those people introduced into their stomachs by
way of medicine, we shall wonder that they could have
been afraid of milk.
It appears that they had false teeth in those days. They
were made of ivory sometimes, sometimes of bone, and
were thrust into the natural sockets, and lashed to each
other and to the neighbouring teeth with wires or with silk
threads. They were not to eat with, nor to laugh with,
because they dropped out when not in repose. You could
smile with them, but you had to practise first, or you would
overdo it. They were not for business, but just decoration.
They filled the bill according to their lights.
This author says ‘the Flesh of Swine nourishes above all
other eatables.’ In another place he mentions a number of
things, and says ‘these are very easy to be digested; so is
Pork.’ This is probably a lie. But he is pretty handy in that
line; and when he hasn’t anything of the sort in stock
himself he gives some other expert an opening. For
instance, under the head of ‘Attractives’ he introduces
Paracelsus, who tells of a nameless ‘Specific’—quantity of it
not set down—which is able to draw a hundred pounds of
flesh to itself—distance not stated—and then proceeds, ‘It
happened in our own Days that an Attractive of this Kind
drew a certain Man’s Lungs up into his Mouth, by which he
had the Misfortune to be suffocated.’ This is more than
doubtful. In the first place, his Mouth couldn’t
accommodate his Lungs—in fact, his Hat couldn’t; secondly,
his Heart being more eligibly Situated, it would have got
the Start of his Lungs, and being a lighter Body, it would
have Sail’d in ahead and Occupied the Premises; thirdly,
you will Take Notice, a Man with his Heart in his Mouth
hasn’t any Room left for his Lungs—he has got all he can

Attend to; and, finally, the Man must have had the
Attractive in his Hat, and when he saw what was going to
Happen he would have Remov’d it and Sat Down on it.
Indeed he would; and then how could it Choke him to
Death? I don’t believe the thing ever happened at all.
Paracelsus adds this effort: ‘I myself saw a Plaister
which attracted as much Water as was sufficient to fill a
Cistern; and by these very Attractives Branches may be
torn from Trees; and, which is still more surprising, a Cow
may be carried up into the Air.’ Paracelsus is dead now; he
was always straining himself that way.
They liked a touch of mystery along with their medicine
in the olden time; and the medicine-man of that day, like
the medicine-man of our Indian tribes, did what he could to
meet the requirement:
‘Arcanum. A Kind of Remedy whose Manner of
Preparation, or singular Efficacy, is industriously
concealed, in order to enhance its Value. By the Chymists it
is generally defined a thing secret, incorporeal, and
immortal, which cannot be Known by Man, unless by
Experience; for it is the Virtue of every thing, which
operates a thousand times more than the thing itself.’
To me the butt end of this explanation is not altogether
clear. A little of what they knew about natural history in the
early times is exposed here and there in the Dictionary.
‘The Spider. It is more common than welcome in
Houses. Both the Spider and its Web are used in Medicine:
The Spider is said to avert the Paroxysms of Fevers, if it be
apply’d to the Pulse of the Wrist, or the Temples; but it is
peculiarly recommended against a Quartan, being enclosed
in the Shell of a Hazlenut.
‘Among approved Remedies, I find that the distill’d
Water of Black Spiders is an excellent Cure for Wounds,

and that this was one of the choice Secrets of Sir Walter
Raleigh.
‘The Spider which some call the Catcher, or Wolf, being
beaten into a Plaister, then sew’d up in Linen, and apply’d
to the Forehead or Temples, prevents the Returns of a
Tertian.
‘There is another Kind of Spider, which spins a white,
fine, and thick Web. One of this Sort, wrapp’d in Leather,
and hung about the Arm, will avert the Fit of a Quartan.
Boil’d in Oil of Roses, and instilled into the Ears, it eases
Pains in those Parts. Dioscorides, Lib. 2, Cap. 68.
‘Thus we find that Spiders have in all Ages been
celebrated for their febrifuge Virtues; and it is worthy of
Remark, that a Spider is usually given to Monkeys, and is
esteem’d a sovereign Remedy for the Disorders those
Animals are principally subject to.’
Then follows a long account of how a dying woman,
who had suffered nine hours a day with an ague during
eight weeks, and who had been bled dry some dozens of
times meantime without apparent benefit, was at last
forced to swallow several wads of ‘Spiders-web,’
whereupon she straightway mended, and promptly got
well. So the sage is full of enthusiasm over the spider-webs,
and mentions only in the most casual way the
discontinuance of the daily bleedings, plainly never
suspecting that this had anything to do with the cure.
‘As concerning the venomous Nature of Spiders,
Scaliger takes notice of a certain Species of them (which he
had forgotten), whose Poison was of so great Force as to
affect one Vincentinus thro’ the Sole of his Shoe, by only
treading on it.’
The sage takes that in without a strain, but the
following case was a trifle too bulky for him, as his
comment reveals:

‘In Gascony, observes Scaliger, there is a very small
Spider, which, running over a Looking-glass, will crack the
same by the Force of her Poison. (A mere Fable.)’
But he finds no fault with the following facts:
‘Remarkable is the Enmity recorded between this
Creature and the Serpent, as also the Toad: Of the former it
is reported, That, lying (as he thinks securely) under the
Shadow of some Tree, the Spider lets herself down by her
Thread, and, striking her Proboscis or Sting into the Head,
with that Force and Efficacy, injecting likewise her
venomous Juice, that, wringing himself about, he
immediately grows giddy, and quickly after dies.
‘When the Toad is bit or stung in Fight with this
Creature, the Lizard, Adder, or other that is poisonous, she
finds relief from Plantain, to which she resorts. In her
Combat with the Toad, the Spider useth the same
Stratagem, as with the Serpent, hanging by her own
Thread from the Bough of some Tree, and striking her
Sting into her enemy’s Head, upon which the other,
enraged, swells up, and sometimes bursts.
‘To this Effect is the Relation of Erasmus, which he
saith he had from one of the Spectators, of a Person lying
along upon the Floor of his Chamber, in the Summer-time,
to sleep in a supine Posture, when a Toad, creeping out of
some green Rushes, brought just before in, to adorn the
Chimney, gets upon his Face, and with his Feet sits across
his Lips. To force off the Toad, says the Historian, would
have been accounted sudden Death to the Sleeper; and to
leave her there, very cruel and dangerous; so that upon
Consultation it was concluded to find out a Spider, which,
together with her Web, and the Window she was fasten’d
to, was brought carefully, and so contrived as to be held
perpendicularly to the Man’s Face; which was no sooner
done, but the Spider, discovering his Enemy, let himself
down, and struck in his Dart, afterwards betaking himself

up again to his Web; the Toad swell’d, but as yet kept his
Station: The second Wound is given quickly after by the
Spider, upon which he swells yet more, but remain’d alive
still.—The Spider, coming down again by his Thread, gives
the third Blow; and the Toad, taking off his Feet from over
the Man’s Mouth, fell off dead.’
To which the sage appends this grave remark, ‘And so
much for the historical Part.’ Then he passes on to a
consideration of ‘the Effects and Cure of the Poison.’
One of the most interesting things about this tragedy is
the double sex of the Toad, and also of the Spider.
Now the sage quotes from one Turner:
‘I remember, when a very young Practitioner, being
sent for to a certain Woman, whose Custom was usually,
when she went to the Cellar by Candlelight, to go also a
Spider-hunting, setting Fire to their Webs, and burning
them with the Flame of the Candle still as she pursued
them. It happen’d at length, after this Whimsy had been
follow’d a long time, one of them sold his Life much dearer
than those Hundreds she had destroy’d; for, lighting upon
the melting Tallow of her Candle, near the Flame, and his
legs being entangled therein, so that he could not extricate
himself, the Flame or Heat coming on, he was made a
Sacrifice to his cruel Persecutor, who, delighting her Eyes
with the Spectacle, still waiting for the Flame to take hold
of him, he presently burst with a great Crack, and threw
his Liquor, some into her Eyes, but mostly upon her Lips;
by means of which, flinging away her Candle, she cry’d out
for Help, as fansying herself kill’d already with the Poison.
However, in the Night, her Lips swell’d up excessively, and
one of her Eyes was much inflam’d; also her Tongue and
Gums were somewhat affected; and, whether from the
Nausea excited by the Thoughts of the Liquor getting into
her Mouth, or from the poisonous Impressions
communicated by the Nervous Fibrillæ of those Parts to

those of the Ventricle, a continual Vomiting attended: To
take off which, when I was call’d, I order’d a Glass of mull’d
Sack, with a Scruple of Salt of Wormwood, and some hours
after a Theriacal Bolus, which she flung up again. I
embrocated the Lips with the Oil of Scorpions mix’d with
the Oil of Roses; and, in Consideration of the Ophthalmy,
tho’ I was not certain but the Heat of the Liquor, rais’d by
the Flame of the Candle before the Body of the Creature
burst, might, as well as the Venom, excite the Disturbance,
(altho’ Mr. Boyle’s Case of a Person blinded by this Liquor
dropping from the living Spider, makes the latter
sufficient;) yet observing the great Tumefaction of the Lips,
together with the other Symptoms not likely to arise from
simple Heat, I was inclin’d to believe a real Poison in the
Case; and therefore not daring to let her Blood in the Arm
[If a man’s throat were cut in those old days, the doctor
would come and bleed the other end of him]. I did,
however, with good Success, set Leeches to her Temples,
which took off much of the Inflammation; and her Pain was
likewise abated, by instilling into her Eyes a thin Mucilage
of the Seeds of Quinces and white Poppies extracted with
Rose-water; yet the Swelling on the Lips increased; upon
which, in the Night, she wore a Cataplasm prepared by
boiling the Leaves of Scordium, Rue, and Elderflowers, and
afterwards thicken’d with the Meal of Vetches. In the mean
time, her Vomiting having left her, she had given her,
between whiles, a little Draught of distill’d Water of
Carduus Benedictus and Scordium, with some of the
Theriaca dissolved; and upon going off of the Symptoms, an
old Woman came luckily in, who, with Assurance suitable to
those People (whose Ignorance and Poverty is their Safety
and Protection), took off the Dressings, promising to cure
her in two Days’ time, altho’ she made it as many Weeks,
yet had the Reputation of the Cure; applying only Plantain
Leaves bruis’d and mixed with Cobwebs, dropping the Juice

into her Eye, and giving some Spoonfuls of the same
inwardly, two or three times a day.’
So ends the wonderful affair. Whereupon the sage gives
Mr. Turner the following shot—strengthening it with italics
—and passes calmly on:
‘I must remark upon this History, that the Plantain, as a
Cooler, was much more likely to cure this Disorder than
warmer Applications and Medicines.’
How strange that narrative sounds to-day, and how
grotesque, when one reflects that it was a grave
contribution to medical ‘science’ by an old and reputable
physician! Here was all this to-do—two weeks of it—over a
woman who had scorched her eye and her lips with candle
grease. The poor wench is as elaborately dosed, bled,
embrocated, and otherwise harried and bedevilled, as if
there had been really something the matter with her; and
when a sensible old woman comes along at last, and treats
the trivial case in a sensible way, the educated ignoramus
rails at her ignorance, serenely unconscious of his own. It
is pretty suggestive of the former snail pace of medical
progress that the spider retained his terrors during three
thousand years, and only lost them within the last thirty or
forty.
Observe what imagination can do. ‘This same young
Woman’ used to be so affected by the strong (imaginary)
smell which emanated from the burning spiders that ‘the
Objects about her seem’d to turn round; she grew faint also
with cold Sweats, and sometimes a light Vomiting.’ There
could have been Beer in that cellar as well as Spiders.
Here are some more of the effects of imagination:
‘Sennertus takes Notice of the Signs of the Bite or Sting of
this Insect to be a Stupor or Numbness upon the Part, with
a sense of Cold, Horror, or Swelling of the Abdomen,
Paleness of the Face, involuntary Tears, Trembling,

Contractions, a (****), Convulsions, cold Sweats; but these
latter chiefly when the Poison has been received inwardly;’
whereas the modern physician holds that a few spiders
taken inwardly, by a bird or a man, will do neither party
any harm.
The above ‘Signs’ are not restricted to spider bites—
often they merely indicate fright. I have seen a person with
a hornet in his pantaloons exhibit them all.
‘As to the Cure, not slighting the usual Alexipharmics
taken internally, the Place bitten must be immediately
washed with Salt Water, or a Sponge dipped in hot Vinegar,
or fomented with a Decoction of Mallows, Origanum, and
Mother of Thyme; after which a Cataplasm must be laid on
of the Leaves of Bay, Rue, Leeks, and the Meal of Barley,
boiled with Vinegar, or of Garlick and Onions, contused
with Goat’s Dung and fat Figs. Mean time the Patient
should eat Garlick and drink Wine freely.’
As for me, I should prefer the spider bite. Let us close
this review with a sample or two of the earthquakes which
the old-time doctor used to introduce into his patient when
he could find room. Under this head we have ‘Alexander’s
Golden Antidote,’ which is good for—well, pretty much
everything. It is probably the old original first patent-
medicine. It is built as follows:
‘Take of Afarabocca, Henbane, Carpobalsamum, each
two Drams and a half; of Cloves, Opium, Myrrh, Cyperus,
each two Drams; of Opobalsamum, Indian Leaf, Cinnamon,
Zedoary, Ginger, Coftus, Coral, Cassia, Euphorbium, Gum
Tragacanth, Frankincense, Styrax Calamita, Celtic, Nard,
Spignel, Hartwort, Mustard, Saxifrage, Dill, Anise, each
one Dram; of Xylaloes, Rheum, Ponticum, Alipta Moschata,
Castor, Spikenard, Galangals, Opoponax, Anacardium,
Mastich, Brimstone, Peony, Eringo, Pulp of Dates, red and
white Hermodactyls, Roses, Thyme, Acorns, Pennyroyal,
Gentian, the Bark of the Root of Mandrake, Germander,

Valerian, Bishops Weed, Bay-Berries, long and white
Pepper, Xylobalsamum, Carnabadium, Macodonian, Parsley-
seeds, Lovage, the Seeds of Rue, and Sinon, of each a Dram
and a half; of pure Gold, pure Silver, Pearls not perforated,
the Blatta Byzantina, the Bone of the Stag’s Heart, of each
the Quantity of fourteen Grains of Wheat; of Sapphire,
Emerald, and Jasper Stones, each one Dram; of Hasle-nut,
two Drams; of Pellitory of Spain, Shavings of Ivory, Calamus
Odoratus, each the Quantity of twenty-nine Grains of
Wheat; of Honey or Sugar a sufficient Quantity.’
Serve with a shovel. No; one might expect such an
injunction after such formidable preparation; but it is not
so. The dose recommended is ‘the Quantity of an Hasle-
nut.’ Only that; it is because there is so much jewellery in
it, no doubt.
‘Aqua Limacum. Take a great Peck of Garden-snails,
and wash them in a great deal of Beer, and make your
Chimney very clean, and set a Bushel of Charcoal on Fire;
and when they are thoroughly kindled, make a Hole in the
Middle of the Fire, and put the Snails in, and scatter more
Fire amongst them, and let them roast till they make a
Noise; then take them out, and, with a Knife and coarse
Cloth, pick and wipe away all the green Froth: Then break
them, Shells and all, in a Stone Mortar. Take also a Quart of
Earth-worms, and scour them with Salt, divers times over.
Then take two Handfuls of Angelica and lay them in the
Bottom of the Still; next lay two Handfuls of Celandine;
next a Quart of Rosemary-flowers; then two Handfuls of
Bears-foot and Agrimony; then Fenugreek; then Turmerick;
of each one Ounce: Red Dock-root, Bark of Barberry-trees,
Wood-sorrel, Betony, of each two Handfuls.—Then lay the
Snails and Worms on the Top of the Herbs; and then two
Handfuls of Goose-dung, and two Handfuls of Sheep-dung.
Then put in three Gallons of Strong Ale, and place the pot
where you mean to set Fire under it: Let it stand all Night,

or longer; in the Morning put in three Ounces of Cloves
well beaten, and a small Quantity of Saffron, dry’d to
Powder; then six Ounces of Shavings of Hartshorn, which
must be uppermost. Fix on the Head and Refrigeratory, and
distil according to Art.’
There! The book does not say whether this is all one
dose, or whether you have a right to split it and take a
second chance at it, in case you live. Also, the book does
not seem to specify what ailment it was for; but it is of no
consequence, for of course that would come out on the
inquest.
Upon looking further, I find that this formidable
nostrum is ‘good for raising Flatulencies in the Stomach’—
meaning from the stomach, no doubt. So it would appear
that when our progenitors chanced to swallow a sigh, they
emptied a sewer down their throats to expel it. It is like
dislodging skippers from cheese with artillery.
When you reflect that your own father had to take such
medicines as the above, and that you would be taking them
to-day yourself but for the introduction of homœopathy,
which forced the old-school doctor to stir around and learn
something of a rational nature about his business, you may
honestly feel grateful that homœopathy survived the
attempts of the allopathists to destroy it, even though you
may never employ any physician but an allopathist while
you live.

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TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES
1. Silently corrected typographical errors and variations in spelling.
2. Archaic, non-standard, and uncertain spellings retained as printed.

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